When Park Avenue janitor Stephen Bruno sorts through the building’s mail and sees an envelope with sexually suggestive images, he and his colleagues know immediately who it is.
“We don’t have to look at the name because we know whose it is,” he told The Post of one resident, who also had a habit of suggestively eating pawpaw fruit in the lobby.
In his new book, Building Material: The Memoir of a Park Avenue Doorman, Bruno covers the two decades he spent working for New York’s 1 percenters and the intimate glimpses into their lives he got.
“They are often stressed and distant. They are somewhere else,” Bruno told The Post. “They say hello, they’re still polite, but you can tell something is weighing on them, and it’s often work. A lot of them are in finance.”
Raised in the Bronx, Bruno was 22 when he was hired as a summer help janitor at a building on Park Avenue. Now 42, he still works as a doorman on the Upper East Side and has spent the past 14 years in the same building.
During one of his first night shifts at a tony co-op, he was reading a newspaper when he heard the elevator ping and saw a tall man in a long bathrobe emerge.
The bathing suit came undone, revealing a “very orange” inner thigh. The man then proceeded to lay awkwardly in front of Bruno before commenting that if he had known how handsome the doorman was, he would have gone downstairs sooner.
“He liked what he liked and thought you two would play together,” Bruno said. “He was a strange man,”
Over the years, he has been aware of the various residents’ romantic inclinations from hot dates to late night rendezvous.
He knew when two residents were involved with each other when he saw them taking the elevator between floors in the early hours of the morning on his night shifts.
Another resident had a boyfriend who came during the day, but at night he would entertain gentlemen.
“Boys used to come at two or three in the morning. He would call downstairs and say, ‘so-and-so is coming for a nightcap,’ and he would always have to say the name because it was always a different name,” Bruno recalled.
Then there was the woman who spent all her time worrying about ghosts.
“There is very little furniture in her apartment, just a candle in the middle of the living room,” Bruno said. “She used to call to see ghosts. Once she crossed the street and just turned around and stared at the building for half an hour.”
Some residents indicated that they were stingy and even mean.
During the holidays, he was once given a simple tip by someone who regularly called him for extra help.
Then there was a woman who hated him from the jump, never forgiving him for replacing a keeper she loved.
“That lady routinely crossed the line,” Bruno said. “One time another janitor was cleaning the floor and it comes and goes through the area he is cleaning, even though there is space on both sides. We looked at her surprised, because it was obviously rude, and she says, ‘oh, I’m sorry. I just like to make you work harder.’”
But while the bad and the greedy come with the territory from time to time, the good relations and pleasant encounters with the residents far outweigh the bad.
When he was in high school writing at Hunter College, the Blooms, an elderly couple who lived in his building, were extremely supportive.
“It was my first year in my MFA program and I was super discouraged. mrs. Bloom understood that,” Bruno recalls.
They invited him to dinner and to see a documentary on playwright August Wilson that they thought would inspire him. Mr. Wilson also came from a working class background and had worked his way up.
“It showed me that I could be myself, a brown Latin boy from the Bronx, and still be an artist,” Bruno said. “They basically saved my life. I am grateful to them.”
Mr. Bloom has sadly passed away, but Bruno is still in touch with Mrs. Bloom, who now lives in San Francisco.
She couldn’t attend his book party last week, but their son came in her place. Bruno plans to visit her in December and present her with a signed copy of the memoir.
“She was more proud of me every day that publication got closer,” said Bruno, who is currently researching a novel set in 1950s New York. “The day the book came out, she was over the moon. “.
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Image Source : nypost.com