An arousing trio As spring nears, the neighbors are all jazzed up BY CAITLIN SHETTERLY

I am dreaming of spring. There’s this point when February begins to slide into March when the air takes on a sharp wet smell and the sun stays in the sky just long enough to fool me into thinking we’re having an early thaw. Perhaps we are, or perhaps it’s just my heart. We all want to fall in love in the spring.

Last week, Sex and the City closed its final chapter, only to be kept alive ad infinitum in reruns. After much debate in the New York Times about whether Carrie would actually end up with a guy, (and if so, who — and what would this mean to the millions of single women who are still alone on Sunday nights guiltily eating carbs as their four famous friends wear impossible heels?), Carrie, in fact, gets the guy. And you thought gay marriage and imaginary weapons of mass destruction were the real issues. Big, as we all know him, shall henceforth be known as John.

Big John. Please.

I started watching the show only after I moved to Portland from New York City. It became this odd piece of nostalgia for a life of Manhattans in Manolas at Pastis that I certainly never had. My neighbor Erika and I have had a long-standing Sunday night "date" to watch the show and eat peanut butter, into which we press as many chocolate chips as possible, off spoons.

MY SAP THINNED enough one evening last week to venture out without a hat. I made my way over to SPACE to see a band called Vorcza. Okay, despite the fact that this is the least memorable name in the history of band appellation (maybe the fact that they are from Vermont explains this lack of conformity to the notion that names actually should be pronounceable), they made my sap run freely. With the lights dimmed and candles on the tables, a glass of wine in my hand and my lipstick cherry red, I stood waiting for my friends Angela and Michael and listened to one of the most lusty sultry blends of jazz funk I have ever heard. These three guys give new meaning to the sensuality of jazz. Listening to them, watching them exhaustively stick with a tune until it reached its climax could make you think of only the most dedicated of lovers. One of the guys in the band milks cows for a living. Now that’s sexy.

Comparing notes after the show with Michael’s friend Josh, we agreed on the liquid sex effect of the trio’s tunes. He told me that he even got a little "aroused." He thought that since I, too, noticed how sexy the music was, on the other side of the room, that this meant we had had a moment. Together.

YUP, UP HERE IN MAINE we’re easy. Give us a little sun, heat us up to about 34° F and we start our mating dances. My new upstairs neighbors have their sap running. I swear they have planned sex on Friday nights. I know this because I am home trying to catch up on the important task of a week’s worth of New York Times while I listen to him bellow from the living room, which is the kinky part. Then I hear them scamper across the apartment to the bathroom. Sometimes, I have to put in my ear-plugs. This racket is in addition to their usual clomping above my head.

A month ago, I left them a note asking if they would consider leaving their shoes off early in the morning or late at night seeing as their tiled kitchen floor is right over my bedroom. Apparently this was an insane request. The guy, who sounds Canadian — it’s very irritating when you’re trying to reason with a person to hear all those inflections at the end of sentences, like "I understand how you’re feeling?"— basically kept me on the phone for 20 minutes of ‘let me tell you all of the ways no.’ This reminded me of the time my friend Hannah’s neighbors made a log of her footsteps: when she wore shoes, how loud she was at different times of night and morning, and how it most ruined their lives. Human beings, it seems safe to say, are not meant to live on top of each other. Except during sugaring season.

AT NIGHT IT IS STILL COLD ENOUGH to turn up the heat. Erika has escaped the leaky windows of her apartment to sunny California. I’m on my own with Northern Utilities. I called her the other day for help reading our meters in the basement (which were last read by a technician in 2000 according to notes attached to their faces). Not only a fix-it guru, Erika is also sous chef at Arrows down in Ogunquit, so I asked her for some scallop-searing tips.

That night as I chewed on my briny bay scallops, I hoped spring might come early this year. It’ll be official when I tear all the plastic from my windows, and let in the sweet smell of mud thaw.

Caitlin Shetterly lives in Portland. Her column runs very other week. Editors note: in the last "Bramhall Square," we printed the wrong address for the Bikram Yoga studio. It is located at 49 Dartmouth Street.