"Could You PLEASE Stop?"

(Writing tip: write about being caught doing something embarassing)

It's Saturday evening. The clock has struck 9:38pm and Amy has been playing guitar and singing in the kitchen of the white painted four bedroom flat she spends most nights alone in. She checks out how the frame is on her iPad on which she records herself singing. Occasionally she musters up the courage to upload the covers to YouTube, mainly for her mum to find like easter eggs a few times a year. She notices you can see her wine glass in the video, which is her third glass of wine tonight, but the viewers won't know that, she tells herself. She has got into that playful mood where she loves to sing classics from the 80s or 90s really slowly and with loads of melancholy.

She starts typing in the words in the search bar on the website which is full of great, well written songs. "Every time we touch" she types and smiles at her own genius.

And so it begins. She plays a short intro consisting of simple chords. She plays the intro with the basic finger picking pattern she was taught when she first started learning to play guitar. She then strums the first chord of the first verse and sings with ironic passion:

"I still hear your voice, when you sleep next to me..."

She checks herself out on the iPad filming her.

"I still feel your touch in my dreams..."

She looks down at her guitar as she changes the chord back to C:

"Forgive me my weakness but I don't know why..."

She wonders why songs like this are so frowned upon when there are songs like "My Anaconda" out there.

"It's hard to survive..."

She smiles at the camera and picks up the pace and belts out the chorus reminding her of a recent night out with a close friend of hers where they went nuts on the dance floor to this song.

"CAUSE EVERY TIME WE TOUCH, I GET THIS FEELING!" She's not concentrated on strumming perfectly anymore, just on playing guitar and singing. Completely alone and with her iPad as the only witness she can really go for it. "AND EVERY TIME WE KISS I SWEAR I COULD FLY! CAN'T YOU FEEL MY HEART BEAT FAST? I WANT THIS TO LAAAST" This is great. This is quality me-time, she thinks. "NEED YOU BY MY SIDE." She takes a deep breath because the chorus continues: "CAUSE EVERY TIME WE TOUCH I FEEL THE STATIC. AND EVERY TIME WE KISS I-"

KNOCK.

KNOCK.

KNOCK.

Amy freezes as a firm hand knocks on her front door. It's a man's clenched fist. She can hear that loud and clear. She makes a face at the camera and yells out into the hallway: "Is it too loud?" hoping the man will just say: "Yes, shut it down!" and go away so she doesn't have to face him. But the man is silent, the clenched fist against her door demands a face to face conversation. She gets up and on the video you see her long legs dressed in the striped, colourful tights she only wears when she feels extra creative walk away and out of the kitchen. Click. She unlocks the door. The tension sieves through the hallway around the corner and enters the empty kitchen making the inanimate third glass of wine look nervous. "Do you want me to stop?" she sheepishly asks. "Yes, could you PLEASE stop?" the man says, clearly irritated. Amy has disturbed his peace on this Saturday night. "I have children who have to sleep, and it goes STRAIGHT through the building and you've been playing for 3 hours now!" The door creaks a little as Amy opens it a bit more. You can hear by how she says what she says next, that she has changed her body language in order to be more confrontational because she feels wronged by the numbers presented to her. "Aaah.." she suggests. "Well, then 2 hours." the man replies. Amy takes charge of the conversation: "I'm really sorry about this. When do your children sleep? When should I stop playing? At 7pm?" "Ehm..." the man says. He was clearly not expecting a kind negotiation with the loud, young, down stairs neighbor who has been annoying him for a little less than 3 hours. Okay, maybe, 2. "They go to bed at 9pm, so 8pm would be a fine time to stop." "Of course, I've got it. It won't happen again. I'm new to the building, so I didn't know about noise levels. It won't happen again." she assures him."Good, it better not. Cause it goes straight through." the man repeats and leaves her with a final blow before he goes up the stairs to his poor apartment which has suffered through half a mediocre, ironic cover of Cascadas "Every Time We Touch.": "And it sounds awful."

On the video you hear a final "Sorry." from Amy who's convincing herself he only lashed out because he's tired and telling herself that at least her mum likes her singing voice. She then quickly shuts the door and locks it, determined to never have a clenched fist beat her trembling front door that hard again. She re-enters the kitchen on her tip-toes, sits down in front of the iPad, blushing all over and says: "Human interaction, ladies and gentlemen." and ends the video.