In today's architecture, no allowance is made for keeping outsiders from sharing the bedroom experience with the participants. Thin walls bring neighbors into the bedroom to cheer or jeer, as in the story of the man whose wife played hard to get. When she finally verbalized her assent, cries of "Congratulations, Hugo!" rang out, it is said, from the next two apartments.
Noise is the most personal and psychologically intimate of all the forms of pollution. It allows impersonal machines and other human beings to get unbearably close.
Writers of marriage manuals are starting to recognize the environmental imperatives. The authors of Sexual Adventure in Marriage offer advice on how "to circumvent noise, to create interludes of privacy for two that can refresh the senses and spirit." One suggestion for quiet surroundings for lovemaking: underwater. In scuba equipment?
Someday, noise is likely to be implicated as a factor in frigidity. Sudden noises will be discovered to short-ciruit the sexual response by shunting it to a secondary track while the body goes on to a state of alert. Couples experiencing difficulty in conceiving will be advised to wear earmuffs, or take to the water in snorkels.