Chelsea Wildness - This Ain't no Holiday Inn: Down and Out at the Chelsea Hotel 1980-1995 - page 47

Do Not Exceed Recommended Dosage
Where drugs are plentiful, overdoses follow. Some ODs killed—others got you on Letter-
man.
PAUL VOLMER
Because the ethic was so free, and because there were drugs everywhere at the
Chelsea, people could easily find their Achilles' heel, that one drug that would
cause them to go over the edge and travel into reaches they never would have
gone. They would burn out spectacularly.
There was a guy named Adrian, an artist who flipped himself out on forty hits
of LSD and became the samurai who frightened David Letterman. Adrian was a
painter who also wrote epic poetry, and he was a little bit pompous. He was in
his twenties and always wore three-piece suits. He had a very rigid bearing, and
would talk in a sort of educated, slightly snobbish manner. But he was an okay
guy, and a very good painter, and he somehow made a living painting, which was
difficult to do.
Adrianburnedoutquitespectacularly.Afriendofmineatthehoteldidn'tdeal
drugs, but somehow he had gotten hold of something like forty hits of acid. And
he thought, “Well, I'll sell a few to friends here and there.” The painter Adrian
bought every one of them. His downfall was this single batch of LSD. He bought
all of those forty hits from my friend, and when he was taking them home in his
pants pocket that night, it started to rain. Adrian got soaked, and the skin on his
leg absorbed all forty hits at once. He lost his mind.
Aroundthistime,acoupleofgayguyslivedinthehotel,leatherguyswhohad
all sorts of elaborate S&M gear, hats and vests, gauntlets, shin plates and spiked
shoulder pads. And by the way, these leather guys, Nick Bienes and Rhea Gal-
laher, were successful authors of trashy novels, writing under the name of Judith
Gould. 37 Their most well-known novel was called Sins, which Joan Collins made
a TV movie out of, so these two guys were kind of established. It was funny,
everyone thought, that these gay leather guys were making good money writing
trashy novels for women.
So Adrian's leg absorbed these forty hits of acid. And while he was tripping
his brains out he went to these gay leather men and borrowed these leather boots
and shin plates, and a leather skirt and shoulder pads and spiked gloves, gauntlets,
the works. He had goggles and a sword. He looked like a heavy metal Samurai!