Before there was 181 there was 61. And before 61 there was 207. From the 8th grade through my first years in New York I maintained a superstition regarding 61 and 207. I can hardly remember why any more, though I wrote about it somewhere in the .MOBI, I think, but that was probably in the 2005-2008 postings which I keep meaning to revive. The 207 thing had to do with going to summer camp and being in cabin #207, where all kinds of bad shit went down. We almost got kicked out for what would have amounted to “insubordination”. None of us could stand our cabin leader, or whatever his title was. At some point the president of the camp came and  spent a lengthy afternoon with all of us. He actually suggested that he would retire the cabin number, 207, for all the bad shit people around the place assoicated with it. I can’t remember the rest now but it was seminal episode, or so I thought at the time. So it was interesting when school started again and I ran a race in 2:07, a record-breaking time for the class. Suddenly I was vaunted and elevated into the heady realm of the ATHLETES. People looked at me differently, and for days and weeks I heard respectful mutterings of “two-oh-seven.”

Then someone broke the record, and my status returned to dimished. 207 just seemed like a cursed number. It was thus with some trepidation when I noticed that my first real apartment that I had to myself was in Inwood, several blocks up from the 207th Street A train subway station.

There were other 207 coincidences and connections. Can’t think of them now.

61 was a confluence of opus and mistaken street numbers. Chopin’s Opus 61, the Polonaise-Fantaisie, was my big recital and audition piece in high school. I played it auditions for all the big 4 conservatories, and in competitions. I considered the opus number itself to be significant, coming as late as it does in Chopin’s oeuvre. In those days I considered age to be a thing, and I was hardly alone. The wise young ones among us played only the latest works of the great composers.  

There were a bunch of appearances of the number 61 over the years. When I moved here I wanted to bridge the gap between youth and adulthood. I settled my fixation on 207 East 61st Street, deciding before I laid eyes on it that I wanted to live there. Even when I discovered it was a landmarked townhouse selling for 8 figures (if it ever sells) I was nonplussed. 207 East 61st was to be my destiny.

I don’t remember exactly when this was, or how it came about, but somewhere in those early years I did an interview for New Zealand radio. I think it focused on the Apology Project but that doesn’t quite line up with my timeline, which could itself be off. Whatever the case I remember thinking the interview was going off to some far corner of the world and I could say whatever the hell i wanted. So I let it all go, the suicidal tendencies, the depression, everything came out. The interviewer seemed genuinely concerned, as I recall. After the interview ended he asked if I wanted a cassette tape of the segment. I told him to send it to 207 East 61st Street. he did. Weeks later he called to say it had been returned. I told him to send it to the 181. I have the tape but I never opened the envelope in which it was sent to me.

I thought of all this today while passing 207 East 61st Street. As I approached it looked like workers were clearing out the house. I thought someone had died and possibly left the property to me in their will. Hah. no such consquence. Alas, they were clearing out 209 East 61st. I never knew who lives or lived in 207 but come to think of it I might be able to find out through ancestry.com…

Ancestry reveals that in 1994 an elderly woman moved in to the tiny studio apartment I lived in at the Parc Lincoln in 1991.