BATHROOM CEILING’S FALLING DOWN (MY FAIR LADY)
A New York Story from 2002
Until I moved to Los Angeles in 2016, I lived in the apartment I grew up in in VeNice, an aspirational neighborhood in central Queens. It was a huge two-bedroom pre-war palace with a sunken living room, tall ceilings, gigantic windows that captured the sunlight all day, and plumbing that dated back to the attack on Pearl Harbor. It was rent stabilized and had been continuously occupied by me since the mid-1970s, which was how I could afford my louche artist’s lifestyle.
As you can imagine, my landlord wished that I was no longer living there. As you can also imagine, repairs didn’t get done as speedily as I would have liked. I don’t miss the apartment itself; by the time I moved out, I had dubbed it The Brokedown Palace. But I surely do miss the rent.
Winter of 2002, I was woken in the middle of the night by a large crashing sound coming from the bathroom. I suppose that I should have been scared, but I’d been through this, man and child, once every four years. I recognized the sound of plaster and drywall giving up its tenuous hold on this life and giving in to the urge to end it all. To let go and fall and trust the rust-streaked porcelain of the bathtub would catch it.
PROLOGUE: CONDENSATION AND CONDESCENSION
Months before, I had one of the super’s guys come in to look at the bathroom ceiling. He told me that it was just peeling paint and needed to be repainted. I explained to him that no, there was actually actual water leaking in through the ceiling, which is what causes holes and cracking and sagging.
In hindsight, explaining it in that kind of snide, sarcastic tone didn’t help me get the help I needed. But I promise that I know the difference between running water and cracking paint, and to imply to the contrary made me feel as if my intelligence had been insulted.
The super’s guy then doubled down on the condescension, explaining as if to a stubborn small child that Santa Claus won’t visit if he doesn’t eat his veggies, that it was just a crack in the plaster and a painter should be able to take care of it.
It was then that I abandoned all pretense at being a nice person. In my most passive-aggressive tone, a tone I’d heard from teachers all throughout my journey through the New York City public school system, I explained that if there was a crack in the plaster, then it was more serious than I thought because it was liquifying and turning into dripping water, which was then coming through the bathroom ceiling.
I told him that this happened every four years, and every four years it always turned out to be the upstairs neighbor’s pipes had broken.
And he pulled the same trick handymen have played since the dawn of civilization. When the invention of the first tool was followed five minutes later by the invention of the move contractors do where they suck air in through their teeth, blame the last guy who worked on it, and then tell you that they need to call in a specialist who just happens to be their cousin.
He told me he’d check in on the apartment upstairs and come back in five minutes. I never saw him again. Part of me wonders if he survived the journey back down the stairs.
Trying to Get My Bathroom Ceiling Fixed: A Pilgrim’s Journey Through The Darkest Heart of Incompetence in Several Chapters
CHAPTER THE FIRST: THE LOCK MESS MONSTER
A couple of months ago they “fixed” the lock on one of my building’s doors (the rear entrance closest to the elevator to my apartment). Which meant that neither my, nor my roommate’s, keys worked in that door anymore. A new key was needed. I put off getting a new key for a while; I’d had many an experience with trying to get the handymen to do anything for me, and it always left me angry, sad, and stuffing my face with bread for comfort.
On a Sunday, I cornered a handyman - and “cornered” is the right word, because during the course of the conversation he looked like he wanted to escape - and told him that I needed a new key for that door. He looked baffled, so I took my key out of my pocket and mimed opening a door with it. I felt ridiculous, like a kid pretending to start a car. As I did, I repeated, “No work. Need new key.”
He nodded, said “I take care of it,” and walked away.
“So I’ll get a new key?” I shouted after him.
He looked over his shoulder, smiled, and gave me a big thumb’s up.
I never heard from that guy again. That was, then, the second of the building’s handymen who disappeared in the middle of doing a task for me. The staff had an attrition rate worse than the English Army’s during the First World War. I feared he had tripped and broken his neck in his rush to get those keys made for me.
INTERLUDE
In Spring of 2002, a pretty young woman moved in on my floor. The day she moved in, I saw one of the handymen (let’s call him “Elson”) at her door, saying “Here my cell number, if you have problem.”
Believe it or not, I don’t have cell number if I have problem.
CHAPTER THE SECOND: IN WHICH OUR INTREPID HERO OUTLIVES MANY OF THE SUPER’S HANDYMEN
The Monday after I’d cornered the handyman, I called my landlord’s office. They didn’t answer the phone anymore. They had become a little too smart for that; they knew that the second a tenant physically got them on the phone, they would have to actually do something.
The next evening, I got off the subway from work, with a voicemail from Maria, my building manager. Here is the message, transcribed in its entirety:
“I’m looking for . . . oops, wrong number.”
That’s right, this poor woman was almost forced to deal with me and my problem by accident. Luckily, I was on the subway and unable to answer, and thus a crisis was averted!
The next morning, on a Wednesday, as I was about to leave for work, the doorbell rings. It was Elson. For a second, my heart leapt with joy. The management office had heard my message and actually responded to my problem in a somewhat timely manner. Oh what a joyous day!
Hope faded as fast as the morning dew as I noticed that Elson held two keys in his hand.
“Is girl here? This for girl.” As it turned out, my roommate, a young and attractive woman, had gone to the super’s office the day before to find out if we could get keys to our building that worked, and he was there bright and early to find her.
While he was physically there in my apartment, I dragged him into the bathroom and showed him the hole in the ceiling. I told him there was a matching hole in the ceiling of the small bedroom adjacent.
He said, “Oh my God.”
He swore he’d be back the next morning to fix it.
EPILOGUE: THE HOLE IN THE CEILING IS NOT A HOLE IN THE CEILING
The following Monday, my bathroom ceiling was still caving in. So, I called my landlord’s office and Maria, I think caught in the act of picking up the phone to order lunch, answered. I told her there was a gigantic hole in my bathroom ceiling. The ensuing conversation I can remember because it is burned in words of fire in my heart:
“There isn’t a hole in the bathroom ceiling. It’s a crack.”
“No, Maria, I’m pretty sure it’s a hole.”
“Can you see into the apartment above you?”
“No.”
“Then it isn’t a hole in the ceiling.”
“I didn’t say there was a hole in the bathroom floor above me. But I can see into the space above the bathroom.”
And what happened next? Well, that’s a story for another day.