Roberto

New York, NY - Peter - Saturday, June 22nd, 2002 : goo

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Ramon Bautista is technically the superintendant for my building; in actuality, he's the super for most of the buildings on my block. Perhaps attracted by the basic capitalist drive of his scheme, he's managed to hire himself off for most of these types of jobs in my neighborhood; he then, it seems, subcontracts these positions off to other people, taking a $5,000 honorarium per year for this serivice. Sometimes, though, his scheme fails, leaving him to see to the work of several men.

After moving into a nicer basement down the street, he vacated his small studio in the basement of my apartment building. This is when the cocaine dealers moved in and squatted the area as a base for their Harlem operations.

Eventually, the landlord discovered his scheme, sent in the police and generally took care of the situation, to make a long story short.

To rectify his non-malintentioned wranglings, Ramon installed his brother, Roberto Rafael Bautista in the reclaimed basement studio, where he sees to the building's upkeep that are, on paper, still his brother's responsibilities, blind to the landlord, the tax authorities, ConEdison Electrical, and the INS.

Roberto is 58 years old, but doesn't look a day over 35. Often are the mornings, upon passing him on my way to work, that he exclaims "hard work is good for the soul and body!" in fractured English while hefting surprisingly rotund piles of garbage and recycling to the curb from their sticky, rat-infested bins by the brownstone steps. Ramon fears nothing.

Ramon is half Puerto Rican and half Dominican. A few weeks back, I passed him on the street immediately following NYC's annual Puerto Rican pride parade; he was standing on the stoop such that the left half of his body was perfectly still; arm, leg and shoulder deathly inert. His right side, however, was convulsively twitching as he shoulted "Viva Puerto Rico!" with a cackling laugh and a heavy accent. I asked him what was going on, and he explained that his Boricua side was celebrating. Here in Spanish Harlem, the Puerto Ricans and Dominicans don't typically get along well, so this seemed, to him, to be the ideal rationalization of his mixed heritage.

Often are the nights that Roberto is hard at work; fueled by $20 grams of brown cocaine and tumultuously loud salsa music, he takes to the stoop and painstakingly hoses it down, often until the wee hours of dawn. He obsessively blasts each speck of city grime from the building's sandstone filligree, and often rinses down the cars parked at the curb. In my neighborhood, its an ongoing joke that 246 West 108th Street is the place to park for free car-washes, and as such, I can never find an empty place in front of my own building.

Roberto has untreated asthma, yet endlessly chain-smokes. I know when he's home because I can usually discern the hacking coughs of perpetual chronic bronchitis seeping into my flat despite the concrete walls of my basement and the service tunnels that separate his living area from mine.

Roberto is like no man I've ever met. He has little to no income, surviving solely on the free rent and the cafeteria leftovers from the neighboring half-way house. He has two outfits: a winter one of denim and a summer one of faded Hawaiian fabric. He has no family, no significant other, and no single goal in life beyond exercising the pride that drives him to keep our building's front stoop among the cleanest in Manhattan.

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Jamie: uperintendent!!

Roberto: im tha fucking mang, mang!

~creAtor~: this story was a really fun read

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