Its fame attracted all kinds of artistic types, in particular—for reasons that remain obscure—those who were mentally unbalanced. I’ll go over a few, beginning with Sarah Bernhardt. The actress traveled everywhere with her own silk bedsheets and kept warm with a down comforter made to fit the padded coffin in which she always slept. Before you write this off as a simple caprice, let me inform you that La Bernhardt was not the first or the last tenant of the Chelsea to sleep in a coffin. Murphy has positively confirmed two other cases. Much can be inferred concerning the spirit and style of those individuals who over the years decided to stay at the Chelsea, including our good old Mr. Tuttle.
As for the fraternity of writers, to which I myself belong, the first prestigious entry in our guest book was Mr. William Dean Howells, who occupied a suite consisting of four rooms in 1888 . . . Er, Murphy, I can verify the year, but where did you get “four rooms” from? Are you sure? Oh, well. Let’s move on. That same year, the author of the Yankee Quixote—in whose tales the swamps of the South stand for the plains of La Mancha, and the wide Mississippi is a mighty reincarnation of the elusive Guadiana—hung his hat there. I am referring, of course, as even the most dull-witted among you must have guessed, to Samuel Clemens, better known as Mark Twain. Sober or drunk—we won’t go into that—the author of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was often to be seen at the bar.
Between 1907 and 1910, when the Chelsea was already a hotel, no less a figure than O. Henry lived in one of its rooms. Oh, the magnificent roundness of that initial, stripped and bared of any glitzy consonants, reduced to the perfection of a circle accompanied with the humility of a squire by an imperceptible ink stain, a thing devoid of dimensions, the most simple of the punctuation marks: the dot of the i fallen to the ground like a ball. A humble full stop, otherwise known as period. And since there is a period here, my fellow Incoherents, students, enemies, and friends, if you’ll allow me to interject some remarks of a personal nature, I will digress for a moment to tell you that I had the honor of brushing up against the great O. Henry face to face. That’s right. It happened at McSorley’s, the Irish tavern in the East Village. He was carrying four mugs of beer, two in each hand, and I was carrying only two, one in my left hand and one in my right. Mine were pale, his dark. Mr. Henry, said I . . . Murphy, you’re a bit sloppy, you know? I think you should be more careful when you’re writing anything I might have to read aloud, in public. I can’t read ahead to make sure I’m not about to make a fool of myself. Would I have really addressed the man by his pseudonym? Well, I can’t remember. Makes it sound a little like fiction, really. And we oughtn’t allow any. Anyway: Mr. Henry, said I brimming with admiration as he stood before me, but I was able to add nothing else to my plea. He gave me a funny look. There’s no need to be so formal, he blurted out. Call me O, just like that, without the period, and turning around, he left me stranded with my admiration and my two beers. I’ll never forget those eyes, round like his name, the dark points of his pupils fixed for a second on mine. I felt like the luckiest man in the city. The best writer in town (who cares what the highbrows might have thought) had deigned to address one of his humble admirers. My experience can only be classified as sublime, as much as my assistant, Murphy Burrell, may want to cast aspersions on it, reminding me that O. Henry often went on outrageous drinking binges during which he spent his time not composing immortal prose but trying to pinch the waitresses’ asses.
But the Chelsea does not live on prose alone! In its hallways, there are the echoes of the footsteps of poets as fine as Hart Crane. If we had time, I would recite you his poem about the Brooklyn Bridge from beginning to end. Unfortunately, time’s just what we don’t have. But I will nonetheless if briefly talk about Edgar Lee Masters, the Poet of Death. The last time Mr. Tuttle set foot at one of our meetings, we the Knights Incoherent gave him a copy of The Spoon River Anthology by way of birthday present—a collection of poems as great as any ever written. Oh boy, Murphy. So you’ve become a critic now, into the bargain? Such strong opinions. I couldn’t care less if Americans don’t tend to rate Spoon River particularly high in terms of, what do you call it, “Great Writing”? Funny, I don’t remember asking you for your opinion, smartass. The guardians of the canon can go chew their way through the Cantos for all I care. The Spoon River Anthology is a great book, end of story, in my humble opinion. A stroke of genius to write a volume consisting exclusively of epitaphs. And in each epitaph a story. Madmen, drunks, murderers, whores, everything is there, spoken from the grave.
Let’s move on . . . where the hell did I put my notes? Do you have them, Burrell? You’re sure? Oh no, you’re right. Sorry. Here they are . . . let’s see, who’s up now? Vladimir Nabokov? But I wasn’t going to tear into him till the end. Are you doing all this on purpose, Master Burrell? Well, your little ruse won’t work. I don’t care what the know-it-alls say. Nabokov’s a hack and that’s it. So let’s set things in order here. What I wanted to do is tell you a juicy little anecdote, possibly apocryphal, about Sinclair Lewis. You’re ready? In that case, I’ll perform a little experiment. On a certain occasion, the good Don Sinclair was giving a lecture on writing to an audience of devoted fans. Let’s see, how many of you here want to be writers? Raise your hands, please. No, no, not you, morons. That’s what he said to his audience then—Sinclair Lewis did. Murphy, put your hand down, please. Everybody else has, in case you haven’t noticed. You always have to make a scene. So yes, that’s exactly right, just about everyone raised their hands, just like you did just now. On seeing that, Lewis struck the podium with his fist and exclaimed: Then why the hell aren’t you home writing? I’m not quite sure why the hell I included that in my notes, but I didn’t want it to go unsaid. Mind that, you lazy scribbler wannabes . . . And something else, too: the worst thing you can do is bore your reader.
Now I have to talk about the Knotts, Murphy? Why do you want me to do that? You should be giving this lecture, not me . . . Now why are you getting up and bowing to the audience again? You already got your round of applause, sit down, please. Okay, thanks. So, the Murphys . . . I mean, the Knotts built a library on the second floor. Did you double check this? What’s this now? From an aesthetic point of view, they almost ruined the hotel. They divided the suites to increase the profits, and if, to make room, something had to be broken, well, they broke it. They almost destroyed the hallways, lowering the ceilings, and . . . I better not go on . . . let’s see, the years of the Great Depression . . . I think I’m going to skip ahead . . . the Louisiana Story . . . Wait . . . What does that have to do with the Chelsea? What? It was a collaboration between three prestigious Chelsea residents, you say? Who, may I ask? Robert Flaherty, Virgil Thomson, and Richard Leacock? Well, well. Who the hell cares, is my reply. Let’s see now. Thomas Wolfe. Yes, this is good. Wolfe showed up at the Chelsea on a sunny morning in 1937. Someone had told him about the hotel and he came to take a look. It so happened that he ran into no other than Edgar Lee Masters . . . Ed recognized Tom, Tom recognized Ed. Ed asked what Tom was doing there. Tom replied that he was thinking of moving into the hotel. Don’t say another word, you’re staying, Edgar Lee said, and introduced him to the manager, who put him up in one of the most exclusive and lavish apartments in the place. Wolfe also had a nice suite, I mean it was dirty and cavernous but at least it had very high ceilings, which the gigantic Wolfe appreciated because he didn’t have to bump his head on the doorframes. In the bathroom, upon a raised, canopied platform, there was a most impressive toilet bowl. What a nice detail. I get tears in my eyes thinking—I hope all of this is true, Murphy—that the manuscript of Look Homeward, Angel was written atop such a majestic throne. Once he’d finished a section of the novel, he would put it inside a wooden box next to his throne. Soon, a single box wasn’t enough. He piled them up all over the bathroom, but soon he ran out of space and had to use the kitchen and then the living room until the whole place was full of boxes brimming with manuscript pages. When he died, the sheets of paper stuffed in
the packing boxes numbered in the tens of thousands. One of the projects that was cut short by his early departure was a history of the hotel . . .
In 1939, the Knotts sold the Chelsea. None of these changes killed the spirit of the place. Its mysterious aura continued to attract new artists, younger blood, talented musicians, writers, poets, and painters, most of them drug addicts or drunks or both at once.
What are you saying, Burrell? Speak up, for God’s sake, I can’t hear you. Arthur Miller? No, I’m not going to say anything about Miller, I can’t stand him. Who? Dylan Thomas? Everyone knows the story of the eighteen straight whiskies he drank before dying at St. Vincent’s. What’s wrong now? What’s with the commotion? Why are you holding that gigantic alarm clock up in the air? You’re a clown, Murphy Burrell. You can’t just wear a wristwatch like everybody else? And now you’re waving a red flag? Have you completely lost your mind? Ah, okay, I get it . . . My friends, we’re out of time. As a matter of fact, I’ve gone over. Too bad, with all these notes left. William Burroughs . . . And so, that’s it. All we have to do is observe a minute of silence for our friend Mr. Tuttle. Thank you for your attention. Please rise.
[There follows a large blank space that Lord Gin, the stenographer of the Society, intends to be the typographic equivalent of sixty seconds of silence, then the words Requiescat in Pace. Amen.]
THE AVENGING ANGEL
[Original text from 1972.
Revised by Gal Ackerman
in February 1992.]
Saturday at the Chamberpot with Marc Capaldi. Colm Talbot, the ex cop, has just opened a bar right next to the Wilde Fire.
You know what he’s calling it? Marc asks. The Green Snot. Those Irish are genius when it comes to names. You probably can’t guess where the name comes from, I bet.
A squalid old man approaches and asks for a cigarette. Our waitress comes out from behind the counter to steer him back onto the street, but Marc stops her with a wave of his hand and, pointing to the sky, barks:
The sea, the snotgreen sea, the scrotumtightening sea. Epi oinopa pontos. Ah, Dedalus, the Greeks!
The old man blinks, not knowing what to say.
Marc lets out a guffaw and the old man laughs with him.
James Joyce, Ulysses, chapter one, Marc says and gives the beggar an almost-full pack of L&M. The waitress tells him to go away and stay gone.
The Green Snot is a shoebox wedged in between two other foul places, the Mad Stork and the Wilde Fire. The Mad Stork has jazz on Saturdays; the Wilde Fire is a shitty bar, where prostitutes gather. On the corner is a gas station in front of an empty lot. That’s where it all happens after midnight. When we get there, there’s a patrol car at the gas station with its lights flashing. The cops have their windows rolled down and are calmly chatting with a couple of people. One of them waves at Marc. According to him, the cops take a cut from the pimps, the hustlers, and the bar owners. They hang out for a moment at the gas station before hightailing it out of there.
At the Green Snot, Marc goes directly to the back and starts chatting with a group of very elegantly dressed black men. A fat, tall man with red hair wipes the counter in front of me with a wet cloth.
I know you, he says. You’re a friend of the Poet. Did you come with him?
I nod. I’m not sure how Marc gets everyone to call him that in these lousy joints.
The tall fat man offers a hand: Colm Talbot, he says. I’m sorry, I don’t remember your name.
Gal Ackerman.
Pleasure to meet you. Is this your first time in the Green Snot?
I tell him it is.
First one on the house, then. What’ll it be?
Marc disappears into the bathroom with one of the well-dressed black men. After a few moments, they come out together, laughing and wiping their noses
Have you got a light, mi amor? chimes a woman’s voice behind me in a Spanish tinged with Caribbean inflections. When I turn around, I see a mulatta with green eyes who can’t be older than eighteen. I search my pockets to no avail.
I’m sorry, I say. I thought I had a lighter with me.
And no fire here either? she says, cupping her hand on my genitals.
Careful, white boy, someone mutters in my ear. She’s after your wallet not your cock.
It’s Al Green, a friend of Marc’s who plays the double bass at the Mad Stork. He bumps his shoulder into mine, placing a small bag of coke in my hand. No, thanks, I say. Al winks at the girl, offers her a light, and heads for the bathroom.
Will you buy me a drink? the girl asks.
I signal for Colm and she asks for a Budweiser. Her name is Esmeralda and she’s from Spanish Harlem. She says they gave her that name because of her eyes.
Nothing to do with the name of this place? asks Marc, right before heading for the door to meet someone waiting for him at the parking lot. I wonder what he’s up to or whether he’ll come back. Years before, when we first met, I wrote this about him:
Marc Capaldi, Italian American, publicity agent, forty-six years old, has published three collections of poems. We met at his apartment on the West Side. As we were leaving, he stuck one of his books in his pocket. It seems incomprehensible to me that he should carry his poetry with him when he goes to those desperate, lonely places where he likes to spend his nights, trying to mitigate the pain of living with a few crystals of coke and a few drops of semen. He’s attracted to sinister guys—the more dangerous they look, the better; just like the dumps where he goes to look for them. Before leaving his apartment, we’d been talking about poetry. By the time we reached the fourth or fifth bar, he rounded on me, exclaiming:
The rabble, blood and shit, the fucking asshole of the world, urban detritus, the loneliness and pain of humanity. Angels, but not those Rilke liked to yodel about—castrati who don’t know what life is about.
Which I found a bit adolescent, to tell the truth. On one hand, in his defense, he was very drunk at the time. On the other, though, I’ve had a chance to skim through his books, and his poetry is like that too—all blood and shit, reeking of desolation and rot. And yet, though of course I could be reading too much into it, I though I saw, from time to time, a infinitesimal flame behind some of his work that allowed one to infer that there was least a sliver of hope in Marc.
Rilke’s angels were not castrati, I said, but let’s not argue about poetry now.
Why not? Because poetry’s too good for the gutter?
No, not that.
It better not be that, because the shit we’re wading through is the real world. That’s why I don’t give a damn about your poets. Not even Blake, much as he talks about hell. People like Burroughs or Bukowski, maybe. At least if they bother to talk to angels it’s because they want to fuck them and then wipe their asses with feathers.
We’ll talk about it some other time, Marc.
Why? This is where you’ll find what you’re looking for, not in Rilke or all those other sublime bastards you gorge yourself with.
We’ve barely just met, how do you know what I’m looking for?
Because you’re looking for the same thing I am, you’re just not doing it in the right place.
And where should I look?
I’ve told you. In the filth. You’re knee-deep in it yourself, you just don’t want to hear about it. But it’s in blood, shit, and semen that you’re going to find what you’re looking for. Blood, shit, and semen, don’t forget it, like when you get fucked in the ass, something you’re too uptight to try because you think you’re not a faggot. Oh, and a bit of coke. Asshole and nostril—they should take whatever comes, no protection, no second thoughts. And if it kills you—well, who cares? All the better. They’ll burn you up, put you in an urn, and that’s that. What are the so-called upright citizens of the world trying to prove? They want me to think I have to die just because I like to fuck? Well, fine. What counts is to be able to brush up against eternity, if only for a moment. Let them burn us. God couldn’t care less what any of us do.
T
he owner of the bar pulled me aside and told me that I had thirty seconds to get Marc out of there, otherwise he would take care of it himself, and it could get nasty. He was clasping a gold medal pendant around his neck. We’re Catholics around here and don’t like this bullshit. And when he sobers up tell the son of a bitch never to show his snout around here again.
Marc was about to say something, but I put a hand over his mouth, and dragged him as best I could out to the street. I put him in a cab, and we got out of there.
The black man in the smart suit comes back from the empty lot by himself. I take a peek out the door but there’s no sign of Marc. Esmeralda is leaning on the jukebox, smiling, when I head back for the bar. She raises her Bud and calls me over. She waits for the song to end, grabs my hand, and leads me out the front door. On Ninth Avenue, the shadows of the whores and transvestites are indistinguishable from those of the trees and streetlights. We pass blocks of buildings and more empty lots. A dirty moon floats in the sky. After a few blocks I realize that a scrawny guy wearing a ball cap with the Puerto Rican flag on it is following us. Esmeralda crouches over the curb and spits out a long, viscous string of saliva that clings to her lips, a worm of rotten light.
What have you been snorting? I ask her.
What the fuck are you talking about? she responds in her Caribbean singsong, still crouching. Her teeth reflect the light of the streetlight. I don’t do that kind of thing.
What kind of thing?
She gets up nimbly.
I’m no whore, get it?
Now that her eyes are level with mine, I realize they’re a bit crossed. The light changes to green. We look at it as if it’s on the other bank of a river we have no way of crossing. The skeletal Puerto Rican watches us, leaning on a tree, always keeping exactly the same distance. Esmeralda begins walking against the red light. A car speeds by her, very close. I hear the trail of a yell, followed by a loud honk that vanishes into the night. I think she’s completely forgotten about me, that she’s heading off to some corner on Eleventh Avenue, but when she gets to the other side of the street she gestures for me to follow.
Call Me Brooklyn Page 26
