Friday: Family "Dirty Little Secrets of NY Apartment Life"

Apartment living tends to both extend the intimacies of the family unit as well as guard them. Because we have so little privacy (shrinking every day with each new technological "advance") we do tend to guard what little we have. However, in my many years of apartment dwelling (my entire life to be exact) I have seen my share of outrageous "public" behavior. I place public in quotes because as we ALL know, none of us would likely walk into the street in our pajamas and bunny slippers, and yet do not hesitate to wear our bedroom garb to get the mail. While we wouldn't dare expose our lingerie in our offices or schools, we happily fold the most intimate (and often odd) apparel under the laundry room's neon lights and closed circuit cameras.

For better or worse we know things about our building neighbors- our very extended family- that we wouldn't otherwise want to know.

72^nd   Street and 3^rd Avenue: The Doorman Rescue

One of the joys of living in the city is never having to drive after an evening of overindulgence. And that is great if you live in a walk-up or a building with no security or doormen. But if you do have such service you are bound to show some, ahem, unpleasant sides of yourself to those unwitting souls.

I am not proud to say (but very grateful) that I had a team of amazing doormen in one of the buildings that I grew up in; the one that I lived in right at the time when under-age drinking was fervently "experimented" with amongst my cohort. Sadly I can't even remember the poor man's name, but our night doorman, on numerous occasions not only let me in at all hours of the morning, but "helped" me to my apartment, carried my handbag, paid for my cab (after having lost my wallet or left it at some club) and asked certain gentlemen who were urgently trying to escort me upstairs to kindly leave.

Anyone who lives with security in their building has yet another layer of privacy deprivation. What our poor doormen witness in the wee hours makes me squirm even though I am oh-so-grateful to have the extra pair of eyes on all things when mine have (in the very distant past) been less than clear. 

9^th Street and 5^th Avenue: The Mad Man Next Door

I lived on 9^th and 5^th for several years and for the longest time had a wonderfully quiet neighbor who rented the studio that was adjacent to my one-bedroom. One day that changed when a young NYU MBA student came knocking on our door wishing us well and extending his cheerful mid-western hand to his new New York neighbors.  We should have known that meant trouble.

Within 6 months our quietude was broken with his middle-of-the-night self-taught experimental guitar. Blaring and blasting through the night we would regularly pound on the wall and on his door until it stopped. One night he opened the door to the pounding fist of my X and there standing in the doorway was a vision of mental decay. That poor milk-fed kid was bleary eyed, twitching and sweating in his boxers and bathrobe.  He was also really aggressive and threatening. We called the police and things settled down for a few weeks.

Then one night, not too late, we heard a commotion next door and opened the door to the communal 5th floor hallway. There were several police officers, a father-type character, and men in white coats who were escorting our young neighbor out of the apartment in a thrashing frenzy, in something that looked like a straight-jacket – although I could hardly believe such a device was still in use.

We closed the door.  I remember the next tenant was much quieter, but cooked a lot of soup.    

100^th Street and 1^st Avenue: Horse Poo and Laundry

I live uptown in a new building with a big clean laundry room that I try not to become too familiar with. I have made it a point to never learn to do the laundry. I fold. I don't wash. I hate it. But that all changed to a certain degree when winter came the first year at the then "new" barn where I moved my horse and there was nobody to do his laundry anymore.

I happen to have a truly, un-hyperbolically filthy horse. You may or may not know anything about horses, but I can say with some security that the average horse in the North East uses one heavy indoor blanket a season and then has various sheets that are washed throughout the season that he or she wears underneath the heavy.

My horse has 3 heavy blankets because he is fond of sleeping in his poo which he piles high in a very specific place for maximum cushioning. I can't make it through the NY winter without washing all three at least once. These blankets are the size and weight of a heavy queen-size bed comforter; covered with horse poo.

Now you are not going to like this next part (and I hope nobody who reads New York Natives lives in my building).

Usually on a Saturday night around 10pm I carry a large blob of really foul and crusty horse laundry into the building's common laundry room. I load two heavy-duty washers with the smelly gear- quickly.   

My rational is that hundreds of people live in this building with their dogs and babies and turtles. I am certain those machines have seen their share of baby and dog wickedness – both of which are FAR more disgusting than horse poo which is essentially digested grass. 

Is that so wrong?