'Help! I Live Next Door To A Loud Masturbator'

With a population of over 8 million people ― many of them living in older apartments with paper-thin walls ― there’s bound to be some issues with noisy neighbors in the city that never sleeps.

This column’s question comes from a New Yorker who’s feeling secondhand embarrassment for her new neighbor ― a man who hasn’t learned to use his indoor voice while masturbating.

We asked Thomas P. Farley ― a nationally regarded etiquette expert who goes by Mister Manners ― to tackle this very specific noise complaint. (Loud neighbor sex we’ve heard of, but loud neighbor masturbation is a different story.)

When it comes to etiquette columns, the questions and advice tend to be a bit stuffy:Who really cares what fork you use at dinner? But that’s not the case here: How To Be Decent will cover topics that actually affect people, like “Should you recline on a plane?” and “How do I tell my neighbors I can hear them having sex?” Got a question about a thorny interpersonal issue you’re having? Email us at [email protected] and we’ll get it answered.