Heard It Through The Fire Door

I awoke one sunny morning last September to a strange new sound in my ear. Granted, in the soft days of Cambridge autumn, it’s not entirely unusual to hear birds just above the heaving and clanking of trucks on JFK Street—but this bird was not cooing at me from my window. It was as if I had literally bedded a cranky parrot, or kept a menagerie in my pillow.

As it turned out, the bird belonged to my neighbor through the fire door. How he managed to keep a live animal in the House, and how I managed to go the whole year without speaking to him, I do not know. I do know that over the course of the semester, I grew more and more attached to that bird—or at least more intimately aware of its mood swings and squawking schedules. I realized the extent to which my life was inextricably tied to the two rooms through the fire doors in my Kirkland bedroom.

Privacy is a pipe dream at Harvard: we live in exceptionally close and crowded quarters, often separated by paper-thin walls, fire doors, and flimsy partitions. But the fire door arrangement is particularly precarious because one push can open up an entirely different world, and even modulated voices can offer a constant soundtrack.

And so, the trope of the fire door relationship, a kind of Sartrean intimité, an inevitable, almost grotesque, familiarity with the behavioral patterns and day-to-day habits of the strangers who live next door.

Through the fire door, we come to know our neighbors’ sleep schedules, the ups and downs of their love lives, their music tastes, and their relationships with their parents. We know when they flush the toilet, we know that they sing along to country music on Monday mornings and sneeze in threes.

In Kirkland, living through the fire door doesn’t necessarily mean living next door—Parrot Boy resided in the next entryway over, so he was just another random Housemate, one of those people you see occasionally in the dining hall, but never in the stairwell.

In the last three years, I have shared a fire door with five different rooms. I have heard everything from roommate arguments and phone flirtation to impromptu shower a cappella and furniture construction. I have, unfortunately, listened in on tiresome pre-party rituals and even more tiresome post-party vomiting. I have heard some hilarious and humiliating accounts of weekend romps, and I’ve heard some weekend romps.

Which leads me to my next point: what to do when the “calls of the wild” coming from the room next door are, how shall I say this, a lot raunchier than the sounds of an unhappy bird. (Because when it comes down to it, I’ll take chirping over groaning any day of the week).

Dining hall tables abound with tales of overheard fire door sex. One friend of mine had to move her bed after her neighbor and his girlfriend discovered a new position that entailed ramming furniture into the wall. In another unrelated case last year, a friend of mine went so far as to shout sex advice through the fire door (“I don’t think she’s enjoying that!”). Moment of full and embarrassing disclosure: I once discovered that a friend was hooking up with my then-boyfriend’s neighbor when I heard her unmistakable laugh through the wall.

All of this practical cohabitation brings about a catalog of ethical puzzles. What is the proper protocol in such circumstances? Is it appropriate to ask your neighbors to turn down the music, or stop having loud sex against the wall? Do you complain, or do you put on your headphones, crank up your iTunes and sulk? Is it polite to giggle about your neighbors’ private lives with your friends in the dining hall (and then write about it in the student newspaper)? At what point are you no longer a neighbor, but a voyeur?

While my relationship with Parrot Boy never progressed beyond muttering my sympathies for his bird and his girlfriend, the fact that the boy through the other fire door in my room lived in the same entryway offered more opportunities for interaction. Our door refused to stay shut—which proved useful on the frequent occasions that I locked myself out and went sheepishly next door to gain access to my room. Establishing a relationship with the person through the fire door, even if it’s just one of convenience, makes the inevitable eavesdropping a bit less absurd.

It’s also important to remember that the fire door, like any relationship, goes both ways, and demands a bit of respect. I can only imagine what my neighbors think of my arguments with boyfriends past, my conversations with roommates, my habit of proofreading my papers out loud, my unnatural obsession with the BBC’s Pride and Prejudice, and my collection of Ashlee Simpson songs.

When it comes down to it, after all, Ashlee doesn’t sound much better than a sick parrot anyway.

Rebecca D. O’Brien ’06, a History and Literature concentrator in Kirkland House, is the associate managing editor of The Crimson. She now will have to move off campus to avoid angry fire door neighbors, past and present.