Schadunfreed

My terrible, very bad neighbors across the hall–you know, the ones of the extremely audible, all-hours bongo-playing and door-slamming and key-losing? The ones who routinely had such terrible, very bad, and extremely audible sex, complete with terrible, very bad, and extremely audible fake orgasms, that I longed to bludgeon them with a copy of Our Bodies, Ourselves? Well, I am extremely pleased to report that those neighbors have left the building. First they broke up—very audibly, of course–and then he moved out, and then she finally moved out as well. As of now, their apartment remains empty, and my building is so still, so peaceful, so luxuriantly quiet that it’s as if I’m living in a mountain spa right in the middle of Williamsburg. I need a new word for the particular schadenfreude one feels upon outlasting terrible neighbors. Schadenfreudenizen? Schadunhausfraught? Oh, the future’s so bright my apartment’s gotta wear shadunshades.

"All, everything I understand, I understand only because I love."
― Leo Tolstoy