I usually do my best to clamp my jaw shut when I'm getting some, but one particularly sultry afternoon last summer in my girlfriend's East Village apartment, my vocal chords got the better of me. "SHUT THE FUCK UP!" bellowed a disgruntled neighbor, shattering my moment. The same guy talked to the building supervisor the next day, and somehow a complaint about noisy sex turned into a complaint about our being gay. The super reassured my horrified girlfriend that "as far as I'm concerned what you do in your bedroom is your business" a well-intentioned cliché I'm afraid I'll never hear quite the same way
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again. I avoided eye contact with all her neighbors for weeks afterward, and kept a pillow over my face at night to stifle any untoward sound.
Recovering from this incident, my girlfriend and I were alone at my parents' house in practically-rural Massachusetts. I thought, now I really can make all the noise I want, but my lover was still so wigged out that she stopped just when I was really enjoying myself, flatly refusing to continue. Talk about a behaviorist strategy I muzzled myself for some time after that.
It can be hard for us loud ones to empathize with people who really hate hearing noise probably because we tend to be voyeurs, and can't imagine not wanting to know what goes on behind closed doors. I've enjoyed the times I've overheard other people having sex. It gives me a perspective on them I wouldn't otherwise have had. Once, to my fascination, I heard a friend blatantly faking it. What did this say about her, I wondered. Was she desperate for approval? Terminally polite? Or was she showing off to mislead outside listeners about the quality of her dalliance? Eight years later, she still cringes at any allusion to her feigning.
I once had a boyfriend who lived three blocks away from me, but would hardly ever sleep over. This was partly because my shower had an unpleasant cold drip, but it was mostly because I live with roommates, and the walls in my old brownstone apartment are thin. One rare night in my bed, I was just about to come, when we suddenly stopped my roommates were giggling in the next room and pounding on the wall. Needless to say, this didn't help my cause.
Some noisemakers go to tremendous lengths to avoid being overheard. I used to share my apartment with a woman who bribed me to vacate it every Friday afternoon (not exactly convenient since I worked at home), the appointed time of her weekly S/M sex date. "I'll work downstairs," I'd protest. "But it will be really loud," she'd insist, and every week she'd buy me a sandwich in exchange for my absurd compliance.
Noise makes the fact that you actually have sex distressingly concrete, and in a society where the word "private" is synonymous with sex (private life, private parts and so on), your sex life is supposed to remain abstract to everyone who hasn't slept with you. This is especially true if you have sex that is somehow stigmatized, like my girlfriend and I, or my sandwich-bearing, discreetly Sadean roommate. Indeed, noisemaking pretty much puts an end to our sincere hope that our friends and family don't have sex, and that they haven't figured out that we do; perhaps this is why our families bring out our worst noise anxieties. My friend Jane has sometimes found her thirteen-year-old stepson's door open after she and her husband have been going at it. She shudders just thinking about this. "I think he can hear us if his door is open. Now that's creepy."
Horrifying as it is to be overheard, the possibility can also be a turn-on. I think of myself as a modest, even private person, nothing like Jane, an obvious exhibitionist who sometimes distresses acquaintances by flinging off her shirt in a crowded living room, or smelling her armpits theatrically. Yet I have to admit I'm an exhibitionist too in my own way. Just don't suggest, like one old roommate did, that I want you to hear me. It's nothing personal: I'm always trying to see how public I can make my private life. I talk about body hair with people I've never met before. I like to make out with my girl on the street and in bars (oh, and I, uh, write for Hooksexup° magazine).
So making noise, though it often feels like an involuntary physiological response, might be an act we put on for our own benefit. (This is underscored by the fact that often when we really have to be quiet, we can and do manage it). Sometimes if I'm not feeling all that much, just making a little noise excites me. And when something feels really good, the sound of my own noise can make me come harder (rather than vice versa), like a pavlovian dog fiercely ringing its own bell. Other times I've had orgasms trail off in the middle because I was suppressing my moans, and if I couldn't hear it, I couldn't feel it. This performative aspect of noisemaking makes it an easy target for mockery. I've been ribbed for the vocabulary of my noisemaking for my Oh baby's and my Fuck me now's, but in bed, being original isn't always the point. Noise can be like handcuffs or black lace more desirable precisely because it's familiar (or part of our common lexicon), and thus all the sexier to perform.
Noisemakers are no more sexual than quiet people, nor do we enjoy sex more; we just have an alarmingly inclusive eroticism. As much distress and chaos as we noisemakers seem to cause ourselves and others, I can't help feeling that our lovers must like it, at least under the right circumstances. When you're having sex with a noisemaker, you know when you're doing something right. Noise is a housing liability, an assault on perfectly reasonable social boundaries, and a form of exhibitionism, but it's also a pretty sound way to communicate with a lover. A full-throated moan can say far more emphatically than any words: Yes.
the next room and pounding on the wall. Needless to say, this didn't help my cause.
dog fiercely ringing its own bell. Other times I've had orgasms trail off in the middle because I was suppressing my moans, and if I couldn't hear it, I couldn't feel it. This performative aspect of noisemaking makes it an easy target for mockery. I've been ribbed for the vocabulary of my noisemaking for my Oh baby's and my Fuck me now's, but in bed, being original isn't always the point. Noise can be like handcuffs or black lace more desirable precisely because it's familiar (or part of our common lexicon), and thus all the sexier to perform.
