10,381. RUDIMENTS, pt.189

RUDIMENTS, pt.189

Making Cars

You know how Yogi Berra once

said, 'It gets late early out there,'

about the field light and shadows

the old Yankee stadium, well that's

a little like what my life felt like.

Halfway to Hades and not even close.

Looking back, I can't see a thing,

and looking ahead, it all seems 

closed up. I was making definitions 

up, and a lot of the times the only

way I found out about things was

by the doing. (Which sort of sums

up my version of sex education too.

Curiously enough, the good padres

in the seminary left that subject out.

I had to learn it on the fly, and from

the fly too. I'd later hear how kids

in school had sat and squirmed

through their visual and graphic

sex ed. classes, learning about

what goes where, how, and how 

long, and even how to tell when 

you were done. Funny stuff, all

those A's given out. Some of the

thugs I ended up knowing, that was

the only 'A' they ever got in their

whole life). Take the Chelsea Hotel,

as a for-instance. A ghastly place

like that had its own aura and an

intensity I could feel, yet I didn't

know much about it. It served a

particular, arty, debauched, and

quite minority crowd of insiders.

If anything, and if a person like me,

you'd know little about what went on;

past what I could glean from the Village 

Voice, or reading about Virgil Thomson 

or Dylan Thomas, I knew very little 

else about the 'living' in that place.

I always thought that the best thing

a person could do was to settle out,

go slowly and with deliberation, and

undertake each one of life's personal

tasks with a quiet fortitude. The 

Chelsea unraveled all that.

-

There were people in there who

had seldom come out in 10 or 12 

years  -  absolute and creepy nutburgers.

Don't get me wrong, there were others

too, but it was really just like a cheap

domicile for the marginally insane. A

person can enter that peculiar ward

slowly, over time, or all at once. Some

can enter and leave it at will. There

were real artists in there, doing their

work, and, just as well, there were

people who worshiped their Siamese

cat as a Deity, a King, and a Kong, of

of myriad dimensions who ruled a

totally and singular world of which 

only they were the inhabitant, and 

their cat the ruler. Inside the Chelsea,

there were both people on their way 'up' -

to something and to whatever, and people 

who'd already been on the way 'down'

for a decade. The halls were creepy, 

and the noises always odd. Eye-contact

was an elective, an option, but beware.

I didn't even know it, but drugs were

already trespassing there like morning

coffee in a Holiday Inn. Which means

they were currency, a secret Bitcoin 

of their day. Others somehow finagled

their way into paying their rent (late

rent, always) in paintings. That was

the best thing too  -  because in the

first entry room of the Chelsea there 

was a comfy-chair and sofa kid of

parlour or sitting room. The walls

were covered with rent paintings,

a few of which, I'm told, later were

worth millions, and the now-successful

artists mostly long gone. That sitting

room, depending on where you sat,

afforded a view of the main desk and 

the main stairwell - so you'd get to see 

any interior activity or comings and

goings along that stairwell and desk 

platform area. Plus there was an interior

doorway  (called 'secret' but it wasn't)

which led directly into the vast bar next

door. Restaurant, bar, hang-out, you

name it. Once just the Chelsea Bar or

something, it late became more of a

Spanish-themed place, still odd and

bizarre, called El Quixote, wherein 

certain people had their certain tables 

and stools, and full reverence was given

to notables  -  art, song, dance, or drug,

notables. Writers kept quiet and 

slinky, but they were there too. 

'El Cid,' as in vicious.

-

The whole idea of the Chelsea Hotel 

was in being secretive about not being 

secretive. It sounds like a paradox, or

 a conundrum, but it's neither. At those 

levels, the people herein were all 

exhibitionists and by that  their fates 

and desires were judged. No one was

there, truthfully, because they didn't

wish to be there  -  it was a curiously

New York way of life; part sordid, part

twisted. instead of living here, any one

of these people could probably have 

been in a marginally better situation

somewhere else, in some walk-up 

apartment or some place like that. 

But there they simply would have been

'private citizen' so-and-so. Responsible

for their own upkeep and milk and 

bread. At the Chelsea you almost

automatically were 'someone' already,

just by being admitted there. A very

private inner-club clientele of freaks.

I used to enjoy the lobby  -  no one

cared, never looked up, there was no

stopping : bring a book, sketchbook,

scarf or circus, you were allowed in

to sit, and mingle, if need be.

It was also a grim sex-ghetto, the

dark side; but as I said they all 

already knew about that, whereas 

I was unschooled. Weird scenes

inside the gold mine, as The Doors

or somebody sang. All you really 

needed to do was stay in place to be

invisible, and no one cared. The old

chairs were neat, interesting upholstery

nail-heads on the arms, kind of a 

fancified old-style. I was facetiously,

I guess, told once that those nail-heads

were to make it uncomfortable for

anyone's bare ass to be using the

chair arms for support while having

a 'go.' Like they do to keep pigeons

off drainpipes. Much of what I saw

in the Chelsea lobby, I realize now,

is reproduced over and over, endlessly

and ad nauseum, each year at the end

of June in New York City in the

Gay Day Parade. But it's lost any

authenticity and is simply a parody

based on its own flamboyance.

-

23rd Street was very cool  -  besides

the Chelsea, there were blind people 

(Lighthouse For the Blind or something

was there), which I always chuckled at.

All this parading and exhibitionism, and

they never saw a thing. There were

dead-dog druggies and drunks, and

wild-kink whores and hookers. It was

all made wilder by the architectural

uniqueness of the Chelsea Hotel itself;

with that front resembling a weirded

out northern version of New Orleans.

Maybe on the cheap, maybe not.

Buses stopped and buses went. The

people of those buses knew where they

were, or they didn't  - it was as if the

entire weirded street was an either-or.

There simply was no middle ground.

A lot of rock n' roll grew out of here;

music, and characters too. Some got

out alive, others didn't.

-

There are legions of stories of that place, 

and the darkside of everything usually

ends up there, in story-line version

anyway. It was a cub-reporter's paradise,

the 'rock n' roll beat' writer's constant

stated of excitement  -  engorged,

swollen, big, ready to unload. Some

of those 90-year old reclusive strange

people inside there, I sometimes did

wonder how they'd survived, and did 

they make it, in their own eyes, I 

wondered, to the top, or to the bottom. 

If you had to write about another

place or another century, a time past 

and a time unknown, this was

surely the place. It got late
early in there.