On Board Elections and Lunacy

“Um excuse me? I have a praaahblem,” whined the voice in the back left corner of the room. “My neighbor, who I share a terrace with? Well she hasn’t trained her dog, and it’s disgusting. She’s a bad ownah! And she awhlso tries to put furniture between moy side of the terrace and hers to block her naaasty dog but the furniture is hideous! She has some sort of feng shui bumbling fountain with little rocks and when the wind blows the pebbles make it onto my side, and I’ve called the president of the board 12 times in the LAST WEEK ALONE and she hasn’t stopped doing what she’s doing!”

“Tell me again what it is she’s doing?” The president of the board replied calmly.

“Violating the fire marshall code!” she yelped.

“Uh huh.”

Anyone wishing to study the wide range of human psychoses need only attend a Condominium Association Annual Board meeting.

Where I lived in Chicago, the board was comprised of a notoriously tightknit crew of WASPy octogenarians who squandered the entirety of the capital reserve on cases of Vintage for their weekly “meetings.” We turned a blind eye to their rampant excess and they turned a blind eye to…all of our requests. Were it not for one of the member’s very public divorce and subsequent commitment to regaining attractiveness, the new gym would never have been built.

Needless to say, I steered clear of those twin-set donning ninnies like the Bubonic Plague.

Having since relocated to a decidedly more diverse establishment in New York, I was rather excited to attend last night’s annual meeting. For one thing, I considered it the decidedly “adult” thing to do (a concept that, like cooking proper dinners and working out on Saturday mornings, at first serves to bloat one’s self satisfaction, only later to become expected and ultimately imprisoning).

Perhaps more crucially, however, I went to both judge how attractive my neighbors were and . to gauge their distinct level of crazy.

There was the characteristically cocky Energy Trader. In his election speech, he mumbled something about the value of our investment, and in an entirely unconvincing show of emotion claimed to care about “our community”. His speech was brutal and his suit terrific. Patrick Bateman himself would have shed tears of pride.

There was the woman who had so much collagen in her face; her cheekbones looked like veritable ping pong balls. There was a woman who so violently opposed the placement of the fucking couch in the lobby that we thought an angry wrinkle might just fight the good fight through all of the botox and betray her emotion. In short, there appeared to be many, many victims of both overzealous plastic surgery and poor taste in design.

People wined about everything from recycling, to cigarettes falling into gardens, to doormen taking “excessive bathroom breaks.” I mean, for fuck’s sake (I shall not invoke the name of the Lord here although it is most apt). It took a great deal of courage on my end not to pick up my chair and throw it at the offending commenter. I earmarked their names for future reference.

Last of all, there was the CEO, in whose speech to the board it was shamelessly announced – no less than 20 times- that he was, in fact, a CEO. “Having managed thousands of people in my lifetime,” he would gloat, “I should think I know how to handle a measly 140 units.” To which we all wondered, genuinely, what the fuck he was doing living in a building that many deemed only a slightly more upscale version of a dormitory to begin with.

That, unfortunately, wasn’t covered in the 2 hour long Q & A.

In the end, after countless hours of nonsense, far too much indulgence in the catering from Mangia (“Brownies with Jelly in them , what the fuck kind of way is that to ruin a brownie” the gentleman to my right duly noted), we cast our ballots. The moment of reckoning arrived. Would I vote for catwoman? She was rather passionate about the unsightly blue panels in the mailroom. How about the man with “I’m a CEO” induced turrets? Or the student with a superhuman concern for the fire safety of our terraces? Or perhaps one of the yummy mummies with so much time and so little to do? Perhaps I could write myself in a la Ralph Nader?

No. In the end, I would vote not on promises nor on well based platforms. Like a mirror of national politics, board elections were a haven for smooth talkers and inexperienced doers. I would vote based on the one criterion that was true and good in the world. The one that I knew would be most committed to providing returns: again, and again, and again, on my initial investment.

I would vote for Trader Guy, because he was hot.