One of my fondest TV memories involves a quieter-than-usual sequence in the celebrated Sopranos series, one that captured an intimate moment in the home life of Tony Soprano, the show’s anti-hero.
It’s morning, and Tony—his bulk wrapped in a voluminous bathrobe, his feet encased in scuffed slippers—shuffles out the front door of his suburban home to retrieve his morning paper. It’s there, folded neatly, in the middle of his driveway.
Tony looks out impassively, seemingly unconcerned that, for a few moments of early-morning exposure, he’s become a possible target. Anyone seeking harm or a confrontation would have easy access to him. For the series creator, such moments were rare. Tony Soprano’s vulnerability was tested often but only rarely challenged.
Each time this sequence recurred, during the show’s nearly decade-long on-air life, I found myself remembering my dad, who had no compunctions about stepping out on our front porch, in suburban Los Angeles, to grab up the newspaper or collect the mail, in a state of what the French might call dévêtu.
Dad didn’t exactly parade his assets, but his time-worn bathrobe frequently got untied and flapped open, leaving him partly exposed though completely unfazed. He was never concerned about what the neighbors saw or thought—not since one of them said he was about to call the cops when Dad, in summer shorts and a T-shirt, rushed into the street to retrieve a ball I’d just tossed.
“I thought there’d been an emergency and was afraid he’d been caught off-guard—in his underwear,” that neighbor said later.
My father rarely engaged with folks living on our street, who, neither friendly nor overtly hostile, had not been particularly cordial or welcoming when my family and I moved in. Thus, appended to his unspoken “live-and-let-live” motto was, obviously, “Please leave us alone.”
Dad perspired readily, when engaged in any kind of physical activity, so his gardening and right-around-home chores were usually executed in baggy shorts, worn paint-spattered shoes, and probably no undershirt.
Why should he care what the neighbors saw or thought? He was in his own house or at work on his own property. What business was it of theirs?
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In early adulthood, I left California and came east to grad school. After moving up from entry-level job status, I got married and rented an apartment in an aging Manhattan building.
Furnishing the place, my wife and I obscured our south-facing living room windows with wood shutters, which we eventually removed after our first winter, when the hours of sunlight shrank to a dispiriting few. For us, enjoying even a modest amount of sunlight topped any need for privacy.
Out in the kitchen, our single window faced a dismal service courtyard backed by an apartment house rising across a narrow alley. Early on, my wife hung ready-made half-curtains that gave us some kitchen privacy but also compromised our exposure to sunlight.
Those panels were pushed onto a pressure-based rod that invariably came loose, and fell to the floor, when either of us tried to open the kitchen window even slightly. Tired of repeatedly laundering and re-hanging those panels, we finally removed the rod and stashed the curtains.
The back-room windows of that adjacent building were mostly shuttered, so we didn’t feel particularly exposed. For a long time, we probably took chances—me in boxers, my wife occasionally wrapped in a bath towel, after her time in the shower or tub.
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I remember when our daughter was a newborn, home from the hospital presenting her unskilled and anxious parents with daily baby-care challenges. Expressing hunger in the wee hours, the child would cry out, and my wife invariably groaned and hauled herself slowly and reluctantly out of our warm bed to tend to the needy infant.
Eager to be a sensitive, responsible spouse, I awoke one night to the first of our child’s hunger cries and rushed out of the bedroom to quell the outburst, before my wife could hear it.
I slept raw then, and naked I was when I bundled the blanketed infant in my arms and strode into the kitchen, cuddling her and cooing as I warmed the baby formula my wife had left out, anticipating nocturnal needs.
Even though inexperienced and a bit groggy, at just after 3:00 a.m., I found myself an able juggler. I poured formula into the bottle, pressed the rubber nipple onto the top, and immersed both in a pan of water that I placed over a burner’s low flame to temper the chill.
I felt proud of myself. I had behaved like an alert and sensitive partner. I was assuming an essential parental chore, so my wife—no early riser—could sleep on, undisturbed.
I remember testing the formula by flicking heated droplets onto the back of my wrist. Then, satisfied that the fluid had been relieved of its chill, I removed the bottle and quashed the flame, while continuing to clutch my infant daughter.
She took the liquid readily from the nipple—this was so easy, I thought. Why hadn’t I done it before? When she had consumed nearly all of it and began yawning sleepily—echoing my own responses, of course—I laid her against my shoulder and began patting and rubbing her back.
She responded right away. I didn’t count the little burps but was delighted when they occurred, with no big effort on my part. Gee, parenthood could be really rewarding; you just had to get into it and be patient. Here was my baby girl, practically asleep again, her tiny body warming my shoulder.
Then, suddenly, I was jolted out of my languor by a giant baby burp that splashed a cascade of undigested infant formula over most of my naked body and onto the kitchen floor. I was stunned—and unprepared. Of course I had heard about projectile baby vomiting but had never imagined I’d one day become its target.
Oh, my God—now what to do! I shivered, or trembled, aware of my nakedness like Adam in a suddenly hostile Eden. I knew, of course, that I had to remove the dampened baby blanket, wipe a bit of the spilled fluid off the infant’s face, change her diaper, and then return her to the crib. To her credit, she went back to sleep there without incident.
Apparently the act of sucking had at least partly satisfied her craving for sustenance. Although chilled to the bone by then, I returned to the kitchen to mop up, before hitting the bathroom to shower off. Later, I rolled back into bed, feeling completely spent but careful not to disturb my still-slumbering spouse.
“Welcome to fatherhood” was the first thought that came to mind, as I curled up and willed myself back to sleep. My second thought was, “Tonight, I think I one-upped my dad!”
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Decorum was the rule of the day when my daughter was a youngster and then an impressionable teen. But in later years, when she was away at camp or college, I felt less inclined to maintain my earlier restraint. No more pajamas or shorts, and sometimes the bathrobe I wore was not securely tied. I felt free again and somewhat liberated.
Neighbors across the street and those visible from my kitchen window were dealt with indifferently. I didn’t look out at them and hardly cared if they peered over at me. Let them, I thought, and in that certainly became my father’s son.
Traditionally, my morning newspaper was delivered to our building in the fading hours of nighttime, then dropped at my apartment later by the building’s daytime doorman—his thoughtful and much appreciated first chore of the day. It was always reassuring to pull open my front door at an early hour and find The Times awaiting retrieval, right at my feet.
The person who trucked in the papers, in separate bundles for each clutch of subscribers, invariably solicited a Christmas remembrance, which I always responded to grudgingly, because it was a uniformed doorman who made sure that my newspaper was at my door by the time I began making breakfast.
I have a morning exercise program that I follow faithfully, if not always regularly. I don’t particularly enjoy the regimen but always punish myself whenever finding some reason not to follow it. In wintertime, the exercises warm me up; in the summer they make me really sweat, so I may need to remove my damp workout shirt before shuffling into the kitchen.
Retrieving my newspaper is rarely a challenge, no matter what the weather is or what I’m wearing, because I usually find the paper dropped on my doormat. Thus I can collect it in a second or two with little effort—open door with left hand, reach down with right hand, grab newspaper, withdraw quickly, let door slam.
Or if I want to be considerate—of my closest neighbors—I’ll hold the door back a bit, so it makes just a soft clicking sound, not a penetrating clunk, when I finally let it go.
The ease of this chore is such that I often take liberties, particularly in hot weather. Instead of wrapping myself in my light summer robe, I might simply peel off the sweat-soaked shorts, briefs, and T-shirt and flash the hallway when collecting my Times.
I have three neighbors. We rarely see each other—that’s the joy and often the dispiriting disconnect of apartment living in my adopted city. Since my wife and I are the only daily-newspaper subscribers on our floor—unlike the lawyers and bankers upstairs who usually have more than one publication delivered daily—I can open my door at an early hour without expecting to hear some depressingly cheery greeting from a well-meaning neighbor.
In other words, I can grab up my Times quickly and silently, a practice that, through the years, has been entrenched in my morning routine.
Thus, as you can imagine, I was brought up short one Sunday morning not long ago, an occasion destined to become a lifelong blot in my memory. It was a particularly sticky midsummer day, and I remember sleepily starting my breakfast routine, when I suddenly found myself sniffing my own sweat-gland excretions and making an ugly face.
Eeeuuuch! It was an involuntary response, but uttering it impelled me to peel off my sweaty workout garb and drop it just outside the kitchen door, as I continued my pre-meal ritual. Remembering the newspaper—the coffee now brewing in my diminutive French press—I pivoted toward the front door and my final early-day chore, retrieving the Times’s weekend edition.
I swung the door open just enough so I could bend over and grab but found that my paper had been tossed a few feet away—apparently our weekend doorman was on holiday and his surrogate was not yet schooled in delivery protocol. To access my paper, I’d have to do more than just bend and reach but take a step or two beyond the front door.
I was understandably peeved—a ritual had been compromised. And, focused on this shift in my practiced a.m. routine, I was also fixated on the inconvenienc e of having to step beyond the doormat to collect the weekend edition that had become unfolded, splaying much of its content beyond where it had fallen.
Damn it! Not only would I have to move out but also scoop up—a few more steps and physical gestures than I was accustomed to making, in a routine I’d been following daily for years
.
Unthinking, I swung the door wide open, grimaced and stepped out, eager to gather up all of the paper, now lying near the center of my hall. As I was kneeling to complete this chore, I heard my front door click shut behind me, and of course I didn’t have my keys. Nor did I wear any clothing. I was—there’s no other way to describe it—standing there buck naked.
I recall clutching the paper against my midsection and ringing the doorbell. It didn’t make much of a sound, and I knew that my wife, a sound sleeper, would never hear it. So, after a tense pause, I began pounding on the door, and rather, earnestly, I guess. Within a few moments—which, of course, seemed like the passing of hours to me, in that desperate situation—I heard a gentle click, which confirmed that rescue had arrived.
As I faced the door, I heard another click—this one from somewhere behind me—suggesting that at least one of my neighbors had heard my pounding and wondered, justifiably, what had prompted it.
I remember quickly pushing open my front door, then—and here’s the cherry topping the whipped cream slathering the sauce—just as the door was sliding shut behind me—I nervously passed gas.
In a moment, without daring to look back, I practically fell into the apartment, newspaper sections in my arms, wondering if one of my neighbors had actually seen or heard me? And, if so, which one?
I couldn’t bear the prospect of any eventual confrontation and hoped against hope there might never be one. I had, however briefly, been naked as a jaybird—a term that had once been applied to newbies at some jails, decades earlier.
To remove any remaining shreds of dignity, new prisoners were shunted into showers, then made to walk, stark naked, to their assigned cells, past crudely catcalling inmates. In my situation, generations later, I felt every bit as humiliated and powerless as those hapless jailbirds.
Inside, our modest foyer was empty. After unlatching the door, my wife had padded into the bathroom, oblivious of my humiliation. So I stood there alone and, by then, really shivering, also wondering who had been out there, in our hall, and what they had seen. I assumed there would be some backlash from the episode and, for days, steeled myself against that possibility.
Over and over, I replayed the incident in the reel of recent memory but still couldn’t pinpoint exactly which door might have opened, and by whom, as I stood in the elevator hall, my nudity briefly on display.
Would it have been that all-business woman who owned an antiques store in the Village? Or the quiet lady across the hall who rarely left her digs? Or maybe it was the dark-haired woman whose falsely cheerful greeting—”Well, it’s a great life if you don’t weaken!”—prefaced any random encounter.
Needless to say, I was braced for some kind of confrontation and surefire humiliation, but the incredible thing is: Neither occurred. Yes, I saw and greeted each of my neighbors on occasional mornings, sometimes, too, in early evenings or even later, when dumping trash or garbage.
But, on seeing me, none of those folks ever shook her head in disgust or looked away in acute chagrin, when passing me in the lobby or on the street. It was as if nothing had happened, although I knew that it had, and, obviously the incident would remain a thorn in my memory.
Nowadays, though I still retrieve the daily paper in a practiced one-two motion,
I do so fully clad or in a robe wrapped tight. In truth, I’ve been almost shocked into wardrobe restraint, even after an old friend weighed in on my ongoing concern:
“Hey, man, nobody gives a crap about your fleshy backside—or your baby farts. This is New York, you know?” To which I said “Amen” and “Thank heaven!” even while knowing that my dad, long gone by now, would have been unashamedly amused.
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