At the advent of my literary career an interviewer once characterized me as part of a burgeoning underground movement. I corrected him—I said I prefer to think of it as garden-level.
For those of you not already in the know, “garden-level” is a marketing flourish that means “of or pertaining to the fact of being situated between a basement and first floor, so that someone standing up (inside such a place) would find their heads at or around street level.” Essentially, it means a basement apartment. This is a long way of saying I have a basement apartment.
So intrinsic is the basement-hood, the basement-ness, of my basement apartment, that even my broker, when she was trying to sell it to me, hadn’t deigned to call it anything different. Either she thought me too intelligent for such a ploy, or too un-so to bother.
I’ve heard they call it that because there’s room for a small garden in the niche they dug up between your entrance and the sidewalk. I have yet to install a garden.
I bought it for a song, but it was a very bad, very shitty, and very expensive song. It was at the very peak of the housing bubble. The economy was doing really great, at the time that I bought it, and housing prices were commensurate with how great everyone was doing. Then, the bubble popped, the economy crashed, and everyone, suddenly, was doing very, very poorly. And my “house”—my basement apartment—was suddenly a lot cheaper. Unfortunately, however, I had already bought it at the higher rate from back when everyone and me were all doing really great, and when the economy was doing commensurately. I should have waited. I bought it for a dirge.
This was ten years ago. I was twenty-five. Now, I’m thirty-five. I don’t know how the economy is doing now—I only check up on it when I’m buying houses.
I was very excited. Buying an apartment is a huge accomplishment, for anybody, because the apartments are so expensive in New York. You have to have a lot of money to buy one. Even a very bad, very shitty one—one that is under the ground, like a mole, or like an earthworm. It is small like a mole or an earthworm, too. Buying it was a huge accomplishment, but it itself was not huge. It was small—small like how a small mammal adapted to a subterranean lifestyle is small. A studio. My entire house is just one room. The “studio room.” I could just call it “my room,” and I would be right in doing so. Not that I am “wrong” in calling it “my house,” instead—just that I could call it “my room,” too, and still be “right.” It was very expensive. The economy was doing so well.
There are various reasons why I might sometimes be willing to part with large sums of cash. One of those reasons is that I wish to live in New York.
When you’re living in New York, don’t have any essential business doing so, and may as well live anywhere else, there’s a certain component of “putting on airs” to it—of frivolity. I moved here when I was twenty-two and fresh out of college, and I had no plans—other than to live in New York; and no prospects—other than living in New York. I was interested, primarily, in inhabiting a certain role: I was to be a writer. Next, I would inhabit New York, the city that, it’s been said, a lot of writers have also inhabited. There are writers, of course, who live elsewhere. I’ve even heard of some Japanese writers who live as far away as Japan. But I didn’t want to live in Japan. I wanted to live in New York. Now what could be more frivolous than that? I had no plans, and I had no prospects, and I had reasoned it all out with the elegance of a disjunctive syllogism.
The entrance to my apartment is separate from my building’s main entrance. There is a stoop leading from the sidewalk to the main entrance, but between the sidewalk and the building’s facade on either side of the stoop there is a narrow gully. To keep people from falling into the narrow gully, there is a gate along the perimeter of the ledge. My entrance is to the left. I use the gate. In addition to keeping people from falling off of the ledge and into the narrow gully, or “niche,” between the sidewalk and the building’s facade, this gate constitutes my security system.
The narrow gully extends beneath the stoop and along the entire length of the building. The narrow gully is sort of like the building’s waterless moat. In this way, the narrow gully in which I live constitutes the entire building’s security system.
The entrance to my apartment being separate from my building’s main entrance makes receiving mail difficult. The residents of the main building all have buzzers which lead from their apartment to the main entrance, and whenever the mailman or woman comes with their mail, he or she can call directly to their apartment using the buzzers; but my basement apartment is not affixed with a buzzer. I am atwain from the network of buzzers in my building. The other basement apartment is, too, but no one lives in that one. This also means that if anyone, and not just a mailman or woman, comes to my apartment, and wishes to make their arrival known to me, they are equally bereft of the utility of the system of buzzers. But the bereavement of the postal service is the most egregious.
Luckily, I made friends with an older woman who lives in the main building. She’s been living in the same building for more than forty years. She has a buzzer. Maybe “friends” is too strong a word. But I get mail delivered to her apartment, instead of mine, only under my name, instead of hers. If I get it delivered to my apartment, the mailman or woman will try to buzz my apartment, ill-equipped of buzzer; will deduce my apartment’s ill-equipment; and will mark the mail as undeliverable. Since my apartment “number”—actually, not a number at all, but just the word “basement”—I don’t need to be more specific, by, for example, saying, “the basement to the left,” because the basement to the right is uninhabited, and I am the only “basement” resident of my building—isn’t indexed on the buzzer machine, it does not, as far as the postal service is concerned, exist. They are legally sanctioned from delivering mail somewhere that doesn’t exist. But if I get it delivered to her apartment, they can buzz her apartment instead, and my mail will be delivered. Even if she isn’t home to answer her buzzer, once the mailman sees that the apartment they are delivering to does indeed exist, they will keep buzzing random apartments in my building until someone lets them in; other people can do this besides mailmen and women, which is why a lot of robberies happen at my building and at others like it; that is another reason that receiving mail is difficult at my building: even if it is delivered, it might, too, be stolen soon after. If no one is home to answer their buzzer, or if no one answers their buzzer for other reasons—for example, the reason of not wanting to let in a stranger who might be a robber—then, having been assured that the old woman’s apartment exists, the mailman or woman will come back the next day; and, in this way, my mail will eventually be delivered. Luckily, however, the old woman is always home, so this eventuality has never come to pass.
I have arranged all this in advance with the older woman. She doesn’t look askance when she sees mail delivered to her apartment in my name. She just leaves it for me to pick up later. As per our advance arrangement. I think, however, that she thinks I am the building superintendent. When I see her on the street or while picking up my mail, she will often stop me and inform me of problems with her apartment, with the implication that I am to fix them. I respond as best as I can, but am always somewhat evasive.
The gate opens directly onto a steep stairwell, leading down to a door which opens directly to my basement apartment. This is “my stoop.” My stoop is separate from the main stoop, and my stoop stoops down, while the main one “stoops” up. My stoop’s stairwell is steep, because the gully is narrow, and it has to descend from street-level to garden-level all in the span of that narrow gully. The stairwell is also narrow. When on the steep, narrow stairwell of my stoop, I am surrounded on all sides by the narrow gully. On one end I can see from the wall that marks the leftmost boundary of my building, and thus the gully; and—past the main-entrance stoop, which goes up and is also less steep, somehow, and which forms a sort of bridge when seen from below; and past the other narrow, steep stairwell, that leads to the other, uninhabited “right basement” apartment—on the other end I can see the other wall, which marks the rightmost boundary of my building but also the gully. Down here, it is gray, concrete, moldering, caked with dirt and, when it rains, mud, rife with litter and leaves, and damp. Always damp. This is my niche. Luckily, the stairwell is so steep that the journey from street-level down to my apartment, or back up again, is a fleet one.
I have yet to install my garden.
I’m now almost thirty-five years old—almost the age, unthinkably ancient to me at the time of its writing, of my protagonist from The Bellicose Jar. And I’m beginning to run into what my financial advisor—I use the same one as my parents back home—has called “dire straits.”
When I was twenty-five and first started making real money, my dad told me I should get a “financial advisor.” “Why don’t you just use Marcus,” he said. “Marcus is great.” Marcus was the guy he used back home.
Marcus was the one that suggested I put my money to work for me. I, he said, should invest. Having never invested before, I looked to him to advise me. Since I live in New York, Marcus advised, I couldn’t go wrong with real estate. Real estate, you see, is very expensive in New York. And you can make a lot of money with expensive things.
At the time, I was living with a roommate, and was desperate to find my own place. I was fatigued with the many quotidian compromises of cohabitation. I was happy for the opportunity to strike out on my own, and with Marcus’s approval, no less. I started looking for a studio: I had this romantic image of all the great New York artists of yore, living in those great big studio-style lofts downtown. I was quick to discover, however, that those great big studio-style lofts downtown have appreciated in value since the days of yore—have appreciated, you could say, commensurate with their mythic stature. SoHo, for example, was once a rundown industrial district. This was before SoHo was “SoHo.” It wasn’t even called SoHo then. At the time, no one wanted to live in SoHo, because it was rundown and industrial, and because it wasn’t SoHo yet. Because of this, however, real estate prices in the area were very low, and artists who desperate to live in New York started renting undesirable loft spaces there on the cheap. Suddenly, SoHo wasn’t rundown and industrial anymore, but rundown and bohemian. But as the neighborhood’s reputation as a creative haven began to grow, it became “cool.” It became less and less rundown. All the rundown parts were now famous haunts of famous artists, and began attracting more people. Businesses and speculators began entering the fold, hoping to capitalize on all the new people. SoHo began to develop; it is now the city’s foremost shopping district and an epicenter of not only retail but food, culture, and tourism in New York. I still worship SoHo as the birthplace of such an exciting generation of artists, the forebearers of my own generation and the progenitors of so many of my generation’s sensibilities. But if you go there now, it’s basically a museum piece. By and by the artists grew older and found themselves sitting on massive liquid assets in the form of their once-rundown great big studio-style lofts. They stopped being artists, and started selling real estate instead, and making huge profits. This is why, apropos Marcus, buying real estate in New York is a good investment. But it’s also why I was unable to buy real estate in SoHo.
I began looking at things more pragmatically. If a studio was what I wanted; and if I wanted something inexpensive; I should start looking for the most inexpensive studios I could find. That’s when I stumbled upon my apartment.
The Village was once a haven for artists too in its day. Short for “Greenwich Village,” it was to the turn of the century what SoHo was to the seventies. Predating SoHo, then, the Village is farther along the curve than is SoHo—which means the real estate’s a lot cheaper. Actually, real estate is a lot more expensive the whole city over than it was in the seventies, not just in SoHo. It’s difficult to find a deal in Manhattan no matter where you look. But the Village has also aged a lot poorer than has SoHo. Where SoHo became a byword for high-end shopfloors and luxury name-brands, the Village has tended to stagnate, and is more a byword for seedy tourist-trap lounge entertainment, and cacophonous student hangouts that cater to the New York University campus whose borders it shares. Perhaps it all comes down to artists of the earlier generation, who tended to live in the Village, having a more antidisestablishmentarian view on the sale and upkeep of real estate than did the generation that followed them and who tended to live in SoHo.
But what it amounted to in the end was my being able to get a studio in the Village for half the price, indeed, almost half half the price, of one in SoHo. I still couldn’t spring for a loft, though. Perhaps due in part to romantic allure, their desirability has skyrocketed; and everywhere you look now in this city, even in the Village, a loft will cost you a pretty penny. But I could swing “garden-level” and still have plenty to spare.
It was so cheap, I even liked to imagine I was ushering a new generation of desperate artist-dwellers into the neighborhood by moving in. My romantic image persisted. And its being in a basement only added to the allure. Why couldn’t the Village have a resurgence on my dime? Perhaps basement apartments could be the new “loft.” And who knows, maybe someday they’d come here and they’d think of me.
Running over the numbers several months later, for tax season, Marcus was aghast at his discovery of my purchase. “Did you have anyone come and look the place over before you went to buy?” he asked.
I answered to the effect that no, I did not.
“You didn’t have anyone professionally evaluate it?”
I answered to the same effect.
“This is the most dirt-cheap New York apartment I have ever heard tell of in my whole life.” Apparently, Marcus had something else in mind for my investment portfolio. “Did you ever think to consult me before buying this piece of crap?”
I answered similarly. And, not knowing what else to say, I also added an “I’m sorry.” The broker had told me that the owner was in a rush to sign. Now, given that my building has two basement apartments, only one of which being now occupied—by me—the other of which being still up for sale, she might have exaggerated slightly. But Marcus was all the way in Des Moines. I didn’t think I had the time.
“I had a list of properties drawn up and all ready to go for you. You have enough in the bank for a one or a two-bedroom—what the hell were you thinking buying a studio?”
I didn’t have a good answer for him. But the damage was already done, and Marcus’s question, largely rhetorical. All the places Marcus had dogeared for me had been of minimal romantic allure, anyway.
“In the bank! In the bank!”
When the market crashed, he acted like my basement apartment was what did it. What it amounted to in the end, though, was that my already, in Marcus’s terms, worthless real estate investment, was now worth even less.