Super Soaker
As a result of an overprotective mother and being brought up in a quiet suburb, relaxation is about as difficult and foreign to me as rocking out on an oud. If I am happy, I immediately start examining what can go wrong. If things are truly peaceful and filled with the kind of joy that conjures up images of tiny, fat cherubs stroking teensy-weensy harps and floating around my skull, I start creeping around, glancing over my shoulder like I’m in some sort of poorly lit noir film. And of course, as is inevitable, life eventually will wield a complication crowbar at the windshield of my happiness. Last weekend that rusty jimmy came in the form of a sink.
Content as a clam while simultaneously as high-strung as a hamster, I watched the Jets game at my dad’s house along with Simon and Snack. Somewhere around the third quarter I got a phone call from the building’s managing agent, the super needed to get inside the apartment, pronto. There was water leaking through my downstairs’ neighbors’ ceiling. It could only be coming from one place. (No, not heaven.)
The faucet had been loose since I’d moved in. Although Simon complained that it was pretty rickety, I was just grateful to be living someplace that wasn’t my mother’s old house. I’d shrugged off the sink issue, though looking back on it I should have given it a little more thought. After all, that cabinet space below the kitchen sink is there usually for one reason: to cover up the pipes while still providing access to them. It is not a regular cabinet. It is a magic cabinet, discreetly hiding the Wizard of Oz known as interior plumbing. If only I’d taken a moment to apply my one frenetic brain cell to that observation, maybe all of this could have been avoided, but alas.
As a kid, if guests remarked that my room was clean, my dad would tell them to open the closet. That often led to me being regarded as borderline disposophobic or crazy. Since birth, my protocol for cleaning was this: if no one can see it, it isn’t there. So messes of all varieties (excluding food refuse) would be shoved under my bed, inside drawers, and behind the fantastically useful closet door. Known as "closet-cleaning," in Ainsley’s version of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe there would be no Christ references, just a lot of swearing and terror when those British brats opened up my closet to clamber inside. Needless to say, my cleaning m.o. has not altered one iota as an adult. And in this apartment, which is big enough for approximately 1.5 Bhikku monks and their six belongings, cleaning became a game of hide-the-stuff Tetris that has teetered on the fringe of mania for me. When it came to finding a location for my two blenders, dustpan, five rolls of tin foil, three rolls of Cling Wrap, trash bags, six bags of dog treats and a ten-pound bag of dog food, among other dog-and-cleaning supplies, the minuscule cabinet under the kitchen sink was the only available real estate where the massive amount of unnecessary shit I’d accumulated but couldn’t bear to throw away could find a home. It took a little bit of effort, but it fit. So when both valves exploded into mini Niagra Falls, one could only assume it was just old plumbing and that it had nothing at all to do with the six cubic feet of crap I had loaded into a space the size of a shoebox. Right.
Needless to say, the super shut off the water for the sink and promised to return on a day that there was no football. Meanwhile, my neighbors below were obviously peeved. They didn’t even know someone had moved in above them, and yet their ceiling turned into a cascade during a Chargers’ possession. When all was said and done, the Jets were victorious and my neighbors’ ceiling had water damage. Of course it was my luck to start off on the wrong foot. Instead of sending a pie and a note to greet them with a friendly hello, they wound up with a kitchen that could have been the set for a Kevin Costner post-apocalyptic flop and a pusillanimous, apologizing teacup poodle of a human on their doorstep offering to scrape, paint, and test the electrical outlets. (Not on my own. God only knows that would solve their problem of having an upstairs neighbor in the first place.)
The following day the super arrived with a bucket full of tools and a hearty handshake. It should be noted that we still hadn’t met in person because nothing short of Maynard James Keenan camping out on my fire escape would have brough me home during that game, and also because the rest of the city, including my super, was watching it with rapt attention. He was able to fix the sink in the amount of time it takes me to urinate, so I started asking him some questions. Turns out he’s worked as a superintendent for twenty-five years, first in Brooklyn, then moving to Manhattan for the money. This building is a "union building," and it’s down the block from an auspicious public school, so the relocation was perfect for him and his family. I’d never really thought about building superintendents before. When I’d lived in New York years ago, it never crossed my mind to call anyone but my dad when my fridge conked out or my toilet got clogged. In Portland, the only thing I had that resembled a superintendent was the Google search engine and a peyote consuming roommate whose dad was a janitor. By contrast, Oklahoma was filled with individuals who considered themselves superintendents, they were known as men. To have a human being technically living at the same address as me, whose sole purpose is to fix what gets fucked up, is pretty awesome. And yet, probably pretty difficult for the human being under examination. This was illuminated when I inquisitively stated that I thought the metal pump device attached to the floor of my bathroom probably had something to do with the tub?
"You just saved me a phone call," he said. "You don’t know how many people ring me up, telling me that the water from their shower isn’t going down when it’s really the drain right there."
"You get a lot of those calls?" I asked, incredulous.
"Dozens," he said.
The man troubleshoots teaching people how to use their bathtub. Even if he’s in the middle of a sandwich, or a Jets game, he’s on the clock. Although he’s living rent free, that’s pretty hard work. Some supers get rent discounts, others live rent free, and still others get a salary in addition to free rent, it depends on the situation. I’d educate countless irate tenants on the intricacies of their bathroom if I could live in my apartment for free.
On average the salary for a superintendent is $35,000 in smaller buildings outside of Manhattan. Of course, if you head into the city, this number only goes up. The average salary for a New York City super ranges from $60,000 to $80,000 a year, not including tips and the perks and packages that come with some of the more high-end luxury buildings. The union for superintendents provides a pension and healthcare, which is why a building like the one I’m currently causing leaks in is so coveted.
Moreover, while researching the numbers, an article cited that one superintendent in particular was living rent-free in a two-bedroom, 1.5 million dollar apartment in the city. And I can almost guarantee that he’s not the only one fixing pads high on the hog. New Yorkers are notorious for hiring other people to do jobs that, in Oklahoma, are relegated to family. Unlike Uncle Burt, superintendents need to actually have acquired knowledge of how to fix things like sinks and electric outlets. They also have to be capable of organizing and subcontracting labor. Some superintendents are in charge of collecting rent and making sure that the rules of the property aren’t broken. There’s really no requirement for education, other than a high-school diploma, though some supers have a bachelors degree in property management. Training and certification in different vocations can be helpful, the more that you know, the more tony your gig as a super can be. Although it wasn’t mentioned in any of the articles I read, and although my super didn’t say anything from beneath the belly of my sink, I assume that a lot of their job is calmly and patiently managing complaints, some of them irrational, others plain old silly. They’re likely the psychologists of the building as well, or maybe that’s just my fanciful imagination who would like to put Lorraine Bracco in some overalls tinkering with my under-mount. Again, fielding complaints and manual labor are a fair trade-off for prime New York real estate, and I think that nearly anyone in this city would agree.
All of that said, my super is living across from my laundry room. I haven’t seen the inside of his pad, but I know he has a family, so I can only assume he has enough space and that their laundry days are wildly convenient. This is in stark contrast to mine, which require hauling all of my wares up and down five flights of stairs and through an outdoor hallway. I’m glad that he’s compensated well for his work, fixing my sink and tightening the faucet so it went from rickety to rock solid only cost me $65. Given that the last time a plumber visited my mother’s house I was charged practically double because it was on a weekend and required some sort of fancy part, I was pretty happy. (For the record, the average salary for a plumber is $38,709.)
Tomorrow I’m having the crew that fixed up my mother’s house come in and repair the damage to my neighbors’ ceiling. I can only hope that all goes smoothly and that they accept my apology. Hopefully Peyton Manning will eat a bad pancake on Sunday morning and another Jets victory will bury the leaky roof in the proverbial closet where I hide all of my unfortunate and mortifying memories. Otherwise Mark Sanchez will be doing a little closet-cleaning of his own.
Tags: closet cleaning, go to a dirty IHOP Peyton Manning, home economics, I make messes, I'm sorry neighbors, Jets game, leaky sink, moving in, plumbing, repairs
