Stanley Bard - This Ain't no Holiday Inn: Down and Out at the Chelsea Hotel 1980-1995 - page 162

Then he had this box spring mattress and a bed that he had painted turquoise
just like the carpet. He called that his “water bed.” And on top of that, one night
there had been a fire in his room. He had once caught his couch on fire, and he
wouldn't let the firemen take his couch with them. It ended up having this foot-
long burn hole in it, and his whole room smelled like wet smoke.
Here was the landlord who could repaint and re-carpet any room in one day
sosomebodyelsecouldmoveinandkeepthemoneycoming.ButthistimeStan-
ley just shook his head at Umberto.
“You better have this room clean in a week.”
But one time Stanley did accomplish an amazing room turnaround. It had
been the room of this person Christine, a drag queen. I had read about Christine
in James St. James's book Disco Bloodbath about Michael Alig. Christine was
very,verytallandhadverydarkhair.Youknowhowwithsomedragqueens,you
think, “Wow, that's really a guy?” Christine was not like that. She looked like a
guy. Evidently she was some rich kid, and at one time, she was big in the New
York party scene, a pretty happening dude, or woman, or whatever. When I saw
her, she'd be in the Chelsea lobby with these long, lace gloves on that went up
past her elbows. She was always smoking a cigarette, and she looked very un-
healthy.
I swear to God, every time she lifted her cigarette hand from her lap, it
must've taken thirty seconds togetthecigarette uptohermouth.Shewouldtake
a hit off that cigarette, and then she'd lower the cigarette and that would take her
anotherthirtysecondstobringherarmdown.Itwaslikeshemovedinveryslow
motion.
I remember thinking, “Man, that person's not long for this world.”
Now we had this friend named Alan Cohen. For some reason, Christine the
dragqueengotacrushonAlan.Christinelivedrightaroundthecornerfromhim.
One day, Alan started hearing all these weird noises outside his door, so he went
up to his door and looked through the peephole. And what did he see but this
big eyeball staring right back at him! He knew it was Christine peering into his
room. Then Alan and Christine got into some kind of conflict because Alan told
Christine to leave him alone.
Thenafterawhile,werealizedallofthesuddenthatwehadn'tseenChristine
around for a long time. We used to see her around all the time. I went over to
Alan's room, and something in the vicinity of Alan's room smelled really, really
bad.
“Man!” Alan said. “I don't know what that smell is!”