Every neighborhood's got its characters. In my old hood—Sunset Park, Brooklyn—it was the boomer-aged Brooklyn 69ers and their grandkids and kittens and chopped Harleys next door, and the woman down the street when I first moved there who had the dogs and the most piercingly nasal voice in which she called them off the street, and the guy who kept the big fighting cock in his back yard one summer, and the other guy with the black voodoo roosters that would occasionally go missing on full moon nights.
Here in Parkchester there's Gail in 5C downstairs who panhandles for a dollar shamelessly in the lobby and the elevator on weekends, or whenver she sees you. And there's the Rain Man, who lives catty corner across the street and only comes out on rainy nights, the rainer and stormier the better. Then he walks up and down the block with such a huge repertoire of voices that I first thought he was a whole gang of kids. I'm undecided about whether he's got Tourette's Syndrome or just has a very full fantasy life. He shouts ("You want me to go to Harlem?!" in a tone of voice in which, in other neighborhoods, someone would say "You talkin' ta me?"), hollars "Yo!" like the homies, spouts glossolalia, and cusses some, though not much. Sometimes he just says, "What?" in the same incredulous tone of voice and with the same accent that one of the guys at work, who's from Jamaica, uses. One night I swear he was doing a Meredith Monk concert. Mostly what he does is meow. And he only does this at night, in the rain. He seems mostly harmless, though he does occasionally harangue people, in disjointed non sequiters, who tell him to shut up.
Still, it's definitely better than the Harleys. I like cats.
Comments