When I moved into my apartment in
Queens I had a lot of complaints but didn't have a chance to share
them. After all, my life at that point had fallen to one of its
greatest deeps, and money didn't come to me easily. Perhaps one of
the most noteworthy things about the place wasn't the smell of rat
piss that diffused through the halls on a near constant basis, or the
lack of communication between the ethnic landlord and his audience of
tenants, or even the fact that the lock on my door simply held as a
ruse and not an actual lock for the first three months of living. No,
the biggest, perhaps most important aspect of that apartment, was the
walls.
It's not uncommon for a tenant to hate
the walls. Every wall is paper thin to everyone, unless you're living
in some expensive condominium down with the bourgeoisie. But you'll
have to trust me when I say that these walls were a very special
case. Privacy was already very sparse in 1963, but when it came to
the apartments, community was everything. I say that speaking of
nearly every single sound-wave passing through your side could very
well be audible on the other. Every day, at 3 pm, I could hear
Robert's boys coming home from their classes in the ghetto and
turning on the TV to watch some early sitcom I couldn't be arsed to
recall the name of. But it wasn't the Robert and his boys I was
thinking the most about, but rather the man who stayed in the room
opposite to where I held my own bed; the man I knew only as Leubeto.
I didn't know Leubeto was a communist
at first. There was nothing about the guy that really struck me as
strange; he looked like the same kind of muscular, straight out of
the navy, first-rate thug you'd expect to live in these types of
places. Occasionally when I'd get home from work I'd see him having a
smoke right outside – he'd give me a small nod and I'd give a small
nod back – and that was about the extent of our direct
acknowledgment of one another. And yet, every Friday night – every
Friday night – Leubeto would
bring a whore from the shack down at Wilhelm Pier with him, and I'll
be damned if I didn't hear every god damn piece of it.
Listening to
Leubeto fuck a woman was like listening to a cheap public school
symphony. First came the introduction; Leubeto would bad mouth the
girl and she would bad mouth back, and then as the clothes came out
the language would get more and more filthy to the point where things
were finally ready to get heated. From there was when things really
began to escalate, but not for very long. It's strange, from a man
with the strength and sexual determinacy of Leubeto I would have
expected him to last longer, but every time I predicted his breaking
point it would always be a little bit before. Perhaps it was because
I always had the habit of overestimating Leubeto, but I digress.
As you could tell,
this was a bad fuckin' time of day for me. My time in Korea taught me
to sleep under hard circumstances, and Leubeto wouldn't last that
long anyway, but for that simple five minute period I swear it was a
hell of a lot louder than it needed to be. Still, I am a patient man
by heart, and so I preserved until a Wednesday night where I had
brought my own love over, and right as we were ready to begin,
Leubeto's horrifying grunts permeated the room. Turns out he had
decided to change schedule on me. It was then that I decided action
must be taken.
The
first thing I wanted to figure out was what in the hell the big fuck
was even doing in
there. I obviously couldn't just ask him – and if he caught me
watching in the act I might have already been dead. So instead what I
devised was an ingenious – if a bit perverse – plan. I figured
that Hashraj wouldn't mind if his already deteriorating complex was
deteriorated just a tiny bit more, so I took the liberty of
constructing a very small and precise that gave a very nice birds eye
view of Leubeto's eloquent bedroom. In that case, even if he had
discovered the hole, it was easy for me to conclude that it must have
been done by a previous inhabitant, and that I myself did not even
know who put the hole there or what its purpose served.
I clearly remember
the day the plan first came into fruition. It was winter, heavily
snowing – must have been early December – and I had been able to
get off work early claiming I was suffering from the same stomach bug
that a few other employees had been getting. I ended up not getting
any pay that week, but it was worth it; I watched through the looking
glass down anxiously as Leubeto finally brought in his escort, and
they immediately went to town.
I was holding in my
laughter and having an existential crisis at the same time. I often
wonder what I look like to other people; when I saw Leubeto that
night the thought transformed itself to some twisted reality. For the
Leubeto I had known – the one who seemed like he can pulverize
anyone else in the hall to a pulp, the man of few words but many
intimidations – if you told me that man was the same one as the
red-faced, lumping, intensely sweaty and slightly emotional man I had
seen in the bedroom that night, and you were to say that with no
connection between the two bodies like I had, then I would be right
to not believe you, as I probably wouldn't. And yet, things came to
the head they did, and now my seemingly miserable life had at least
one positive – the self-fulfilled enjoyment of a nice Friday night.
…
“You're
telling me he's a fuckin' communist?”
“I understand
this may come at a great surprise to you, but you must believe me in
what I say. In every word. I have already given you the proof; and
now I am asking you to step up and help your country one more time.”
“I mean, it's not
that I'm going to decline the invitation or anything, it's just –
what the hell is he spying on? The lame duck couriers down at the
pier? Little Ol' Hashraj? Is he spying on his own ballsack?”
“I'm afraid I
can't tell you exactly what we believe he's done. All we can tell you
is what we want you to do; go to that little hole you made in the
wall and plant this camera there.”
It was a whole
three months that had passed when I found the FBI agent at my door. I
had been carrying some groceries up when I found him in all his black
suited glory, beckoning to me, explaining the situation briefly but
offering to explain it in depth over some coffee at a place in the
uptown. Being both scared and starving, how could I refuse? I put
down the bags inside and then went straight back out to meet him down
at his car – a terrible idea in retrospect – but he did keep his
end of the bargain and I ended up getting a damn good coffee out of
it. I don't recall the entire exact dialogue, but I do remember the
key points; so that bit of fictionalized discussion should set up my
situation pretty well for you.
The Friday was the
first Friday since December since I felt as jittery as I did,
although now it was for all the wrong reasons. It turns out my casual
fun had attracted quite the pair of wolves, and seeing that I was now
between pissing off the KGB and pissing off the CIA, I decided to
score one for the true motherland. And so, while Leubeto gave his
classic rhythmic thumping, I took the liberty of setting up the
camera exactly as I had been instructed.
After that, truth
be told, not much else happened. I waited nervously another three and
a half weeks before the feds finally busted down Leubeto's door,
probably due to the fact that they had enough evidence of whatever
the fuck they wanted to know. And then, things went silent. Life
moved on. To be honest sometimes I wonder why I treat it so much more
than a funny anecdote in a much greater life. I tell this story at
parties a lot and it does a lot of good. I figured I'd write it down
too.
Leubeto, if you're
still out there – sincerest apologies.
