strap freaks in four days at the Chelsea than I did in my entire career of wearing black leather. Sex at the Chelsea involved giving enemas and fist fucking. I didn’t care for it much. The rooms at the Chelsea were even guaranteed soundproofed. Now why would anyone want a soundproofed hotel room? Heavy sleeping?
I rode up in the elevator with a Puerto Rican girl in a big white hat. She got off on my floor and watched me go to my room from the other end of the hall. Three minutes later she knocked on the door to my room. She sat down on the bed, unbuttoned her pants, opened her purse and took out a picture of Mick Jagger and a vibrator. Then she pulled her pants down to her knees, laid back and masturbated. I called Mike and Dennis into the room to watch with me.
Glen was never at the Chelsea. He was sick of wearing the clothes he had on his back when his suitcase was stolen and he was determined to find his belongings before we left New York. People separated in waves around him as he strode down the hot streets in his smelly lame outfit, positive he would find some Puerto Rican hanging out in a doorway dressed in Glen’s purple pedal pushers and black beads.
Our last night at the Scene Shep asked Alan Strahl to come see us, and he in turn brought some of his own friends. They all arrived between shows and Shep waved me over to their table. Alan Strahl’s friends were some tough-looking guys from Brooklyn, and when he was introduced to me, his mouth fell open. I could tell he was embarrassed.
“Shep, Shep,” he stammered, “I thought they were a little strange, but….”
Our last night in New York Shep called a meeting. We were leaving the next morning on an early plane for Buffalo, and after the last show was the only time left to talk. By the time we wrapped the equipment it must have been three in the morning. I went straight to the bar and doubled up on my drinks.
When we got outside it was pouring with rain. I stood by the curb throwing up phlegm while Mike and Dennis went to the corner to hail a cab. A few minutes passed, and I was soaked through to the bone. Finally I walked to the corner to look for them and they were gone. I went back to the Scene, but everyone had left and Steve Paul was locking the place. He said Shep had just called looking for me. Mike and Dennis had forgot to tell the cabdriver to go back and pick me up. Steve Paul loaned me two bucks to get downtown to the Chelsea, and I went back out into the rain.
It was impossible to get a cab. It was just before dawn, I was alone, which was rare, and in New York, which was rarer. I did the only sensible thing. I started walking downtown. Ten minutes later I was a shivering wet mess and when I spotted an empty cab I almost fell over myself trying to hail it. When the driver saw how wet I was he made me sit on an opened newspaper. I closed my eyes and sat back when suddenly the cab stopped short.
Just up ahead of us a husky black man was standing in the middle of the street, as wet as I was, waving us down like we were a locomotive.
“Hey, I need a lift, man! You got a lift?” he shouted to us. The driver backed up and started to drive around him when the black guy grabbed one of the driver’s door handles and held fast. We dragged him a good five feet.
“Where the fuck are you going? I said I needed help!” The driver, an old man in a golf cap, spun around an locked all the doors as he began a chant of what I thought were New York cabdriver words.
“Crazy, foking nigger! Getoutahere!”
The black man took a knife out of his pocket and banged on the window with the handle. The driver put on the emergence brakes, reached under his seat and pulled out a bayonet. I thought, “Holy shit! These guys are crazy!”
I sat up in the back seat, fascinated and terrified as the driver got out of the cab and squared off with the black guy in the street. I figured that if the black guy got the driver first, I would be next, so I opened the passenger door and tried, drunkenly, to get across the street. I was sloshing around on the wet pavement when somebody took hold of my arms and helped me stand up. It was the black guys.
“He owes me ninety-five cents,” the driver yelled from the other side of the cab. “Leave him alone.”
“Watch the knife! Watch the knife!” I begged him. “You want a lift, I’ll be glad to give you a lift. You can have a lift, all right! Just put away the knife.”
We all calmly got back into the cab as if nothing had happened, and the driver turned around and said, “Where to?” The black guy gave him an address and I just sat there numb and wet, drunk and petrified. The driver kept mumbling. “What a job. What a craziness.”
“What’s this stuff, man?” the new passenger asked, fingering my clothes.
“What’s all this stuff you got on? What’s your scene?”
I told him I was a singer in a rock and roll band.
“No shit, man! You’re not a faggot?”
“Not really. I’m a singer in a band.”
“What’s it called? What’s your name? Do I know you?”
I told him my name was Jim Morrison but that didn’t seem to impress him.
“Listen, I got some girls I manage, you know? Really foxy ladies. They got voices like angels. You think I can get them to be stars? You know, like the Supremes?”
For five uncomfortable minutes I tried to explain that I didn’t know anything about the music business. I told him I was drunk and would be glad to drop him off wherever he was going if he just took it easy. The driver seemed very calm until we stopped in front of a closed bar and the black guy paid him some money, then he came hurtling around the passenger door and threw me out into the street. “Hey, no! No!” I yelled. “Take me to the Chelsea!” But he got back into the cab yelling, “Foo! Faggots and niggers!”
The black guy stood on the street and laughed at me as the cab pulled off. “You better come in and have yourself a drink to warm up,” he said.
“No thanks. I’ve got a meeting to go to.”
He laughed again and hooked his arm tightly under mine and led me into the dark bar. Although it looked pitch black from the outside the jukebox was still going, and there must have been a dozen people at the bar. When we walked in everybody turned to look at us. The place reeked of stale cologne and body odor. My new friend, who said his name was Norm, introduced me to the bartender and said I could order anything I wanted on his tab. Norm talked to people and spit on the floor. I spit on the floor with him and sipped my VO and Coke, waiting to make a dash for the door, amazed that I had allowed myself to be thrown out of the cab and went inside. I couldn’t wait to tell the guys.
“She is ugly!” a woman screamed in the darkness. “You found the ugliest fish of them all, Norm. Where’d you find that fish?”
She was talking about me. A black girl in a short skirt came over to me and ran her hand up my leg. When she brushed against my cock I made a feeble “oh, oh, oh” sound at her and shook my finger.
“This is Melissa,” Norm told me, “I think she likes you.”
I felt like I was going to be sick and told Norm, who walked with me and Melissa to the back of the bar and sat me down in the phone booth. When I was ready to throw up Norm led me into the bathroom, still tightly gripping my arm (his fingers reached all the way around my tiny bicep), and stood there unmoved while I threw my brains up into the toilet bowl. When I sat back down in the phone booth, exhausted, the girl said, “I bet that boy’s no bigger than my pinky.”
“Why don’t you leave him alone?” Norm said protectively. “Can’t you see he’s sick?”
“Sick. That’s just a junky drag queen throwing up her shit. Why you takin’ up with drags?” she asked Norm.
“He ain’t no drag. He’s a singer in a rock band, you know?”
“I still bet he’s no bigger than a pinky. He’s a fag, man. I telling you… look at the way he’s dressed up.”
Norm looked at me with what I was afraid was a dubious expression on his face. Finally he said, “You want to get laid?”
“I want to get to my meeting,” I told him.
“I told ya. I spotted that a mile away,” the girl said. “Lemmee see. C’mon, honey. You want to get laid?”
I shook my head no but the girl was in front of me in the phone booth fiddling with the top of my pants. I tried to push her head away but I couldn’t get a grip of her tightly curled hair. Norm was laughing and people in the bar were whooping and cheering. I looked down and all I could see were two huge black lips painted with thick lipstick closing over my pale asparagus stalk. I pretended to pass out.
I can remember being thrown in the back seat of another taxi and Billy shouting at me with a towel wrapped
