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making money, but still living a desolate life because I was there at the Chelsea
living like the rest of them. And the summers there were so hot! I had bought a
fan at a yard sale in Long Island for five dollars. It was about an eight-inch dia-
meterfan.Iusedtosleepwithitfacingmyface.Itwasprettyrugged.ButIguess
the rough times at the Chelsea were less rough than out in the rest of the world.
If Marlowe's departure from the Chelsea came from being alienated from his own room,
Paul Volmer's had to do with a woman, namely Neicy. With her as the root cause, Paul
eventually landed in jail.
PAUL VOLMER
Inaway,theworstthingIcouldhavedonewasmoveinwithNeicy.Ihadwanted
to protect her, and I did. She was so lively that she was almost incapable of get-
ting a job. She did do a little babysitting. But in taking care of her, I began my
own decline. I really couldn't support both of us on what I was making. It was
stressful. And Neicy had a very strong personality—she demanded a lot of atten-
tion. We were always on the edge financially.
Eventually, I wasn't able to keep up the rent. So I was a part of the “house-
cleaning” when Stanley's son, David, got rid of Robert and Viva and all the Bo-
hemians in the hotel.
But Neicy was my weakness,
my femme fatale.
I would have done anything
for her, and that was my downfall. Other people had drugs as their downfall, but
mine was a woman.
Stanley was always trying to break me up with Neicy because she wasn't
paying any rent. One day he gave me an ultimatum: “If you don't get Neicy to
leave, then I'm going to evict you.”
SoIstartedworkingasabikemessengertoearnextramoneyandpayNeicy's
rent. Before, when I had been working for Stanley as bellman and night watch-
man, he had control over me then because I was working for him and paying off
my rent that way. But now my loyalties were to Neicy, and she was making me
fall further short on my rent. Stanley no longer had a reason to keep me.
I remembered how free I used to feel riding a bike as I kid, so I started the
job with a small bike messenger company. It was headquartered in a rinky-dink
office in an old warehouse. One time I bike-messengered pot to one of the mem-
bers of the Allman Brothers. That's how I used to make a little extra money!
When this company hired bike messengers, they would always end up em-
ploying, say, two Pauls and three Johns, so they had to pick nicknames for
people. Because I lived in the Chelsea, they nicknamed me “Sid.”
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