CHARLES GETER(CG), WILLIAM(W), GUS(G), HENRY(H), PAUL(P), DAGASTINO(D), SAM(S), ALFRED MING(AM),ORLANDO(O), JACK(J),ERNIE(E) and CLERK(C)
CG: Testing. Testing. One, two, three. This is Charles. Okay, let me see is it working . . .
(Tape recorder clicks off.)
(Music fades in.)
April 1997. I’m starting my project.
Hello. Hello. This is Charles Geter, born February the 2nd, 1947. I was born in Denmark, South Carolina, the oldest of nine children. Unmarried . . .
That’s me, recording my life story late at night at the Palace Hotel. I came here in 1973 after I got back from Vietnam.
Coming out the army I started using drugs. And after I started using drugs, my whole world just started crumbling. I been drug free for three years now — and going strong.
At first, I made hours of tapes about my life. Like talking about my first night in a flop.
I was tired, and I didn’t know what to expect so I lied down on the bed and drifted off into sleep. And when daylight was breaking I felt something was crawling on my body. I jumped out of the bed, and I look — I seen all these bugs on me, little white grayish bugs. And once I seen these, I started running.
But telling my own story was just the beginning. My real assignment was to get interviews with the other guys living here at the Palace.
When I first moved here, the Palace was the biggest hotel on the Bowery. Six hundred guys slept here each night. But now it’s like a ghost town. There’s just thirty of us old-timers left in our cubicles. My job was to bring ’em out and get them to talk about life on the Bowery.
I’m walking down the hallway of the Palace Hotel. And I’m standing here at room number one.
(Knock on a door.)
CG: Hey, how ya’ doing, William? You know my name is Charles, right?
W: Right.
CG: I’m doing a project here something like on the Bowery. If you feel like talking to me that would be cool, if you don’t feel like talking, it’s all right also.
W: I can’t think of anything to say. Maybe next time.
CG: I’m standing in front of room number three now. Hello, Gus? Gus?
(Knocks.)
G: I don’t want to get involved. What ever it is, I don’t need trouble.
CG: Okay, fine. Thank you.
Moving on down the hallway.
(Sounds of knocking.)
CG: Henry? Are you home, Henry?
H: What?
CG: This is Charlie.
H: Who’s that?
CG: You know, if you can open the door, you can see who it is.
(Sound of door opening.)
CG: Hey, how ya’ doing, Henry? Don’t . . . don’t . . . it’s okay, Henry. It’s okay. Okay.
P: You caught me at the wrong time — I got to make a run for the bathroom.
CG: Okay.
D: I’m not feeling very well tonight. Maybe another time if you stop back. Okay?
CG: I’m gonna try it one more time. I got one more gentleman. Do you feel like talking?
S: No I don’t feel like talking. I’m kind of depressed. Maybe some other time. Thank you.
CG: Okay, thank you, Mr. Sam. I think I’m gonna cut it off right here.
(Tape recorder clicks off.)
(Music.)
CG: It was frustrating. No one at the Palace would give me an interview. Listen.
People don’t want to talk. They want to hold things in. They don’t want the world, the people, to know about them. That would be against their principal of trying to escape the world. And it’s getting harder and harder every day, you know. And the harder it gets, the more frustrated I get; the more frustrated I get, the more I don’t want to do it. I’m sorry, you know, it’s coming out this way . . .
I felt like a failure, and I was ready to quit. But then I started thinking, the only thing I ever stuck with in my life was shooting drugs. Maybe I was giving up too easy. So I took my tape recorder down the Bowery to visit some of the other flophouses that were still around.
Testing one two three. This is Charles Geter. I’m going into 220 Bowery.
Hey, how you doing? My name is Charles Geter, and I’m doing a piece on the Bowery, about the conditions — you know, what it used to be like. You could let me in and I could talk to a few of the guys?
C: I can’t do that, no. I got strictly orders from the manager not to let anybody in.
CG: All right.
Okay, I’m down here by the Providence Hotel and I’m walking in.
How you doing? I’m doing a piece about the Bowery. You know, the past history of the Bowery and the present?
C: What do you want? You want a room?
CG: No, I don’t want a room. No.
C: You don’t want a room. What you want then?
CG: I just want to interview some guys that lived on the Bowery for a while.
(Fade out.)
(Sound of a door buzzer.)
CG: My name is Charles Geter, and I’m doing a piece on the Bowery about the uh . . .
C: Nope. Nope.
CG: No?
C: Forget it.
CG: Okay.
C: Good day!
CG: I was discouraged, but I didn’t give up. I actually started feeling more comfortable with the microphone and more confident about myself. Listen.
I love doing this. Yes, I love doing what I’m doing. Actually, I’m getting to where I like to talk into a microphone. This is Charles. Here’s lookin’ at you.
(Tape recorder clicks off.)
CG: I was feeling better about everything. I even decided to go to the doctor. I hadn’t gone for years and years. I was sure the doctor would tell me everything was okay. But I was wrong.
I really don’t know how I should put this, but I was tested for AIDS, and it turned out positive . . .
(The sound of his crying fades out.)
CG: At first I thought I could keep going with my story, but I just got more and more depressed, and finally I quit for real. For months I stared out the window of the Palace, doing nothing. But always in the back of my mind, I was thinking about this project. I was tired of disappointing everyone. I had something to prove. So finally, last New Year’s, I made a resolution to start taping again. And couple of days later, I did.
Testing. Testing. This is, uh, Charles Geter. I’m here standing in the Palace Hotel on the second floor. And it’s 1: 00 AM in the morning of January the third. And looking out the front window, it’s very dead outside, and no people. Maybe a few just walking the street. Yeah, I can see a couple walking the street, and that’s about it. And probably in the background, you can hear a radio that’s going. There’s no one listening to it, but I’m going to turn it off.
(Sound of radio clicks off.)
CG: And I just did that. There’s no one in the lobby at this time. It’s actually dead here, in the lobby of the Palace Hotel. Not even one sound. You got the Christmas tree. It’s blinking on and off. And a few garbage cans. And I’m just like a lonely person who’s walking around an empty place . . .
I made a promise: to finish this project, no matter what!
’Cause I think it’s a time now for me actually to do something and complete it, so I could say I accomplish something. I give something that they could remember me by.
I went looking for interviews in the Palace again. And this time I actually managed to convince a couple of the guys to open up.
AM: My name is Alfred Ming. I’m 50 years old. In the year of 1989, I believe I came down to the Bowery, to the Palace.
CG: Can you describe where you live at? How big it is?
AM: Stand up, now spread your arms — that’s how big my room is. From end to end. Okay. I have a bed in the room, and a light.
CG: Want to say hello?
O: (mumbling): Oh yes, thank you, Charlie. Say hello to Mr. Charlie Geter, dear friend. Gonna do a little fifteen minute interview with him. What else, Charlie? What else you want me to do?
CG: What is your relationship to the Bowery?
O: Let me see. My relationship with the Bowery right now is pretty good. Have a pretty decent relationship with the Bowery.
(Fades out.)
CG: I even got a guy from one of the other hotels to sit down with me for a couple of minutes.
CG: Describe your life in the hotel. You get along quite well with everybody in there I imagine, right?
J: I don’t get along quite well with anybody in there. You can’t speak to these people. All it is is ”hello” and ”good-bye.”
CG: That’s definitely a rough way to live for anybody.
J: It don’t bother me at all, because I don’t really care.
CG: Okay, Jack, if you had your life to live again, what would you change about it?
J: Living in the Bowery. (Laughs.)
CG: They was tough interviews, and I was proud. It was an accomplishment just to get these guys to talk. But I didn’t feel like I was finished yet. I still wanted to find someone that could tell me about the Bowery in the old days. Finally, I found him — a retired cop named Ernie who used to patrol down here in the 1950s. I was a little nervous to talk to him, but he treated me like a professional. Here’s some of our interview.
E: I remember a lot of the frostbite. Literally people sleeping in snow banks. I pulled them out of the snow banks. I saw a lot of death, I saw an awful lot of isolation and loneliness. Yet there was a kind of a camaraderie around living on the Bowery. There was a camaraderie around a bottle of wine — a bottle of white Irish Rose, I think it was called . . . Sneaky Pete.
CG: Right now, is it better than it used to be?
E: Oh, absolutely. There is no more Bowery. When you came in years ago as a tourist into the city, you wanted to see the Bowery. The Bowery today is the same as any other street in the city. There are no more people sleeping on sidewalks, no more of the romantic kind of Bowery man that you remember from Steinbeck. You know, jumping on freights and going across the country, you know . . .
(His voice fades out into music.)
(Tape recorder clicks on.)
CG: Testing, one two three, testing. This is Charles Geter. Sitting here on my bed, December the 22nd, 1998. And I’m doing my final diary. And these words I will give you will be my final words.
I’m 51 years old. And up until now I have never completed anything that I started. See, I never completed my schooling. I never stuck with a job very long. Everything I did was a failure, as far as I’m concerned. I think by doing this tape and completing something . . . that I could once say that I finally finished something that I started. Something I can look back on and say, ”That’s my story. That’s my story.”
And I always say to myself, ”I wonder what my purpose on this earth was? Why did God put me on this earth?” But now I know he put me here for a reason.
And I, Charles Geter, sitting here in my room, looking at a light bulb in the ceiling . . . I say, ”Thank you.”
This is Charles. Good-bye.
