ON a bleak winter afternoon in 1957, I sat in the
lobby of the Hotel Marlton (vintage1900), located at 5 West 8th
Street, watching my mother try to negotiate with the desk clerk. The weekly rent for our two room suite (plus
kitchenette) was way overdue, and we were locked out. All my schoolbooks were
upstairs, not to mention my toothbrush and pajamas. I was in the 9th grade at P.S. 3
on Hudson Street and much was expected of me. To show up with my homework
undone……and I was hungry.
To distract myself from the unbearable sight
of my mother’s pleading face, I took out some hotel stationery and wrote down a
brief description of my plight, our hotel room number, and signed off with a
depiction of my favorite cartoon character, Pogo.
Then,
inside a big heart, I wrote I GO POGO and stuck the note inside the top desk
drawer of the writing desk.
Lo and behold, my mother beckoned to me
and indicated that we were going to be able to stay on, at least for a while. I
stepped eagerly into the elevator and soon we were wolfing
down Hormel canned chili con carne and saltine crackers. My homework awaited me.
The Pogo-strewn plea for help was forgotten.
A week later, the clerk handed me an
envelope addressed to me with no stamp. Inside was a whimsical typewritten
letter signed, “The Man in Reverse,” from someone who claimed to be a fellow
Pogo fan and also a Hotel Marlton dweller. For several months, we corresponded. I was 12; he told me he was a journalist and
I finally figured out that Man in Reverse meant that he lived in Room 712 while
we resided in 217. Eventually, the Hotel Marlton lost patience with us and we
had to transfer to the Albert Hotel (vintage 1882) on University Place.
Both hotels had long been home to a variety
of writers, musicians, and actors down on their luck and hoping for better
times. Edna St. Vincent Millay and
Lillian Gish lived at the Marlton; Jack Kerouac wrote The Subterraneans there.
Hart Crane wrote part of The
Bridge at the Albert, and much later, the Mamas and the Papas composed California Dreaming there one nasty
winter when “on a good day the hallways smell somewhere between old socks and
vomit.”
Recently, I found a sheaf of yellowed
typescripts from The Man in Reverse….herewith some unsettling quotes:
“Hi, Genius:
I’m leaving town---by land, sea and
air (over and under)—so this is farewell.
But I’ll be back to “Sweet 712”, in fact in time to celebrate
Washington’s birthday under the Arch. (In case of rain, I’ll repair to
Nedick’s.)
I hope you didn’t mind too much my
tracing you to the Hotel Alligator, I mean Albert. It’s just that I don’t like minor mysteries
dwelling on my mind. So, I put my Paul
Pry instincts to work, and—Presto! Rest
your fears, however. I shall refrain
from stealing into your room some dark night and strangling you in your sleep
with your bobby sox. The worst I might
do would be to fill your bobby sox with a few spiders, scorpions, sharp tacks
and a purple-toed elephant.”
This was acceptable chitchat in 1957
between an adult man and an adolescent girl?
Somehow I survived the Hotels Marlton and
Albert, and the Man in Reverse, and did become the writer I confided it was my
ambition to be.
I’ll say this much for him – he did
encourage me in that pursuit.
(Did I forget to mention, Valerie
Solanas was living in Room 214 of the Hotel Marlton at the time she shot Warhol
in 1968?)
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