A world away

Luis took me with him on a real estate listing today to a six-story building in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, the neighborhood I was born and raised in. When I saw the building again, it brought back to me an extraordinary incident that happened there, coincidentally 33 years ago to the day, an incident that for me symbolized the end of my innocence.

I vividly and fondly remember my childhood in Flatbush in the 1960s and 1970s. I wouldn't have traded the experience for anything else. We lived in a six-story building on Ocean Avenue called Ethel Arms (which Luis likes to call "Ethel Flabby Arms"). Ocean Avenue was once a sleepy path leading to Sheepshead Bay, but in the 1920s, as immigrant waves kept rolling in, high-rise apartment buildings sprouted all along the avenue, urbanizing it. When I was growing up, Ocean Avenue was a four-lane street, and the most popular sport was dodging cars to get to the other side. Once across, you entered Ditmas Park, where the scenery changed markedly and you felt like you were in the country.

The side streets were--and still are--lined with shade trees and stately Victorian homes dating from the early 1900s. The nearby Pink Palace in Sophie's Choice exemplifies those homes. Erasmus Hall High School, alma mater of Barbra Streisand, Susan Hayward, and Donny Most, was the closest public high school. Movie stars such as Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford lived in Flatbush around the time it urbanized. By the early 1970s the only famous local residents I knew of were Tiny Tim and Miss Vicki, a few soap actors, and Barry Manilow and his mother. The giant, fenced-in house across from my building was purportedly the home of a porn director, but I never knew whether that was true.

I always felt safe growing up in Flatbush, and evidently so did my parents, since they let me play unsupervised out on the big, open dangerous street. We weren't really unsupervised, as hundreds of invisible pairs of eyes somehow managed to report unseemly activity to our respective parents. Assaults and thefts were rare, but there did seem to be a fair amount of arson. On Hallowe'en my mother and some friends' parents would escort us to select homes around the neighborhood, including the Ebinger house on E. 19th Street. For those unfamiliar with Ebinger's, it was a family-owned bakery famous for its chocolate blackout cake.

The local movie palaces were the spectacular Loew's Kings (Baroque) and Rialto (Beaux-Arts) theatres, both now houses of worship. I realize now how magnificent some of the local architecture was. I remember old ice-cream parlors like Karp's on Flatbush and Newkirk, where my mother would get me a little cup of Coke syrup to combat an upset stomach.

At the time, I was unaware that the rest of the world was not like mine. Mine was what would be categorized today as "diverse"--a concept that is now enforced politically rather than organically. My building was like a mini-United Nations of different races, religions, and family status. The Pavlicases were a middle-aged Greek couple whose apartment smelled of cardamom, anise, and cumin. Our Jewish neighbor Miriam was a housebound single hemophiliac living with her 80-year-old widowed mother. My best friend, a black girl named Angela Barnes, had a white mom and a black dad. Glenn was a soft-spoken Jamaican man who I think was probably gay. I had friends who were Argentinian, Chinese, Haitian, Italian, Irish, Norwegian, Puerto Rican, Russian. I started studying Spanish on my own when I was 11 by sitting with El Diario and a Spanish dictionary so I could try to understand the Hispanics around the corner. Later, when we moved to an all-Irish block in Sunset Park in my late teens, I realized that worlds like mine were the exception rather than the rule.

In the summer of 1975, I was in love with a beautiful Trinidadian girl named Allison whom I'd been hanging out with for 6 months. When people ask me whether that wasn't a sign that I was straight, I remind them that we were both 12 and neither of us had gone through puberty yet. When we'd watch "Gidget" movies together, I was far more interested in James Darren than Sandra Dee.

Every Sunday morning I went to 10:00 mass at Our Lady of Refuge Church. I sometimes served as a lector, reading from the New Testament before the priest delivered the Gospel reading. I was a faithful churchgoer, a good little Catholic boy who never questioned authority, at least not until much later.

That was the first summer I had been allowed to cross Ocean Avenue by myself and play at my friend Chris's house on E. 19th Street between Ditmas and Newkirk avenues. I had a pretty large group of friends of different ages and backgrounds, and we all hung out together, forming cliques and clubs and factions but in the end always coming back together. Ditmas Park was like living in a suburban community without the sameness. On summer nights a big group of our friends would divide into teams and play Ring-o-levio for hours, using the 16-block grid of Ditmas Park as our playing field.

On August 9 of that year, the news broke that Sam Bronfman, a son of Seagram's heir Edgar Bronfman, had been kidnapped. At first there were reports that Bronfman was tied up in a cave somewhere, but then it was discovered that he was being held in an apartment building right around the corner from our building! My friends and I stood on the corner for long periods, trying to see if there was any action, but all we saw were black cars with tinted windows waiting for something.

One night, a news reporter said that one of the kidnappers was Dominic Byrne, the father of one of my classmates, Tommy. Everyone in the area knew Mr. Byrne, a small, slight Irishman who used to own a liquor store on Newkirk Plaza and then became a limo driver. No one could believe that he could be involved in such a caper because he was so unassuming. There was hushed talk of homosexual activity between Tommy's father and the other kidnapper, a fireman named Mel Lynch. (Lynch later claimed in court that he and Sam Bronfman had met at a gay bar and had been lovers and that Sam was a co-conspirator in the kidnapping, an allegation that was never proved.)

At church the following Sunday, the priest asked everyone to pray for Mr. Byrne, an upstanding usher known to everyone in the community. It was all anyone talked about for weeks. When school started a month later, Tommy wasn't there, though I think eventually he returned after the publicity had died down. Tommy's father went to prison for 3 years, for extortion, not kidnapping.

When I saw the building that was the scene of the crime yesterday I felt a little sad. It was the first time I realized that the kidnapping symbolically signaled the end of the Flatbush I had known and loved, or maybe I'm just older and more cynical.

In October 1975, New York City went bankrupt, and the federal government refused to bail the city out. Garbage piled up on the streets, and crime spiked as cops became scarcer. In 1976 the brand-new 10-speed bike I got for graduation was stolen from me at knifepoint in broad daylight on Ditmas Avenue, half a block from my building.

By 1977, the burning of Bushwick during the NYC blackout and the Son of Sam shootings were further emblems of the city's ailing health. Many of my friends and their families were moving to the suburbs or to other states to escape the worsening climate. My mother was mugged in the vestibule of our building, and my father had his wallet stolen several times. And then, the coup de grace: some random teenager picked up my 8-year-old brother and dropped up him on his head on the grass down the block for no apparent reason. In September 1977, we said goodbye to Flatbush.

It was strange walking around the area. I found a faded patch of concrete where a bunch of us had etched our initials in the then newly paved sidewalk. And there was the fence--or was it the fence?--we climbed over to get to our favorite hiding place during Ring-o-levio. Everything looked the same as it did 30 years ago, only smaller and less magical. Today I live only 3 miles from my childhood home, but in so many respects it's a world away.

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Tear the roof off the sucker

Our building looks like a bomb hit it--and that's a good thing. Today was the first day of demolition. We've waited two-and-a-half years for this moment. It's the first actual sign that something is happening. The ceiling on the first floor came a-tumbling down, revealing beams that were a little higher than we thought.

We're doing limited interior demolition so we can see how much of the building we can salvage and how much will be new. It looks like we'll be saving very little. We also have to have four giant test pits (3 ft by 3 ft) dug on the first floor to determine the composition of the foundation. The second and third floor were never fully built out, so engineers need to test the bearing capacity of the soil underneath.

It's all very exciting, and now we just have to hope that getting a construction loan in this credit crisis isn't too difficult. Otherwise, we will need to call our building The Money Pit.

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Laying with fire

This morning when I woke up, Luis was still in bed. He's usually at the gym when I get up, so I figured he was not feeling well.

"You OK?" I asked.

"I'm wiped out," he said.

"Did you know your phone rang in the middle of the night?"

"Yes. It was J. Around 4:30."

"Did someone die?" I asked.

"No, she smelled smoke in the house and called the fire department. They came and went through the building, even here, and couldn't find anything."

"Here? Our apartment?"

"Yes. And they rang our doorbell even after they had already come inside."

Our doorbell is shrill and sounds like the starting gate bell at Aqueduct.

"I heard nothing," I said, both cursing and blessing the 31-dB-rated earplugs I wear to bed and the dreamy mattress we bought at Sleepy's last week. If there's ever a real fire, we're toast.

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Goldilocks had an easier time

For the past few weeks Luis has been conducting research into why he sleeps so poorly. He has had this problem ever since I've known him, which is almost 9 years, and things haven't gotten any better. He's tried humidifiers, memory foam, ear plugs, caffeine reduction, breathing strips, linen spray, orthopedic pillows--nothing has helped. Lindsay Wagner has become his personal hero, since she has found her Sleep Number and Luis is intensely jealous.

I, on the other hand, could sleep standing up on a moving bus.

Luis begins conking out at around 10:30 p.m. Our friends know that when we are out, regardless of where we are or what we are doing, Luis's batteries are beginning to run down when he suddenly announces, "I have to leave." The instant his head hits the pillow he is sound asleep. He recently discovered that falling asleep within the first five minutes of lying down is a sign of sleep deprivation.

He sleeps soundly for a while, but invariably he tosses and turns and I hear a gagging sound like he's being strangled. When I go to bed I try to insinuate myself like Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible trying not to trip the lasers, but he always wakes up and doesn't remember a thing the next morning.

I've been telling Luis for months that I think he has sleep apnea. He's finally coming to that realization and is going to look into a sleep study. Personally I think he has a deviated septum, but that's something a doctor should determine.

While researching sleep studies, Luis came across an article about mattresses. "Oh my God!" he said. "Listen to this: 'In 7 years your mattress will double in weight due to sweat, dust mites and oil from your skin, so plan to get a new one every 5 to 7 years and you should be in good shape.'"

"Ewwwww," I said. "How old is our mattress?"

"At least 10 years old."

Yesterday afternoon buying a new mattress became our top priority. And there is no place more apropos than Sleepy's.

Buying a mattress is far more intimidating than buying a car. At least you can take a car for a test drive and return it if you have buyer's remorse. Mattresses are very much a personal choice. You have to lie down on each and every one and extrapolate it to 8 hours every night for the next however many years it takes for your mattress to double in weight from all the schmutz that gets into it.

It was Saturday afternoon, and no one was in the Sleepy's showroom but a salesman. He rose from his desk chair as we walked in the door. Dressed in a cheap grey suit and smelling of eau de something bad, he looked like a cross between Dustin Hoffman and Bela Lugosi. "Hello," he said in a vaguely Eastern European but not altogether coherent accent, "and velcome to Sleepy's. I am guessing that you have come because you vant to buy a mattress."

That kind of shtick may go over well in Minsk. Luis and I just let out a hollow laugh.

Before we could say anything, the man escorted us to the back of the showroom, stopping momentarily to ask us what size we wanted.

"Queen," we said in unison, certain that our salesman missed the irony.

"And vat kind of firmness are you looking for?"

We told him that we have a pretty firm mattress now but that we were looking for something that contours more to our bodies. I thought to myself, oh my God, we've been watching too many Lindsay Wagner Sleep Number infomercials.

He took us to a video display that said DormoDiagnostics in giant letters. "Ooh, sleep 'technology,'" I whispered to Luis.

"Now," the man said, glancing back and forth between me and Luis, "do you have any sleep issues? Can you tell? Can you tell?" I was trying my best not to laugh.

"Not really," I said.

"Nothing?" the man said. "Your neck? Your hip? Your back, perhaps?"

I thought for a minute. "No."

"All right, then," he said, dubious about my lack of sleep dysfunctions. Into the display he punched in my name, age, gender, height, weight, and areas of discomfort, then did the same for Luis. He made us each lie on a display bed, which probably had more sweat, mites, and God-knows-what than any other mattress. The DormoDiagnostics display confirmed that I, indeed, did not exhibit any areas of discomfort.

"Congratulations," he said, in a voice reminiscent of The Count on Sesame Street. "Now ve are going to find the right mattress for you."

Luis and I tried not to look at each other. This man was a cartoon character. He clearly believed he had a bona fides in sleep technology.

"Now, you do know that firm is not always better." He bounced his hand along the edge of a softer mattress. "Your body has curves." What a revelation! "So it's better to find something that molds to your body."

The first bed we tried was a plush, suede-topped, queen-size mattress with a velvet bolster at our heads. I felt a little skeeved but tried to push away thoughts that a large, hairy, sweaty man with seborrhea and head lice might have lain in the same spot, ever.

Luis lay down next to me, as our salesman watched us recline in comfort. "Purr," Luis said. "This feels delicious. I could sleep on this forever."

"This is undoubtedly one of our finer mattresses," said the salesman.

"How much is this one?" Luis said.

"2500," the man said.

"Do you have anything less expensive? I just don't think I have it in me to spend that kind of money on bedding."

"Vy, certainly," the man said. "Come this vay." I half-expected Tattoo to amble along behind him.

We lay down on the second mattress, also suede-topped. It didn't feel much different from the first one.

"I like this," I said. "Me, too," said Luis. The price of that one was $1700.

"How about something in the $1000 range?" Luis said. Many years ago Luis had gone mattress shopping with his friend Mel and had been impressed with the way Mel handled the salesperson. It really was not much different from buying a car. I wondered if we'd have to get mattress insurance too...and detailing.

"Ah, yes," the salesman said, unfazed. "Right over here." We lay on the third mattress, which both of us decided felt just as good as the first two. We lay on it a little longer than the others to see if we could feel anything, even subtle, that would make us decide. "These mattresses are made by the Kingsdown company. They are an employee-owned company in North Carolina, and they are crafted--vell, I can't say that they are all made by hand--but they are vell made and they have been around for 100 years." I hoped he was referring to the company and not the mattresses.

After a few minutes the salesman walked away and Luis and I rested for 5 minutes.

"Hey, BooBoo," Luis said.

"Mmmm."

"What was that Martin Short character?"

"Oh my God!" Our salesman sounded just like Franck Eggelhoffer, the frenetic wedding planner with an unintelligible Eastern European accent played by Martin Short in Father of the Bride. I unleashed a reflexive shriek and began laughing uncontrollably. Now I couldn't stop the tears spilling out and accelerating the saturation of this particular mattress with moisture. I had to lay on the bed until I could compose myself again.

That mattress was $900. "One more," Luis said to Franck. "What else you got?"

"Vell," Franck said, "this one here is a stripped-down version of the second one you saw."

"What makes it stripped down?" I asked.

"The top on this one is cotton, and on the other it is suede. It is essentially the same mattress with maybe a few less coils and some more foam."

I have to say, I didn't notice any difference, really, in any of the four mattresses. I could easily have slept on any of them--but then, I'm not the one with the sleeping issues.

The stripped-down mattress was $1200. We liked it, but Luis felt that even that was a little too high.

"We like this one," Luis said, "but can you do any better on the price?"

It made sense that since buying a mattress is like buying a car, you should be able to negotiate. Franck offered it for $1150, including taxes and a new mattress pad. We took it.

"Ven do you vant it delivered?" Franck asked.

"As soon as possible," I said.

"Good," he said, "because some people, they vant it delivered right now and I say, 'Vat, do you vant me to parachute into your house with it?'"

"Tomorrow will be fine," I said.

When we left, I said to Luis, "I can't believe I didn't think to look in Consumer Reports. I think we were just scared by the idea of mites sleeping with us."

"I know," Luis said. "It's such a scam....though I have to say, I could have slept on that $2500 one forever."

"I don't know. I didn't think it was such a difference."

When we got home I looked on Consumer Reports, which essentially confirmed that choosing a mattress is a completely personal experience and that the only perfect mattress is the one that is perfect for you. Boing!

I did a search on Kingsdown and discovered that it is the originator of the DormoDiagnostics sleep technology, which explains why the only mattresses we were shown were made by Kingsdown.

The mattress came today, and the old one was hauled out. Luis is sleeping on it right now. I don't think it's the cure for his sleep apnea, but as he's resting I imagine Franck telling him in his dreams: "Vell, Mr. Martinez. This is a very, very reasonable price for a mottress of this magnitude."

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Saying yes to mess

My department is moving in a few weeks to another floor. I'll lose the picturesque view of New York Harbor, the Statue of Liberty, and Governors Island that I've enjoyed for the past 5 years. We're moving from the 51st to the 3rd floor, where I'll have a picturesque view of the FDR Drive. I'll miss the top-floor view, but I'll be closer to the exit. Anyone who worked in lower Manhattan on 9/11 understands the benefit of this trade-off.

I'll be relieved when we move, but now I'm consumed with anxiety. My work space is a collection of cavalierly created piles of paper that to the untrained eye appear to be chaotic, but to me are a perfectly logical filing system. You ask me where the report I did 14 months ago is, I can pull it out like the ace of diamonds in a magic card trick. The officer manager keeps reminding us that this is our opportunity to divest ourvelves of paper we don't need. But what does that mean--don't need? Every document I produce is intended to be used electronically, so there's not much need for me to keep paper around. No, I don't need it, but having that paper copy makes my work real; otherwise, what I do is only a collection of red, green, and blue dots coursing through wires.

The fact is, I love the smell, feel, and look of paper and ink. In school I couldn't wait to get mimeo sheets just to get high off the smell. I have writing and editing books that date back to my high school, including my English teacher's autographed copy of Strunk and White. I can't bear to part with them because I just might need to show someone that ending a sentence with a preposition is perfectly acceptable. (Linguists long argued that you must never end a sentence with a preposition, allegedly prompting Winston Churchill to reject the rule as the "sort of English up with which I will not put.") I will get around to reading that book on the 7 habits of highly effective people. E-ven-tu-al-ly. For now, it goes in the "To Read" pile, the largest one in my archaeological dig.

So far as I know, I have always been this way. In my last job, my boss used to give me scathing performance ratings on my organizational skills. Even though I could always produce a piece of paper she wanted at a moment's notice, she tried to instill in me the virtue of a neat desk. She persisted; I resisted. "A cluttered desk is the sign of a clutter mind," goes the popular wisdom. Now, however, even the New York Times has turned that neatly constructed platitude on its flimsy end:

Studies are piling up that show that messy desks are the vivid signatures of people with creative, limber minds (who reap higher salaries than those with neat “office landscapes”) and that messy closet owners are probably better parents and nicer and cooler than their tidier counterparts. It’s a movement that confirms what you have known, deep down, all along: really neat people are not avatars of the good life; they are humorless and inflexible prigs, and have way too much time on their hands.
--Saying Yes to Mess, Dec. 21, 2006

Oh, so true.

My home environment is only slightly better than my work environment, and only because I don't live alone. One reason why Luis and I bought a duplex loft a few years ago is because I knew I would have a mess on the lower floor, but it would be out of sight of guests and, more important, Luis. In our current apartment my office is hidden away in the far corner, like a defiant child relegated to his room. Having lived with roommates all of my adult life, I've been tamed to keep the common areas neat, but it's a struggle. I still deposit magazines, books, mail, CDs, receipts, and business cards where they happen to fall--and I know exactly where they are when I need them. Luis gets sweaty and breathes heavily--not in a good way--when the clutter upsets our feng shui. "Why can't you just put the magazine away in a neat pile in your office and then you'll find it in that place?" he will ask reasonably and logically. I will nod my head in agreement while leaving a trail of paper in my wake.

When scolded, I shamefully collect my things and plop them on my desk, again in whatever order they happen to fall. When I need them, I know what nook or cranny or pile or corner to look in. But there's a hitch. Our cleaning lady, Betty, loves to put things in piles. On Betty's cleaning day the house smells of pine and our surfaces look as lovely as the pyramids at Chichen Itza. It almost makes me homicidal when I can't find something that Betty has "arranged." Don't get me wrong; I have file cabinets and storage boxes and drawers, and yes, they get organized when my impetuous Felix Unger alter ego kicks in, but most times I like the sweeping vistas of the gently rolling plateaus and ridges on my desk.

Being a Libra, Luis craves beauty, harmony, and order. Yeah, whatever. Read Architectural Digest. Most people think I'm a neat freak because I'm a Virgo. While my fellows sun signs do value neatness, organization, and perfection as virtues, our devotion to them is theoretical rather than applied. I feel like Llewelyn's 2007 Sun Sign Book looks straight into the pith of my messy piles:

Virgo has a reputation for neatness. Some are; some aren't. This perception is rooted in organization, but not necesssarily neatness. Whether you're a messy Virgo or a neat one, what you have a knack for is keeping tabs on everything. And that's no exaggeration, as you well know. Many Virgos forgo a calendar and rely on their incredible memory. All born under your sign can produce paperwork in a flash, even if it's buried in a foot-high stack sandwiched between yesterday's newspaper and tomorrow's extensive to-do list.

Don't mock astrology. It has a point...when it's convenient.

Luis practically has to leave the house when I cook, because he can't bear to see me use pretty much every available utensil and vessel to make something as simple as a vat of pasta. It upsets his aesthetic sensibility. He can't stand to see the dishes piled in the sink. Doesn't bother me. I will do them, but maybe not in the next five minutes. I will not descend into dirtiness. Messiness, to me, is acceptable; dirtiness is not. I have learned to embrace the mess; it's others who have the problem. When I see someone else's desk looking like the Sierra Nevadas, I nod my head in recognition. "Mess tells a story," says the Times article. "You can learn a lot about people from their detritus, whereas neat--well, neat is a closed book. Neat has no narrative and no personality (as any cover of Real Simple magazine will demonstrate)."

There, I feel a little better now about our move in January, which, coincidentally, is Get Organized month. I can't wait to unpack my office boxes in a new configuration on my 3rd floor desk and see what rises to the top.

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Good news for a change

It's sort of anticlimactic, but after our first second third hearing before the appeals board to obtain our zoning variance, the change of use was granted. The final decision won't be handed down until January 9. It's been 14 months of waiting around.

Before the cheers begin, however, there's a ton of other stuff we have to do: air testing, plan revision, paperwork filing, and rubber stamping. We're over the biggest hurdle. We weren't really sure it was going to happen. Now, at least, we can go forward. We can do some internal demolition.

I read that the Whole Foods being built three blocks from our new place finally broke ground. Given its proximity to the Lavender Lake, I can only hope that they don't sell two-headed fish.

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