All Visitors Must Be Announced

We have one rule for people visiting our building. One rule. It's not hard to follow and it doesn't require a siginificant amount of enforcement, typically. For th emost part, people respect the sign in the lobby that clearly and explicitly states that "All Visitors Must Be Announced."

The purpose is obvious: to protect the safety and privacy of the residents of the building. Friends and family of tenants, food delivery, parcel services, supermarket dropoff, drug dealers, escort service - no matter who it is, if your name is not on a lease, check with me first so that I can make the call. Our building is equipped with an internal phone system whereby I can dial any apartment with a three-digit number and the intercom in their kitchen or living room rings to alert them.

Now working the late night shift has its pros and cons. Pros- much quieter (during the week), fewer visitors, packages, dry cleaning and food delivery to deal with. Con- there is no one to relieve me when I must "relieve myself." All other doormen get to take breaks because the super, a porter or maintenance man can watch the door when they need eat or use the restroom. I, on the other hand, can never leave.

But in an eight-hour shift, that is not realistic. Once or twice a night, I need to run to the basement where we have our lockers and a private bathroom next to the laundry room. I am never away from the desk for more than five minutes. And if someone comes in that time, to hell with it. They have a free pass.

But last night, the super's drunk mistress happened to stop by. This is not the first time this has happened, either. The super, a Turkish man in his mid-40's, took over the job in late 2003. The previous super was great, but he was forced into retirement when he got sick. Needless to say, no one likes the new guy, but those stories are for another time. Anyhow, the super is given a two-bedroom apartment in the building so that he can always be around in case of an emergency. His wife lives there as well, but travels back and forth to Turkey, so there are weeks at a time when she is not here. No real surprise that the super has a girlfriend on the side, but you'd think he'd be more cautious. Nope. He brings her around whenever his wife is away.

Once last summer she just appeared in the middle of the night one night when the super and his wife were at home asleep. I was able to send her away the first time without incident. The second time, she put up a fight and I had to call the super down to deal with her. I'm not sure what lie he told his wife, but I'm assuming it was fine.

Of course, last night, in the five minutes I was downstairs using the restroom, the woman must have gone straight up and not waited for me to announce her as a visitor. The super and his wife were home asleep and when I got back to my desk a few minutes later, he was grabbing her by the hair and pulling her out of the elevator. He threw her, literally, towards the door after reading her the riot act very loudly, but then he pulled her in and kissed and said he'd call her again soon, but not to come back there again without calling. Man, I'm not sure what this dude is telling his wife, but she's gotta be the dumbest woman ever.

Once she was gone, I apologized and said I was in the back room sorting through the remaining dry cleaning and that she must have come in very quietly. I do not like lying and helping this sonofabitch out, and he knows I have power over him so he was calm and cool to me - it was the first time that I was not there to intercept her. I won't make that mistake again. Next time, I'll just call up and let him and his wife know that his girlfriend is back.

Coke Classic

Wait until you hear this one... So last night was proceeding along the path like any other night. We had the regular run of dog walkers, drunk kids and random hook-ups going along without exception until about 3:15 a.m.

Then, pushing their way through the double glass doors were four girls completely decked in black, make-up still perfect, eyes glassing over. One girl had dark circles under her eyes and all four had red, chapped noses. Had I not known their ringleader, Lindsay Diller on 11-A, I would have chalked up their behavior and dazed look to the bitter cold.

But no, Lindsay Diller has had one too many late night deliveries from her "contacts" over the past 18 months since she moved in not suspect a dangerous addiction. Now I'm not sure who the other three girls were, but they could have been anyone - friends visiting from out of town or are just or just college friends living down the street.

Either way, they came in laughing, stumbling and coughing. Lindsay saw me and just smiled. As a courteous employee who knows all-too-well who her father is, I smiled back. She then stumbled over to my desk and asked me how my night was going.

What was this? Respect?

Hardly. Without waiting for me to answer, she pulled out a little, multi-colored pouch, removed a metal case and poured a tablespoon of white powder onto my marble desktop. I was too stunned to panic. But I did not even have time to react. With a few deft hand movements, she had divided up the pile into four thin lines about the size and shape of a single match. One line quickly disappeared with a quick sniff and a cough. The other three girls came over and followed suit.

The last one, a shorter, chubbier Meg Ryan lookalike, then leaned over and licked my face. It was appalling.

After a few more seconds, they all disappeared into the elevator and went higher. Only one came back down, about an hour later. How she made it out of the building and throught door i do not know, as her eyes were completely closed. I have no idea if she even made it home, wherever home is. But I left this morning at 8 and did not hear from the other three at all.
Maybe they overdosed. I can only hope.

How Lazy Are You People?

You know what really bothers me? There is a dry cleaning/laundry store within our building. The entrance to our building is directly adjacent to the store front. But many of the tenants are too lazy to pick up their clean clothes, requiring a delivery man to "deliver" (read: walk three steps and leave the clothing in our charge).

What's worse, they often leave their dirty clothing with me, requiring the dry cleaners to send someone out to pick it up. This usually affects me because people leave it with me when they depart in the early morning prior to the end of my shift. That means I have to hold onto and sort their dirty clothes, keeping everyone's separate and organized. I can't think of anything more foul.

I would understand it if the place opened late or closed early, but it is open from 7am to 9pm. Now I have no problem with the dry cleaners themselves. The Kims are lovely people, cleaning my uniforms at a steep discount. They are only offering a service to their clients. But how hard is it to walk three steps and leave your dirty shirts with them as opposed to me?

And John from 7-G, your pit stains are just plain nasty.

Loose American Women

You know what I love? The girls that live in my building come home with different guys night after night. This used to just be a thing that the guys did, but now the women are not far behind.

This one girl, maybe 23 or 24, moved in straight from college last summer. Her name is Amanda. Total bitch. Never says hello, never even looks my way. You know she thinks she's better than me. It's too bad she is very attractive, because she has probably used that as an excuse to walk all over everyone. Comes from a wealthy family in Westchester, she has had everything given to her her entire life.

She does some sort of work in magazine ad sales or some bullshit like that. It's not important, because her daddy probably got her the job. What is important is that she sleeps around. In the past six months, I bet she has brought at least a dozen guys up to her place. Now I don't know what goes on down there, but some leave a few hours later with their hair all messed up and their clothes all untucked. Some I don't see leave before my shift is over at 8 a.m.. Suckers.

I bet they spend their money on her, buying her drinks at hars, taking her to nice dinners to impress her, and then she just leaves them in her wake.

What is my point? Well, I have two. First, Jewish girls in New York are viscious. Second, if you are looking for a cheap and easy screw, stop by my building and ask for Amanda in 14-F. I'll send you right up.

***

In other news... something I neglected to mention earlier... Mrs. Lipschitz in 5-O finally died last week. Her daughter is coming in to move her belongings out this week and the apartment will be ready to rent on April 1. Usually we go through a broker, but if you take care of me, I'll take care of you...

The Chinese

I've seen it all - poverty, hungry brothers and sisters and even wars that have ravaged my native land. But nothing could prepare me for the Chinese idiots you have here in your country.

Of course the women are bad drivers. Whenever I am in my jeep and see a bad driver, I know it is either an old person or an asian. You see, we don't have them back in Europe. Muslims and Serbs, oh yes, those crazy kidders, but no Chinamen.

There is a place nearby where many people in my building order from. China Palace. First, I've been there and it is no palace. But because I work overnight, I don't typically have to deal with too many delivery people. But this one kid gets me everytime. He rides up on his bicycle that looks like it has been run over by cars on a daily basis. He rolls up and jumps off holding the plastic bag of food in one hand while the bike is still going. It always ends up crashing into the window in front of my building, making a huge racket. I'm gonna beat him down one day.

So last night, he rolls up and crashes the bike into the glass again, leaving it laying there on its side. He doesn't lock it. Instead he strolls right into the lobby and walks right past me to the elevator. Now he knows that all visitors much be announced, yet he does it anyway. Not only this, but there is a service elevator for all deliveries. He pays no rent. Therefore he should not be treating this building as his own.

I bet he is the kind of person who stands still on the left side of escalators, not letting people pass him.

But this is not unusual. The blatant disrespect for New York City doormen, or any laborer, service employee, foreigner, tourist and fellow human being is par for the course here. Some of my fellow doormen get used to it. A friend of mine just up Park Avenue who is forced to wear a Bulgarian admiral's uniform just laughs at it. I guess it's funny, if you really think about it.

How I Got Here. Literally.

So now you know where I work, but it is the way I got here that is really where the story begins. And no, I don't mean how I got here in life... we have plenty of time for that. I mean how I actually got here tonight. To work.

Just a couple of hours ago, I was asleep in my underwear on the couch after putting my daughter to bed. But it was that time and my wife woke me. I wanted to make love to her, but was too groggy to pursue it. Minutes later, I was angrily stamping out the last of my cigarettes on the yellow strip of the subway platform and kicked the butt over the edge. Smoking in the subway is not allowed, but there was no one around to enforce the law. No wonder why all of the subways and parking garages here smell like piss.

An elderly woman to my right stared across the tracks to the east-bound platform with no particular focus. It was only 10:25 pm, and the four Advil I popped ten minutes earlier had not yet begun its assault on the effects of the previous sleepless night followed up with a day spent watching and celebrating the accomplishments of a team of men, only some of whom I know by name, representing my old homeland in a European soccer match.

In just a few hours, this platform would be filled with "the briefcase brigade," the white-collar professional group that all looks the same in their the Polo shirts and Kenneth Cole shoes. I will never be one of them. But tonight there are just a few teenagers heading into Manhattan to an entirely different world than mine.

I thought about throwing up just for kicks, but fought the feeling, realizing there was nothing left to boot. I still smelled the Jack on my breath and hadn't bothered to shower or brush my teeth today. What was the point? I grabbed the same white button-down shirt from previous encounters, unaffected by its creases or stains. Again, what would have been the point? There was a clean shirt in my locker, not that that mattered. Covered by the thick, navy blazer, no one would notice.

Three brutal, cigarette-less minutes later, the rumble beneath my plain, black shoes told me what time it was. Game time. Like I do instinctively on the ride home in the morning when the platform is much more crowded, I spread my legs wide to prevent other passengers from gaining any advantage and getting a seat on the train before me. With a wealth of experience, I always know where the door will open once the city-bound 4 train stopped at the Franklin Avenue Station, but just in case, I was ready.

I could see from the corner of my eye that an elderly woman kept glancing at me, but I didn't give her the satisfaction of looking back. I wasn't falling for her act. I'd have no problem throwing an elbow to her gut if she thought she was getting on before me.

Luckily for her, it wasn't necessary. As the train came to a halt, the doors lined up properly, as I knew they would. Through the door stared two tall black teenagers wearing ski hats and puffy coats. They looked through the doors and straight through me. Their battle was ending. Mine was just beginning. The doors slid open and I used their baggy clothes to my advantage, and slid between them. Don't these kids realize that they look like punks like this? Maybe they hide their guns in those pants.

The inside of the train was awash with white light. I stepped in and found just a few open spaces. One was next to a sleeping, homeless guy, another with a nearly-dry coffee stain and another next to a smelly Indian man. This was not going to be my night. I instead stood in the opposite doorway against the closed doors and stared down at the patterns of dried dirt on the floor. I only looked up upon hearing the sound of a man rushing through the turnstile to make it on board before the doors closed. We never made eye contact until the two heavy doors came together. One man remained on the outside looking in, breathing heavily and looking dejected with outstretched arms and a questioning look on his face. The one already on the inside felt nothing, instead leaning back.

I made no effort to hold the door. I was not at work just yet.

The train was more crowded than usual and I was ever-weary about touching a fellow passenger or one of the support poles that had long since replaced the old leather straps. Some thrill-seekers enjoy the rush of subway surfing. Not me. I've seen enough adventure in my 33 years to last a lifetime. I could do without the crowd and wondered when the Second Avenue subway project would be finished, reducing some of the clutter on the east side green line.

As Union Square became less of a far-off dream and more of a swerving reality, I planned on exiting the train to cross the platform to wait for an uptown 6-train. How many times had I fallen asleep on the train and missed the connection, instead not being able to transfer until Grand Central, thus overshooting my stop? While opn the platform, I instinctively reached for another cigarette, denying, then willing there to be one last one hidden in the area under the foil wrap. No such luck. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway, but it would have been nice to know that there was one there.

Before I regained a comfortable level of awareness, I was climbing the stairs at 33rd street and waiting for the light to change in my favor so that I could cross. I cannot tell you how many times I've seen accidents at this intersection. Actually I can. 41. I ventured out into the crosswalk, watching both the uptown traffic as well as the Park Avenue tunnel that exited right at 33rd Street.

The aching continued, but I was unable to tell if it was the Advil wearing off or just the dread that washes over me when I am in this neighorhood. I reached into my black bag and threw back four more brown pills and it wasn't even my breakfast time yet. How will I get through the night this time? How will I make it through another lost weekend? The old laptop and two Blockbuster DVDs in my bag will only last a few hours.

According to my shitty digital watch (I have a Tag Heuer, but never wear it to work), it was nearly 11:40 now and I felt like I was late, but the apartment was immediately within reach as I reached the far sidewalk. The Murray Towers lurked in the shadows of the Empire State Building, illuminated in red, blue, and white on the west side of Park, encompassing the entire block.

On other nights or coming from another direction, I might have passed the stores and buses and phone booths and construction sites and power lines that sparked some distant memory- a joke, a trick, a tale, a story. But on this night, all was quiet and I walked straight through the front door, nodded to Dante, the afternoon and evening doorman covering the previous shift, and descended two flights of service stairs into the cellar. I slid out of the darkness that was my mood and into the stale blue coat that hung in my locker. It smelled like an old gymnasium, I remember thinking to myself. Oh, how the charm was back.

The basement is a roasting inferno. In the dead of winter it can easily be over 45 or 46 degrees Celsius down there (I have no idea what that is in Farenheit, so don't even bother asking... Americans and their crazy, stubborn measurements. The rest of the world uses one scale and you think you're better than us by using the English system). In the summer, it is downright unhealthy to be down there. At that hour, the trash compacter room and the laundry room have long since been abandoned by the daily run of Hispanic housekeepers that I thankfully avoid, at least for the most part. I always find myself glaring at the rows of dryers in the laundry room, the source of the dreaded heat down there all year round. Always with the heat in this place. Why can we not have better ventilation or a fan to make the employee locker room more bearable to change in? It's ridiculous. Remind me to bring it up with my prick of a boss.

I opened the locker that has never actually had a lock on it and found no surprises. The standard doorman uniform of cap, jacket and pants required by the management company, a few white dress shirts, a half-empty bottle of Dannon Spring Water that was probably 40 degrees warm and a can of Right Guard spray deodorant. I unbuttoned the shirt I was wearing and put one of the newly dry cleaned shirts over my ribbed sleeveless t-shirt ( I prefer my undershirts to not have sleeves. If my wife buys the kind with sleeves, I cut them off with a scissors). I then took off my own slacks and put on the uniform pants, took the bottle of water and the jacket out and slammed the door shut.

With the door closed, I could see into the small bathroom that had nothing but a toilet, sink, mirror and yellow light bulb. I went in and looked at myself in the mirror as I put the jacket on one sleeve at a time and stared at the bald patch of skin on top of my head that seems to grow larger every day. The scruff of black hair at the top, back, and sides falls back now like a row of plowed wheat, but is short enough to show the signs of previous struggles.

But still, so handsome. Isn't that why they hired me all those years ago?

With the water and my black bag with my laptop computer, I climbed back up the narrow stairs and cut through the back package room behind the desk and tapped Dante on the shoulder. Startled, Dante looked first right, then left, and relaxed at seeing his relief in uniform and ready to spell him for the night. For Dante, a 50-year old Brazilian, he had known no other job since arriving in New York in 1963.

In the U.S. for about a decade, I speak better English now than any of my fellow doormen at The Towers, yet my inexperience means a lighter paycheck and a heavier burden. Dante slipped back down the same flight of stairs behind the elevators and disappeared for the night out a service entrance.

Now settled in my chair, I first buried my face in my hands for just a moment and longed for sleep when I heard one of the elevators in the lobby open to the left. This is when I really came alive and sat up straight, as if waking up from a dream. My hair. I quickly combed my moist scalp with my bare hand, willing the few remaining wisps of hair into some semblance of neatness. From our vantage point, I cannot see the elevators without leaning out over the desk, so it could very well have been my boss, the super, who I know I already mentioned is a prick, but feel like I should do it again because I can. He keeps an apartment in the building, so I always have to be prepared for that inevitability that he will show up.

It was not him, though all of the building’s employees are familiar with his tendency to surprise us as we begin and end our our shifts. Instead, it was Eric Silverman, of 10-G, with his wife’s black poodle. Married just over three years now, I think, the Silvermans moved into The Towers long after I began working there.

“Hey, Mirko. How’s it going tonight,” the 29-year old real estate broker asked?

“What’s up, buddy,” I rhetorically replied with one of my favorite, trademark line. I say that a lot, now, calling people "buddy" or "pal." This is new for me. I always hated people who did it. But I'm just getting bored.

The man and his dog walked out the front door and disappeared to the right of the front door. The Silvermans were a polite, but extremely guarded couple, already struggling to keep their marriage in tact. I think they got married too young. Most likely, Lisa and her family put too much pressure on Eric to propose before he was ready to do so and now they were realizing how different they really were. The addition of a puppy to their modest one-bedroom apartment was supposed to bring them closer together, but Eric resented the late nights and early mornings spent having to walk him. She has him on a tighter leash than the dog.

The growing number of young married couples in the building isn't nearly as staggering as the addition of the even-younger, just-out-of-college hotshots who think they own the neighborhood. Within the last two years alone, there must have been at least twenty to thirty new tenants that fit that description. There are only a few that I can tolerate, and even fewer that I can talk with.

At midnight on a weekday, the direction of tenant flow is still decidedly uneven as I type this. More people are coming home for the night than leaving. There are the occasional Wall Street players and yuppies on their way out to a TriBeCa lounge or to some coke party in SoHo or an Upper East Side dive bar, but it is Monday. Who can go out and get wasted on a Monday? It seems like a waste of the money, though I'm sure it's the only money they really spend since their parents still “help” them with their rent.

I wish a good night to each tenant coming in. Any more than that might invite a conversation and I want them to keep on walking. Like I said, I do enjoy talking to a few of the tenants, but only on weekends when people come home drunk with good stories and ready to create some mischief.

Too much time, still, to kill before Alberto is scheduled to arrive at 8 o’clock tomorrow morning, long after the late summer sun starts its climb over Long Island and shoots up the canyons of 33d and 34th Streets. It is too early to order food from the nearby 24-hour deli, so I guess it's time to pop in the first DVD on this old IBM ThinkPad laptop and fade away into my thoughts...

The Doorman Chronicles

Greetings from the lobby! My name is Mirko Milutovic and I have been a doorman here at at a residential highrise building near the corner of 34th Street and Park Avenue, also known as The Murray Towers, for nearly a decade. In that time, I have seen the neighborhood of Murray Hill evolve from an aging, haphazard collection of people into a young, vibrant community. Ok, so a bunch of rich brats moved in, but at least it keeps things interesting.

Why so interesting? Well, just about everyday, something ridiculous happens. And I don't mean ridiculous in the sense that I was raised on a dairy farm in Eastern Europe and did not have running water until I was 11 kind of ridiculous. You'll soon see. I don't have much to do other than sign for the occasional package and vaccuum the lobby during the overnight shift here, so I get to take it all in.

Working late at night is not something I was crazy about, but when I first moved to the United States many years ago, legal work with decent pay was hard to find. The country was in a recession and I could not have picked a worse time to come to pursue my education in electrical engineering. College had to wait (And is still waiting...), but I learned English from reading newspapers, magazines and, ultimately, watching movies during my shift.

My personal life doesn't really matter much... I have a lot of time to get into that, too. I have a wife, she is almost ten years younger than I am. I was friends with her older brother back in Europe. When she came here, I looked after her and she was soon pregnant. We now have a two-year old daughter who talks more than anyone I have ever heard except maybe her mother. It was tough being away every night for that first year, but as my baby grew up and slept thru the night, my wife was able to take care of her.

I should also say that I have a day job. It leaves little time for sleep, but it gives me a good, working feel for the neighborhood. Commercial by day, residential by night, life is always moving.

So as I get this "blog" up and going, I look forward to sharing stories with you as they happen. Some you might not believe, but everything you will read in the days, weeks and months to come actually happened...

If you are in any way offended by what takes place within these covers, well then I apologize, but you should not have been making out with that sketchy weirdo in front of the apartment at 4 a.m. in plain sight of the doorman. You know I have a big mouth, so be more discreet next time.

As they say in my country, Mjet i madh prej druri i ngritur mbi katër kembë dhe me pjesët e nevojshme, në të cilin tendosen fijet e majës prej liri, leshi, ëndafshi a pambuku dhe punohet për të endur pëlhura të ndryshme e qilima!