3:20 a.m. - 2024-02-29
another rambling dream post: act three
Whatever it was I'd hoped to accomplish over a pay-phone, I hadn't. So I set out to join my parents at the Hotel St. M___. There to rest, regroup, and sort out bus transportation when weather permitted.
~ ~ ~
While recalling those strange interstitial buildings in act two, I was reminded of how often the “intense architectural detail” I mentioned manifests in the fantastic. In inverted ziggeurats and impossible cantilevers, in houses with crab-spiral stairs and fixtures forged for giants...through sweeping balconies constructed to accommodate elevated railways and aqueducts whose payloads defy gravity; all dream-rendered w/explicit finish-detail. From Shinto Shrine-carpentry to Beaux-Arts baroque, from Bauhaus restraint to Churrigueresque excess,1 my whole design catalog blows open while I slumber. When the addled set-painter in my brain starts in on another backdrop.How to explain the “mash-up” nature of those implausible structures? Are they random bits of work detail, regurgitated along with a steady childhood diet of Science Fiction? Does the fabulous cover art from those $2 paperbacks haunt me in my sleep?
I bring this up because the whole neighborhood around the Hotel St. M___ had been razed and rebuilt by dream-architects. And they'd done so in a bizarre-but-uniform style,2 one adopted w/zero concession to the historic buildings that stood before.
“But Ernst, if the neighborhood was gone, how could you recognize it? How did you realize this was the Lower East Side, and that you were standing on Delancy Street specifically?”
Because the Hotel St. M___ was built underneath the Williamsburg Bridge.
~ ~ ~
Or so I assumed...there was no sign to indicate a hotel at the address given. Nor was there a Bell-Captain or Valet. Just a sheer concrete edifice, windowless save for a few randomly-placed arrow-slits. These glowed a dim amber; the rest of the building was lit faintly from the ground, fading towards darkness where it met the illuminated bridge above. There, presumably, traffic and trains were passing to and from Brooklyn, but whatever noise they should have made was muted on the dream-street below.The sole entrance was deeply recessed and low-ceilinged; underscoring the visual weight of the building's monolithic exterior and creating a dramatic “cave-mouth” effect upon entry. Because the glass doors at the back of that claustrophobic passage opened onto an interior that was, to complete the metaphor, cavernous...
Consistent w/the brut exterior--every surface here was of concrete. The floors boasting a polished finish while the walls had none; exposed form-marks and pockets of aggregate remained to betray their construction. The ceiling was impossibly high. “What a strange and impressive hotel lobby”, I thought as two points of concern came to my attention: I appeared to be the only person in the building, and this appeared to be an art gallery...
~ ~ ~
It was a familiar lineup of abstract-expressionists, most with minimalist tendencies: Rothko, Kline, Ad Reinhardt and the like, but only the most sombre or monochromatic paintings by each were on display. This hushed curatorial palette was epitomized by an artist whose specific work I remember “seeing”--Antoni Tàpies. While not as recognized as his American peers, some curator at MOCA had favored him when I lived in LA, and I'd become a fan over the course of several visits... (The other specific piece I recalled upon waking was a modest-but-powerful bronze3 set atop a lone pedestal. One that would strike me as appropriate later.)The gallery was only three rooms deep, and as there was no exit from the third I made my way back towards the entrance, puzzled. An attractive young woman in a short black dress4 stood now by the door...did I miss seeing her before? She handed me a show brochure, “HOLOCAUST MUSEUM” it read. Oh. Where then was the Hotel St. M___? She gestured towards a wide set of stairs, atop which sat a concrete reception desk. Behind that desk stood her twin sister, waving.
“Curious accommodations...” I thought, as I set out down an empty hallway, room key in hand.
~ ~ ~
The hotel's floor-plan didn't seem to have one. Suite numeration was sporadic and unpredictable, hallways would dead-end abruptly, and steps would elevate only to descend again without purpose. There was neither exit sign nor landmark to indicate my relative position, and I soon found myself lost. Imagine my relief and confusion then, when I turned a corner and saw my dad in the hallway ahead, stripping naked...Did I mention in act one that my parents were played by their present-day, septuagenarian selves? And not the fit young couple who used to walk around the house quite-comfortably nude? (Something I never thought twice about as an American child of the seventies, it was just part of the zeitgeist...like fondue parties, roller-boogie or shameless mustaches.)5 Not that I'd blink if my old dad slipped into a Japanese sentō while I was bathing, or if I stumbled across my parents sunning on a nude beach tomorrow; but this was a fancy (albeit odd) NYC hotel... Had his cognitive decline crossed some sort of critical threshold?
“Not at all” he replied calmly.
The Hotel St. M___, he explained, was an exclusive, members-only nudist resort for retired military brass and their families. And he was just stripping down to join some old colleagues for a cocktail reception. “Take off your clothes and I'll introduce you”, he gestured towards the open entrance to the bar, which, like everything else in this place, seemed to have snuck up on me.
The bar itself was built, predictably, of cast-concrete. Chatting there in a neon-lit haze of blue cigar smoke were the hotel's elite clientele; naked per their charter, all clearly retired officers. The sit-up toned abs of yesteryear lay buried now under gentle belly-pots, and the triceps that once tested uniform seams might have gone soft—but their posture betrayed them. Years at the Academy and a lifetime spent standing at attention still showed...those senior-spines stood ramrod straight. The steely haircuts were another tell; uniformly conservative and impeccable, no doubt trimmed every two weeks by the same barber. These were the kind of men who shaved every morning, and again before dinner if company was expected.
They drank brown liquor to-a-man, short tumblers of bourbon or snifters of cognac, and most wore heavy, stainless-steel wristwatches (being naked is no excuse for being late, soldier). The only other ornamentation on display were the class rings from their respective service academies.
I noticed my dad wore his West Point ring as well...something I'd never seen.
What were they discussing in there? What context informed those knowing nods, those chuckles and back-slaps? Was the conversation as revealing as the dress-code? Those leathery old hides must've been walking storyboards of scar tissue. Old combat souvenirs perhaps, traces of trauma to be romanticized in the retelling...others fresh evidence of cardiac surgery and the like, of ongoing campaigns against a more-inevitable enemy. And what of those flaccid old cocks? What kind of trouble had they gotten into when they weren't busy stateside, siring future congressmen with high-school sweethearts turned-honest-women? Were they ever “deployed” whilst deployed? What calloused confessions, from battlefield to bedroom, are shared in the confidence of like-minded men...
“Think I'll take a rain-check Dad.” I left to find our room.
~ ~ ~
My mom was glad to see me...as was, surprisingly, my little sister. Both were naked of course.I'm quite sure my sister hadn't been in that 1980 VW convertible from act one, but she must have been part of the same “dream set”...because she appeared to be 13 years old here. She was busy arranging blankets into a pallet on the floor next to the bed; a place for us “kids” to sleep. (There was biographical precedent for this. Owing to situation or circumstance, over the course of the many, many cross-country trips that defined our lives as military brats, we'd been obliged to sleep that way a few times.)
“So I saw Dad out in the hall...he's going to meet friends?”
“Oh lordy I know...you get some whiskey in those ol' warhorses and they'll talk all night”, my mother replied, patting the bed beside her, “Why don't you sit down here by your mom and we'll find a good movie on cable”.
1 Hi Pidge!
2 Think Moebius' Bedouin-Futurist aesthetic meets Hip Santa Monica House-Flipper. (Not my best work.)
3 I'm not big fan of the “artist as outsider” narrative in general; mostly because of its impact on popular appreciation and inevitable commercial exploitation but...Gaudier-Brzeska? Dude was intense. There's a biography based on his correspondence called Savage Messiah that Ken Russell made into a movie back in '72. Recommended, both.
4 I hesitate to mention any tangential coincidence here, because I doubt my slumbering mind made such an esoteric connection, and because my relationship with the woman playing the role of “girl with brochure” is so long-standing (involving young love and passionate crushes and such) that it's not unusual for her to cameo in my dreams, but...she did grow up in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh. With friends and family who were members of L'Simcha synagogue.
5 See also: yarn art.
