The Upper East Side bouncer reveals he knows New Yorkers’ secrets

When Park Avenue doorman Stephen Bruno goes through the building’s mail and sees an envelope containing sexually suggestive images, he and his colleagues immediately know who it’s intended for.

“We don’t have to look at the name because we know who owns it,” he told the Post about a certain resident who also had a habit of suggestively eating papaya fruit in the lobby.

In his new book, Building Material: The Memoir of a Park Avenue Doorman, Bruno talks about the two decades he spent working for New York’s one percenters and the intimate glimpses into their lives that he received.

“They are often stressed and distant. They’re somewhere else,” Bruno told The Post. “They say hello, they’re still polite, but you can tell they’re having trouble with something, and often it’s business-related. Many of them work in finance.”

Bruno grew up in the Bronx and was 22 years old when he was hired as a summer bouncer at a building on Park Avenue. Now 42, he still works as a bouncer on the Upper East Side and has spent the last 14 years in the same building.

During one of his first night shifts at a tony co-op, he was reading a newspaper when he heard the elevator “ding” and watched as a tall man in a long robe came out.

The robe was open, revealing a “very orange” inner thigh. The man then began to stretch awkwardly in front of Bruno before remarking that he would have come downstairs sooner if he had known how handsome the bouncer was.

“He liked what he liked and he thought you would join in,” Bruno said. “He was a strange man”

Over the years, he has been privy to various residents’ romantic inclinations, from hot dates to late-night rendezvous.

He knew when two residents were coming into contact when he saw them riding the elevator between floors in the early morning hours during his night shifts.

Another resident had a girlfriend This would happen during the day, but at night he would entertain the gentlemen.

“Men would come over at two or three in the morning. He called downstairs and said, ‘So and so is coming for a nightcap,’ and he always had to say the name because it was always a different name,” Bruno remembers.

Then there was the woman who spent all her time worrying about ghosts.

“There is very little furniture in her apartment, just a candle in the middle of the living room,” Bruno said. “She always called because she saw ghosts. One time she crossed the street, just turned around and stared at the building for half an hour.”

Some residents turned out to be stingy and even downright mean.

One time, during the holidays, he received only a candy bar as a gift from someone who regularly asked him for extra help.

Then there was a woman who hated him from the start and never forgave him for replacing a bouncer she loved.

“This lady crossed boundaries on a regular basis,” Bruno said. “One time another bouncer was mopping the floor and she came and walked through the area he was mopping, even though there was space on either side. We looked at her in surprise because it was obviously rude and she said, ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I just like to make you guys work harder.'”

But even if the territory is occasionally nasty and lewd, the good relationships and pleasant encounters with the residents far outnumber the bad ones.

When he attended graduate school for writing at Hunter College, he was extremely supportive of the Blooms, an older couple who lived in his building.

“It was my first year in my MFA program and I was totally discouraged. Mrs. Bloom recognized that,” Bruno recalls.

They invited him to dinner and to see a documentary about the playwright August Wilson, which they believed would inspire him. Mr. Wilson also came from a working-class background and had worked his way up.

“It showed me that I could be myself, a Latin brown guy from the Bronx, and still be an artist,” Bruno said. “You basically saved my life. I’m grateful to them.”

Mr. Bloom has unfortunately passed away, but Bruno is still in contact with Ms. Bloom, who now lives in San Francisco.

She wasn’t able to attend his book party last week, but her son came in her place. Bruno plans to visit her in December and give her a signed copy of the memoir.

“She was prouder of me every day that the publication got closer,” said Bruno, who is currently researching a novel that will be set in 1950s New York. “The day the book was published, she was overjoyed.”