floating in a tin can

jewsinspace
spaceodyssey

Things have been going unbelievably well for Michael Ginsberg lately. His girlfriend (girlfriend!) must be a good luck charm because a week ago, he'd gotten a huge promotion he'd been sure he'd never land—Peggy's old job, copy chief. He knows Cutler must have been against it every inch of the way, so how he managed to secure the position in the end is a mystery to him. No use questioning it, though. He doesn't want to think about how much pressure he's under. (How he's certain one mistake will get him demoted or even fired. How his workload is ten times greater than before, because now he's managing other people. How he is utterly not cut out for this, Cutler is probably right, he's terrible and will fail.) The deed is done, it's a holiday, he's spending it with Lee, and they're going to celebrate.

There's a party at the Chelsea (there's always a party at the Chelsea) and although it's bound to be as wild as usual, for once it suits the mood. Folks there know him by now, for better or worse, and they know about him and Lee, unlike his coworkers. The downside is they never stop giving him shit about it; it's like running into his father everywhere he goes.

“Heeey, moon man,” calls a noise musician named Lyle in an amused greeting. “Happy New Year, brother. Good time to reinvent yourself, you know? Become a man, man! Don't tell me you're still doin' that monk thing!”

“Fuck you, Lyle! How about you stop playing recordings of trash compactors and bagpipes at three in the morning!” Michael calls back, earning a chorus of laughter. Who they're all laughing at, he's not sure.

lunistice
spaceodyssey

December, 1968

Lee hates parties. She hates talking to people. This is a well-established fact about herself, one that everyone seems to ignore. Rich, her patron - and what an odd word for their relationship, though better suited than "boss" - either doesn't remember or doesn't care, though he is thankfully not one of the many who believe shyness is a character flaw one simply has to get over. Her presence being required at these kinds of parties, Lee called Michael Ginsberg the other day in a panic like help me, oh God help me. Probably not how anyone expects to be invited to a party.

Rich Higgins' room is on the eighth story of the Hotel Chelsea, a two-bedroom suite with a sitting room packed from one end to the other with people of all kinds, most fabulously dressed - artists, filmmakers, models, actresses, sexual radicals, old money trust fund babies... even one or two people in stuffy professional suits who look moderately uncomfortable at the amount of nudity going on here. The entire hotel consistently reeks of marijuana smoke - you can get a contact high in the lift - and the suite is no exception, people high off dope or speed or both. The world's tiniest kitchenette (that's New York for you) squats in a corner of the sitting room, unused all the time - Lee wandered to the Lower East Side for the first time in search of food, actually, there is never any here - except as counter space to hold dubious hors d'oeuvres (do not eat them) and cigarettes. A cloud of heavy smoke hovers throughout the place, making it difficult to see or breathe, although the door opening out to the balcony is open, the collective body heat of the gathering the only thing stopping the suite from being freezing icy cold. This whole happening is certainly a fire hazard. The volume of the music would constitute a disturbance of the peace anywhere else, but not at the Chelsea. Everybody, absolutely everybody, is drinking or drunk or both.

So is Lee, but she's always drinking, though tonight only wine and not hard liquor. She's managed to kick everyone out of her room, which is the smaller of the two, containing a bed, a small table and two chairs, and a window with an alcove seat. She is hiding. At some point she will have to emerge again, either to voluntarily make an appearance or when a drunk-or-stoned couple collapses in here and starts trying to get down on her bed. She has the door closed to prevent this as long as possible and also to be able to hear herself think. Michael has been in here before, actually, and it's no cleaner than it was before, strewn as it is with journals, books, records, and clothes - Lee has so much in the way of clothes. She gets paid mostly in clothes and jewelry and never has anywhere to put it all.

Someone thumps on the outside of the door and after a moment there's a rhythmic moaning. "I wish they wouldn't do that here," she grumbles, sitting on a chair and putting her head in her hands. She narrowly avoids setting her hair on fire from the lit cigarette she's still holding. She's dressed overwarm, but then all winter she has been lamenting the weather, unable to understand why it's so damn cold here. No one told her it would be this cold in the winter or that hot in the summer. A bandana keeps her hair out of her eyes, her style more hippie than not; she is always well-dressed, bohemian.