According to this article, Manhattanites who can afford to be choosy now choose non-doorman buildings. In addition to confirming (as if this was needed) the Times' fixation on Manhattanites who can afford to be choosy, the article reminded me of my brief stint in a doorman building on the Upper-Upper-West Side.
This was my first residence in the city, coming up to test the job market as a nervous country mouse. I took the sublet, sight unseen, off of Craigslist, from an arty woman who was to be out of the country for three months. Through a series of pleasant long-distance e-mail exchanges and phone chats, we declared our mutual trust for one another and I met her briefly in her immaculate, intimidatingly white apartment, hours before she was to take off for Europe.
Though I'd been assured of the legality of the sublet, upon our meeting I was told that I was now an " old friend" of hers, mainly there to "water the plants." This story was necessary, she explained, to make sure the doormen didn't rat her out -- "try not to chit-chat with them; they can be rather nosy," she advised, as she instructed me on the finer points of exactly how to arrange the pile of white eyelet-lace pillows on the bed each morning, and on exactly what chair, and in what manner, the couch pillows should be stacked in the event I had an overnight guest.
Between all that and the plant instructions and the lecture on the intricate workings of the leaves in her folding antique table and the linen-laundering advice and the complicated arrangement by which her "real" friend would be coming by to pick up my rent check and take a look at things every so often and her rules about when to raise and lower the airshaft window depending on what time of day the Chinese restaurant downstairs started frying garlic, I sort of forgot the doorman admonition.
The only doormen on a sad stretch of upper Amsterdam that faced a housing project, the poor guys could be forgiven, I thought, for being a little chatty. Besides, I was unemployed, locally friendless, and in heartbreaking negotiations over the impending implosion of a relationship down south. In my phone calls back home to Countrymouseville, I'd amuse friends with my stories of the doormen and their names, which all ended in a variation of "-ie" -- Reggie, Johnny, Danny, Tony. They ribbed me good-naturedly about my boyfriend, who I was hopelessly trying to convince to join me in the city. Despite my carefully worded friend-watering-plants tale, they caught on right away to my illegal sublet status. But it was all very nice, until it wasn't.
I can't say when the shift took place -- probably in just a few weeks, after the glamour of Having a Doorman wore off -- but their good-natured teasing gradually seemed to carry a hint of malice, and the constant questions about the long-distance boyfriend turned into a challenge about his very existence. By the time I'd talked the soon-to-be-ex into coming up to visit, I may have cared more about showing him off to Reggie and the gang than actually selling him on the prospect of life in the big city. The politics of when to say good night, when to accept help with packages, whom to complain to about mice, when to lie low (when the landlord came around), and when to stop and furnish a report on my progress in the big city -- it all became too much. It was with relief that I finally hauled my last suitcase out of there for another living arrangement.
When I came back to the building a month later to pick up my deposit check from the fastidious arty woman, the doormen barely acknowledged me. It occurred to me only much later that I was probably supposed to give them some sort of tip for their services. I feel a stab of guilt about that whenever I pass a doorman.
Which, as it happens, is quite often in my current neighborhood. Yesterday, I admired a fuchsia azalea heralding spring in a planter outside a residential high-rise. The color reminded me of a bush we'd had outside my last country mouse house down south, and I felt a little wistful. As I passed by, I heard a doorman call after me, "Hey, it wouldn't hurt to smile!" A half a block later, I did -- not because he told me to, but because I was so damn happy to be going home to my own non-doormanned apartment.
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