Tasteful Nudes: ...and Other Misguided Attempts at Personal Growth and Validation (22 page)

I had to stifle my laughter after that one and most of the rental prices he mentioned (you know, cuz I was broke) but there was one room I thought I could handle. It was the smallest room in the place and would cost me $1275 a month, three times what I had been paying in Cleveland for a four-room apartment with a deck. Location, location, location—am I right?

“Suit yourself.” Stanley sighed.

I was expecting all sorts of questions about my finances, or—even worse—proof that they actually existed, before I’d be allowed to take the place, but Stanley just told me to show up tomorrow with a check and the keys would be mine.

“These are my kind of people,” I thought.

I hurried back to my friend Victoria’s place, where I’d been crashing while she was out of town, after work the next day to gather my few belongings and head over to the Chelsea. I had been staying at her place for a few days already, so it occurred to me that—whether I could pick up on the scent myself or not—the place probably smelled like a guy who rarely changed his socks and also liked to sit around in his underwear, drink beer, and eat Chinese food whenever possible. As I tidied up a bit, I figured it might not be a bad idea to let some fresh air into the place even though it was early March and still freezing outside. I decided to crack a window and, as the cold winter air rushed into the room, heard a slow, creaking sound coming from the window. For reasons I still can’t comprehend, I failed to notice that the window I’d just opened also happened to be housing a large air conditioner.

“This seems bad,” I thought.

I rushed back over to the window but it was too late. The air conditioner had already become gravity’s bitch. But I managed to get there quickly enough to grab the cord to the air conditioner as it slithered out the window. I yanked it as hard as I could, certain that crisis had totally been averted, only to find myself holding nothing but a fistful of frayed wires, like I was a cartoon character. Next, I heard a stentorian thud. I pitched myself out the window to see the air conditioner in pieces on someone’s backyard patio four storeys below. I gasped at the sight of it and cringed at the thought of what might have happened if the window I opened had been in the front of the building. I could see the cover of the
New York Post
already: “Cleveland Moron Cools Off Avenue C Pedestrians … Permanently!” I figured the only way I’d be staying in New York City after that would be for court appearances. The whole episode took about three seconds, but at the time it felt like it had played out over several pants-shitting minutes.

It occurred to me that I should probably own up to my carelessness (okay, it might have been flat-out stupidity) to whoever lived on the first floor, but with no one dead or even injured, I figured it might be better to just take the low road and get the hell out of there as quickly as possible.

“222 West 23rd Street between 7th and 8th,” I told a cab driver as I hopped in the back. I thought it would sound cooler that way. And I still think it did.

When I got to the Chelsea, I flung open the front doors and excitedly dashed inside.

“I’m moving in!” I said to the front desk guy, waving my key in the air as I headed for the elevator with nothing but a duffel bag.

Moments later I let myself into my new home, room 732. It wasn’t much bigger than a freight elevator and only slightly cozier with just a twin bed, a mini fridge, and an old TV to comfort me. Hinting at the fun ahead, the room also came with an old upright piano against one wall. I could have used the extra space it occupied, but I felt like it gave the room a touch of class. And while I could actually play a little, it seemed cruel to subject my neighbors to the opening chords of Billy Joel’s “Only the Good Die Young” more than a couple of times a week, so I rarely touched it when sober.

Perhaps most noticeable about my new place was the fact that it lacked its own bathroom. Instead, I had a second key that would get me into a bathroom with a toilet and a shower at the end of the hall that I’d be sharing with three other tenants. I was told that was the European style, which sounded glamorous, so I just went with it. Besides, as small as my room was, having my bathroom in a whole other part of the building was a blessing in a way as it allowed me to distance myself from the crime scene should I ever have any gastrointestinal issues. However, having the bathroom entirely separate from my room presented its own set of challenges. Given the Chelsea’s frequent film appearances, it wasn’t unusual for me to stumble out of my room in the morning wearing just a towel, only to find the hallway lined with craft service tables and production assistants puffing on Marlboro Lights.

“I’m sorry,” some guy with a clipboard and headset might tell me. “We’re filming a movie so we’re asking people to try and stay out of the hallway.”

“Sure thing,” I’d say, helping myself to what I assumed were free bagels and all-you-can-eat Reese’s peanut butter cups. “Just as soon as I get done taking a shit.”

I didn’t like to talk that way, but I was now officially an artist and—sorry—but artists don’t censor themselves.

My room did have a small sink and a mirror in one corner, presumably for brushing teeth and performing other last minute cosmetic wonders before hitting the town. I knew myself too well, though, and immediately laid down the law with the only guy in the room—me—that that sink would never, ever do double duty as a urinal as long as I lived there. Sadly, however, I only lasted four hours before I found myself coyly shuffling over to the sink with my pants unzipped. Sorry, but sometimes artists don’t have time to walk all the way to the end of the hall to use the toilet, either.

Despite my lax in-room urination policy, I quickly learned that my new status as a resident of the Chelsea Hotel was something to take pride in as long as I gave the sink a good rinse every once in a while.

“This is Dave,” a friend would say while introducing me to someone or another at a bar. “He lives at the Chelsea Hotel.”

“Cool!” they’d invariably respond.

It was as if people were giving me partial credit for all the great writing, music, and art that had been spawned there over the years. It felt a bit silly, but being new in town and all, it was nice to have an icebreaker other than just saying “I’m new in town” over and over again like I was some kind of she-male advertising my reasonably priced in- and outcall services in the back of
The Village Voice.
Besides, I chose to believe it was only a matter of time before I whipped up something of important cultural significance back in room 732.

Once the initial thrill of my new address wore off, though, it was hard to deny that my room itself was pretty depressing. The walls were dirty, the carpet even dirtier, and my presence wasn’t helping matters with either. Though I had a window, it was covered in steel bars and the view was only good if you’re into bricks. I’d never made plans to kill myself before, but among the many reasons I hadn’t was the fact that I had never lived anywhere I would have ever been comfortable having someone find my body. Room 732, however, was a different story. I could totally, totally see it. It was almost like a dead body would have completed the decor. I could practically hear my friends’ hearts sink the first time they swung by for a visit.

“There’s a darkness to this place,” my friend Fred said upon seeing the place for the first time. “You have to get out of here before it swallows you whole.”

It might have been a little melodramatic, but he definitely had a point. And while I certainly didn’t want to over-romanticize the place, I quickly realized that if I didn’t, Fred’s assessment might eventually prove correct.

To that end, I decided to actively try to turn things around. On the interior decorating front, I bought a bunch of plastic flowers from the dollar store downstairs, some Christmas lights from a nearby hardware store, and a tapestry from an Indian gift shop across the street. Then I pulled some posters for a Spanish radio station featuring buxom girls in bikinis off a few lampposts along 23rd Street and hung them up in my room with the help of some duct tape. Within minutes, the place was so festive you could barely even smell the pee anymore. It was less shabby-chic than just plain shithole-chic, but still an improvement and still in keeping with the mildly suicidal vibe of the place.

“It looks like a real artist lives here,” I thought as I took in my handiwork. “All I have to do now is create something, anything, and my work is done here.”

Room 732: My room at the Chelsea Hotel that I decorated all by myself. If you blur your eyes a little bit, it’s really not so bad.

My neighbors at the Chelsea were as eclectic as my decorating skills. Next door was a part-time drag queen who held New Age meditation sessions in his room twice a week. Across from me was a Swiss club promoter who was so awesomely rude and unfriendly whenever I encountered her that I almost looked forward to it. Down the dimly lit hall was a movie star, a surf guitarist, and a retired dancer with a penchant for using a garbage bag as a purse.

But my favorite person on the floor—and the only one I ever really became friends with—lived in a room just two doors down at the end of my hallway. He was an old man with whom I shared the bathroom. The first time I ran into him was early one morning when I was just getting in from a long night out. As unlike me as it was, I had decided to use the bathroom in the hall before heading back to my room and, when I came out, discovered my new neighbor standing there impatiently in a pair of old Army pants, unlaced hiking boots, a baggy sweatshirt, and a winter hat over close-cropped gray hair.

“Hi,” I said. “Sorry for taking so long.”

The man said nothing in return, instead just sighed and rolled his eyes as if to show his disdain for having to share his bathroom with yet another random bastard. I ran into the old man in the hallway several times over the next couple of weeks. I said hello each time and eventually graduated from receiving a blank stare in return to an indifferent nod to a friendly nod to an actual hello. After about three weeks, however, when I spotted the old man in the hallway wearing just a tank top, I noticed something different about him. He had breasts and was, it turned out, actually a woman.

“My name is Dave,” I told her, finally officially introducing myself.

“I’m Storme,” she replied, shaking my hand.

In retrospect, it kind of made sense that I had mistaken Storme for a man all that time. Though she was retired by that point, she was a legendary drag king (the female version of a drag queen, just like it sounds) who used to tour the country performing in a show with a group of female impersonators. She also worked security at a number of lesbian bars around town over the years. And, perhaps most famously, she is credited with helping to spearhead the Stonewall riots in 1969. Some say she threw the first punch. She was a total badass and knew it.

“It’s nice to have you as a neighbor,” Storme told me. “The girl in there before you would sit there on her bed naked with the door wide open all the time. I hated it.”

“Yeah, I’m not really planning on doing that sort of thing very much,” I assured her.

Over time, Storme and I became more and more friendly, often stopping outside each others’ doors to chat, especially if one or both of us had had a few drinks. Equally tough and sweet, she seemed to pride herself on being the eyes and ears of the hotel. And she wasn’t shy about the fact that she owned a gun—or at least used to—and knew how to use it.

“Honey, if anyone in this hotel ever gives you any trouble, you just let me know and I’ll take care of it,” she said to me one day without prompting. “In fact, if anyone anywhere ever gives you any trouble, you just let me know where I can find them and I’ll see to it that they never bother you again.”

God, I loved that woman. She was like my eighty-something bodyguard, confidant, and surrogate grandmother all rolled into one, willing to lend me a shoulder to cry on or a shoulder to take a bullet for me whenever I might need it. And though it turned out I didn’t have occasion for either, it was always nice to know she was just a few feet away should my circumstances ever change.

Meanwhile, I had been waiting for some of the magic of the Chelsea’s walls to rub off on me so I could start cranking out some sort of art or another that was guided by the ghosts of all the legends that had come before me. But, with the television show I had been writing for suddenly canceled and me suddenly unemployed, the only part of any of that romantic picture that seemed to come easily was being a starving artist. And since I didn’t even have a stove in my room, I couldn’t even eat ramen noodles every meal of the day like artists are supposed to do. Instead I ate whatever room temperature stuff was on sale.

I knew I had to discipline myself if I ever wanted to stay in the hotel long enough to create anything lasting and important, so, in an effort to make that happen, I decided to lay down a second law with myself, one I actually intended to obey.

“There will be absolutely no unnecessary spending!” I promised myself. “This is about survival!”