According to “Building Material,” a new memoir by Stephen Bruno, a Park Avenue doorman of twenty years, nearly every conversation among doormen can be classified into one of three categories: “Baseball, women, or Puerto Rico.” A doorman’s skill can be measured by the fluency with which he moves between genres. “Only a doorman of the highest caliber can segue from the Big Ass Walking By to a monologue covering an unrelated topic,” Bruno writes. “ ‘Look at that nice ass’ has never been followed by a pinch of the chin and ‘that gets me thinking.’ ”

But could three doormen, gathered at a bar, expand their conversational repertoire? The other day, Bruno met Paul and Nik, also doormen at his Park Avenue building, at Bloom’s Tavern. The occasion: publication day for Bruno’s book. After the bar, they’d head to the building, a few blocks away, where a resident was hosting a book party.

Bruno, who had tattooed forearms and neatly pomaded hair, is of Ecuadorian and Puerto Rican descent. Nik—black shirt, very broad chest—is Albanian. The Latino doormen and the Albanian doormen have been in a cold war. Nik is the building’s new super—a doorman turned boss—but he’s all right. “We campaigned for him,” Bruno said.

The memoir touches on doorman classics—the upstairs-downstairs dynamic, the uniforms, the reading of residents’ mailers, the end-of-year tip—but the doormen are the stars. Bruno has stories about a not-clandestine-enough liaison between a man on the fourteenth floor and a man on the seventh, and a woman who would call the lobby complaining about ghosts in her apartment, but he left those out.

As a doorman, Bruno writes, “you’re like a fish meant to stay the size of your tank.” He put himself through college at John Jay and got an M.F.A. at Hunter while working the door—a fish who learned how to jump. “I don’t believe in the starving artist,” he said. “I’m writing a book during my shift. Essentially, I’m getting paid to write.”

“You probably wrote half your book on your overnight shift,” Nik noted.

Overnights are usually reserved for the newest doormen. Nik said, “One year, when I was doing the overnight on New Year’s Eve, which is the worst overnight, I had a girl come and put her ass cheeks on the glass.”

“Doesn’t sound like the worst,” Bruno said.

“Hurricane Sandy, we got stuck for five days,” Bruno said. “We had food being delivered from the tenants—with silverware!”

“This is probably where those weird e-mails are coming from.”Cartoon by Roland HighCopy link to cartoonShop

The trio set off. At the building, the doorman on duty, Neil, directed them to the service entrance. “He’s sending us around the corner!” Bruno said. But he was just busting their chops.

In the host’s apartment, more doorman buddies awaited: Manny, Andrew, George. They wore open collars, undershirts, and chains. Residents and book-world friends wore dresses and sports jackets and ate egg-salad sandwiches cut into triangles. Fish of a different tank. Paul appeared holding a book. “I got it signed,” he said.

The group greeted two residents: “Hello, Mr. Ahamed, hello, Mrs. Ahamed.”

“Hello, Stephen, hello, Nik.”

Paul stood around for a moment, clutching his book, until Mr. Ahamed brightened: “Paul, I didn’t recognize you out of the uniform!”

“We’re both writers,” Mr. Ahamed’s wife, Meenakshi, said, of herself and her husband. The couple had read an early draft and offered feedback.

Were the residents nervous about the exposure? “No,” Meenakshi said. “Most people in the building are super friendly. Even the gossip columnist.” She went on, “Cindy Adams. She lives in the penthouse with her dog.”

She didn’t make the book, though: “I like my job,” Bruno said. ♦