From the Peripatetic to the Pathetic

Movin’ on Up 

Union Street, Brooklyn

And I might have stayed on Union, just down wind of the Gowanus, nestled in the protective arms of my own little posse of Goodfellas, had it not been for an offer from my Father that I couldn’t refuse.  Some ten years earlier, in the 70’s, Dad had used a windfall to buy a small pied-a-terre in one of New York’s most famous and elegant co-ops, the Osborne on West 57^th Street.  A few steps East of the Arts Students League the Osborne was inhabited primarily by celebrities from the Arts: Lenny Bernstein was there, and Bobby Short and Craig Claiborne, Fran Lebowitz, Van Cliburn, Lynne Redgrave….You get the picture. 

As a young man, back in the day, my father had accepted the post of Director of the New York State Council on the Arts from Nelson Rockefeller, so he knew all these people – he’d had the distinction of teaching Maestro Bernstein how to play “Glow Worm” upside down and backwards at the piano – and no doubt felt that they were his sort of neighbors when he went looking for an address. But now he was weary of the City; he wanted out and the market was too soft to sell.  Needless to say, sublets at the Osborne were frowned upon – only immediate family members were allowed to assume ownership – and so it fell to me to take over his $500 monthly maintenance fee. Which was $50 less than I was paying Marcella over on Union Street….and I was doing a favor for my Father which only I could do.

A few weeks before my move, I got a call from a Mr. King about painting his apartment.  He had a duplex in one of the City’s premier, landmark buildings on the West Side, he began. Once it became clear he wasn’t referring to The Dakota, I broke in to ask, “This wouldn’t be The Osborne, would it?”

“Why, indeed it is.” He said, “Do you know it?”

“As a matter of fact,” I replied, “I’m moving in next week, but it won’t reflect on your estimate!”

   

The Osborne Lobby

And thus began my tenancy on West 57^th. Needless to say, I never felt I belonged there. I sensed a bizarre alienation when,  going out to the newsstand that first Sunday morning for the paper I found the neighborhood empty and silent but for a gaggle or two of Midwest farm families from the nearby hotels aimlessly, futilely, searching for someplace to eat breakfast.  Never having lived in a “doorman” building, just figuring out how to acknowledge the poor men dressed to the nines in the raiment of petty tyrants occupied a good portion of my first few days. Setting aside the whole notion of the actual opening for me of the door – which I would spend the next few years trying to avoid - If I’m stepping out, say, for a pack of smokes and I expect to be gone for all of four minutes, must I say Hello on the way back in as well as the way out? If I’m in and out a dozen times a day, well, I can’t just walk past the guy with no acknowledgement, but twenty to thirty “Hellos” – even interspersed with the occasional “Howdy” or “Howyadoin” – seemed just plain untenable and I’d be damned if, as a fellow working stiff, I were to fall to the depths of the “Grunt” or worse, the absolute brush-off. I can’t tell you what a relief it was to arrive in the lobby to find the shift had changed! This abashed self-consciousness reached the level of grand comedy when I started Mr. King’s job.

   
 On that fateful morning I donned my work clothes, gathered up an armload of rags and drop-cloths and headed down to the lobby. The Osborne had two sets of elevators, one on either end of the lobby, servicing different parts of the building. As I walked past the doorman, pausing to say good morning and tell him that I was beginning a job for Mr. King, I paid little attention to the troubled look on his face and completely ignored whatever it was he was trying to tell me in Portugese-English. On my second trip, though, I was stopped by the Super who drew me aside into the mail room to politely ask that I use the service elevator. He was visibly chagrinned at having to accost my Father’s son, and I was mortified that it hadn’t occurred to me that, at least in this guise as housepainter, I should be crossing in the basement with the rest of the staff and not mucking up the famous lobby! And so it went for the next few weeks. I would come down in my street clothes, cross the lobby to the other bank of elevators, change in to my work clothes chez King and use the service elevator and basement for the rest of the day. The guys in the basement – all these buildings have hordes of guys in gray in the basement – thought I was just a laugh riot…..They’d never seen anything like me before.

  

Rubber Rodeo

Worse than the relentless “hellos” was the need to ring the doorbell after hours. I’d stumble home at three in the morning from seeing Rubber Rodeo with Marilyn And The Movie Stars and Neon Leon at CBGB’s or Max’s and find the big front doors locked. I’d ring the bell and wait. Sometimes it would take all of ten minutes and I’d know I’d woken the poor man up or gotten him off the john.  If he peeked and saw it was me, he might show up without the jacket and braid, just in his short-sleeves. It might have been hours since the last tenant came in and he’d try to hide the fact he’d fallen asleep at his post. One night, toward the end of my Osborne period – the end, in fact, of my post-youth decade in New York City – I arrived at the lobby at some God-forsaken hour. A youthful doorman in full regalia let me in immediately.  As I waited for the elevator we talked for a minute about the Mets and just as the doors began to part he walked smartly back to his post, fully alert and ready to serve. It’s three in the morning, I am alone in the Osborne lobby. The doors open and the floor of the elevator is literally carpeted with twenty dollar bills.

  
This doesn’t happen in Brooklyn.