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...