Here’s the set up. We live on the 20th and 21st floors. It’s the top of the building. We have skylights in our bedrooms (slightly unnerving) and you can call me pretentious if you like but our unit is one of four corner units called the penthouses. Think what you want. Oh Jeff is showing off and trying to impress me … Jeff is so superficial … Jeff’s life is a pageant.
How about Jeff could care less what anyone (now that my parents have passed) thinks of him. I didn’t name it a penthouse. Somebody else did probably to jack the price up. Well it worked.
So in this sprawling penthouse, we have ten foot floor to ceiling windows on almost all of the first floor. The second floor has smaller voyeuristic challenges. When I hit the remote in the morning and the first floor shades all rise, it’s the best way to wake up, rain or shine. Spectacular almost 360 degree views. City Hall. Dilworth Park. One Liberty Place. The all mirrored W Hotel. And on Thanksgiving I am told I can watch the parade from my living room. Can’t wait. So that’s all the bragging rights.
Now let’s meet the neighbors. Well in six months I think I’ve met two people that actually live on my floor. Either the units are making money or their owners do a helluva lot of traveling. Anyway, I don’t know a person on either floor, and since the unit is soundproof I’ve never heard a peep.
BUT. How about the 50,000 + anonymous neighbors living in apartment buildings that look directly into ours or (the worst) guests staying at the W Hotel. The first few months there was so much construction and confusion I never added two plus two, but the other day when I took my dirty clothes completely off and walked to the laundry room on the main floor, I suddenly realized a good percentage of the “neighborhood” could (if they desired) really get to know me if you hear what I’m saying.
Then I started thinking of some past tense activity like flipping an omelet and having it land on the floor, then picking it up and eating it. Like making coffee in an adult diaper. (I had a nasty bout of the COVID virus.) Plucking my grey eyebrow hairs and flinging them anywhere. Tweezing my earlobes.
There was one night I was all settled in with my fake beau Anderson Cooper when I felt like someone was staring at me. I turned around and saw a whole lot of uncensored open curtain fully naked love. Oh it was quite a show and there was no mistaking who their intended audience was. Damn.
Hey, I ain’t perfect. Since then I do have a pair of opera glasses from the Bolshoi that I insist are decorative, but let’s just say I’ve analyzed more than leg heights!
So that’s the dilemma. I have zero immediate neighbors to borrow milk from yet I have thousands of neighbors I know intimately and who know quite a bit about me. Will I ever pass them in the street? I’m sure I already have. Should I live my life with the shades down? No. The non-human views are spectacular. Should I learn how to flip an omelet? I think it’s a start.