More About My Neighbors

I know everyone on my block.  Well, almost everyone.  I don’t know most of the neighbors and those I do know, I do not like.  There’s Thing 1 and Thing 2, the Horrible Dog Owner, and the Bread Thrower.  The Horrible Dog Owner used to live in the apartment now occupied by Thing 1 and Thing 2.  We thought that would be the last we’d see of Horrible Dog Owner, but no, she moved to an apartment building three doors down.  Our terraces are within eyeing distance of each other.  Stink-eyeing distance.  She has a beautiful friendly dog that she leaves on her terrace in the worst weather conditions.  Mr. Dingo and I never have to check the weather report.  During the winter, if we can see the dog, we know that it’s freezing with a 100% chance of hail.  In the summer, if we can see his thick, fluffy fur, we know that there’s a heat advisory and we’d best stay indoors eating Popsicles and making sure we have enough ice cubes for our Long Island Iced Teas. 

I’ve never seen The Bread Thrower.  I’ve only seen the aftermath.  Occasionally, Mr. Dingo and I will be sitting on our couch watching TV and enjoying our Long Island Iced Teas when we hear a series of thumps on our terrace.  Upon investigation, we’ll find partially eaten bagels, crusts of bread, and saltine shards.  I have no idea who’s throwing bread out their window.  I know it’s not Thing 1 and Thing 2 because I don’t think they’ve eaten a carb since the first Bush administration.  Sometimes I’ll hear a window open and I’ll dash to the terrace — but too late.  I arrive just in time to be showered in bread and walk back into the apartment pissed off and looking like a chicken cutlet. 

The neighbors I like the best don’t actually live in my neighborhood; they either own or work in the shops on my block.  There’s the deli where I buy my bagels, the deli where I buy sandwiches (Yes, two delis on one block.  This is NYC), the dry cleaners, flower shop, nail salon, and pizza place.  I’m on a first name basis with most of them.  I know who’s working their way through school and who’s getting married.  They know my class schedule and the results of Dingo Girl’s last vet visit.  And we all hate the nail salon people.  The salon people have an attitude that makes them a pox upon this block.  The rest of us are sunshine on Sesame Street and they’re more like a sleep-inducing moonless night on Elm Street. 

My favorite neighbor, however, is Michael.  Michael works in one of the non-descript buildings on my block. I don’t know exactly what he does but I think it has something to do with the arts/entertainment industry.  He’s very cryptic about his line of work but he often has backstage passes for many of the cultural events around the city.  This weekend he gave me a ticket to an international photography exhibit way uptown where the ladies who lunch live and work and shop.  The exhibit was incredible.  It featured everything from mid-nineteenth century daguerreotypes to freaky experimental stuff that I pretended to like because everyone around me was viewing it with slack-jawed awe.  Okay, I didn’t pretend to like it, but I did have a slack-jawed look on my face.  The price tag on one particularly garish piece was a mere $250,000.  See!  Your jaws just went slack, didn’t they?!  $250,000!  One woman was elated that the recession had made the price of art so affordable these days.  You see, she was looking for artwork to complement the new Italian marble in the Grande Foyer and the completely renovated Petit Foyer (and yes, she pronounced it “pet-tee foy-yay”).  The Petit Foyer was completed last Summer and she’s just positively mortified that it’s Spring yet the Petit Foyer remains barren.  I wanted to tell Lady Foy-yay that I just ordered a venti foy-yay and then ask whether her pet-tee foy-yay was for the pets because I would never be caught dead with anything less than a tall foy-yay, and then it would need to be made with whole milk and an extra shot of espresso.  I didn’t say any of that, though.  I just shrugged and vomited a little when I did.

I left the mewling masses to explore other parts of the exhibit and was completely in awe of photos by Jill Freedman, Minor White, and Ansel Adams.  Poking around the nooks and crannies of the exhibit I couldn’t help but think that Ken Gilbert’s photography belonged there. His work is by turns shocking, soothing, introspective, and in your face but it’s all from a very talented eye.  If you haven’t checked out his photoblog you are missing out.  As I was standing on one side of an L-shaped wall looking at a tiny landscape and trying to convert 1900£ into U.S. currency — unlike Lady Foy-yay, I had forgotten to bring an accountant along — I heard a sound that could only be described as someone trying to play a kazoo filled with Jello.  And then came the “ahhhhhh!” And then, the smell.  Apparently someone chose to go to an out-of-the-way spot to relieve some gastrointestinal distress. 

Imagine a rotten egg wrapped in moldy feta cheese stuck between two layers of decomposing meat.  Now imagine baking that in a crock pot for a few hours before just now opening the lid.  It came drifting around the corner and wrapped my head in its stink molecules like a tight facial compression wrap.  My eyes watered and my throat immediately seized up.  The room started spinning and everything began to fade to black.  I knew I couldn’t pass out because the olfactory offender would be sure to tell the arriving paramedics that I was the one who forgot my Beano.  I don’t know why I was the one who felt embarrassed, but I did.  I thought about leaving before the sense assaulter came around the corner.  My mama raised me well.  Courtesy is about making the other person feel comfortable. But I don’t listen to the mama on my shoulder.  I just held my breath and waited for the noxious noisemaker to appear.  And appear she did. 

Apparently, Lady Foy-yay was also an accomplished player of the ass-trumpet.  The butt-ugly piece of art she just bought?  $250,000.  The look on her face when she saw me standing in her fog of stench?  Priceless.

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