The Second Hotel

For years, I used to walk by an old residential hotel. It had tall windows, and I would always see elderly men sitting in the lobby smoking.

I decided to give it a chance. I still wanted to live around people. After filling out an application, I got a room right away with a shared bath. Breakfast and dinner were served six days a week. During my five years there, I learned to like baked chicken, the best item on the menu.

Ironically, while there, I felt like I had my psychological freedom. I could have been anyone. People from the neighborhood knew we were “poor,” but I didn’t care. Sometime later, the hotel changed ownership. It went from a “genteel poverty” retirement residence to one that basically took in the mentally ill, parolees, and any such combination.

I made two close friends, Mike and Paul, and many acquaintances while there. I’m still friends with Mike and Paul after twenty years.

Mike is a poet, an artist, and recently sold a painting for $100.00. Years ago, being homeless, he inadvertently burned down a warehouse while trying to stay warm. He went to prison for a few months and then to the state hospital. When it closed to people like Mike, he was sent to a board and care home where he spent 13 years. Hating it, he began pounding his head against the wall. His clinic finally found him the hotel.

To me, Mike is an enigma. I have known him a long time, and I still can’t figure him out. He hears voices and thinks the people on the television are his friends and family. Sometimes we will be out on the street or in a coffee house, and he starts talking to strangers. He thinks they are people he knows too!

Mike mentioned that he had wandered through Europe. I saw some of his photographs. He also said he had worked at the post office and a grocery store. Receiving a check from social security, he never seemed to be short of money.

One day, I saw him in front of the hotel, soaking wet in his clothes. People in the hotel said he had taken a shower fully clothed. That afternoon, he came up to my room and tried to cut his wrists with my razor. I chased him as he ran out. A park nearby had a pond. Mike jumped in. It took the police, paramedics, and ambulance drivers to coax and fish him out! He had created quite a scene. A counselor from his clinic thought he might have taken someone else’s pill. Mike ended up in the usual acute mental hospital. Being Halloween, I sent him a card. He was released three days later.

That year, Mike’s mother died. He began to drink heavily.