I did not take very many pictures of room 317. And as far as I know there are no pictures of room 1422, the first room I stayed at in the Parc Lincoln Hotel, 166 West 75th Street.
The name of the hotel amuses me. The word "Parc" evokes something upscale, "Lincoln" something austere. Paul Auster. I think of the 9 or so months (which felt like years) living there as the freshman year of my life, and the people I worked with at Tower Records Lincoln Center the alumni from those days. At this moment I'm listening to classic rock on the radio and wondering about the treacly feeling infecting my head this week. I don't know if I've ever had so many flashbacks to sodden times and moments mostly forgotten.
At seemingly incongruous momentson the phone this week I shut my eyes and expected that when I opened them I would be in the bedroom I grew up in in Tampa >in in in in in , in a cross-legged contortion on the floor with the phone between my legs and my fingers punching up random toll-free telephone numbers just to see who would answer, passing the long summer nights concocting amazingly accurate theories of what went on behind the automated voicemail fa�ades.I remembered those obsessive-compulsive nights while living in room 317 at the Parc Lincoln. Through November and December, 1990, the clock radio (a gift from my grandmother) was the only friend I had, and I slept with that thing like a kid with a stuffed animal or, I later discovered, a strung-out self-declared failure with another 3-night lover. I listened to Danny Stiles on the AM band through the night, and when he played "Those Were the Days, My Friend (We Thought They'd Never End)," by Mary Hopkin, I sat up straight in the bed and, in a rare moment of clarity in the midst of 5 months of the heaviest drinking I've ever done, I looked around room 317. The window was wide open, there was a 6-pack of Budweiser on the sill, and two ghastly pigeons on the outside windowsill. Some nights pigeons stomped right into the room, batting about the tiny space as confused as I was terrified. But that night they stood at attention, clucking mildly, soldiers of a fat, filthy army of the Parc Lincoln. This afternoon I closed my eyes during a phone conversation and could feel room 317 closing in on me. The sweaty summer nights offset by months of impossible coldness; the decent night's sleep interrupted by people screaming; the roach infestation and rats racing through the walls; the sleepless nights holding and listening to the radio, waiting for the unique thrill that comes from hearing a favorite song on the air.
|
|
|
I stood up and, stepping over plates and plastic forks, opened the door to the room and stepped into the hallway. It was 3:30 in the morning and the emphysema-afflicted man in the room across the hall sounded like he might cough his guts up upon the floor.
Sounds of a party or gathering of some sort from an upper floor (I thought it was the 9th floor) wandered through the building, filling the walls like cheap wine through the body. The door to room 314 was, as always, propped open. My door was wide open. From the hallway my room looked enormous. The pigeons at the far end did not regard me at all. I was totally naked and cold in the hall, and I walked toward the elevator, past 4 or 5 other rooms.
|
|
