who got into the Chelsea via a sublet arrangement. It sounds like David’s arrangement turned out OK. He met Anna Wintour down in Serena’s and he scored a room with a view: "When I woke up and looked outside, I saw this gorgeous girl walking around topless in her apartment. She was getting ready for work, but must have known I could see her. I’ve never seen anyone take so long to get dressed. And right in front of the window the whole time. It was a good writing day…" You can hear David read Friday at 7:00 p.m. at the Astor Place Barnes & Noble.What do you do?
I’ve done all kinds of things since moving to New York City eleven years ago. I’ve been a minor league baseball player (in Ohio, actually), private investigator, Sothebys auction house expert, investigative reporter, Internet entrepreneur, and finally, settled down to write books, which is the only occupation I’ve been successful at and is clearly what I should have been doing all along. That said, my first effort, a memoir called Seemed like a Good Idea at the Time (it came out June
2nd), chronicles everything I did on the way to becoming a writer, so I suppose it wasn’t a waste. It’s a generational story about what it was like coming of age in New York in the late nineties, the exact moment when the past–the history of the city that hangs heavy around us all the time–was overtaken by the future, by endless possibility–in the form of technology and the Internet boom. Thankfully, it was something of a mirage, though it’s scarred a lot of us who lived through it. I’m writing a novel now. When did you live at the Chelsea?
What inspired you to move into the Hotel Chelsea?
Do you think the Chelsea has a creative spirit?
Has your writing been influenced by any current or former Chelsea Hotel residents?
Who, among contemporary authors, do you most admire?
What was the best/worst thing that happened to you while living at the Chelsea?
building across the way. When I woke up and looked outside, I saw this gorgeous girl walking around topless in her apartment. She was getting ready for work, but must have known I could see her. I’ve never seen anyone take so long to get dressed. And right in front of the window the whole time. It was a good writing day… Did you meet any famous folks while living at the Chelsea?
alone, Rufus with a group. I was friends with Sam Schaeffer, who along with his mother Serena Bass, were the original owners of Serena, so I spent a lot of time at the bar down there after long days of writing. Sam knows everyone, so it was always quite a parade coming in and out of that cavernous basement. I had my 30th birthday party at Serena (in 2002), and when I went in one afternoon to plan the thing with Sam, his then-stepmother Anna Wintour was there. When I met her, she told me she liked my shoes. I don’t think I took them off for a month after that. The marketing materials for "It Seemed Like A Good Idea at the Time," doesn’t promote that part of the book is set in the Chelsea, why?
affected me so much that I had to include it. So I wrote a prologue (attached) that takes place at the Chelsea. It’s at the beginning of the book, though it takes place sequentially after the book is done. I think it serves to root the story in New York, because the first chapter (which immediately follows) actually takes place in Ohio, at a tryout for the Cincinnati Reds. You can probably guess how that went.
Read an excerpt from Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time.
SEEMED LIKE A GOOD IDEA AT THE TIME
Here he is again, the man from across the hall. He doesn’t care that my door was closed, that I was working, or trying to. He comes in, takes a seat in the corner, and produces a cigar from the depths of his crumpled jacket. It’s one of those skinny hybrid cigars, the type smoked by street kids and men who no longer fit in the world. He rolls the thing around in his fingers, then lights it and sighs.
“I’m here to save you,” he says.
He says the same thing every time. He talks without breathing, streams of words rushing past thoughts. Today it’s Edie Sedgwick and the fire. It was candles, he tells me, candles and coke and too much confusion. He says he was here in the hotel that night and I believe him. The names are what get me, so many famous names that I wonder if he ever knew anyone ordinary. Back when he knew people.
Arnold at the front desk laughed when I asked about him. Said he’s some kind of writer, been here almost 40 years, one of their permanent transients. He’d been a talent once, a voice of his generation and all that. There were a few published stories in the sixties, heady comparisons, soft fame, but then a book deal went wrong, addictions emerged, and the spotlight moved on. The requisite poetry came next, bitter and unreadable, and then nothing. Two decades of silence. For a while, in the mid-eighties, he’d started work on a new book, a history of everything left unsaid. But then his wife left him for a banker and he withdrew again, became the Joe Gould of 23rd Street—a sad loner spinning tales that never were.
Arnold said I shouldn’t listen.
But I can’t help it. The man looks past me out the window and speaks of ghosts. Heroes of that New York. Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan, William Burroughs and toothless Gregory Corso. He was here the night Sid stabbed Nancy, the night Mapplethorpe met Patti Smith. Leaning forward he describes Edie’s skin, how the pills made it pale, how all that speed had her running in circles. He talks with his hands, conducts a symphony with every sentence, and when he’s done, when the only story left to tell is his own, he gets up, looks solemnly at the pages piled on my desk, and walks out.
I’ve been toying with the idea of turning him into a character. But the thing is, I can’t remember what the hell he looks like when he’s gone. He vanishes into these thick silent walls and I’m left with a vague impression of a Vonnegut gone to seed, a beard framing cracked yellow teeth. Anyway, this is no novel. He’d have to play himself. And I don’t want the story to end like that.
My room was once a servant’s quarters. There’s just enough space for a desk, two chairs, and a bookcase full of dusty essays on the nature of things. On sunny days like this I open the window and let the city in. A half mile north the silver towers of Midtown push against the sky. Beckoning, even now. My father, my brother, my friends, they’re all up there somewhere, surrounded by infrastructure. There is safety in numbers, wealth in billable segments. But I’ve learned I can’t live like that. The hours fall too lightly.
Mine is a crowded city of loners and opportunists. Street level music, played out of tune. I’m chasing the clunky promise of a life with a purpose. But it’s risky. Live too fast and you end up running in circles too. You tell unending stories to strangers, mumbling names from liner notes. Forgotten people from some other New York.
So I keep my head down, focus on the page. This is a haunted hotel. It’s a beautiful place. I’ve been trying to get here a long time.
Copyright 2006 David Goodwillie
Living with Legends 
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