Do you like hearing the sounds of lovemaking from the hotel room next to yours?
I’ve had my fair share of overhearing neighbors in hotels. Not surprising, given the number of nights I spend in hotels each year (average: 240).
Sex sound effects are certainly superior to the sounds of snoring, or worse, fighting. I’ve been kept awake entire nights by both. Yeah, travel is glamorous.
Unlike next-door-snoring- and next-door-fighting-wakefulness, other people’s nighttime sex sounds put me into a sort of dreamy, foggy trance—as long as they don’t go on too long. One night, wakefulness dragged on and on and the neighbors’ lovemaking sounds—loud and dramatic as they were—became repetitive and predictable. I had no urge to tune in, as with a fight or loud conversation. It wasn’t interesting. Still, I lost a night’s sleep.
I can’t help wondering about the noisy neighbors. What do they look like? How long have they been together? Do they always sound like this? Maybe they’re each married to others.
Mornings-after are amusing if I get a glimpse of the couple. Once we got in the elevator together and went down for breakfast in the hotel restaurant. I sipped my coffee stealing glances at the two strangers I had intimate knowledge of.
A few years ago we stayed in the antique-filled East Concubine Suite of the five-room Red Capital Residence in Beijing. On its intricately-carved opium bed was a porcelain headrest and a note suggesting that couples take care in their positions so as not to damage the ancient bed.
Soon after we turned out the lights we heard the amorous sounds of our neighbors. Bob was convinced that it was a recording, piped in for realism. Thankfully, the moans and gasps did not continue all night.
What about daytime sex sounds? I hear them about the same way I notice people’s tattoos and rubberneck accidents: with a squeamish fascination of private things exposed. (I know tattoos are not private, but I was taught not to stare—but I want to stare—and at tattoos, I sometimes do, though not without a slightly naughty sense of illicit license.)
On an amusing, tangential note, I used to live next door to a prostitute. While she did not conduct business at home, she did take appointments. Her answering machine blasted each john’s message. “Hey honey, remember me, Jim? I’ll be in Vegas next week. I’m the one who…” And here we were treated to usually unfamiliar, vivid, and sensational details. On beautiful days when her open windows faced mine, it was impossible to ignore the variety of plaintive and seductive messages left by hopeful men seeking Cinda’s services. Compelled to overhear the men’s intimacies, I had this same sense of unwilling spying and illicit knowing.
So here’s my survey, travelers: do you like to hear the sounds of sex from an adjacent hotel room? Yes? No? Comments? If you’ve read this, you have to answer.
Thanks for sharing that very clear imagery, Adam. Or should I say, well-defined audio replay, which itself paints a clear picture. Good point about B&B vs. hotel, though both are great settings for stories. Remember Fawlty Towers?
I don’t mind if the couple is–how shall I put this–normal in terms of volume & duration. We have overheard other couples making love on countless occassions and none of them were noteworthy… except for one. It’s always the strange ones that you remember. We were at a B&B in Galway, Ireland. Now, I have to remind folks that a B&B is not a hotel; it is a home. Someone has opened their home to guests and this is how they make a living. The B&B staff live there, sometimes with small children. With that in mind, I was quite embarrassed at being woken up at 3:00 AM, 3:30 AM, and then 4:00 AM with what I can only describe as a woman being brought to a banging-climax with wild cries of passion, and the sound of a fat man pushing a wheelbarrow of bricks uphill. Seriously, that’s what we thought he was doing. You’d hear these loud (feminine) “uhhh… uhhh.. OHHH YEAH” noises, and at lesser frequency a great heaving “Urrrggh!” like a man pushing something heavy up a hill. It was probably the strangest sex we have ever heard other people having. We had to bite our blankets in order to keep from laughing so hard.
Apparently a tour group (their tour bus said The Paddywagon) of 8 people was staying overnight. Imagine both our curiosity and embarrassment at having to MEET all these people in the tiny breakfast lounge the next morning. We were racking our brains trying to figure out WHO it was. We also felt kind of bad when the owner of the B&B sent her daughter & son off to grade school. Those kids were probably used to rude guests making “adult” noises in some part of their house. Still, how inappropriate. People need to be more respectful.
Hotels are fun and all but I think you always have to be respectful of your neighbors. Luckily in my travels, any episodes I’ve heard have been short. So funny about the sign on the Chinese bed!
I haven’t yet been treated to stereo hotel lovemaking!
Bambi,
No way do I want to hear the sounds of a couple having sex when I’m in my hotel room.
On a business trip several years ago I had to endure the sounds of “hard core” sex on either side of the hotel room I was staying in. All I wanted to do was sleep as I had just flown cross country flight from Washington, DC to Seattle. All I wanted to do was sleep and I didn’t get much that night.
To remedy having to listen to couples having sex in their hotel room I do the following:
1. Insist on a room at the end of a hallway. That way I only get the “sounds” from one side and not in stereo.
2. Fall asleep with either the TV or radio on to help drown out any noises from parties or sexual encounters
3. Put my head phones on and fall asleep to what I want to listen to.
The above solutions don’t work 100%, but they are better than listening to the squeals from a neighboring room
But Noelle… you don’t know what your son heard from his neighbors!
Ick. No. I was kept awake until 1:00 a.m. at a hotel near Disneyland while accompanying my son on a junior high school field trip with 100 other kids. I’m glad he was in a different room. It’s called a “private life” because it’s supposed to be private. Nobody wants to hear that.
Sweet post. But the answer is ‘goodness no’.
1. If I could hear them then they could hear me.
2. I find it the responsibility of the hotel to build insulation that works. Absolutely hate disturbances of all kinds, home and away from home.
After hearing a long, eventful sex episode in a San Francisco hotel, my sister and I stood near the connecting door and applauded enthusiastically. It was quiet after that.