In all the places C and I have lived before New Jersey, I've always been aware that our neighbors could potentially hear us. And I'm not just referring to during the, you know ... play times. I'm talking about during casual conversations. Fully clothed. Just talking about things like tea. Or grits. Or the Tao of JD in Scrubs.

In our DC apartment, the walls were actually quite good and thick. But I always knew that if I would call out to C from the bathroom asking "Honey, could you bring me a roll of toilet paper?" and she would call back from the living room saying "We're out!" and I would call back to her saying "Okay, well, could you bring me the Andy Warhol t-shirt, then?"—well, I could be fairly certain that all our neighbors had been privy to that exchange, and not just the neighbors who lived on our floor but those above and below us, as well. And if there were people in the hallway, we wouldn't even need to have been speaking loudly for them to catch it. People could pick up everything out there, because every little sound travelled through our door and echoed up and down the hallway, getting amplified as it went. This is why I would pray for empty hallways after any night of hard drinking or extra spicy Thai food.

After we moved out of that apartment and began our brief stint in Baltimore, I became acutely aware of just how thin our 1910-era brownstone walls were when I started hearing strange grunts and growls bellowing forth through my neighbor's wall each night. And he would shuffle up and down his upstairs hallway like he was dragging a dead carcass around with him. I'm still 99% sure he was not a werewolf. Though he did kill a cat once, so ... who knows.

Who, indeed? But when I say I was constantly aware that our neighbors could hear us in these places we used to live, your take-away might be that I was paranoid or that it bothered me in some way. But this wasn't the case at all. In fact, it made me feel closer to my neighbors, and I liked that. I appreciated the fact that they knew intimate things about me, some of which my best friends didn't even know. And when I'd run into them in the lobby and we'd shoot the shit about the weather or the sink hole in the front yard, I knew there was this unspoken dialogue going on between us and that their end of it went something like this: I am aware that sometimes you play "Whiskey River" on repeat one while soaking yourself in a tub full of mayonnaise. And while I don't understand it, I am okay with it. You are my neighbor and I accept you unconditionally. As long as you're not hurting anybody, we're good. You can't imagine how freeing it is for people who are otherwise strangers to you to know all your dirty little secrets and yet accept you so completely. The bond you feel with these people, it's unparalleled. And it's something I just don't feel with my current neighbors and our twenty-five feet of space between our houses.

But I should reiterate that even though all this intimacy didn't necessarily bother me, it was something I was always keenly aware of, and I operated under that awareness at all times. And so I would calculate what I should let them know about me and what I shouldn't. Like: is it wise for people to know I like a little Eminem now and again? Maybe not. Maybe it's better, therefore, not to belt out the lyrics to a song like "Criminal" while cleaning the apartment:


The assonance and consonance on his verses, man. Goose bumps. And it's also some fun shit to recite while vacuuming. Try it. You'll see. It's hard to resist. But as tempting as it always was to spout those lines out loudly in our apartment, I never did. And while I might dance and gesticulate with the recklessness and the fury—and I might even do it naked in nothing but a sock, all Flea-like—I would always make sure to keep vocal dynamics to nothing more than a hoarse whisper.

I think this has made me somewhat frustrated over the years—not being able to fully let go and just yell and scream every once in a while. When we lived in Dallas, I could at least get my loud voice out on my drives to and from work. Big D's roads and highways are just loaded with people yelling at the top of their lungs from the perceived sound-proof confines of their SUVs and sports cars. But when we moved to DC, I stopped driving and started walking most places. I became one of the many robots with white headphones in my ears, silent on the outside, but a whole world of noise going on inside. And even though in a city like DC, I needn't have been shy about singing out loud while I walked down K Street or 7th, the drugs I took weren't hard enough to make me feel comfortable with that sort of thing. So my big rock-star voice got relegated to the four walls of my brain studio.

But here's the crux of this thing: since moving to the Jersey burbs and having—for the first time—a detached house AND—for the second time—a truck, all this quiet voice crap has gone out the proverbial window. During the many hours I've spent painting our walls, I've assisted dozens of artists, from Jeff Tweedy to Tom Waits to Dave Matthews. And yes, Eminem. And my truck might as well have a "Recording" light on it. God, I've laid down some tracks in there, brother.

But the other day, something made me take pause. I was outside waiting on Honey to finish up a poop and I heard quite clearly the sound of a baby crying from our neighbor's house. Now, if I had been right up on my neighbor's property line that would have been one thing. But I was about as far away from his house as I could get.

Wow, I thought. That baby's pretty loud. I wonder ...

Then, the other day I was walking down the street with Honey and I could hear a voice from inside a house calling out to somebody else to pick up the goddamned phone.

Hmmm...

That's when it dawned on me: a detached house does not a sound-proof oasis make. If somebody's walking by our house, they can probably hear me. Perhaps I need to rethink things.

Perhaps, indeed. I guess what really bothers me isn't the singing. What I'm really beginning to question is the wisdom of naming our dog Honey. Because C and I have taught her certain things—certain commands. And sometimes I will toss one of those suckers at her just all spontaneous-like. And sometimes the voice I'll use to do it will be quite loud. And maybe—to the outside listener—it would sound a little odd, these commands I'm making. Maybe odd isn't the right word. Maybe kinky is a better word. Like when I say "Honey! Go to your bed! Now! Oh, that's a good girl. She's my good girl. My Honey-Bunny." Or when I'm teaching her the concepts of "take" and "give" and I say something like, "Honey, take the bone! Yes! Good girl. Now give it to Daddy! Come on, Honey. That's it! Give it to Daddy! There you go! Yes!"

Yeah, I'm thinking "Honey" might have been an unfortunate name for our dog.

And maybe this is why I keep getting winks and knowing glances from that lady who does her morning walks down our street.

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