There’s a large, shady garden on top of the Hotel Chelsea, complete with flowers, bushes, and fully grown trees, one of which has taken root in the roof itself, sending its roots down into the apartment below. The garden is surrounded by a brick wall, insulating this idyllic retreat from the swelter and commotion of the city below. Over the top of the wall you can see the top of the empire state building and the other tall buildings uptown.
On the evening of last year's Gay Pride Parade, a couple of the Chelsea people, two men who lived together in one of the hotel’s more lavish suites, gave a party in the garden. They had hung some rainbow-colored balloons, but besides that it was just the usual Chelsea party, with, by and large, the usual Chelsea denizens.
The gay guys of the Chelsea Hotel are not the buff Chelsea Boys you hear so much about. Any actual, self-respecting Chelsea Boy wouldn’t be caught dead here. The Chelsea Hotel boys are more flamboyant, artistic, fabulous; whatever their age, they dress more like old time gays, in lavender jackets, cravats, fedoras, things like that. There were even a couple of drag queens, Chelsea Girls. One man, tall and thin, with a lined, weathered face, wore a pink seersucker suit.
The lesbians at the party were, by and large, girls next door (looking like boys next door), in jeans and t-shirts, though one of them wore a retro polka dot dress and had a beehive hairdo.
There was lots of liquor, and lots of food: one table filled with fancy, catered appetizer platters, another with potato salad and coleslaw, and burgers and hotdogs to throw on the grill. My girlfriend and I talked to our friends, got drunk, and then, as the sun was setting, slipped away from the party to explore other areas of the roof, higher levels toward the rear, where the purple sky, and Greenwich Village, it’s streets alive with the gay pride revelers, spread out before us in a panorama.
When we came back, everyone was finishing up their food, and it was time for the desert. A 
heavy-set, husky woman, butch, in flannel shirt with hacked-off blond hair, brought out a platter containing the dinner’s piece de resistance: three cakes in the shape of round, white tits, C-cups, approximately, with delicate pink nipples set enticingly on top. Smiling, she showed the cakes around the crowd proudly. The tits were coated with a glazed, hard shell of icing, making the confection seem more like candy, rather than cake. They looked mouth watering, almost too pretty to touch.
Finally, after everybody had had a good look at them, they were placed upon a table, a knife was produced, and everyone gathered around as the blond butch dyke cut into them.
And, lo and behold, they were green inside! The tits were filled with a green gel of some sort. Everybody was surprised. “Oh, they must be Irish tits!” the guy in the seersucker exclaimed.
The blond woman glared at him, and looked him up and down in disgust. “These are American Tits,” she said, crossly.
The man in the seersucker was too frightened to say anything. He just stood there for an uncomfortable moment with his mouth agape.
Finally, as the woman turned her attention back to the cake, the seersucker turned away, and, making his escape, rolled his eyes and remarked in a low voice, “Yeah, tits on a plate, real American!” (Copyright 2006 Ed Hamilton)
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