Poet in New York
Unlike a play, a life can’t easily be divided into three acts: say, youth in Pennsylvania, coming of age in the Army, and marriage and maturity in Puerto Rico.
My memory, the mighty molder of time and occasional fabricator of facts, chaffs before the chore of jamming this tale into three neat containers, or putting planning and logic on the same scale as serendipity.
To cook up a new metaphor, without this episode I can’t slice and dice this story into a proper stew.
When I mustered out of the Army, I headed straight for New York. It was not an impulsive move. I had previously experienced an epiphany—which I was anxious to explore—in the big city and, frankly, there was no reason to go home.
Think about it. Choice one (the responsible one): play the prodigal son and help my hard-working, semi-alienated parents run their country hotel in a tiny town in Pennsylvania.
Walnutport (that’s its real name; I couldn’t have made it up) takes up less than a square mile of space along the Lehigh River and the remnants of the Lehigh Canal near the eastern border of the state. The town had (and has) about 2,000 residents, virtually all of them white, Christian and Republican.
The Anchor Hotel was on the corner of Main and Canal streets—actually right on the canal. In its heyday in the mid-19th century, it was a major stopping place for the river men and mule tenders who would eat, drink and rest there before resuming their slow journey moving coal from the mines upstate to the factories downstream. My parents bought the place in 1959, established a successful restaurant and operated it until they retired 14 years later in 1973.
Choice two (the wild one) was to join the seven million keepers of the flame in Manhattan. There was no choice three. I wasn’t ready to return to my sister’s always welcoming home in Bethlehem and my friends were scattered far and wide, mostly in the Army or Navy, in college or in grad school. My high school girlfriend was history. We broke up when she went off to Penn State.
I had a little money—but not enough to live very long in one of the most expensive cities in the world. I had no marketable skills: even if there had been some demand for cryptographic machine repairmen—and there wasn’t, of course—I couldn’t even talk about it, much less do it. I did have a stubborn resolve to be somebody—a poet, a writer, anything—and New York was the place to be any of those things.
I lucked upon a cheap, seedy mid-town hotel as a home base, one that could have been the perfect setting for a gothic novel. The once magnificent lobby was partitioned off for I don’t know what purposes. A small cubicle was stacked like a crate atop a portion of what was once a massive, elegant reception desk. It was here you knocked to get the attention of the keeper of the keys, the only employee I ever saw, a tiny old man with yellow teeth that were framed by stubby white hairs that jutted out from all over his face, neck and head. Dusty plaster ferns, scrolls and cherubim circled overhead and disappeared behind the thin partitions.
My room was on the fourth floor, accessible by walking up what was once a grand staircase, its deep red carpet only lightly faded and stained. On the mezzanine level was a landing with two smaller stairways on each side; an even narrower stairway lead to the fourth floor and to the first space that I personally paid to occupy.
It was a pretty dismal space, something out of a noire movie: a bed with a metal headboard, a simple wooden desk and chair, a night table with a metal lamp, and a threadbare carpet. The remains of a window shade and curtain hung crazily from the single window—which—predictably—opened to a dark and sooty airshaft. Thankfully, there was a cubicle with a yellow toilet, sink and shower, so I wouldn’t have to use a communal bathroom down the hall. I dusted the mattress and the rug with insecticide before sleeping in the bed.
Except for an incident that still weighs on my conscious (a black onyx and gold ring with an elaborate “F” in old English script that had belonged to my father disappeared from my night table when I left it behind one day) my first “place” was a haven; it suited my temperament. I wanted to be alone, on my own, with no one telling me what to do. I had a roof over my head, I had a notebook, and—after rushing down a hundred steps—I had at my feet the magnificent metropolis of Manhattan.
I could walk everywhere—a few dozen blocks uptown to the museums: the Metropolitan for the Velázquez and El Greco, MOMA for Picasso and Monet; to the Broadway theaters when I could get cheap tickets, to the movie houses on Times Square to see the premiere of Gigi. A few blocks downtown and I was listening to jazz at the Village Gate or the street musicians in Washington Square Park.
With a list of off-limits places (a memento from Fort Monmouth) as my guide, I visited the underworld seeking experience and inspiration. I found, actually, an old friend. I walked into a place, a long narrow room that had banquettes and small tables near the entrance, a grand piano, and a long bar that stretched back into darkness. As I walked toward the bar, I heard the piano player call out my name. It was Tim, whom I knew from the Children’s Theater in Bethlehem, the man who introduced me to the music of West Side Story, the play that coincidentally was about to close its long run at the Winter Garden.
He had moved to New York and worked as a minor editor for a magazine—I don’t remember the name—and played piano to makes ends meet. We marveled at the Dickensian nature of our reunion. Tim’s tastes were different from mine, but we paled around for awhile—I met some fascinating people including the wild transvestite cast members of the Jewel Box Revue—and , frankly, it was nice having another person to talk to.
My cash was quickly running out, and I found a job at Schrafft’s, not in one of the company’s many restaurants that were a fixture in New York at the time, but at a coffee service that was run out of a basement a few blocks from where I lived. My job was to pick up an urn filled with coffee that was mounted on a cart, supply it with cream and sugar and pastries and push it to an office building in the area.
It was a surreal job, in truth. On a typical day I would make my way to the service elevator of the building to which I was assigned, and roll my cart through the hallways of floors x, y and z. The office workers would burst from their cubicles, line up, grab their coffee with one hand and pay me with the other, and disappear back into their hovels. It was fast and furious action, and—except the day I mixed things up a bit (I dropped the change into a steaming cup of coffee), it usually went well.
My clients liked me. I was efficient. I was neat. I arrived on time. I spoke English. I began stocking my cart with fresh fruit and other items they requested. It was against Schrafft’s rules but resulted in nice tips. Between my minimum wage and tips, I made barely enough to pay my rent and subsidize my nightlife, but I was happy.
There was a locker room kind of place where the coffee boys put on their Schraffts’ jackets and waited around until the coffee urns were filled. It was there that I was accosted by three Puerto Rican co-workers. Two held me by the arms while the third held a knife to my throat. “You don’t steal,” the knife-wielder said.
“No, I don’t steal,” I admitted.
“You make us look bad. If you don’t steal, they will know that we steal. You must keep some of the money, a dollar for them, a dime for you,” (or words to that affect.) “And you do not speak Spanish. Steal and learn, or I will cut your throat.”
Naturally this is a conversation reconstructed from memory. It is not verbatim, but it captures in essence what was said. What was my response?
“It’s a deal.”
