Elinor Nauen

For a long time I knew all the neighbors in my 16-apartment building: their names, occupations, hometowns. Then apartments began to turn over faster, and less-friendly young people moved in, generally to renovated spaces where they were paying 3 or 4 times the rent of the long-timers. I suppose they didn't have time to socialize when they had to work 2 jobs to pay for a place with a real bathroom, rather than a tub in the kitchen like I have.

Yesterday, my neighbor told me she had let the police in to do a wellness check on a nanny, except the guy in that place isn't, & is fine, & I realized which apartment they must have meant (if they had the right building at all). And I realized that I once again know most of my neighbors, at least by sight & to nod to. I believe the next few years have to be about community, standing up for & protecting each other. Knowing who's in the Ezra Pound: it's a start. 

I was letting myself into my building when someone asked how long I'd lived there & said their friend had lived there in the late 70s. When she said he was from Brazil, I said, Apartment 1! And she said what Francis remembered was the big Thanksgiving dinners. They were in my apartment, I was eager to tell her. Rosa is also from Brazil & in touch with Francis, who now lives in Spain. I love that sort of small-world-in-the-big-city story. A friendly encounter that ended with exchanging numbers & a hug. 

I had the middle section of a sectional couch, covered in nubby aqua-glitter cloth. It was wide in the back but narrow in front, so it barely fit two people yet took up a disproportionate amount of room in my small apartment. So I decided to get rid of it. 

 

I threw it out my window. Oh my, what a satisfying thunk when it landed in the courtyard. There's a picture, but I can't find it & I can't really tell which way it goes. 

 

This was shortly before I started going out with Johnny, the longtime super of his building. 

 

I mentioned it one day & he was so appalled he almost broke up with me. 

 

It was the backyard! No one was endangered! 

My neighbor in #8 when I first moved in was Mary Deane, a young mother who was very protective of me, which I was amused by given that I had hitchhiked all over the country by myself & felt extremely capable. She was right, though, that I had no clue about the Lower East Side (which was what we called the East Village back then). She had a beautiful sister named Gloria & lots of other relatives in the area. I once or twice went to the beach with a bunch of them & they really did the cliché Puerto Rican thing of setting up their blankets & grills on the median near the parking lot not the sand. When Mary moved out, she was afraid I'd be helpless so she gave me a metal bar with a metal chunk on the end to protect myself. My apartment got broken into while I was away, & my neighbors thought it was some kind of maniac because they found my weapon lying on the bed. They were so relieved to find out it was mine. Years later I ran into Mary & asked what Gloria was doing. "Twenty to life," she said, I think for drugs.

I love to talk about Lucky, in part because he was so modest that he was easy to overlook. He would comb through catalogues all year round to buy Maggie & me perfect presents. Later, he had an aide who, by the time she climbed to the top floor was too tired to actually do his errands, clean or cook. He was fine with her sitting and chatting, and I wouldn't be surprised if he fed her & gave her a few bucks here & there. 

 

His one bad quality was that he cheated at cribbage & then gloated when he won. I stopped playing with him! 

 

He made borscht & gravy every Thanksgiving, & loved to be part of the giant dinners we threw for many years. 

High in November

Cheery as a lamb

Johnny toddles by & tousles my hair.

… & I'm back in my first months in NY, my empty apartment

(now with so much art & books & breathing) —

the light fixture I thought was a gas outlet:

scared to touch it, I didn't see my walls for years.

One Fourth of July, Brodey sat on the middle part of an aqua sectional couch—

the only piece I had—

grilling over his shoulder on the fire escape

in the hibachi he'd brought.

Later I pushed that couch out the window.

I found broken glass

in a jar of bouillon powder

& the company by way of apology

sent me a case of caviar.

I opened my tenement icebox one day

to nothing but caviar & decided to throw a cocktail party.

I bought a blender

& made a drink of honeydew melon & vodka.

 
I eat cookies with specks of salt

& kiss Johnny on his way to lie down & watch

something that makes him laugh.

I look at Biala's flowers every day

& every day I'm abashed to see them.

 
Just like Ollie, my 40-years-older boyfriend

who I loved so much,

I managed to get old

being the same old fucked-up me.

We got the sign made in 1983 in Ocean City, Maryland. It came down when they put up a new door & Keith (pictured), who takes care of things & works in the store downstairs, glued it back up a day or 2 ago. People sometimes stop me coming out of the building: "Did Pound live here?!" I don't tell them the real reason for the sign. We would see all those buildings with their fancy-ass names: The Van Gogh, The Dakota, The San Remo. Why shouldn't we have a name, we thought, & why shouldn't we be able to say we live at the pound. 

 

Note: I forgot to write in advance that I'd be off 2 days for Passover. Not that it's over. Just 5 more days of the holiday of affliction.

I moved into the Ezra Pound the same month Jimmy Carter was inaugurated & am now the person who has lived there the longest. It was easy to get an apartment & cheap. I don't know where people on SSI live these days but back then Bobby & Lucky, who were a couple, had their own adjacent apartments. I asked Lucky once how he got that nickname. It wasn't enough that his real name was Homer, I must have figured. He lit up: I really am lucky, he said. I have enough to feed my pets, & I hardly ever need to borrow more than $20 to get through the month.