One of the best perks to New York City are the doormen who stand like sentinels in the lobbies of many of Manhattan’s Upper East Side apartment buildings. I didn’t appreciate this NYC perk until I moved into such a building five years ago. Every morning whoever is on duty greets me with a smile. And every night the doorman wishes me a good night. He opens the front door for me, signs for packages, sends ordered meals upstairs, offers to carry heavy bags or any bags for that matter, watches my car when I need to run in and grab something and a myriad of quotidian tasks that make my life easier. I feel safe walking the dog on a pitch-black night because of the doormen dotted along 72nd Street where I live. Nothing is ever too much trouble. As Fran Leibowitz said about her friends retiring to Vermont, “Why Vermont? There are no doormen in Vermont.’
So, imagine my delight when I passed my local bookstore and saw a book in the window called Building Material: The Memoir of a Park Avenue Doorman. My doorman knows a lot more about me than I know about him. I loved this coming-of-age story from an academically gifted Latino 22-year-old who lands a much-desired job as a doorman at a high-end Park Avenue building.
Debut author Stephen Bruno recounts all the do’s and don’ts of the job while also observing the escapades that go on behind the scenes, both upstairs and downstairs. Bruno, who is of Ecuadorian and Puerto Rican decent, got a profile in The New York Times and The New Yorker . The New Yorker title, What Does Your Doorman Say About You got me thinking. Hopefully, only nice things. I strive to be like Mrs. Bloom in Bruno’s novel, but know I have a long way to go before I’d be that good a person. Below is our edited and abbreviated Q&A. You can listen to the full Q&A here on my podcast Elena Meets the Author or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Elena: Hi Stephen, I loved your book, Building Material. You’re a talented writer with a knack for metaphors and an ear for dialogue. It’s a real hero’s journey told with a great sense of humor.
Stephen: Thank you so much.
You were twenty-two when you got the job. Can you tell us initially about where you grew up, your family, and why getting this job was a particularly lucky break for you?
I was raised in the Bronx. I guess you might call us poor. My father worked very hard to put food on the table, but it wasn’t like steak every night. I was the oldest and went to private school until the sixth grade. And then when my family got bigger (Stephan has 6 younger siblings), my parents pulled us out of private and put us all into public school. My brother Johnny and I were put in a program for gifted students, a magnet school. I was nerdy but I also played a lot of sports and went to church three days a week. We were raised ultra-Orthodox Christian. My father had a shelf full of classics, like Of Mice and Men, Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn so we always had something to read. I am super grateful for that life because I had sports, academics and literature. I had it all.
But when I got to high school I became a hit with the girls. I hadn’t been a hit before. My parents went crazy, and I rebelled. It cost me my academics. I then went to a Christian college to appease my parents, but I treated college like it was a resort. I was no longer in the Bronx, or under the supervision of my parents. I stopped going to church. I was like an animal unleashed. I became the head of an underground fraternity. I got on the radar of the school officials, and they expelled me on a technicality. I couldn’t face myself or my parents. I moved to Minnesota and worked in a Buffalo Wild Wings. I constantly smelled of teriyaki sauce and ballooned up to 265 pounds.
My mother just wanted to get me back to the Bronx. She thought he’ll get a job, be able to pay rent. She thought the trajectory of my life will start going up, even if it’s not skyrocketing like before.
My younger brother Jason worked as a doorman. My mother begged him to put in a good word for me. I knew nothing about this.
It’s not easy to get a doorman job. There’s no application. There’s no ad in the paper. You’ve got to know somebody. And my mother knew my brother. She was essentially my agent.
Can you tell us nondoorman people about the job.
Don’t get too close and don’t do too much. Sometimes residents when they’re coming home, they don’t need to have a conversation with you. They don’t want to talk about the Yankees. Just say hello, grab the bag and help them upstairs because they just want to get to their front door.
I live in a four-story walk-up. All I’m doing when I get out of the train station and am walking the four blocks to my home is thinking about the front entrance of my building. I don’t want to be stopped by a doorman who wants to talk about the Yankees.
You have to pick up your cues from the resident. Let them initiate conversation.
It’s a service job. Whatever is going on in your life, you leave at the front door. You have to say hello with a smile. It’s not in the union handbook, but you work where others live.
How did the idea of the memoir come about? And were you taking notes while you were a doorman. You have such good stories.
I had already worked as a doorman for eleven years when I decided to write the memoir in 2015. I had taken no notes.
I had wanted to go back to college to finish my degree. While I was at John Jay College, one of my professors told me I was a terrific writer and should get a masters. I had missed every deadline for the Writing MFA, and I didn’t want to leave NYC. But Hunter College was still open. I applied and got in.
You did both degrees while working as a doorman and wrote your book during the quiet night shift. How was the MFA program at Hunter?
The first year was the worst year I’ve ever experienced in my academic life. I didn’t want to go back. Everything in our culture is racist so no one takes it seriously when it actually is racist. My classmates, all women didn’t talk to me. They treated me like an ape. One girl just stared at me unblinking when I spoke like I was a monster, and she couldn’t believe I could speak. I was just being myself. I’m an authentic human being. The way I’m speaking to you is the way I speak to the person down the street. I was the only man, the only Hispanic, the only New Yorker in the class. When we’d workshop our work, the women would write beautiful all over the margins of the other women’s work in my class. But never on my work.
When I told my teacher, she said Fuck Beauty. Just write, just do what you do. She taught me a core lesson in writing. Write the way you speak. I think one of the reasons my classmates didn’t like me was because I sounded different. I sounded like a New Yorker.
That’s when I realized I have a singular voice. You have a lot of writers living in New York City, but rarely are they actually from the city. And rarer still is the Latin native New Yorker. So when I realized I had that market cornered, I relaxed. Just do what you do on the page, Stephan. Have fun. And that’s what I decided to do my second year.
Well, you really do have a strong voice on the page and on Audible. You mention that part of your job is to leave your personal life out of it. But things were so bleak for you that first year at Hunter, that you had a hard time being happy at work. Can you tell us how a resident saved you?
Yeah, that year was an absolute struggle. Everyday kind of melted into the next one. Mrs. Bloom (not the resident’s real name) noticed it. We had been having a dialogue for years when I was at John Jay and everything was going well. I was a rockstar, bringing great news to her everyday. Like, Mrs. Bloom, you won’t believe this, the professor is putting me up for an award. I won the contest, Mrs. Bloom, I beat all those law students. But at Hunter, I wasn’t saying any of those things. It was crushing me not to be able to deliver good news to her. She was like a surrogate mother to me. I was really dark and morose.
Then one day, Mrs. Bloom asked me to come over for dinner the following week. Mr. and Mrs. Bloom set me up with sandwiches and Amstel Lights and turned on the TV to a documentary about the American writer August Wilson. He was a light-skinned black man. I saw myself in him. He’s walking around smoking cigarettes talking about life in Pittsburgh. He’s an artist but he doesn’t treat himself like anything more than a Pittsburgh working class guy. There was something about seeing him smoking that made me think he was very comfortable in his own skin. He didn’t give a damn what anyone thought about him. It inspired me. That documentary made me think, just be yourself, who gives a shit what others think.
And it was wonderful and beautiful on (the Bloom’s part). It just changed the trajectory of my MFA.
They sound like fantastic people, just the kind of people you needed in your life. You tell us in the book that the three topics of conversation for all doormen are women, baseball and Puerto Rico. Were you able to weave into those conversations that you were working on a memoir?
I didn’t. I didn’t tell anyone in the building until the 11th hour. I didn’t tell people in my neighborhood or even my life that I was working on a book or had a book deal. I feel like everybody’s working on a book. At the job we’re just doormen.
What has been the residents’ response?
They all read the New York Times so ninety percent of them heard about the book from that article. They’re all really proud of me. They say, ‘great article. I’m going to buy your book’
What has been your parent’s reaction?
My mother is very proud. She flew up from Florida for my publishing date and went to a reading.
My father isn’t talking to me at the moment because he read the book jacket. I didn’t write that descriptive text. My editor called him an oppressively religious man wreaking havoc on my life. And I was like, ‘hey, can we cut that down a little bit.’
The book isn’t about my father and me, it’s about me. My father was emotionally absent, and he was verbally abusive when I was growing up, but he worked really hard and provided for all nine of us.
I hope he starts speaking to you.
Me too. I love my dad. I want the best for him. I’m his son.
Towards the end of the book, you write, “You’re a doorman, a man who opens doors. You’re like a fish meant to stay the size of your tank.” Do you think you stayed the size of your tank?
No. I have jumped out of my tank. My doorman job is a job and it’s a good one. Until I find a job where I am challenged, where I belong, like maybe being a professor, I’ll continue to do it. I’ll be a big fish in a small tank. I’m not complaining.
And you’re teaching Salsa too?
I am. I absolutely love it. It’s part of my culture. But writing is going to be my priority. I’ll do whatever it takes.
Thank you and good luck Stephen.
December 2024
I am going to get this book at my public libary i reserve a cophy of this wonderful inspired book
I hope you enjoy it, Edward.
Best, Elena