The Transformative Power of Dirt
It was a sunny Saturday morning in June 2005. I had begun getting out and interacting more with people that year, rather than just sitting in my room writing and drinking. Susan and I had started Living with Legends, our Chelsea Hotel blog, in April, and we made a lot of new friends and contacts through that enterprise. I was giving a reading of my fiction later that day at the Ear Inn, and I was walking around distracted, worrying about how I would do. Readings always stressed me out, which was why I had generally avoided them in the past.
I was walking by the building next door to the Chelsea, when all of a sudden something hit me in the face. Or rather, several small things, felt like a load of dirt. I looked up. There was a stained glass window propped open on the second floor. I didn’t see anybody, but I yelled anyway, crossly: “Hey buddy, don’t throw stuff out the window!”
A little Latino man—looked like the janitor—popped his head and shoulders up, dustpan in hand, and said, stupidly, “I didn’t throw anything out the window!”
Yeah, right, I thought. “Well, good! Don’t!” I said.
It had pissed me off, and I still needed to vent some of that anger. So when I got to the door of the Chelsea, I told the few people standing there, “Some guy just threw something out the window and hit me! Can you believe that?”
One of the people standing there was Jordan Atkinson, an old writer. Jordan had had a novel published in the seventies, but nothing had come of it. Now he was bitter, always walking around with a chip on his shoulder. He kept his head shaved, but sometimes he got lazy, and today you could see the gray hair growing in on his scalp and face. He was a drunk, fat and unhealthy, his cheeks sagging, pale. He was hung over that day, in a bad mood, you could tell—just looking for a fight.
“Where?!” he demanded.
“Next door. The synagogue.” Jordan was the wrong person to tell, and I immediately regretted it.
“No! Those bastards! I can’t believe it!”
“Uh, it looked like the janitor,” I said quickly, not wanting to start him on any sort of anti-Semitic tirade.
“Son of a bitch! Well, he can’t get away with this!”
Jordan slung open the door and strode through the lobby. I followed behind him.
The manager, Harvey, had been standing there a moment earlier, but when he saw Jordan heading his way, he turned and ducked into the back room. The bellman, Dennis, a brawny Irishman, was left manning the desk.
“Dennis, we need you to kick someone’s ass,” Jordan said as he approached the desk. He explained what had happened, indicating me as the wronged party.
I stood there like an idiot, not saying anything; I would have just as soon dropped the matter.
“It could’ve been anyone,” Jordan said. “Someone could’ve been killed! They can’t have some asshole like that working there. You gotta go over there and straighten this out.”
Dennis stared at him, expressionless.
“Aren’t you gonna do anything?!” Jordan demanded.
I guess Dennis was used to tirades such as this from Jordan. He completely ignored him and looked at me instead. “What do you want me to do for you?” he asked.
“Ah, don’t worry about it,” I said, nervously. “It’s no big deal.”
Shaking his head in disgust, Jordan stalked off toward the elevator, which had just arrived. I followed, since I was going that way too.
“I can’t believe you don’t want to do anything about it,” Jordan said as we rode up. “You’re just gonna let the guy get away with that shit?”
I felt vaguely ashamed of myself. “I didn’t want to cost the guy his job or anything,” I said.
Jordan rolled his eyes. “Didn’t you at least say something?”
“Uh, yeah,” I said, thinking quickly. “I said, ‘Don’t throw shit out the window, you fucking asshole!’”
Jordan didn’t say anything, but he snickered, and actually cracked a smile, a rarity for him. I was glad to see he approved.
It had taken a load off my shoulders too. For those brief few minutes I had been able to get outside of myself. I didn’t worry anymore, enjoyed the day, went to the bar where it was nice and cool inside—bars are always nicest in the afternoon—and the reading went off without a hitch.
