I was the one who picked the apartment above the bar. He wanted the cozy little place with the big closets and the driveway and the yard, but I wanted the place above the seedy bar in the seedy part of town. I rationalized it by telling him it would motivate us, but really, I just wanted the place above the bar. I fantasized about befriending the bartenders, getting free drinks at any time of the day or night, listening to the jukebox, telling stories and hearing stories that made mine pale in comparison.

The irony is, I never set foot inside the bar. It wasn’t until I got what I wanted that I understood how much I didn’t want it.

The first night in our new apartment, I realized how badly I’d messed up. We sat on the floor in the living room as the blue neon of the sign with the typographical error filled the room with mournful light. We ate Taco Bell and drank beer and watched TV and wondered how we’d ended up where we’d ended up.

It was then that the soundtrack to the next two years of our lives began. Of course, I didn’t realize the significance of the moment until much later, but as I ate my bean burrito and watched television, the future began to unfold.

I’d never even heard “Ripple” before that moment. That guitar riff stuck in my head immediately. Bah da da dah. I was Pavlov’s dog, and someone in the bar downstairs kept ringing the bell, over and over and over again. For two years, they rang that goddamned bell, until they nearly drove me insane.

The people in the bar loved that song. Sometimes they would play it twenty or thirty times in a single night. Occasionally, drunk voices would filter through the cheap carpeting too, and they’d sing me to sleep.

Of course, I never really did sleep. For two years, I didn’t sleep. It got to the point where I refused to go to bed before two a.m., regardless of how early I needed to be awake for work. But even though the bar locked its doors at two, the party always went into the wee hours. I’d often sit in my bed at four or five in the morning, my eyes pleading for darkness as the sun began to shine through my bedroom window. The song would end, and a minute or two would pass, and I would close my eyes in a fit of optimism. Then, just as sleep crept into my room and laid her hand on my pillow, those four notes would jerk me back from the brink. Bah da da dah.

The Grateful Dead wasn’t the only band this bar played. Sometimes they went with Fleetwood Mac, and on rare occasions, “All I Want Is You” would creep through the floorboards. But time and time again, those same four notes drifted up into my room with the stale cigarette smoke and the drunken laughter. Bah da da dah.

I did everything to that song. I cooked dinner and drank gin to that song. I made new friends and lost a few old ones as that song played in the background. I fucked and I fought and I forgave, all to the sound of those four notes. I could never hear the words, so that simple little melody was the bond that held it all together. Bah da da dah. Eventually I gave up. It was time to move.

I live in a different city now, one where heroin addicts and sirens and gunshots are the sounds that shatter the night. I’ve learned to filter out those sounds, though. I don’t hear the cars stopping to pick up the neighborhood whores, and I don’t hear the corner boys selling their sweetness to the hundreds of customers who make up the population of my horribly addicted city. I don’t hear the drunks leaving the bars, and I don’t hear the helicopters circling overhead. I still don’t sleep right, but at least I don’t hear.

Last night a car drove by. The stereo was loud enough to cut through the brick wall of my little rowhouse. Whatever song was playing had four notes that followed a certain rhythm. Bah da da dah. I jerked up in my bed, wide awake, looking for the blue neon typo that lit up my room ten years ago. It took a long time before I realized where I was, and where I wasn’t.

The little dog who sleeps in my bed snuggled up against me and immediately fell back to sleep. I lay there for at least an hour, my eyes wide open, my muscles rigid against the soothing autumn air. The song never came, but I couldn’t sleep. I sat in the dark and waited.