King of the world
Tonight I’m sleeping in a hotel with no guests.
In 1970, when my dad was 25, he bought a bar on Caroline Street in Saratoga Springs for ten thousand dollars. He thought the world was his and this part of it was. The Tin & Lint is still open and it’s fairly nasty, but maintains some dive charm, I guess. There are photos of him all over the place & a plaque that marks the table where Don McLean wrote American Pie (allegedly). If I walk by the right person on the right day in this town, they’ll pull me aside to tell me how great my dad was. Larger than life and generous and crazy and the most important man to stumble into this place in decades. Blah blah blah.
Even my mom’s 60-year-old lesbian bestie remembers ‘Tommy’ and his infamy among the Skidmore girlies. His estate in Bacon Hill housed parties for the then prima ballerina at the NYCB during their summer residency and when he got pulled over for going 12mph in his Chevy Biscayne on Lake Avenue in the wrong direction the police chief, Pinky Lafayette, said ’Tom, what the fuck? Again?’ and drove him home.
He was obnoxious and righteous and generous and loud. He gave his friends jobs and cars and sold coke by the barrel and kept his hair in braids down his back. He balanced his bipolar with a healthy combo of blow and robitussin and drove formula 1 cars for fun. I never met this Tom.
My Tom is sober and angry and he wobbles when he walks. He lives in a trailer park in Florida and I send him money every month for camping materials or mini DVD players or whatever new idea he’s got. When my brother died, old friends reached out. Friends who grew with this town. They invited him to Saratoga for the summer. He could work for them and go to the track and escape his misery, if even temporarily. He started driving the hotel taxi at Longfellow’s Inn during the racing season. He had given Sully his first job at the Tin & Lint when he was 23. Now Sully was returning the favor. It was a big favor, too. My dad is fucking miserable to be around and it’s the saddest thing in the entire world.
Anyway, now my dad comes up here in the summers. One summer he lived on a boat he found in Schuylerville, another in the spare bedroom of an acquaintance's double-wide. He skipped two years during covid and last night I got to see where he’s been living this summer. He said it had “waterfront views” on the phone. My dad is angry and erratic, but he maintains a decent sense of humor. He’s spent this summer living in a trailer in a vacant boatyard 14 miles south of Saratoga. He calls it the Malone estate and it has 10 feet of waterfront Hudson River view. It does lack a bathroom, wifi, phone service in general, and potable water. He didn’t drive the hotel taxi this year….I think it’s a liability at this point. He tends to yell at strangers and he got this place for free.
Sully heard I was coming up for a few nights and suggested we stay at the hotel even though it’s closed for a few days given that the season has just ended. Sully and I have never really gotten into it, but every time I come up, he pats me on the back and gives me his card with his cellphone number on it. He knows.
Everyone’s doing my dad favors. For a long time, I think he was deserving of it. He would give the world away if he had it. And he did for a time. He ran this fricking town. Ha
Now he just yells. Today, mostly it was at me. It was also at the woman who owns a vintage furniture store in Hudson and almost the woman at the antique warehouse. I stopped that one.
This hotel is empty and I can’t figure out the TV so last night I watched Titanic…twice. I’m driving back to the city tomorrow with some pretty vintage furniture and four giant pimples.