A Japanese friend once explained to me the idea that all people have a God presiding over certain aspects of their lives. Some people have a God of work, meaning that they always manage to find a good job even in tough times. Some have a God of love blessing them with an unending stream of compatible lovers. You get the picture.
Before this weekend I was convinced I had a God of shelter. All of my life I have always had luck finding great places to live with fun people at a good price. (Alternatively I would say I have a Devil of hair – as evidenced by my evaporating hairline, inexplicably rowdy bedhead and persistent patches of alopecia all over my face and body.)
Sadly, here in Estonia my God of shelter has forsaken me. Upon arriving here in Tallinn the apartment I had arranged was callously rented to another tenant the day before I was supposed to move in. After a frantic weekend-long scramble I found a tiny room in a centrally located guesthouse. It was the only place I could find willing to rent to me for 3 months. At first everything was hunky dory. For two weeks the room was a quiet sanctuary with speedy internet and tidy hall-mates.
That all ended Thursday night.
In preparation for an early Friday morning trip to the Estonian city of Tartu I settled into bed. While drifting away I was yanked awake by violent coughing from the apartment next to mine. Though, to call it coughing would be inaccurate. It was more like simultaneous screaming and coughing.
This scream-coughing was followed up by the vibrating rumble of moving furniture — then full-blown crashing. This went on for two hours. As late evening turned to middle of the night the crashing finally stopped and was replaced with blarring thumping euro-techno and probably dancing.
By 1:30am the music had not only gotten louder, but the crashing had resumed – as had the scream-coughing. With 5 hours and 30 minutes until my alarm sounded I couldn’t take it anymore. I knocked three times on our shared wall. It was as gentle and polite a knock as I could muster. Nothing. I knocked again. Still the same awful music. Finally I pounded the wall five or six times… all I got was my neighbour gleefully pounding back on the walls. I searched frantically for my earplugs, and found only one. Seriously! One earplug…
My simmering anger boiled to rage and paranoia. As muffled sounds of Katy Perry blended into Milo and then into what I swear was Mambo #5 I lay in bed, pillow over my head, marinating in frustrated hate-fuelled fantasies. In my minds eye I pictured my neighbour shirtless with a sweatband lifting and dropping weights while guzzling energy drinks with pictures of cobras and stallions on the cans. I was helpless. All social conventions had failed.
At around 2:30am he got a phone call. The walls are so thin not only did I hear him speaking, but I heard his friend speaking through the receiver! (!!!)
Long story short, I was so tired I slept through my alarm the next morning and awoke to a phone call from a colleague wondering why I was already 30 minutes late for our trip… fail.
When I returned to my apartment the next evening after a groggy excursion to Tartu he hadn’t even stopped. Still the same music, still the same thumping, still scream-coughing. I am embarrassed to admit 
I was afraid to confront him. I was scared my anger might get the best of me and I would freak out. I was scared that he might actually be a gigantic caffine-fulled menace looking for a dust-up with a neighbour insolent enough to interrupt his 24hour dance party. But I went anyway. I knocked on his door.
***
The man who greeted me was indeed shirtless, but other than that couldn’t have been further from what I had imagined — or any stranger.
His name was Oliver and he greeted me at his door with a hearty handshake and a smile. He sported bullet-repelant glasses and maybe 100 extra pounds (45.359237 kg) wrapped around his squat shirtless trunk of a torso. His entire body, from his close-cropped blonde hair down to his Crocs®, was soaking wet. He had a towel wrapped around his waist. He pulled me into his rainforest of a room. Boxes, clothes and knick-knacks were strewn everywhere. The heat was cranked up high and lush plants hung from every wall. The wet slick on his round body was most likely sweat. Though the language barrier made it hard to tell, I realized he had some kind of developmental disorder.
Oliver wasn’t a strong English speaker, but right away he apologized for the noise. He pointed me to his bedroom, where perched on our shared wall was a recently installed massive plasma TV. We genuflected, spoke in simple English and managed to communicate that I was frustrated and he was sorry. Curiously, Oliver couldn’t stop moving, twitching and speaking. He was not in control of his own behaviour.
Oliver pulled a bottle of Jägermeister from a shelf and poured us a couple shots. It was his 31st birthday – the same age as me. He explained that the TV was a gift from his family and that tomorrow he would see his two daughters. They were 9 and 11 years old. Tonight he claimed he was celebrating and going to a club.
I said I had to leave, and thanked him for the Jäger, and for turning down the music. On my way out I noticed something I couldn’t believe I had missed. On the only wall without plants, hung a massive four-square metre poster of Oliver himself, again soaking wet, yelling (or coughing). It was like a giant advertisement for his behaviour, or a totem he worked 24 hours a day to live up to. There were some words on the poster that may have explained everythihng but I am illiterate in Estonian.
Oliver hugged me as I left. I went back to my room and though he never did leave his room to go clubbing, I slept in peace.
The next morning I woke up to more of the same. But I wasn’t angry at all. Now that I could picture the source of the noise, and where it was happening I felt calm. I am fairly certain that most of this situation is out of Oliver’s control.
For that whole next day people came and went from his apartment. Through the walls I heard some Russian-speakers, some Estonian and lots of laughing. At one point Oliver stopped by and asked me how I had slept the night before. I said fine, and thanked him for the respect.
I seriously have no idea what to do now. Now that I know Oliver I can’t get mad at him for being noisy, but nor can I rest comfortably in my own room. I can’t blame him for what he is doing, but I feel like I can’t leave now… like I am the villain in an after-school special. The nasty guy intolerant of other people’s differences.
I need to pray or make some sort of sacrifice to my God of shelter to deliver me from Oliver. But what do you sacrifice to a God of shelter? A table lamp? A remote control? And what do you say to that God? Let my people go! (to bed).
Awesome.
[...] God, deliver me from Oliver [...]