I pulled up in a borrowed minivan, parallel parked in a not-so-pretty-but-got-it-done fashion, and got out to begin hauling my first load into my new place. My helpers were on their way, so I decided to start light and begin with the frame to my dish chair. I put it on my head, stretched out my arms as far as they could go and carried it to the front door, all the while pretending it was the heaviest thing on earth and I was steroid strong.

There’s a restaurantish Italian-American place that takes up the storefront of my building. It’s run by two old people who aren’t married or related, but are just old, and they monitor all of my comings and goings and report on me to my roommates as often as they see each other because they’re nosey and have to know everybody’s business, which is the case with most residents in my new neighborhood–or so I’m told.

Anyway, I got to the door with my chair frame and outside the restaurantish place was a man who looked a little bit off, but could have just been drunk. He had on a bright orange shirt that said how much he loved Brooklyn and the word GAGA was written in permanent marker on a piece of strapping tape on his right sleeve.

As luck would have it, he decided to strike up a conversation:

GAGA: Is that a hammock?

me: No dude, it’s a chair frame.

GAGA: A hammock chair?

me: No dude, it’s not a hammock. It’s just a chair frame.

GAGA: Is it like a hammock?

me: Not really. It’s a chair. A dish chair

This continued for maybe 10 minutes or so, as I continued to try to edge myself further inside the door and out of his presence altogether. I failed. He was not a hint taker and wouldn’t take a breath long enough for me to say I needed to get going.

GAGA: Did you see my name? (pointing to the piece of tape)

me: Yeah.

GAGA: It’s one of my nicknames. Do you know what it means?

me: No.

GAGA: It means slightly crazy. Not completely crazy. Slightly crazy. It also means infatuated, which, if you think about it, also means slightly crazy.

me: That’s cool, dude.

He rambled on and on some more and then one of my friends finally showed up and saved me.

It turns out that GAGA just moved into the neighborhood a week before me. He paid $450,000 cash for a condo that he bought from a long-time resident who is now being sought for stoning. GAGA also gets 2500/month in disability checks, but nobody is really sure for what. He’s definitely drunk all the time, but people don’t know if he also pops pills or just needs to pop pills.

What has made GAGA reach awesomeness in my book is what happened the other morning. There’s a bus stop right outside our building and at 8 o’clock in the morning, there were a lot of finely dressed New Yorkers waiting to be commuted to work. Enter GAGA with a super soaker water gun, shooting up everyone in sight until the police showed up. When ordered to stop, he didn’t understand what he had done wrong.

“But the water is clean! It’s clean!”

Tags: "gaga", "minus five", "new york", "police", "sarah coffman", "water gun", Brooklyn

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 19th, 2009 at 2:52 pm and is filed under Brooklyn, My Neighborhood, Stories.
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