Behind door no. 3: A harrowing tale from the halls of Gramercy Green

Through the revolving doors and past the doorman I went, up 12 floors to what I thought was my first apartment in New York City. The building still smelled crisp and new, like fresh paint and polished glass. Accents of bright hardwoods and buffed metal caught my eye high and low, the kind of little touches that make a place not only modern, but stylish and unique. Heck, even the New York Times wrote a story about how nice living here was, and now that I had arrived, I was not disappointed. Despite lugging my entire life behind me in a duffel bag and suitcase, I moved with a light-footed ease. I was excited. And then I arrived at the end of the hallway, at door number one, what I thought was the threshold of my first apartment in New York City.

On the way to this door, I'd passed a very round Korean man in the hallway. He asked if I was moving into room 1223. I told him I was. He said that was great, because he was going to be my roommate -- along with someone else who had dropped off a couple bags, then quickly departed. The portly young man said he was in a hurry and had to go, but would talk to me later. He waddled away toward the elevators. I would never see him again.

As I approached that first door, I should have seen the warning signs. Every other doorway along the hall was immaculate, welcoming in that pristine, never-lived-in sort of way. The door that was supposed to be mine had an old broken printer and scanner stacked just outside, and the welcome mat was decidedly not so; it literally read: "Not Welcome." I dropped my bags and took out my key. I didn't need to turn it to know what awaited me. I could smell the garbage from outside.

Behind the door was a scene I could only describe as "Puij-esque." Puij, you see, was a next-door neighbor of mine in college. His real name was Thomas (the nickname was from some anime), and the man was the least-kempt person I have ever met, including folks sleeping on sidewalks. One time, Puij left a urine-soaked phonebook in his shower for weeks after another friend threw it in there as a joke. Puij would sleep in a mess of dirty clothes on his bed like a hibernating hamster, cuckooning himself in the stench of sheets gone unwashed for months. Another time, Puij refused to get up and clean up his kitchen experiments gone wrong, even when a friend hurled a half-dozen mini-bibles at him, shouting, "The power of Christ compels you!"

The scene behind the door of my would-be apartment, with the multiple rice-cookers, rotting Korean cuisine, and unwashed pots and pans, was decidedly Puij-esque. I wandered into what was supposed to be my first bedroom in New York City and sat down my bags. I immediately wanted out. Aloud, I said to myself, "We're going to have to have a talk."

Being the type to try to work things out, I weighed my options. I could try to get another room, but hell, that might end up even worse. Out of the frying pan and into the fryer. And what if I landed here by fate, and I end up being good friends with this guy? I decided to wait until he came back. Maybe he was just going through a bad time and forgot to take out his garbage. I decided to forget the mess for the time being and get ready to go meet some friends out in Brooklyn for dinner and drinks.

But the mess, in a way, wouldn't stay forgotten. As I was about to leave, the door opened. A posse of young Asian men walked in. At the front of the pack was the person who had dropped off his bags and then quickly dashed. He'd brought back some friends to show how filthy the apartment was. His name was Shawn; he was one of those popped-collar, muscle-bound preppy Chinese guys. He told me he was from the nice part of Brooklyn, and before I could tell him my story, he launched into a chest-puffed tirade about how he couldn't believe how fucking disgusting the place was, how he's paying too much for this kind of shit, and how he was going to demand a new building entirely. I told him I had arrived only 10 minutes before, and the mess inside was the fault of the other guy, who had apparently been nesting here since the fall semester and decided not to move out. He demanded to know what the other resident looked like, as if he and his posse, equally spiky haired (though less muscle bound), would hunt him down and force the Korean Puij to clean up his mess.

I left shortly after, around 6 in the evening. I had an amazing time in Brooklyn. I stumbled back in the early morning and immediately passed out in my room, which was clean, though I still hadn't bought a blanket or sheets for the bed. At around 11 a.m., someone opened the door and woke me up.

"Yo. Can you believe this shit? This other guy still hasn't cleaned up."
It was Shawn. Shouting down at me as I poked my head from my sleeping bag.
"Really? Hell," I said.
"You see the guy?" Shawn asked.
"No. I still haven't seen him. I got home at like 4 a.m."
"You went out? That's cool. Where at?"
"Brooklyn, around Williamsburg, then BedSty."
"Oh man, you know that's the dangerous part, right?"
"My friends say it's in transition."
He looked at me like I was crazy. Biggy and Naz were from that part of town.
"Well, yo, I talked to the people. They said I can move, so I just came back to get my stuff."
I took a deep breath and smelled the spoiled kimchi waft into the room.
"You know, I might do the same," I said.

I showered, trying to ignore the scummy tile of what would be an otherwise beautiful bathroom.
After I got dressed, I went to the building manager's office on the second floor. I was hungry, thirsty and just wanted to get this over with. Behind a white desk covered in lists and post-it notes, a woman named Beatriz was doing something on an iMac. I walked up to her and cut to the chase. I told her I'm a moderately clean guy, and moving into a place so cluttered and dirty was not what I had in mind -- especially not since this was supposed to be my first apartment in New York City.

She shuffled through some papers. Looked at some lists. Tried to find a baby blue sticky note among a dozen other baby blue sticky notes. Then she called her assistant into the office. She sent him up to inspect the room -- just to be sure I wasn't being picky. The assistant looked, acted and talked rather effeminately. He was dressed impeccably. Luckily for me, even if I was exaggerating about the room -- which I wasn't -- I imagined he'd return with a favorable report. She handed him a baby blue sticky note with the room number before he left. I sat in an awkward silence with Beatriz for 10 minutes as she tapped at her iMac keyboard, the computer softly playing Latin love songs. My attempt at small talk didn't go too well.

"Looks like you've got a pretty big job here -- how many tenants are in this building anyway?" I asked.
"That's a good question. I don't really know. I just started," she replied.

Finally, the assistant returned.

"The room is pretty dirty -- especially the floors," he reported to Beatriz.
"Is the resident there?" she asked.
"He was sleeping. I guess he isn't now."

Beatriz turned to me.

"That room should have been cleaned a long time ago. Let me see what I can do."
She scanned another list, then told her assistant to go up and check to see if this new room -- just a few doors down from the first one -- was cleaner.

I panicked just enough to make a difference.

"Uh, is it possible for me to look at the room first? Just to be sure I'm not, like, jumping out of the frying pan and into the fryer?"
"Actually, you can't. We're required to give notice to the tenant before we show the apartment," Beatriz replied.

She told her assistant to go find keys to this new place, and I sat there, silently dreading what the outcome would be. And then Beatriz had a change of heart.

"You know what, this will save everyone some trouble," she said.

She had her assistant get a tiny envelope with a room number on it and keys inside from a big box of identical tiny envelopes. There were hundreds.

"Nobody's living in this unit yet. That way, you can set the rules," she said.

I was ecstatic.

"Thanks so much. I really didn't want to be the guy to come in and say, 'o.k., buddy, here's how things are going to be from now on,'" I said.

She handed me the keys to a big corner room on the 14th floor. I sneaked back into my old apartment, stuffed my things back into my bags, careful not to rouse the sleeping Puij in the other bedroom, and hauled like crazy back through the obstacle course of ethernet cords, a bike helmet, unused cleaning supplies and empty strawberry cartons.

Later, I would say to Beatriz, "He probably felt really bad, knowing all his roommates abandoned him because he was too dirty." She hid her snicker behind a fan of papers.

The red elevator doors opened onto the 14th floor. I was even more excited than I had been the day before. My entire life was in the luggage behind me, not quite packed as well as before, as I arrived at room 1403, what was supposed to be my second apartment in New York City. There were three fishbowls made from colorful construction paper pasted onto the door around the peephole. Inside each bowl was a goldfish with a name written on it: "Ashley!" "Stephanie!" "Amanda!"

This felt good. Girls like that usually keep their rooms pretty clean, I thought. At least all the girls I knew from college, anyway -- the kind who always kept a can of Fabreeze handy, who did laundry three times a week, who owned a Swiffer and actually changed the cloths. I opened the door of what was supposed to be my new home. Instead, it would become the address I would hold for the shortest amount of time -- ever -- despite my long list of short-term addresses.
When door number two opened, and the evidence registered in my brain (the shock of it caused reality to slow down), I said aloud: "Ho-lee shit."

Who would have thought three preppy, peppy little girls who pasted their walls with photo spreads from Vogue and hung framed vintage romantic pictures on their walls could cause this magnitude of rock star-in-a-hotel-room destruction?

They were Lindseys. Lindsey, to use another anecdote from my college days, was a girl who lived downstairs from me my junior year. She was the type of girl to stay out all night and come home with the sunrise only to fall asleep half-naked on the floor with her feet caked in barroom filth. She gave off a preppy vibe, drove a nice car, but simply didn't seem to properly manage any aspect of her life. She put off getting a proper bed for months, instead sleeping on a mattress on her bedroom floor. She had a little dog, which she left locked inside while she was away at class all day. I'm surprised the thing didn't die -- since one time, when I was hanging out with her roommate, I saw a couple packages of Plan B strewn next to her mattress, slightly chewed.

This room was decidedly worse. It appeared that the girls of 1403, the former occupants of what was supposed to be my second apartment in New York City, had thrown a massive party the night before they moved out. Confetti and glitter was somehow jammed into every nook and cranny in the place. Beer bottle caps and crumpled cans lay nonchalantly here and there. The garbage can was overflowing with the detritus of modern college living: cell phone charger, sugar free Red Bull cans, packaging from prescription samples, and more cigarette packs than I can count. A coffee cup was filled with that pungent juice that distills from beer being mixed with four dozen cigarette butts. Two holes were somehow punched into the kitchen wall. And in the bathroom, there was the crown jewel of this wreckage -- a scorched Pepsi bottle with a hole drilled into it, with a makeshift tinfoil cap over the top, filled with a half-smoked bowl of weed.
I repeated my refrain: "Ho-lee shit."

But in addition to the mess these girls had left behind for their daddies to pay for and the maids to clean up, they also left every thing else. By that, I mean everything. A closet full of coat hangers, a toaster, two desk lamps, a power strip, a pair of dice from Dad's Casino in Vegas, a duvet with cover and sheets and pillows, a corkscrew, and so much more. There was even a cluster of brand-new cleaning supplies, as if the girls started to clean up, realized the task was far beyond them, and just said "fuck it."

There was no way that I was going to stay there, or even wait for the staff to clean that hell hole. I left my stuff in the entryway and prepared to go back down to talk to Beatriz and get yet another room. But as I was about to leave, it donned on me: how about a shopping spree?
I had only brought the essentials with me to New York; clothes, computer, and that's about it. I was planning to buy everything else. But when the environment, even the urban environment, gives you lemons, you don't turn down the lemonade -- especially when it comes with sugar and a juicer. I took what I needed, wrapped the stuff in a bedsheet, and left the bundle in the vacant hallway. The stuff would have ended up down a garbage chute anyway.

I took the elevator back down to the second floor. Beatriz looked surprised to see me.

"You're not going to believe this," I said. "I'm going to need to return this one too. The room looks like a party bomb exploded, and nobody bothered to clean up."
"This has just been a nightmare for you, hasn't it?" she said.
"It's alright -- I know it's not your fault. I just want a clean room." On the outside, I appeared tired and plaintive. On the inside, I was smiling; I was about to walk away with a few hundred dollars worth of household goods and move into, what I hoped, would be my third apartment in New York City.

"Here, take this room. It's a studio, and nobody's scheduled to move in for a while," Beatriz said. She handed me the key to room 1117. I liked that number. It was sounded both clean, and lucky.

"Thanks. Hopefully I won't be back," I said.

I returned to the hellhole and gathered my things and left the bundle of swag behind for a second trip. I took the elevator down to the 11th floor. I arrived at door number three, what I hoped would be my first real apartment in New York City.

The chrome-coated lock tumbler twisted like perfection. The door opened, and sunlight from a bank of 5-foot-tall windows was cast over me. The wood floors shone like just-threshed wheat. I could see into the canyons of both 23rd and 24th streets. Not a single remnant of the previous occupants was left behind, except for the fact that they had scrubbed the place to a sparkle.

Behind door number three, I found my first apartment in New York City.