the armenian security guard (0)
Posted 27 June, 2005 in life shiz
there are some friendships you make which turn out to be impossible to maintain.
we’re moving offices in a month, and i am going to miss the security guard out front. most of our guards are dumb as bags of rocks. you can see it in their faces and the way they bumble about trying to look like they’re actually protecting the building. most of them sleep very obviously at the desk or smoke cigarettes with their civilian buddies outside, while bums with sleeping bags sneak into the elevator and up to abandoned floors. i am serious.
but this security guard is different. he is armenian, probably in his mid-50s, short and stocky but not fat. my coworkers refer to him as the guy who looks like a bald eagle, and he does. at first, when he started talking to me, i was snooty and assumed it was because i was a young woman. but then i noticed he talked to everyone who came in and out of the office doors, including the guy with a parrot on his shoulder, and the weird hunchbacked english guy.
at first, i also thought he was dumb. when he started telling me stories of his life in the former soviet union and his jiu-jitsu skills, i thought he was lying. i still am not quite sure he isn’t, but over the months i’ve been working in the building, i have started to believe him. he is obviously very well-educated: he can hold forth on any current news story, quote proust and guy de maupassant, and he knows magic. i am serious. my coworker studies voodoo. she came in the lobby one day with a book on some arcane thing or other. not only did he spot the book from across the lobby, he’d read it, and he gave her a summary of it right then and there.
from what i can gather, this man is an ex-soviet army officer who used to make a living doing computer programming. he may have also been a KGB officer, but he isn’t telling, except through carefully dropped hints: he will tell stories in which he was working on a KGB computer, or on a government airplane, but he won’t say why he was there or what he was doing. he knows all about hacking and coding. sometimes, he says, russian dudes follow him around town when he does his errands.
he claims to have beaten up ten men outside our building one night. “young armenian guys,” he says in his not-quite-broken english. he tends to speak in phrases rather than sentences. “they go to club next door, get drunk. outside they shout, become…” he hesitates, looking for the right word, “violent. i come out, very nice, not threatening, say, ‘guys, guys, what are you doing?’ then one of them attack me. but what they do not know–” he holds up a finger and grins–”i have eight years jiu-jitsu training.”
he’s one of those people who, when you talk to them, you forget all about how old they are, where they come from, how much money they have and what they do for a living. i forget all these things because now that i know him, i’ve realized they don’t make him who he is, and he seems to do the same for me. he’s never been sleazy, or patronizing, or acknowledged what is undeniably a rather large social gap between us. he just talks to me like i’m a reasonably intelligent person who enjoys a good chat, and that’s how i talk to him too.
when we move offices, i am not sure i will even say goodbye to the guard, because this could open up a whole can of worms. do i say it was nice knowing him and walk away just like that? do we exchange phone numbers? and if he called me, what would we talk about, an armenian security guard in his mid-50s and a 30-year-old englishwoman who was born with a silver spoon up her butt? could we meet for coffee, or would it just be bizarre?
maybe, then, i’ll just leave quietly when it’s time to go. i’ll wait for a little while. then i’ll stop into the building the next time i am on hollywood blvd. (insert joke about why i would be on hollywood blvd. here). he’ll be outside, talking to the guy with the parrot, or the blond armenian chick the building owner is always trying to hook him up with. we can chat about the armenian mob, or police helicopter markings, or any of the other subjects we have covered. maybe ten dudes will show up and he will kick all their asses, and i will finally know that he was telling the truth all along.