A few nights ago I was staying at my girlfriend’s apartment and we were having a bit of a fight. It was late, we were tired, and things were a little weird from an evening at the bars. Nothing too extraordinary, but at 2 a.m. we were each annoyed with the other.

In the middle of this, one of her neighbors returned home with a gaggle of older women laughing and talking in the same volume they would have used at the bar. More annoyance. Could these cretins not tell we were having a fight? Some people.

One in the group announced that she couldn’t find her key. Also, her husband is not opening the door, which is pissing her off a whole bunch. This is one of the neighbors: “Helen.” Her husband is a guy we’ll call “Dave.”

Soon everyone is bored of waiting for the door to open and decided that the party actually was over. Most of the gaggle left and we were left with a small murmur of conversation between two people — some guy and Helen. It wasn’t a very interesting talk for two drunks locked out of an apartment, so the girlfriend and I got back to our own argument.

At some point a bit later Helen and the guy start having a very nice conversation — I mean that in the “Borat” sense of the term “very nice.” They’re giggling and making groaning noises. Suddenly I was no longer concerned with our argument and, like a nosey jerk, I dove out of bed to wedge my face as close to a crack between the floor and the door (she lives in a studio). I can’t see anything, but I can hear everything better.

“We could go down that hall and no one would see us,” the guy said.

“No. No, we can’t,” responded Helen. All I could do was wave my hand to beckon the girlfriend to join me on the floor. She got there just in time to hear Helen say this: “Put that away. I’m not going to put that in my mouth here.”

This made my day. Here’s a married woman, outside of the apartment she shares with her husband, and she’s telling some guy she refuses to perform oral in the hallway. Screw Desperate Housewives; reality is so much better.

The back and forth — no pun — between Helen and the random guy continues for a few minutes with him offering and her denying. Then Dave arrived on the scene as the disgruntled lover.

He opened the apartment door and announced, “I think it’s time you leave.” The guy agreed, but Dave continued. “Seriously,” he said, “I own this f—ing apartment. Get out of here.”

“Yeah, whatever. You have fun f—ing that slut,” said the guy.

At this point, having been insulted by her would-be lover and caught by her husband, Helen entered the conversation with this: “It was nice to meet you tonight Waylon.”

Crouched on the floor trying to see someone, we could barely hold our laughter at what was a sad, but ultimately hilarious, event. And we learned something that night: no matter how crap things are going in your relationship, someone always has it worse. So really, your problems aren’t that bad. The girlfriend and I said some apologies to each other and went back to bed, our problem solved by Helen’s disregard for her mate.

Oh, but the best part is this: Dave and Helen are born-again Christians.

Guess those “Commandment” things are grayer than I remember…

Patrick Duganz