Going Postal

My rent checks are addressed to a Caribbean gentleman with a toothy smile and a habit of praising God while bagging our recyclables. My landlord's friendly, though prone to breaking repair promises: Nearly three years after moving in, our ceiling still flakes like cheap baklava. The crumbling paint is always a conversation starter.

Concerned Friend: "How do you live like this?"

Me: "Have I told you about my cheap rent?"

My rent is cheap because I live on Brooklyn's Crown and Prospect Heights border. Around here, my bodega sells toilet paper through a Plexiglas hole. A nightly gunshot symphony lulls me to sleep. And around the corner, drug dealers more bloodthirsty than mosquitoes ply substances green and white. A few months back, one unfortunate salesman received an additional hole in his head.

Quality-of-life issues, yes, but for three bedrooms in a tidy brownstone with minor troubles (ceiling aside, there's a sticky bathroom door and a finicky radiator), my roommates and I pay just $1,650. Sure, as my parents remind me, it's more than the mortgage on their one-level ranch in Dayton, Ohio. But Ohio, I remind them, is a four-letter word.

In the super-heated housing market, Prospect and Crown Heights have drawn latent interest. Only after being priced out of tonier Fort Greene and Park Slope neighborhoods have buyers looked east and snapped up anything with-and sometimes without-a roof. Luckily, speculators have largely shied away from my street. It's a no-brainer why: The block is bisected by an elevated train that, despite the MTA's shoddy repair record, manages to rumble day and night.

So imagine my surprise when, a few months ago, I returned home from a long day copyediting to find a flyer jammed under my front door. It looked like a fifth-grader's handwritten scrawl, but closer examination revealed a computer font mimicking juvenile penmanship.

Here's the gist, errors included:

My name is Michael And im very interested In buying you'r house. Please call me only if your interested. I will pay for it all CASH Call me at: (917) 577-XXXX

If you'r not interested please ignore this letter.

Which is exactly what I did. Like waving Wild Turkey underneath an alcoholic's nose, there was no reason to tempt my landlord. Or had temptation already struck? ------

I have two roommates: Firstly, Andrew, a man with a hairline running away to join the circus. Perhaps that is why Andrew rides a unicycle.

There is also Cory, a soft-spoken restaurant worker with a video game addiction. To the lazy eye, we look alike: We slink beneath the five-foot-eight barrier and sport short hair.

"Andrew, praise God, how are you doing today?" my landlord asked the day after I discovered the first letter. He was taking out the trash, in pleasant spirits while hefting a bag filled with tinkling beer bottles.

"It's Josh."

"Okay, Andrew. How are you?"

Perhaps testosterone prevented him from admitting his mistake. God knows it's not an isolated incident. Perhaps it was reverse discrimination: All you short, vaguely Jewish boys look alike. Let me explain: Several years ago, I was paid $10 an hour to answer phones for a firm called KTGM. It's evil. The company harvests and sells demographics. They're why mailboxes are crammed with junk mail. Time passed. I stole staplers. I grew bored. I took a job steaming clothes for Lord & Taylor. Andrew, who was ramen-eating poor, slid into my receptionist seat. To KTGM, we were as faceless as Chinese restaurant deliverymen.

"Hey, Josh, how you doin'?" demographic salesmen would ask Andrew.

"It's Andrew, and I'm fine," he'd say, initially perturbed. As weeks grew into months, their greeting patterns remained Pavlovian: Enter the office: "Hey, Josh?" To prove that temp workers are interchangeable cogs, I would occasionally sub for Andrew. KTGM employees' didn't miss a beat: "Thanks for filing those papers yesterday, Josh. Hey, did you get a haircut? ------

The night I received the flyer, I lay in bed, listening to my neighbors' soothing marital discord. Following an encore of "I'm not living with your mother!" I had one of those sleepless 3 a.m. panics engineered by daytime double espressos: What if my landlord wanted to sell? Where would I go? What would I do? What would I say? I broke into night sweats: Without an apartment, I would no longer elicit murmurs of approval at cocktail parties after announcing that I only paid $535 a month. I'd have to impress people with conversational gymnastics. The horror!

A couple days later, I asked my landlord, point-blank, "You're not thinking of selling the building, are you?"

"Oh, no, Andrew, I like you guys. You've got nothing to worry about."

He smiled with teeth as bright as our flaking ceiling.

"You sure?"

"Andrew," he said, rubbing an index finger along his mustache, "I'm not selling anything."

"You sure?"

"Yes, Andrew." Then he dumped more beer bottles on the sidewalk with a crash. Would you believe a man that didn't remember your name? It was time to investigate my landlord's home-owning past. Hello Propertyshark.com. Enter your address into this handy Web site and, voila! Your building's history, dating back to 1966, magically appears like a genie from a bottle. My landlord paid off our circa-1910 brownstone about 10 years ago. He took out a second mortgage several years back, but that was to pay for his new home. Satisfied with what passes for modern-day sleuthing ("If the Internet says it's true, it's true!"), I cracked a beer and took a long, satisfying gulp.

A few days later, I returned home from work and found another faux handwritten flyer crammed beneath the front door.

Dear Sir/Madam,

I was driving in your neighborhood and I saw your house. I am really interested in purchasing your house?

I crumpled the notice and gave my trashcan company. Is two a trend?

No. But three certainly is. Two days later, another flyer:

I'm Very Interested in BUYING your Property.

It was time to halt this trend with drastic, irrational action. Though I'd recently quit smoking (save for cigarettes when drinking, which don't count), I found a new addiction: weeding through my landlord's junk mail, which the post office conveniently leaves on a ledge. Century 21, the Corcoran Group, Douglas Elliman; my blue recycling bin soon read like a roll call of Brooklyn's biggest-and most opportunistic brokers. I even trashed come-ons for carpet cleaning and commemorative coins-my petty revenge on KTGM.

Some may see this as bending the law; I see this as protecting my personality. In New York City, you are defined by your neighborhoods.

Tell someone you live in Williamsburg, the knee-jerk reaction is hipster. Upper East Side? Entitlement. Chelsea? Rainbow flag. This is not a blanket indictment, and there are exceptions. My friend Steve, for example, lives in Williamsburg, but insists on dressing like a flannel-wearing carpenter from Youngstown, Ohio.

Am I Prospect Heights?

Perhaps. I frequently drink myself incorrigible. I refuse to wear deodorant. I'm prone to shouting at arthritic Hispanic women who block the sidewalk. It is not a glamorous neighborhood, but it is home, the security blanket against the big, bad city. So it is here where I draw the line, my own Alamo. If you see me trying to jimmy open my landlord's mailbox with a screwdriver or crawling around on my hands and knees, scrutinizing flyers like a bug-eyed bomb-squad reject, please, please don't call the cops. They might want to buy my brownstone, too.