The Stage
I: LOBBY MASCOTS
Stanley Bard, our justly esteemed proprietor, always sees to it that his guests are well entertained. In particular, he provides us with an unbroken series of inadvertent performance artists, appearing daily on that grand old stage known as the Chelsea Hotel lobby.
The first during my residence was Hiroya. In his red overalls and later in his paint-spattered suit, the fat, then suddenly thin Hiroya was a self-promoter par excellence, in fact almost to the point of mania or psychosis. Toward the end he became such a pain that the desk people began to call him Annoy-ya.
After Hiroya’s untimely demise, we were treated for a time to the otherworldly stylings of the Angel, another Japanese man you have met, who dressed in drag with feathered wings on his back. He was usually attired all in white, but sometimes he would appear as a sinful red angel or even as a black angel of death. But no matter what color he wore, he was essentially a seedy angel. Though at times he would wear a splendid long gown, topping it off with a bejeweled tiara, at other times, in keeping with the faded grandeur of the hotel, he allowed his costumes to deteriorate, the lace to get torn and dirty, the feathers of his wings to molt, like an angel fallen to earth. When it was hot, the Angel would sometimes just wear his frilly panties with a pair of wings on his back—maybe he got the idea from Victoria’s Secret—and I think that was what finally ran him afoul of management and got him kicked out.
Then there was the long run of Blondie, a disheveled woman with Tourette’s syndrome who would stand out on the street in front of the hotel and make weird guttural noises and who would generally flee if you approached her—several times she ran out into the street to escape me—though sometimes she would hold her ground and hiss at you like a snake. She refused to go into her room—demons lurking in there, apparently—and would sleep in the lobby or in the hallways. Periodically, Blondie would disappear for a week or two, apparently to get treatment, and then come back looking more bedraggled than ever. Her sojourns abroad increased in frequency and duration, and then one day she returned no more.
We seemed to be heading downhill with that third one, I must admit—though some of the crueler bohemians among us got their jollies by chasing after poor Blondie and running her up the stairs—but lately things are looking up, especially now that we have the Umpire in residence.
II: THE UMPIRE
The Umpire is a middle-aged woman who hangs out in the Chelsea lobby and apparently can’t control her gestures. (Maybe she has Tourette’s too. Unfortunately, I’m not a psychiatrist.) When you walk through the lobby, she’ll let you know what she thinks of you through a series of hand signals: thumbs-down, up-yours, the finger, the cuckoo sign, holding her nose: P-U. She’s really more like a third-base coach giving the batter a series of signals, but somebody once called her the Umpire, and the name stuck. Though she usually expresses a rather negative opinion of people, sometimes the Umpire will actually give the safe sign, or the thumbs up, or even the okay sign.
One day three tourists came into the lobby, three young women in pastels: two blonds, slightly heavy, and one brunette, thinner. They were staying at the hotel and had gone out for the day, but one of the women had lost her sunglasses, and now they had come back looking for them. They looked around briefly near the chairs where they had been sitting earlier in the day.
But it wasn’t long before they noticed that the Umpire was sitting across the room wearing a pair of sunglasses that looked suspiciously like the ones that had been lost. (They may very well have belonged to the Umpire, I can’t say for sure, but the tourist women thought otherwise.) The women huddled, exchanging nervous glances, whispering among themselves. They were intimidated by the Umpire and were afraid to ask her about the sunglasses, because whenever they would look in her direction, she would give them the finger or make some other obscene gesture. Finally, they decided to tell the manager.
The Umpire had stood up and walked toward the desk to wait for the elevator, so the manager didn’t have to go far. He came out from behind the desk and asked her, “Are those your glasses?”
The Umpire nodded up and down in reply.
“You didn’t find those glasses sitting here in the lobby?”
She shook her head back and forth.
The manager threw up his hands. “Well, if she says they’re hers, there’s not much I can do.”
As often happens, the elevator was taking a long time to arrive. The three women, slightly dazed, stood there waiting for it with the Umpire.
Finally, one of the women, the brunette, the one whose glasses had been stolen, couldn’t take it anymore. “Why are we going back up to the room to look for the sunglasses?!” she said. “We know where they are! She’s wearing them!”
The other women tried to shush her and calm her down. I think by now they had begun to realize that the Umpire was rather off.
The brunette refused to be mollified. “What? I’m just supposed to do nothing while she steals my glasses and then gives me the finger? I’m just supposed to just lie down and take it? I don’t think so!” And she launched into her own series of gestures, imitating the Umpire: “Same to you! Up yours too! How you like them apples?”
The Umpire shrugged her shoulders, unfazed. She gave them a final flurry of signs, threw in a leg shimmy for good measure, and then, as the elevator had by now arrived, stepped on and left the women standing there in the lobby.
III: A THREAT
It was inevitable that the Umpire should eventually run afoul of Magda. A ballet dancer in the forties and fifties, now elderly, Magda was a tough old broad who never took any shit from anyone and was in fact famous for engaging in shouting matches with Stanley Bard.
I was sitting there in the lobby when Magda came walking through, dressed jazz-age cool, her hair in a snow-white bun. Though she wasn’t frail, she walked with a cane, perhaps for defensive purposes. As soon as she caught sight of Magda, the Umpire began running through her usual repertoire of signs, unambiguously disparaging this time.
Most people just ignore the Umpire or else, if they’re feeling cruel, they make a series of their own gestures back at her. Magda, on the other hand, advanced right up to where she was standing and said, “Something bothering you, honey?”
Though showing, I thought, some distress, the Umpire continued alternately to hold her nose and give the old heave-ho.
“You got something to say to me?” Magda asked.
The reply was another series of hand signals.
I cringed, half expecting Magda to assault the Umpire with her cane. Instead, showing remarkable restraint, she marched up to the front desk, and said, “You better keep that woman away from me, or I’m gonna kill her.”
“Ah, come on, Magda,” the manager said, in his Brooklyn accent. “Give her a break. She’s crazy.”
The Umpire had followed, either unafraid or, more likely, compelled by her madness, and now stood nearby, making her signals behind Magda’s back.
“I know damn-well that bitch is crazy,” Magda said. “I’m gonna kill her crazy ass.”
