WELL-AIRED

Back in 1984 I lived in a residential hotel above a nightclub on Broadway.

I stayed in a small room, with a window out onto a large air well. Two dozen other rooms also opened onto the air well. On autumn evenings, with the window open, I could hear the other tenants.


Placid female voice from across the air well: "Would you like a sandwich? I could make you a cheese sandwich.... you would like a cheeeeese sandwich, wouldn't you? Perhaps....., ...... you ..... should have a cheese sandwich. Would you like that?"

Three or four times a week for several months I heard nearly identical monologues by the same voice, but I never heard a response.
Maybe her roommate was imaginary. If so, a very constipated fantasy friend. How nice.


Shrill angry voice from the top floor: "Get off me, bitch. Get OFF me, bitch. Get-off-me, BIIIIITCH! Gwan, get off! Get yourself off, bitch. Get offf!" Followed by another shrill voice saying: "you're so soft and cootchy when you're angry".

Well now.

Dysfunctional?


I seldom heard the most interesting tenants, though, as their private lives were far less noisy, much more visual. I greeted them when I saw them in the hallway. The inbred-looking gimp with the tight leather pants. The drunk with the cross-eyed young wife (he was often passed out in her arms at the top of the stairs). The petite blond dance hostess with the tattooed biker-chick girl-friend. The preacher-man who spoke no English.

Also, the five hundred pound transvestite with the greasy leather diaper, who drifted the halls cocktail in hand while waiting for gentleman callers. When he was working, his three willowy roomies and the big (and very male) German shepherd would be shooed out, to go drink sodas down at Nick's.
Afterwards, another cocktail, and a cigarette. Reclining with grace, staring dreamily at the ceiling. Flaked out on the zebra-striped throw rug on the bed, door wide open, big-band music on the tape player, a spiral of rose incense drifting heavenward.
One tried not to look, but one sometimes couldn't help catching corner-of-the-eye glimpses. He was surprisingly pink, one thought.

Occasionally he would wander the halls in a flowery blue and red kimono with a purple sash. On those days he was "indisposed". Not receiving guests. In a funk or brown study. Or just taking a day off.

On weekends he would pop enough pills to put a normal person in the hospital twice over. It had little effect on him. He would titter a little more giddily, and entertain many more gentlemen. His three boy-thingies would spend all weekend at Nick's coffee shop. By Sunday evening he was positively twirling. All beams and laughs and girlish chirpy cooing, reeking of Vodka, Kool Filter Kings, and almond-scented body oil. Effusive, cheerful, and hippity-bippity-boppiting. A sight to be seen. Infectious joi de vivre.


After he moved out, I heard from the manager that between the four of them ('Sister Love-Bear and The Three Graces') they drank a crate of beer a day. The manager was sad to see them go. But happy to finally be able to throw out the zebra-striped throw-rug that had covered the bed - his dislike of that bed-cover may have been personal, but I dared not ask; he seemed to be on a first-name basis with the oily, crackly thing.

A month later the inbred gimp with the tight leather pants moved out too. He shot out all the bathroom mirrors with a Saturday-night special before leaving the building. The mirrors had offended him.

Now, perhaps you should eat a cheese sandwich?