The Apartment that Sex Forgot

That’s where I live. On the Upper East Side. Maybe sex has forgotten me because Jesus is my Landlord. I’m not kidding…that’s not a play on “Jesus is my Co-pilot”. (Can I tell you, if I got on a plane and saw J-man up in the cockpit, I’d just turn right back around and leave. Express flight to heaven? No thanks.) The Lutheran church next door actually owns my apartment. They are very pleasant…as are the organ music and bells on Sunday morning.

Not sure what makes it so unsexy up here. Perhaps it’s the 5th floor climb. Perhaps bad feng shui bed placement (one side is up against the wall). Maybe the fact there are two entrances (although one would think that would make it sexier). The ski-slope floors? The tin ceilings? Maybe my Goddess Kali lunchbox is displayed too prominently in my living room.

I just don’t know.

What I do know is what made my last apartment soooooooo sexy, so deeeeeeeeeeeeeply sexy.

Follow me back to the early 90s…

I was leaving the opera world, relationship with Boyfriend FUBL(1) had ended and my temporary digs with some crazy beeeotch proved too crazed. Synchronicity! A lil’ ol’ lady who lived in a brownstone across from my bro’s firm needed someone to live on her third floor…where no one had lived for 25 years.

ME DO!!!!

One floor of a brownstone on Murray Hill. 800 square feet. 7 foot walk-in closet. Patio off the bathroom (heretofore known as the potty-o) and…

A working fireplace.

Cost = $500

Sex-appeal = Priceless.

It was honestly the best sixsex years of my life. Who could deny the beauty of a world that would offer that kind of a digs deal…to ME?

Within two weeks of moving in I booked my first musical. And I basically never stopped working. And if I wasn’t working, I didn’t need to. Here’s the kicker—if I left town, the lil' ol' lady didn’t want rent. “Why pay for something you’re not using?”

Ummm…okay.

It was the perfect bachelorette pad…with its fire in the Winter, potty-o in the Spring and Summer, and ability to bathe al fresco. I would actually just ask guests if they would like to bathe. Male? Female? Everyone was invited. I could LIE DOWN in this bathtub. A bathtub built for two.


And a HUUUUUGE bedroom. No feng shui issues there.

I swear some of my relationships lasted so long because the guys just wanted to hang in the gorgeous, eclectic pad. Tom even proposed…and he admitted it was because of the flat. Gotta love honesty.

In ’95 Fidel Castro came to the States and stayed on my block. Nooooo…I did not date Fidel Castro, but let’s just say security was on the heavy side. I needed picture id and something official with my addy on it just to get onto my barricaded block where I would be escorted to and from my door by a lovely member of the NYPD.

Wednesday night’s conversation…

Officer Riley: “Identification please, Miss.

Tiz: “Here you go.”

Officer Riley: “Thank you. Married or single?”

Tiz: “Single?”

Officer Riley: “Officer Callahan…it’s your lucky night.”

I loved that apartment.

Even sublettors felt the glow. My last left a library of porn, binoculars and massage oil on the nightstand (which overlooked other brownstones) and rumors of naked sunbathing. This was, of course, after I begged his 6'5" notable self to be discreet.

I eventually had to leave that paradise (a subject worthy of its own post) and move to the Siberia that is the Upper East Side. I’ve been here ten years now and although it is the Apartment that Sex Forgot, it does have its good juju. Guests always remark about the energy—a lightness and a coziness and an intelligence all rolled into one.

Oh, my combination mountain aerie/rabbit warren. If only you had chaud lapin energy too.

(1) Fucked Up But Lovely. Just didn’t want to drop the f bomb in big letters.