Around the time my wife and I got married, we lived in a two-room apartment that I had lived in alone for about fifteen years. Herb Gardner once came over, looked around, gave me a look, and said, “I know a good lawyer who could get you out of here.” My wife gave me a similar look a couple of years later, so we bought a co-op apartment on Fifth Avenue.
I hadn’t been trying to save money. I actually liked the place. It was on the twenty-second floor. It was quiet. There was a view of the Hudson River from the bedroom, the living room, the kitchen, and the shower. I mean, what’ya want!?
For anyone who lives outside the New York area, a co-op is a cooperatively owned building. Each tenant gets a specific number of shares according to the size of their apartment. Every co-op has a board composed of residents who are elected to serve the building’s interests. Before you can purchase an apartment in these buildings, you must present yourself before the board so they can determine your worthiness to live in their midst.
We were interviewed by the board. My wife found it extremely unpleasant, and I found it riveting. When the eighty-something patrician chairman paced back and forth and said, “Your accountant refuses to verify your financial statement,” I said, “What? That’s the first call I’m going to make after this meeting!” When I called my accountant, he said, “An accountant can’t verify his own statement. Who are these people, anyway?!” Great question.
We were accepted into the building, but I have to admit that I was surprised when the board invited me to join them. I had assumed that I wouldn’t be welcome in a role like that, because I came to the table with a certain amount of controversy. By that I mean I’m known to have strong opinions, and I’m often around people who don’t share them, but I’m a gentleman, so I don’t offer my opinion unless asked.
Not surprisingly, after a few meetings another board member pointed at me and said accusingly, “He’d let anyone into the building!” He wasn’t far off. My position was that if you could afford it and the police weren’t looking for you, why not? On the other hand, some board members considered it a negative that an applicant “gets his clothes off the rack.” When I said, “I get my clothes off the rack,” they said, “We know.” Of course, some of the most disagreeable characters everywhere get their suits made.
There are some co-ops in Manhattan, not ours, that will only accept dogs no heavier than fifteen pounds and no taller than twenty-one inches to the shoulder. If there’s a question, they’ll weigh and measure them, too. The rationale is, “You wouldn’t want to get on an elevator and have a Great Dane looking you in the eye, would you?” Not a bad point.
Actually, I don’t remember any dogs in our building.
The board also used something some called Fidelifacts to investigate applicants. One revealed that a man had been cited in the past for driving the wrong way down a one-way street, which the board chose to interpret as his having a drinking problem, and they were very vocal in not wanting to have anyone with a drinking problem live in the building. I believe it was my friend and fellow board member Gideon Rothschild who then said, “Where are rich people with drinking problems supposed to live?”
Although I was viewed as too open to applicants, I was respected for my dedication to the job, surely evidenced by all my note taking. No one imagined they were notes for a play.
The idea that this needed to be written about had quickly taken hold once I realized that my fellow board members were actually serious about the preposterous concerns raised in our meetings. There were some who felt that the rather elderly doormen should be standing at attention at all times. One board member was certain flowers were being stolen from the arrangement in the lobby and became obsessed with rooting out the supposed thief.
I never witnessed any anti-Semitism in my building, but I know it exists in some exclusive buildings and clubs all over America. A relative in Kansas City was a guest in a private club recently, and someone called out, “What is this, Jew night?” When my Jewish father-in-law was dying with esophageal cancer, I asked his gentile doctor on the phone what had caused the disease. He said, “Eating too much lox.” Lox is smoked salmon, which Jewish people particularly seem to enjoy. I took it as an anti-Semitic joke that I’ll never forget.
A friend of mine recently bought an apartment on Fifth Avenue and was told he couldn’t have a welcome mat outside his door. They allowed him to have his welcome mat inside his apartment.
After we sold our apartment and moved to Connecticut, I began to put on readings of the play I had written about the co-op board. After one of the readings, a former colleague of mine from the board came up to me and said, “Your apartment has tripled in value.” I could have said, “So has my house,” but I let him have his moment. What does it hurt?