"I love you!" he shouted. "I really do!" Hurried footsteps followed the sound of a woman's voice. She was laughing--flattered or surprised was hard to tell.

"Come on," she said, "you're drunk."

"Not that drunk," he swore, and footsteps and voices faded.

It was after 3 a.m. and I, an early riser, was attempting to get to bed. From the window I could see two blurry black coats disappearing around the corner.

I write this as a warning to all eloquent, drunken lovers. My window opens onto a particularly busy path circling Lowell House and facing the Fly. By construction that would make the sonic ancient Egyptians proud, conversations spoken at ordinary volume drift upward with perfect clarity. Our protagonists can hardly guess they're involving an entire Lowellian wing in their declarations.

My room, among others, is a lucky recipient of this 24-hour programming. Even I, a self-avowed philosopher more interested in the Scandinavian excursions of Wittgenstein than the continuing saga of inebriated strangers, find such eavesdropping hard to avoid. My desk and bed are away from the window and my shade is drawn. I've tried playing music, but not at 3 a.m.--as has been said, the walls and windows are thin.

I have heard declarations of love, drunken ballads, political arguments and a Grammy-worthy Mariah Carey impersonation. Inevitably, there are voices I recognize, stories whose beginnings I've heard. Occasionally, feeling guilty, I've opened the window noisily or turned off the light; sudden noise is enough to move the epic along. Twice I've even left the room.

But this is hardly characteristic. Most of the time we don't know each other and the effect is less one of secret divulgence and more of trying to get work done in the cafeteria. My closed winter windows are little insulation: the rising volume levels that come with alcohol consumption more than compensate for a thin layer of glass--not to mention the efforts of nightly Tommy's pilgrimages, Fly partygoers and the 9 a.m. recycling crew.

Does it matter to our protagonists whether or not they are heard? Probably not. Does it matter if I, tired and slightly intoxicated myself, catch the end of a declaration between half-sleep and sleep--or if everyone on my floor does? Probably not. But would they have had the same conversation if we were all visible?

Our notions of privacy are marked by sensory inconsistency. Out of sight, out of mind--is it so simple? Human beings, I would like to think, have progressed beyond the level of the ostrich in this respect. Yet sight, we feel, is much more embarrassing than sound. Why else would we insist on three-quarter stalls in public bathrooms? Why do walls keep our neighbors feeling private, even when aural clues leave little to our visual imagination?