going home

I now have my airline tickets and my tickets to Avenue Q and Spamalot. I am almost as excited about going to New York as I am about the rest of the trip to Baku and St. Petersburg. I haven’t been back to the old neighborhood in years and I plan to take a quick walk around.

When BC and I moved to New York we found our apartment in Chelsea on W. 21st between 9th and 10th. Chelsea wasn’t the uber-trendy gayborhood it is today. It was a gritty working-class neighborhood that happened to be more affordable than Greenwich Village. We paid $400 a month for our 2 bedroom apartment. Chelsea Piers was nothing but run down warehouses and parking for trucks that served up anonymous sex after hours *ahem* or so I’ve been told. Chelsea was also home to the sleazy Everard Baths, The Glory Hole, The Spike, and The Ramp.

Our block had it’s assortment of memorable characters. Creepy Anthony Perkins lived a few doors down. He could often be seen riding his bicycle while he cruised the streets. No one can convince me he wasn’t really Norman Bates. Our building was also home to Joe, the manager of the old Limelight on 7th Ave.; Patti, the head of Psychiatric Nursing at NJ State Hospital; and Harlow, the stripper. We were all friends. The building’s Sunday pot luck brunches were good times.

From daybreak to dusk the stoop of the building next door was home to Ricky, a really sweet mentally retarded kid. Ricky always had a friendly word when ever I walked by. More than a dozen years after I left NY I happened to pass Ricky on my way to visit Patti. I hadn’t seen him once in all that time. He looked up, smiled at me, and said “Hi Ray. You been on vacation?”

Chelsea Piers may now be an entertainment complex. The Everard Baths, The Glory Hole, The Spike, and The Ramp may have given way to Splash, Barracuda, The Break, and G. But I’d like to think that Ricky is still there and exactly the same.