I hate developers! Hate them. Not content with charging an arm and a leg, the promise of your firstborn and a contract signed in blood before they’ll give you an apartment, the bastards are frequently too cheap to provide actual walls between one room and the next in your ‘bijou’ residence.

At first I marvelled – what kind of space age, technologically advanced material had they used to build the walls? They looked study enough and yet were no thicker than the gossamer wings of a fairy. If Thomas was in the kitchen and I needed servicing – or merely a cup of tea – there was no need to shout at him to get his ass into the bedroom. A loud whisper was enough.
We realised soon enough that the neighbours could hear us too. After all, well, we could hear them. They seemed quite fond of The Simpsons while Thomas and I prefer more energetic activities. But we decided that apartment living, while it does mean you are literally and figuratively on top of one another, was fairly anonymous. As long as we didn’t get too friendly with the neighbours, we wouldn’t worry too much about disturbing them. That was the idea anyway. Three months later they moved out. Happy days. At the moment it’s all quiet on the Western Front, at least until some poor sucker rents next door.
The lack of proper walls was all very well until we got roommates in the shape of my brother David, and his missus, Haley. Lured to Dublin’s fair city by promises of well-paying jobs, they have upped sticks from South Africa and are currently living with us. Those cheeky chaps, the developers, obviously thought it would be a great bit of craic altogether to have both bedrooms backing onto each other with nothing but these lovely flimsy tissue-like walls between them.
I have mentioned before that I tend to be a bit, ahem… expressive, in my appreciation of a good shag. This is fine most of the time, but it’s a bit of a liability when your brother is only inches away. Furthermore, while I hope that he and his good lady have a wonderful, exciting and mutually fulfilling sex life, I really don’t want to have to be aurally assaulted with the evidence.
The upshot of this is that Thomas and I have been forced to sneak around like a couple of horny teenagers. Now, sneaking around can be fun for a while, but its charms wear off pretty quickly, I can assure you. It’s all very well when you are having an illicit affair – sneaking around can, and indeed does, add to the excitement – but it’s a bit much when your only desire is to shag your ‘official’ partner. I didn’t mind it so much when I was younger, but as I am a hard-working, tax-paying citizen, you’d think that basic privacy rights would have forced developers to provide me with decent walls.
Actually this has been a bit of a bugbear! As a student my sex life was sporadic because of lack of privacy. Initially I shared a studio apartment with my sister. As it was in the city centre near all the good pubs and clubs, I would have at least three people staying over most weekend nights. This meant that I, and whoever I was seeing at the time, would have to come up with creative ways to get some privacy. Parks, car parks, empty lecture halls, early screenings at the cinema or whatever we could find. No wonder I like sex outside the bedroom – I had no choice!
Then I moved into a house-share. Having obtained the Holy Grail, a room of my own, I thought my opportunities for quality time with the man of my choice would improve. However, I hadn’t factored in my housemate. Her name was Toni, a reborn Christian (no less). While her soul may have been saved, her sense of humour had been surgically removed, as had her sense of charity. Whenever I was entertaining a guest, Toni would bang on the walls to tell us to stop. It was like having my Mammy in the next room.
Back to the present: at first, conscious of my brother’s doubtlessly embarrassed ear about six inches away, Thomas and I tried to be quiet. This was a bit difficult. When Thomas was doing what he does best, I had to bury my face in a pillow or bite my arm to muffle any noises. In just a few days I’d managed to give myself quite an impressive hickey and chew the corner off my favourite pillow. But I realised that, muffle the dramatics as best we could, chances are they could still hear us. I wouldn’t have minded if it was friends, but a brother… I dunno, it just seemed a bit weird.
Next I tried using Jedi mind-tricks on our guests with mixed success. “David,” I asked using my best smooth-as-silk voice, “Do you want to go to the pub?”
“Well,” he said, “Perhaps we’ll go for just the one.”
“Or two.” I replied. “It’s not late.”
As soon as they were ready to leave, Thomas and I suddenly ‘remembered’ work that needed to be done and sent them on alone.
“Go on, have three drinks. More even. Perhaps it’s time to take up binge drinking? You need more hobbies. Take your time. I need privacy to, er, write. That Niall Stokes, he’s a hard taskmaster. He makes Tony Soprano look like a teddy bear. If this isn’t in by the crack of dawn tomorrow, he’ll have me covered in syrup and set the hotpress killer bees on me.”
My brother, for all his faults is no fool and twigged exactly what was going on. After all, he was well aware of the issue with the walls. “We’ll be back in two hours,” he informed me. “Perhaps tomorrow evening you two would like to go to the pub. You need to get out more. You both work so hard. Spend some time together. Don’t worry about us. We’ll stay in and, er, watch a movie.” Damn.
I don’t suppose I am alone in this problem. There must be thousands of people across the country forced to share badly built new apartments with friends in order to meet the rent or mortgage payments. Great for exhibitionists, but not so good for those who don’t really want to broadcast the soundtrack of what they get up to between the sheets.
It could have been worse though. After five days David and Haley had found an apartment and Thomas and I had our privacy restored. Cue to crack open the champagne and celebrate with a very, very intimate party for two. Bless those lovely people at Daft.ie!