Encounters
a hallway, a subway
March 8 2025
Reflection is not an option at the moment. Would not lead to good writing or good experience for you to read. Instead I’m going to put down two stories of recent encounters.
Feb 3 I had a doctor’s appointment at Gramercy Park in Manhattan. Gramercy is a very fancy neighborhood in the east 20s, downtown but still extremely patrician in history and wealth. Gramercy Park is a gorgeous square-block park, filled with beautiful trees, grass, flowers and benches. At least that’s how it looks from the outside. Because nobody who doesn’t live in one of the magnificent homes on Gramercy Park is allowed to go inside, unless they are with someone who lives in one of the homes. People who have their homes are given a key to the gate. Everyone else is kept out.
My doctor’s office was in a fancy apartment building at the corner of the park. Vases of freshly cut blooms greeted me as the first doorman opened the door. I walked down the long hallway with marble floors and more flowers and at other end of the hallway was the door to the doctor. There was another door to enter or leave the building there. And a doorman there too.
Since I was early, I stayed off my phone and waited and soon the doorman began to talk to me. His name is Angel and he’s originally from Puerto Rico but grew up in Fort Greene, the neighborhood near from mine in Brooklyn. He told me how he worked from age 17 to 35 at a liquor store on the upper east side, which is where he first learned to drink. Later he worked as a doorman in the “Ghostbusters” building on Central Park West. Doormen have a union in New York so it is a relatively steady position and many of them stay for many years in the jobs and the buildings. My parents’ building has several doormen who have seen generations of kids born and raised in these private yet communal spaces. There is a support relationship and a familial one and a transactional one, as their job is to guard, help, gather packages, and be the front-facing representative of the cooperative building.
As I was talking with Angel many young wealthy-looking residents of the building came and went. He bantered with them, some guy was bringing in McDonalds and Angel asked where was his, and another guy was heading out to Starbucks and said to Angel “Iced coffee, the usual?” and Angel said yes. He teased and joked and asked after their families.
Angel was frustrated because as he said his union messed up and now he would have to work until age 69 as a doorman instead of the 65 he had initially thought. Then he started telling me about his childhood and upbringing.
He said recently he saw a photo of himself at age 1 in Fort Greene and how at the time it was a mostly Black neighborhood and generations of families lived in the brownstones and there was a lot of activity on the block, people cooking and grandmas keeping an eye on everyone else’s kids and feeding each other meals and now it is very fancy. Which is true. Now he lives in Park Slope around the corner from where we go to the movies when we go to the movies.
He tells me about when he was working at the liquor store the owner had this gig where he was supplying champagne to a huge luxury party of a bunch of businesspeople out on a boat on the river. He was just a teenager and his job was to serve champagne to the clientele. His boss said he could drink the champagne too, there was so much of it. He’d never been on a boat and the combination of seasickness and drinking didn’t help and he got super sick and his boss said he should go lie down below deck but he said no way, going below deck would be even worse. Later he went home and told his mom about the party and the champagne and then he slept it off.
Soon after he finishes this story, a tall, pale woman enters the building. She looks very nervous and also has a doctor’s appointment. The office is still closed. She sees the tall stool where Angel gets to sit, next to his doorman desk and asks if she can sit on it before the office opens. Angel hesitates. The hesitation means no and she said “ok, no” and he says “it’s pretty wobbly, you wouldn’t want to sit on it anyway” which seems to me his way of keeping something of his own in this transitory space of banter, fleeting intimacy, and labor.
I tell Angel I hope to run into him in the neighborhood. Then the doctor’s office opens and he and I keep talking and then I go into the very sterile office and sit down across from the nervous tall pale woman and wait for my appointment.
These encounters matter to me because I like to hear the details and stories that people share, these memories that they recount and are meaningful to them. The expressions of lived experience and how they are constructed as stories that get passed along to strangers.
***
On Feb 25 I was on the subway going to Manhattan. I had my earplugs in as I often do. A woman wearing a pink wig, rhinestone triangle-shaped dangling earrings, a fur wrap, and pink lipstick was sitting a few seats away. All the seats between us were empty.
I did Diana Ross’s makeup, I hear through the subway noise and my earplugs. Do you like Diana Ross? Isn’t she beautiful?
The woman opens her purse and brings out a rolled-up color photocopy with a hairband around it. She takes off the hairband and unrolls it and shows it to me. There are two photos of Diana Ross with makeup on. I can’t tell if the person next to Ross is the person on the subway next to me with a face very lined, made up heavily, and a pink wig.
I love Diana Ross, I say, did you see she’s performing at Kings Theater? Yes, of course. And I love all of them, Rita Hayworth, Joan Collins, Lena Horne, do you know them? Yes, I say, I do and they were amazing. And Marilyn Monroe, they killed her, but she was the most amazing. And Dynasty, and Aretha Franklin, the very best. And I like Prince, but Michael Jackson, he was a mess. Elizabeth Taylor, I love Elizabeth Taylor, so beautiful, so stylish, so glamorous—I’m trans.
Of course I knew this but I just say yes. Are you Italian, she asks? I say, no. She says, Jewish? I say, yes. Me too. Grew up in Bay Ridge. She tells me Do you know the film Paris is Burning? I say yes, it’s a great film. I was in that film. The 90s were the best time to be in New York. New York isn’t what it used to be. I came out in the 60s, can you imagine? By this time, of course I have taken the earplugs out and moved two seats closer to hear over the racket of the train.
To move the conversation a little bit I ask, where are you heading? she says, I’m going to The Center. And I say I think The Center’s great I take my students there. It’s such a great place. I also have a trans kid, and a gay kid too. She says, to female, like me? I say no, to male. And she repeats, male to female? And I say, no, female to male. And I say what are you doing at the Center? Going to a meeting and then to the Sylvia Rivera Law Project. Do you know that place? I say yes, I do. She says you should come to the meeting tonight at 5:30. What do you think’s going to happen to the gays, to the trans, do you think the gays will be ok? I say, yes, the trans and the gays will win, of course they will! They always do! And we laugh and agree.
What’s your name, I ask? Gina, she replies. I’m Jenny. Nice to meet you.
I’m going to pick up my food stamps at the Center, she says. It’s hard to make them last the full month. Sometimes people give me a dollar here and there…and she looks at me. I ask quietly, do you need some money? She nods. I give her a five dollar bill. We’re at Park Place in Manhattan, a great spot to land on in Monopoly if you hold all the cards and have put some houses on your property. An even better spot if someone else lands on it and has to pay you however much the card says it’s worth.
The subway doors open and a young, fresh-faced blonde woman enters and sits across from us. She is so beautiful, Gina says loudly. Oh my god you are so beautiful. Are you a model? look at her, isn’t she gorgeous? You should be a model! The woman leans across to say hello. I get up to go, a little early for the stop I need, but I can see that our conversation is over. From behind me I hear, oh my god you are so gorgeous! And do you know what, I did Diana Ross’s makeup. Look!
The train doors open at Franklin (now renamed Aretha) and I leave the subway.
Thanks for reading.
P.S. My feature BUNKER is streaming on various streaming platforms including Amazon, Mubi, Projectr.tv, and Metrograph. Educational distribution through Grasshopper Film.
Great encounters, well told.