This is a story about living in Brooklyn.
I'm sure by the title you're thinking that I was homesick, suffering in some distant place, wishing that I was in my one-bedroom apartment in New York. But alas, this is nothing of the sort.
For an entire month, I lived upstate with my mom, helping her recover from minor surgery. My boyfriend was back home, holding down the fort. My palace of a pre-war apartment is prone to accidents and catastrophic events. I once walked into a completely flooded bathtub that so generously gave me a mini-lake in my 3-foot hallway. I ended up paying $1,000 to fix it because my Super acts like his phone has no cell service. So, holding down the fort is putting it nicely.
The night started with my boyfriend randomly FaceTiming me from a bar—not his usual. I donned this perplexed face as he yelled over the booming music, "You're home? You need me to come home? Alright, alright babe! I'm coming home now." I hadn't said one word to him.
He rushed out of the bar, thanking me for answering because he couldn't stand another minute in there. He makes his way to the apartment and reminds me that he'll call me when he gets there.
Our usual.
In the meantime, I took a much-needed shower. I was enjoying some gospel, hip-hop, and R&B when my mom barged into the bathroom. "Kesi! Darryl is calling; he said there's a leak in your bathroom!" "WHAT?!" I scream as I almost unalive myself sliding across the slippery bathroom floor. I answer on the fifth FaceTime, and I'm looking at my Brooklyn bathroom walls, pissing water from some ungodly place above. As I watch, the ceiling light is taking a swim, the doorway is slowly deteriorating, and a trail of water is making a highway to the third floor.
Now, if you know a woman from NY, then you know we have two emotions: angry and furious. This was a moment to be furious. My boyfriend is drunk, it's 11 PM, and I'm two hours away from home. Naturally, I turn into a tyrant and start bossing Mr. Tipsy around. First order of business, wake up the Super who conveniently doesn't answer his door either. I then instruct my boyfriend, from his AirPods, to go to the apartment above us to see if we can fix this ourselves.
From the extension of his long arms, I can see blue swim shorts (decorated with pink flowers) open the door. I try to listen to what he's saying, but I can't quite make it out over my boyfriend's loud voice. Apparently, the water was ALSO running through his apartment, and he chose not to do anything about it. Just watching the water, I guess, or maybe he was going for a swim.
My boyfriend then goes back to the Super because the water hasn't stopped except this time, I tell him to bang on the door as if he were the police. It's him waking up or me spending $1,000 to fix it. I chose his lack of rest. If I can't rest in the quaint night of upstate New York, neither can he in Brooklyn. I call that the butterfly effect. He finally answers and immediately goes to the top floor to see what's going on. They won't answer either. Just our luck, right? My first thought, they're drowning themselves in the tub. Because who in their right mind would let water just run?
After lots of running up and down the stairs and my Super asking my boyfriend if he could access our fire escape to get into the fifth-floor apartment, I finally call for firefighters.
My Super was livid, exclaiming that the fire department would only break down the door and cause more problems. I thought, oh, cry me a river. What's more of a problem than the possibility of my Archive Manolo Blahnik Oklamod Boots being ruined? That's all I could think of. You can imagine how relieved I was when they finally showed up. So was my boyfriend when he was able to sit down and eat his food that was now lukewarm at best.
When the fire department got there, I not only had disgusting yellow-colored water spilling on my walls, but I also had size-12 boots clamoring on my $200 carpet. I thought I was still in my boyfriend's AirPods when I said, "Tell them to go see those dumbasses on the fifth floor too. Figure out what's wrong with them." They all got a crack out of that one. Happy my pain can be entertainment for New York's Finest. Before they left the apartment, my boyfriend blurted out, "Oh yeah, the Super's scared that y'all are gonna kick down the door..." They replied with, "He'll be aight." I was just as nonchalant about the possibility of someone living without a door as they were.
Finally, they all (Super and firefighters) find out that the two-story waterfall was from a running toilet. Blessed be, the water finally stopped. Oh, and they didn't have to get their door broken down. Lucky them. I, however, came home to a train of yellow-stained walls and a doorway that's one more natural disaster away from being nonexistent. I guess I'm lucky I didn't have to pay $1,000. I'm still waiting for it to be fixed, but the top floor got a new toilet!
Oh, Brooklyn...