Tales of the Old Hotel


“Freddie the Freeloader”

Strange habit I have: the worst troublemaker in the room wants to tell me his story, as I apparently understand.
After three plus months of life here at our one hundred years old-and-counting hotel, Freddie Allman’s*door sported an eviction restoration notice. At least five times since I’ve seen it, I felt a little sorry for him, on a purely human animal level, because he has lost his home, that most basic need behind food and water and rest.

“Just be wary of that one,” said Ms. Janice, holding a newly-dried pan washed in the community kitchen. “He’s dangerous. When they evict him tomorrow, that one might be loud!”

“I’ve been avoiding him, hon,” I told her. “Steering clear. Not talking. Didn’t want anything to do with his business.” Yet clearly I knew he needed a good community of people. It was a shame he could not see what he might have; Ms. Janice brings me food, O.V. hooks me up, we all do each other favors and turn this wing into a neighborhood.

Life in Freddie’s tiny room, so long as he was in, never was quiet. If it wasn’t old school rap, it was hair band rock, always just loud enough to hear in the hallway on your way to the restroom. Sometimes the door was open. I’d go down to the other bathroom just to avoid passing the door. Experience had taught me he could pop out at any minute with another request I most likely couldn’t fulfill.

There were other noises known to come from that door, and that was why I avoided him religiously. Not that closed doors meant I couldn’t feel my nerves wrack in empathy as he stayed up on speed. It’s my curse to feel the tightness and mental drain when people around me take those kinds of substances. By itself, that would’ve been reason to be a bit relieved to see him go.

The noises I refer to involve an angry friend of his standing outside the door at 4:30 am, calling him a great variety of bad names and demanding something back. For over five minutes. That was just the last such instance, maybe a week ago. I almost called it the third one, but that’s just three that weren’t between him and residents here.

Ms. Janice had an eye out for him after he came to her door wanting a cigarette. He offered her a dollar, but she said she didn’t have one to sell him. He took offense. “Here’s my damned dollar!” he yelled. “Are you too good to sell me a cigarette now?”

I can picture her towering a head taller than him even now, like the school teacher she is, lording over some recalcitrant, goat-like child.

“What I want you to do is leave my doorway,” she retorted, “and never come back!”
So next time she does to empty garbage, he rushes up on her to say, "you and me, we've got something to settle right now! This is why no one her likes you!!" Apparently, her boyfriend then visited his door to inform him perhaps he should let her be.
Such was the life of Freddie the Freeloader.

I took a “political affiliation” quiz and found the question, about an hour ago, asking did I feel, “some people are just born unlucky.” Now, I’m just thinking about Freddie. It’s not like he hadn’t been better off before---he told me he was a car dealer before times got tight---but I never met another soul more miserable to live in this old hotel. Nor have I ever known anyone here to have the police at their door twice over arguments in the middle of the night.

It’s like he decided he lived in a slum now and chose to make his life there as ghetto as possible. More than once I expected gunfire. More than once I thought about going to management and suggesting he be dumped. More than once my rather imposing neighbor O.V. nearly pounded his goatee down around his ankles. More than once I took up an invite to stand in his room before I saw into his drawer and knew all there was to ask.


But it’s not like I didn’t give him a chance, even though I had him pegged for an asshole from our first conversation. Once I got the window into his thinking, however, I could only say my piece and hope he’d realize it did him no favors. ..though he did not think so at first.

Is this a real person and residence you're describing? Unfortunately I find it all too believable.

He’d created a job for himself: painting the street address, with a stencil, outside of homes in suburbia, like Chula Vista. Once he’d asked me to help him save a map depicting the cul-de-sacs and street patterns of the neighborhood he wished to work next, so he wasn’t completely stupid...Just that finky laugh of his. Even when he got along on some surface level with people, I could here that goblinesque "hehn hehn hehn!" in the same cadence.



Freddie had a picture of everyone else at the hotel---me included, until we talked and he said he figured out maybe not me---as losers. What stuck out in his mind were those who live on Social Security checks and would never make anything of themselves. I realized he at least meant Jimmie Simmons, as he’s nicknamed, who is simple enough to understand, in his case. He intimated he thought I was in that group with everyone else until he’d learned what I do for a living. This, from the guy who asked me for a Phillips head screw driver four times. Go figure. (I did in fact need one soon for my new drawing board.)

I pointed out that everyone around him was trying to make it: the very neighbor on our wing, O.V., with whom he’d already loudly quarreled the first time by that point, had been in sales, too, and done pretty well in earlier times. Proof he’s never given up is that he’s just landed another sales job again with Carmax. I’ve known the man, known his plans, heard his enthusiasm that he could put funding and the right product together and create a success. I told him of working musicians we’ve had here, how everyone I knew here had occupations (though a couple were laid off by then) and many people who came to live at this old hotel climbed its steps day in and day out with a bit of hope in their hearts things would get better, so long as they never gave up.


He told me of his deals in the car biz, a good occupation after seven years in the Marines. He had the nice car and the hookers and not a care for money. Things were now to the point he had homeless women come up sometimes just to see how far they might go with a mutual arrangement---“had her up to, you know, talk!”

Twice this resulted in hall-filling shouts. One occasion led to my girl Emm’s brief involvement; he asked her, on the way to the bathroom at 3 am, could he use her phone, as his ...how did that go? He had some girl’s cell phone this time, and wouldn’t let her have it back; then he threw it the length of the hallway. Emm passed. She was not sure what was going through the loudly cursing woman’s mind at the time but this wasn’t a wise place to remain.


Soon O.V.’s voice booms, along with the intrepid manager and two police officers. Apparently, another guest of our man here was climbing the fire escape next to my window, in an effort to retrieve a bicycle he said Freddie stole from him. Not much was clear except “stay out of it.”


I think the other time was about something he had that the person wanted returned. It’s not as clear in my mind. I do know every time I had a naked girl sitting on my bed in sight of the door that he tried to sneak peeks, but shy of self-discipline necessary to keep respect, that is just a man for you.


He asked me if we could smoke on the fire escape, first time I saw him. “It’s not officially allowed,” I replied, “but the thing they really don’t want is people throwing cigarette butts down in the courtyard below, because...”


“Yeah, yeah, I don’t need anyone to tell me that,” he said. The complaints about the butts started up again a couple of months later, so somebody didn’t get it, I’m not saying him. I also can’t say for sure he was the reason I suddenly felt like locking my door so regularly, as no one from the street comes in except as a guest (and you don’t know what I’ve done to burglar proof my room and I’m not telling).


Some other time he mumbled something intended to get him completely on my bad side but I literally didn’t care and told him upon his apology I really just chose not to take it personally. It’s not that I’m so holier than thou, but what was the point? It did give me insight into how he kept so suavely butting heads with my old friends. After police visit #2 O.v. and I happened to be chatting at O.V.’s door and we eluded to “the shit that we doesn’t go on around here” about the time he walked sheepishly out his door across the way. We continued our affirmation; what did we have to hide? The only other police visit to the building all year before Freddie arrived was when poor T.E. drank himself to death. There was a similar problem though. A man can feel too sorry for himself.


Freddie’s eviction notice hangs on the door across the hall now. The last time I was inside that door, I saw the pipe and all the behaviors clicked into identifiable patterns. But you could never shake the feeling he had a good guy in him, surely never meant to be persona non grata anywhere.
Nor was he without charm. Once he saw me leaving with my date/ partner and guitar, and asked did we play Van Halen. “Not really,” I replied. “Eddie’s very fast you know! I’ll never be that fast.”

“But then,” Freddie noted, “he’s not happily married, and you are!”

I remember nothing besides “hey” after that time.

The 10 am eviction time’s passed without any of the noise that accompanied Freddie’s life, and I’ve seen hide nor hair of him in three days. I am glad to see him gone, but I can’t help wondering, if he’s not really okay, where he will go now. He was often seemingly gone for two or three days, so there are other haunts.

Like, right outside the door.


Emm and I were headed out the door a couple of days after Eviction Day had passed. There's our Freddie, smiling, cajoling: "Hey, I need your help! I've got a beautiful new girlfriend and I just need you to go back up and knock on my buddy's door, he's just a couple of doors down from you---I need to get some of my stuff from him!"

Emm weighed the idea that he'd known about the eviction for two months and replied, "No, I'm not doing it. You can go across the---"

"But HONEY!" he pleaded.
"You can go across the street and do it through official channels." That is, after all, where the front desk operation is, for our Old Hotel.

"Thanks for nothing!" he retorted. "Nice knowing ya!!!"


"That's why no one wants to do anything for you," I replied, walking away. She convinced me walking away was better than what my reptile brain suggested. He dismissed us with a wave of his hand, sitting at the table outside an establishment he wasn't patronizing.

I really appreciate you giving it a chance, TMK. You realize probably what a polar switch this is from my Block posts (but let's say, not so different than the first one you likely ever read from me---my first and for a long time only IMWAN post).

Steve Gerber and James Thurber (they rhyme!) influence this general cycle of tales, as did my travel journal/ report. Believable characters are my one ally in telling the kind of twists and conveying imaginationscapes I've always wanted to write.

I like social relevance but it has to grow out of life organically to avoid a didacticism too disconnected from experience.

There are a lot of people like Freddie. I've had neighbors who had a bit in common years ago. And in-laws. And for that matter was married to someone who had a touch of it. As long as they live, there is one hope.

Twas battered and scarred, and the auctioneer
thought it scarcely worth his while
To waste much time on the old violin,
But held it up with a smile.

"What am I bidden, good folks," he cried,
"Who'll start the bidding for me?
A dollar, a dollar, then, two! Only two?
Two dollars, and who'll make it three?

Three dollars, once; three dollars, twice;
Going for three . . ."
But no,

From the room, far back, a grey-haired man
Came forward and picked up the bow;
Then, wiping the dust from the old violin,
And tightening the loose strings,
He played a melody pure and sweet
As a caroling angel sings.

The music ceased, and the auctioneer,
With a voice that was quiet and low, said:
"What am I bid for the old violin?"
And he held it up with the bow.

"A thousand dollars, and who'll make it two?
"Two thousand! And who'll make it three?
"Three thousand, once; three thousand, twice;
And going and gone."said he.

The people cheered, but some of them cried,
"We do not quite understand, what changed its worth?"
Swift came the reply:
"The touch of a master's hand."

And many a man with life out of tune,
And battered and scarred with sin,
Is auctioned cheap to the thoughtless crowd,
Much like the old violin.

A 'mess of potage,' a glass of wine;
A game - and he travels on.
He is 'going' once, and 'going' twice,
He's 'going' and almost 'gone'.

But the Master comes and the foolish crowd
Never can quite understand
The worth of a soul and the change that's wrought
By the touch of the Master's hand.

--Myra Brooks Welch

I revised with a couple of lines to flesh out Freddie, edited above:


"I can picture her towering a head taller than him even now, like the school teacher she is, lording over some recalcitrant, goat-like child."

" not completely stupid...Just that finky laugh of his. Even when he got along on some surface level with people, I could hear that goblinesque "hehn hehn hehn!" in the same cadence."

Fixed.

Also added:
Ms. Janice had an eye out for him after he came to her door wanting a cigarette. He offered her a dollar, but she said she didn’t have one to sell him. He took offense. “Here’s my damned dollar!” he yelled. “Are you too good to sell me a cigarette now?”

I can picture her towering a head taller than him even now, like the school teacher she is, lording over some recalcitrant, goat-like child.

“What I want you to do is leave my doorway,” she retorted, “and never come back!”

So next time she does to empty garbage, he rushes up on her to say, "you and me, we've got something to settle right now! This is why no one her likes you!!" Apparently, her boyfriend then visited his door to inform him perhaps he should let her be.


And an epilogue.


Emm and I were headed out the door a couple of days after Eviction Day had passed. There's our Freddie, smiling, cajoling: "Hey, I need your help! I've got a beautiful new girlfriend and I just need you to go back up and knock on my buddy's door, he's just a couple of doors down from you---I need to get some of my stuff from him!"

Emm weighed the idea that he'd known about the eviction for two months and replied, "No, I'm not doing it. You can go across the---"

"But HONEY!" he pleaded.
"You can go across the street and do it through official channels." That is, after all, where the front desk operation is, for our Old Hotel.

"Thanks for nothing!" he retorted. "Nice knowing ya!!!"


"That's why no one wants to do anything for you," I replied, walking away. She convinced me walking away was better than what my reptile brain suggested. He dismissed us with a wave of his hand, sitting at the table outside an establishment he wasn't patronizing.

"Words Escape Me"

I promised I'd write this day down for myself, if no one else. Then I had someone let me know they really don't care if they hurt my feelings or ignore even the single need for which I asked fulfillment, my one condition for her company and my one request for her time. More than one person very close to me let me down in a day, and suddenly my holiday plans were absent two people.

Granted: a two week visit, especially if the two of them fought, was going to be a challenge for us all, as when Emm and I are alone quarrels are seldom. With a bit of momentum, I should be really putting away the completed comics pages and preparing shows by Christmas/ my birthday. I was going to split the difference prudently and ready myself to sacrifice some personal time for the possible rewards that come with it and hopes of making others happy, even if I felt quite a bit unappreciated.

That isn't what I'm going to talk about, though---because, what about that wonderful day before? Monday contains content and inspiration for stories and songs and drawings, based on the richest personal treasure I have, and one I intend to celebrate more consciously in my work.

Why has sadness dimmed the fresh memory? Why have new memories left the dialog of that harmonious day so blank? Were that I had only spent Tuesday seizing that moment to remain with me. Truthfully, the personal disappointments since also have their lessons; the discomforts also inspire stories, songs, drawings. To make peace with those, I summon the happy day before, to use as my strength. The brain responds to our thoughts, our body reacts to them, as though what we imagine is somehow present; it's why we can scare ourselves with a movie or calm ourselves thinking about a soothing place or presence.

I reach into the fragments of that day to find myself and Emm walking all the streets of East Village in the sun. I'd been up working most of the night, but sleep felt like a waste; we had each other's company to enjoy, and soon enough the time would yield to the needs of work again.

We'd started out the door only to find Freeloading Freddie outside. We thought maybe he'd get what he wanted or vamoose in the time it took us to get a little sun and exercise. We'd gone out the door to at least restock on juices, but we did it several blocks north on Broadway. Balboa Park, a mile away, was tempting to consider and pleasing material for thought, though I'd probably need a nap in the middle of that trip!

Before we reached the store, we stopped off at the public library to fill out new cards for both of us---even if we didn't stay inside to look. Emm felt a bit rundown, but a walk and sunlight were a good tonic and we covered about half of downtown before turning up to Broadway. The store there has no sign for its unknown name, selling overstock, mostly, at discounts.

How do I reach back to the easy comraderie; what did we say to one another that made things so breezy, so quick to laugh?

I know we must have observed the troubled career of Freddie, but aside from the notion of staying out, gracing the library, walking to Broad, even heading back to the mall---what did we say? Was it some hope for where we go next in life? Was it enjoying someone's dress or figure?


I know we end up at Horton Plaza,and we laugh on the escalator, where we always have a laugh. Were we pretending to speak as Stuckwayze characters, smiling vacantly and twisting words into hilariously misunderstandable phrases? Sure it's weird! It's funny. It must sound very out of the ordinary if we're observed, but don't you always enjoy watching people you know are having a good time? Doesn't some part of that feel active in you? Do you know what I mean?

We decide to try a new place instead of the Indian food we've eaten as our primary mall stand-by; what WAS the name of that place with the Smashed Baked Potato with Ranch and Bacon, and the cheeseburger and fries? We almost never have a cheeseburger anymore, from red meat. We sat somewhere different, too, in the big outside food court. You couldn't help but notice all the school aged kids. We didn't even note the pen the deaf man left at first; it resembled a flower on the top end. Emm went over to the man, grey curly hair, mustache and slight beard on a long face centered with sad eyes and buys it. She really just wanted to offer him a couple of dollars. Attached was another sign language alphabet card, and we went over some of the letters. I remember when we first learned that much, years ago, and more; once upon a time, that was nearly her choice for college major. It feels good to see her openness and giving.

We write down the movie times for Megamind, should we come back out and feel like a matinee. We hustle past the massage parlor ---well, the mall version, you know---as we were both quite full and they are known to plead vociferously with passersby.

We'd been talking about a new plant and looking for one over the week before. Now we finally stop at Allen's Flowers, certain to find the green life we need for our apartment. Stephanie---that's the girl's name. Pretty. Dark haired. Gorgeous blue eyes, Emm says. Warm. We enjoyed listening to her tell about the variety of plants, but Emm's heart was set on a cactus from the first. Somehow some more laughs gently creep into the sunlit day, in the sunlit store with wide open bay doors. Before the end of the evening, the cactus is named Crowley Gerard, inspired by our friend Eric and his saint of Motherhood and Aleister himself. She waters him and checks out his pot, anticipating a long life with a little sunshine.

I know when we got home, some things happened that I can't provide for a mixed forum. We had very, very quality time together. It's too bad; I could probably describe that time best of all.

I have no doubt we played guitar. We may have tried improvising some music that night---no, that was last night. She is still pretty new but we can play along and both improve. Besides, I will always love her singing.

Looks like I drew for a few hours, too. We listened to Citizen Band's cd for the first time. I can hardly remember a word.

I tell you about this one afternoon, this one day, but what we said is submerged in the images of our actions. I know it made me feel like creating art that expresses how people might deeply love and appreciate, and enjoy, each other. Aside from what we said to Freddie, though, the words themselves emerge only in details about what drink we're going to try and how I really should leave my bag at the desk and the memory card we never pick up (in this case I don't have the phone that needs it with me, and since it came as a gift all I recall is that it's an LG phone of a sort lots of people would've replaced with a Curve or something by now).

Is the point becoming that we observe a few details in the moment---that sometimes no deep conversation is involved, only the rich freedom of knowing the day is ours? I may have been talking about the huge multi-band Local Brews Local Music show I'd attended the night before, how much it made me want to play, what people looked like. I'm glad the show was broadcast on 102.1 KPRI, because at least she heard most of the same music I did. How else would you hope to describe music---outside of crowd reactions, or maybe some attempt at analyzing what you technically heard (only useful with another musician who's in the know)? What else can you say about it? You had to be there.

What is said precisely is only occasionally memorable; as soon as you've slept the night through, even the most pleasant day begins to drift away. Yet the stinging words of someone's resentment and combativeness is there for the taking three days later. Perhaps it helps the latter that it was written; perhaps the feeling, and not the words, were the gold of the golden moments. When there is no sadness, such days seem as though they can never fade away.

“Peace”

The sounds coming out of their room couldn’t be missed from anywhere on the floor of the one hundred year old downtown hotel. None of the words made sense. The woman’s voice---was her name Nadine? ---shrieks for what must be one latest of a dozen times. He types for another hour of morning. He pours word after word, explaining, revealing. He is not sure, if, for her, they are for naught. He has already decided not to send but a few of the words. He suspects he has said all he can say on the matter. It may well be the same even a year on.

He hears the two little girls crying out.

So many times he’d run across Nadine in the kitchen, with no unpleasant moments. She’d said something once about thanking God for all that we have, with some veil over her averted eyes.

Her towering, brawny husband, he knew from less. He’d always nodded his head as they went by, they both had, he’d asked some advice about the Old Hotel a time or two. They may have had a brief laugh passing in the community kitchen.

The yelling cannot be ignored.

It is none of his business. He thinks about the little girls. He decides to wash his bowl in the kitchen and make up his mind from there.

Someone had to do something. Preferably, one of the people living there would end this, or both of them. He’d seen the little girls before---five and seven, maybe---coming in with Nadine from shopping. She was tired and strict. He’d heard them all laughing once, though.

The words he leaves on the monitor writhe earnestly with appeals to reason. Which ones of those words would be singled out for exception? He wants to defuse a violent temper with them. Words only work so well in bad stories; in life they require participation and acceptance or they die on the page. Yet he could not help trying to put them into her head: solace is possible, silence is golden.

He pauses outside the door of 212. A “thwack” soon rewards his vigilance. He washes his bowl. More yelling from everyone. “Thwack” again. Thud of a fist, muted in dense flesh.

So, he knocks.

The door flies open. Breathing hotly, the massive man in workman’s blue leans forward, glares out, while Nadine and the two wide-eyed children stand in the background.

“What do you want?!?”

He stands there in the doorway of 212 with the blue plastic bowl in his fingers. He detaches all excessive emotion and, feeling every pore of his own skin, says one weary word.

“Peace.”

The man stands there pondering him for five long seconds.
“All right,” he relents. The door is closed. The sounds return to the muteness typical of the old hotel.

Nadine is at the door of 208, knocking not two hours later, seething. “Did he say anything to you? What did he say?”
He shakes his head. “He really hasn’t said anything to me much at all. About anything at all.”
She leaves without another word.

Her husband, the girls’ father, carries some things down the stairwell when he sees his erstwhile neighbor for the last time, two days later.

“I’m going to try to find a way to make things work better. Going to help her move out a while. I’ll see if I can afford to live here by myself. We’ll see. But thank you, man.”

He never sees any of them again.