Empire
I am at P.J. Clarke’s by Lincoln Center, looking at multiple reflections of myself in the rounded metal notches of the beer taps. I am not drinking, though. Too early for that.
More significantly, I am at the ground floor of the Empire Hotel, the hotel where my mother and I stayed when I auditioned for Juilliard in 1985.
It was here, in a room that looked out on Broadway, that I found a note to Peter, from Ruth.
At first I did not know what I was reading, but my mother’s shocked reaction made the document more interesting. Fascinating, even.
The note (which I may still have in storage) had evidently been slipped under the bathroom door while Peter was using the toilet.
“Dear Peter,” the note began, “I hope your shit is coming out real good. When you come out (and on my face) I will make you climax to the max!”
More charming chit-chat filled the back of a room-service menu. The letter was memorably signed “Your cunt, Ruth.” It was, evidently, a note from a hooker to her john. At the time I found it I was 17, making it possible that I did not even know what a hooker really was. I knew the word “hooker” but I don’t know if I knew what hookers *did*.
I don’t know if my mother was aware, but I managed to sneak the letter out of the hotel room and back to Tampa. The letter from Ruth became the stuff of legend among my friends and me. To this day I can not deal with anyone named Ruth without first assuming she signs her letters in the dignified manner of Ruth at the Empire Hotel.
Ah, memories.
….
It is later. I am somewhere else. That P.J. Clarke’s was not what I expected. It was basically an Applebee’s type of place (and a chain, no less), whereas I imagined it would be more uppity than that. My assumption of uppitiness comes from its location at Lincoln Center.
Which brings me to my other memory of that space, the space now inhabited by P.J. Clarke’s. That space was previously taken by the Iridium Café and Jazz Club — or something like that. Whatever the full name was, the place was called Iridium.
A friend and I spent New Year’s Eve at the Iridium in either 1995 or 1996. It was open bar for $75, and my friend at the time had evidently never seen such a thing. He drank, and he drank, and he drank. And he drank. He became incoherent and ridiculous, pounding back one tall Long Island Ice Tea (college boy special!) after another after another. He was intent on getting his $75 worth out of the deal.
It sucked. Drunk people suck. The music there was supposedly very good. I wish my memory of the band that played that night would come back and replace what memories endure.
….
I walked a long, long way today. Just wandering, directionless, seeing what was there. I got a cool shot of an old hotel sign on Barrow Street.
It was a beautiful day to wander around Manhattan. I was thinking, as I thought the other day, that if I ever move back to Manhattan the first and maybe only area I would consider is lower Manhattan. I like the way things feel there.
For some reason my ability to remember the directions of the avenues comes from one single, unremarkable experience: a cab ride up 6th Avenue from 23rd Street to 78th Street in 1991 or 1992. There was nothing remarkable about the ride, except that it was late. In the back seat of the cab I remember thinking “6th Avenue goes uptown.” and that single observation remains my frame of reference for Avenue directions in Manhattan. Even numbered avenues go up (UP! UP! UP!) and the odd numbered ones go down, with Park Avenue the main exception to the one-way rule.
It is not as simple as that, I know, but that is my general rule for avenues in midtown. The memory of that unremarkable cab ride surfaces every single time I even look for the one way sign to see which direction an avenue goes. The experience of that cab ride is recalled momentarily, then incorporated into my planning as appropriate.
It is similar, I think, to the way that I can only remember right versus left by mentally signing my name to a piece of paper. Which hand would I use? Oh, that is right. The unused hand is left.
I ramble pointlessly. Time to socialize.
