the man in 2804

On a late Spring business trip, I became hotel-bound, lolling in a fully loaded suite while a blizzard raged outside. At first, I laughed at the beauty of a system that delivered great plops of snow while a mere thousand miles away, my home glowed beneath the year’s first heat wave. By day three, I was sobbing into the telephone, pinning my despondence on the weather that ruined my high-heels.

I checked in, then floundered in the excess space, absorbed by the excruciating minutiae of an orderly room: fat fresh roll of bathroom tissue with end folded to a point, drinking glasses crowned with paper caps, brochures pushing local mustn’t-miss attractions, blankets pulled taught and phone cord coiled snugly. Once the shine wore off the all-access cable and playing bartender with pricey tipples of mini-bar gin, I skulked around the lobby like a hard-boiled detective, peaking around a folded newspaper and over the rim of my cocktail glass, projecting racy lives onto plain people with homely suitcases.

Languishing in my room, I imagined fanciful scenes of strangers converging and filled my evenings by inventing the overhead guest, fleshing him out from sounds that leaked through the night. At bedtime, I was lulled by the elevator shushing between floors and the man upstairs peeing, no flush. I’d say he peed more than average but about him I knew nothing more. I heard no footfalls, no visitors knocking or doors opening and closing – perhaps all that peeing occurred with the bathroom door ajar, with reckless disregard for privacy and no inkling that I was building him from the bladder up.

It was nearly June; yet, a rind of snow lingered in shady crannies for days after the storm. My trip wore on, the snow was scoured away by sloppy rain and my relationship with the hotel drifted into a fixation upon the man in 2804. I cast him aping my activities, narrating a routine for him as I went about my own. Perhaps he watches television and eats Chinese take-away straight from paper cartons. Maybe he saves the chopsticks for when the pizzeria forgets to include cutlery with the steaming cardboard box and single tin of Italian soda. After dinner, he might stretch his spine and legs, joints unfurling. I see us stacked one storey apart, bending to touch our feet, hauling in deep breaths, shushing stale air from dank bellies, lowering our chests to the floor. I can wrangle my body into bow pose; he tips side-to-side and just can’t get a grip on his left ankle. His neck strains and his cheeks get pinker. “Fucking yoga!” breaks into his thoughts of water, wind, silence and purity.

Or perhaps he’s a hotel deadbeat, wallowing in the seclusion of the “Do Not Disturb” sign, ordering and then only picking at room service treats, scattering towels throughout the freshly straightened suite, chugging child-sized servings of rye and screw-top wine out of the mini-bar then, come morning, ignoring the wake-up call he requested the night before.

My fantasy’s trajectory veered to the puerile, and our unconsummated affair remained chaste and surreal. Before I checked out, I said good-bye to the sound of my neighbour at the toilet – my neighbour whom I gave only luggage, a yoga routine and plentiful pee. Stationed at the window, I heard rain pelting the glass and pooling on the concrete sill, and piss pelting the water in the toilet upstairs. I heard myself breathing and the radio turned down low. No wind, no yard dogs, no kids or cars. Only water: falling from the clouds outside, and falling from a penis upstairs.

-Amanda Miller of Toronto, ON
http://cakesandneckties.blogspot.com/

a place named for a cow

Visiting Hereford, Texas, a place named for a cow, I was forced to take lodgings in a small motel on the outskirts, because all other motels were full-up due to a cow-related event. The clerk gave me a room number but no key. I asked for a key. He said there were no keys, because "people busted all the locks." He did, however, walk me across the courtyard to show me my room. My room was not good. There was a brown blood-splatter across the television set and wall. I asked why. He said, "Meskins." The "air conditioning" was from a device known in Texas as a "swamp-cooler," a very apt description. There was no cable. The television set acquired two TV shows at the same time, one superimposed on the other. I watched both of them and was interested to discover that I could more or less keep up. The only phone service was through the desk clerk. He said I had to pay cash in advance to call long distance. When I walked back across the courtyard to give him the cash, two young cowboy types were sitting in the courtyard drinking tequila and arguing. I asked the clerk far it was to the nearest liquor store. He said it was 57.5 miles. "Dry county," he said. I drove it. Just as he said, the county was dry.

-Jim Schutze of Dallas, TX
http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/unfairpark/

i almost threw up, but settled for crying myself to sleep

My husband and I were driving from Chicago to Massachusetts, and since that is a long trip, we usually stop for the night somewhere in New York. We were passing lovely pockets of hotel chains, but my dear hubby scoffed at them, saying that he wasn't tired yet. Of course, an hour later, he can barely hold his head up. So we stopped at the nearest motel. This was one of those "door open to the outside" motels where people (I imagine) get murdered. It was filthy of course, but after eating a meal of McDonald's (the only thing around and open, we would never eat that otherwise, blah), we started to get into bed. As I stepped to the edge of the bed, about to get in, I stepped on something sharp with my bare foot and look down. At the pile of toenails piled on the side of the bed. I almost threw up, but instead settled for crying myself to sleep - after I made my husband promise to let ME choose our hotels from now on.

UGH!

-Anna Gregoline of Chicago, IL
VoodooToaster.com

my stay at the big chief

This incident happened several years ago. We were traveling through Colorado in the summer and decided to drive to Gunnison. We had been playing and arrived in town quite late. We saw the neon for the Big Chief and it looked quite sleazy and we laughed as we passed. Well we checked with all the other hotels in the area and as you can guess they were full. So sheepishly we went back to the Big Chief and yes they had a room. The room was very sketchy, so we unpacked and settled in. My son who was five at the time was thrilled and watched bowling on ESPN. I believe he was the only one who slept well. We were out of there at the crack of dawn.

-Lori Williams of Albuquerque, NM

like walking into a time warp

My "favourite" worst hotel would have to be one we "stayed" at for about 10 minutes last summer in Oregon. I can't remember the name of the town as it wasn't an actual destination but just the place we ended up at the end of the day's driving.

My husband had to go to the bathroom and didn't want to stop at a gas station and since our choices of hotels were very limited due to the size of the town and all of the hotels we spotted having no vacancy signs he pulled into one that didn't look too bad. Usually we check out rooms before paying and hauling our luggage out of the car but not this time. We got our room key and headed to our room with our luggage and kids in tow. We actually were staying in a motel not a hotel as the door was outside and not down a hallway.

Walking up the stairs and to our room in the corner we started to get not so good vibes about our accommodations. The stairs and walkway were damaged and unswept and on closer inspection the building looked like it hadn't been painted in years.

After unlocking the door and depositing our luggage hubby made a bee-line for the bathroom. The kids and I looked around the small cramped quarters with a bit of disdain. The room was dark and dingy and the beds didn't look like a place I would want to sit on never mind sleep in. Being hopeful I started to check it for cleanliness because looks aren't everything. Dust on the baseboards and other flat surfaces hinted at the room either being empty for awhile or not being well cleaned. I spotted a fridge in a strange spot and proceeded to open the door but closed it just as quickly as it stank of mildew and needed no further inspection. I pointed this out to hubby as he exited the bathroom.

Our son came out of the washroom telling us about the leak in the toilet. We went in to inspect and found water coming out of the base of the toilet but luckily it was coming from the water intake and not the toilet bowl. Since we were already there our daughter took her turn in the bathroom giving us a couple more minutes to really see the room for what it was. We couldn't believe we were thinking of spending the night there.

We looked out the one small window only to spot a hotel hidden behind the one we were in. We got in the car and quickly drove to the hotel we spotted. They had a vacancy and we quickly took it but not before we inspected the room. The price was the same but this room was large and airy with a clean fridge and no water leaks.

We drove back to our first room to tell the proprieter about our change in plans. He apologized and told us that he just bought the place and was in the process of fixing it up. Wanting to retain customers he told us he had more rooms right next door he wanted to show us. Not wanting to be rude we agreed to view the "new" room.

As we followed the proprietor across the parking lot and down the sidewalk my husband and I exchanged looks wondering where we were being taken. By now it was getting dark and when we first spotted the outside pool our hopes brightened a bit. Then we noticed the pool covered in a black tarp and had a closed sign on it. Next we spotted old rolled up carpets thrown around outside and the shrubbery was all over grown. Going inside the room was like walking into a time warp and into a bedroom circa 1955. The furnishings were so old and mismatched we couldn't believe we were being offered these accommodations as being better than the previous room. We politely took a 5 second look around and declined the offer. Leaving the room we realized there were no other cars in the parking lot.

We went and gathered our luggage and canceled our reservation trusting that we would receive credit on our mastercard for it. No matter how much of a hurry we are in we always inspect rooms before accepting them.

-A careful consumer in Cranbrook, BC.

you are so ugly I cannot look at you: three motel stories

Motel Story 1

Rachael, my sister , and I decided to drive around Puerto Rico one summer. Apparently this is something you can do in a day without interludes but we had read about paradors – guest houses -- throughout the island. With descriptions like ‘as you eat breakfast on the peaceful veranda , hummingbirds will sweep by’ we made reservations at all the spots where we planned to visit a site – El Yunque Rain Forest, the Phosphorescent Bay etc.

We checked into our second parador after San Juan and it resembled a dungeon-like dorm room. There were no hummingbirds during breakfast but there was a scowling hostess whose disdain for guests taking an extra piece of toast was very clear.

We decided to wing it and canceled our future reservations. When we got to our next stop we asked around and ended up at a motel with a broken concrete parking area filled with a pack of wild dogs. My sister conversed with the owner about staying and was told we could stay but only one night. She said the honeymooners were returning.

We got to our room and closed the tin door – inside it was sprayed in scrawling type “Check Out at 11!”The room’s shabbiness was masked by dense floral patterns and the toilet was contained in a semi circle plastic addition that was literally 1 in from the bed! We tried to imagine this honeymoon couple in this place. Apparently they had stayed there after their wedding and had conceived their 1st child there – and the next day they were returning to the scene.

We watched a show about spousal abuse that night. There was a man who would constantly say to his wife, “Turn your head; you are so ugly I cannot look at you."

We said goodnight with these same words to each other.

Motel Story 2

In Chicago we live near an old motel strip – the sorts of places with huge early Vegas like signs. These have seen their day but they were once frequented by rock bands when they came to town. They’re being torn down one by one now but in the late ‘90’s and up until now they catered to transient types, hookers and high school kids looking for a place to have sex.

My brother was planning a trip to Chicago and because he’s in a wheelchair we had to find a hotel to accommodate him. Keeping with family tradition (my Dad’s), he got sticker shock with Chicago prices and didn’t want to spend so much money on a place where he was just going to sleep. I told him about those motels & that they were gross but he said he didn’t care.

So I spent a day visiting these fine establishments. I went out armed with a yardstick to see if the doorways would fit his chair and to look at the bathrooms. There were doorways as narrow as 20 inches! Some places refused to show me a room because they thought I was a cop – that happened at a place where there was a man with a pasted on black moustache. You would think these crappy places might welcome business but some said they didn’t take reservations . Some asked how long he would be staying . When I said days they said ‘oh we only go by the hour.’ One room I was allowed to look at had a 100 pack box of condoms on the bedside table!

Needless to say my brother didn’t stay at any of these but Kevin & I did when we failed to make arrangements for ourselves while we had our floors refinished. We checked into ‘The Acres” which was supposedly a decent motel in my husband's youth—he & his sister used to sneak into the pool when they were young. Well the pool was no more on the day we were there and the carpeting revolting – thick and oily from years of filth – that we didn’t remove our shoes for the entire time. As we were leaving , I did the quick under the bed check to find an empty coke can & 2 Penthouse magazines. Super gross!

Motel Mississippi

Kevin and I flew to Memphis with plans to drive from there to New Orleans for Jazz Fest. On the plane he discovered that his license had expired so I got to drive for the entire trip. We hung out at the Peabody in Memphis – a swank southern hotel with a lobby of fountains, high tea, a flock of ducks (that lives at the hotel, upstairs, in a room, and each morning the red carpet is rolled out & they come out of the elevator and head to the fountain – then they head back up in the afternoon) and frequented by students of Ole Miss during the holidays.

We drove on from there to Jackson Miss – and stopped late night at a crappy motel that was ‘just a place to sleep’ as Dad would say. We were a bit scared by the place and enough so that we moved a dresser up against the door. In the morning we heard a knock. The person outside the door was telling us that our keys were in the door.

-Sadie Gerbic of Chicago, IL
www.sadiegerbic.blogspot.com

an excerpt from the short story "a story to tell"

As he steps back into the office, Frank nods and says, “Night,” again. Frank closes the door and locks it behind Erik and Erik is alone in the Farm Inn.

Not knowing what to expect, he opens up the door leading into the hallway. The door shakes and groans like an alcoholic suffering through a case of the DTs. It needs a good oiling. The hallway seems to be lit by votive lights, it is so dim. In between the doors to the five rooms that line the hallway to his left are small plastic candles that are topped with dim orange bulbs that are shaped like flames. They blink slowly on and off to give the impression of a wavering flame. The hallway has a weird, throbbing orange glow. To his immediate right, Erik sees a set of wooden, handmade steps that look like a boy scout project gone wrong, like someone gave a fourth grader some 2 x 4’s, some nails, and a hammer. At the other end of the hallway is one door marked, exit and another marked, washroom. Three ceiling fans are spaced equidistant from each other, shoving around the stagnant, woodsy air in ineffective circles.

The walls seem to be made of reclaimed wood, maybe from other old barns, Erik thinks. They are roughly cut, unsanded boards and he doesn’t want to think about how many splinters he’d get by running his hand down one.

The steps sound like they’re going to snap or break with every movement he makes climbing up them. Erik runs up the remainder of them unleashing a chorus of racket like a set of creaky shutters getting tossed around by a storm. In front of room number 11, maybe ten feet from the stairs, Erik puts his bag down and inserts the non-black key into the lock, and opening the door. Just as in the hallway, his room is covered with a fake grass, plastic green carpet that he recognizes as the playing surface of miniature golf courses. He smiles to himself and decides that he likes this place. The exterior definitely has character, but the interior decorating moves it up into another level of novelty. It was 1989, he thinks, but there was no way that anything in this place was manufactured later than 1960. He couldn’t wait to tell everybody about it when he got home. Nobody would believe there’s actually a place like this out here, only in Wisconsin.

He should be carrying a putter over his shoulder and knocking around a bright pink ball through obstacles or under a windmill’s spinning blades on this carpeting. Do they vacuum this stuff or just hose it down and squeegee it off, he wonders. The first thing he decides to do is hit the bathroom before settling in.

Erik is surprised to find the fake grass covering the bathroom’s floor as well. Now he definitely hopes there is water and lots of soap involved in its cleaning process. A vacuum would not be sanitary enough. The bathroom is cleaner than he expected and he gives the bathtub/shower a cursory glance to decide if he will use it tomorrow morning. A dull orange ring circles the bathtub and he makes another mental note, this one deciding to skip a shower the next morning. He walks back to his room after emptying his bladder feeling hollow and ready to crawl into bed.

The bolt clicks as he turns it into the locked position and he steps up on to his bed to pull a chain and start the ceiling fan spinning. Erik plops down into a surprisingly comfortable bed and looks at the wooden, behemoth of a television set past his feet. A relic from the 50’s, he realizes it won’t have a remote and he doesn’t possess the energy to get up to turn on the thing and so leaves it off. There is a lamp on the right side of the bed on top of a nightstand with an ashtray sitting next to it.

Despite his lack of energy, Erik does not fall immediately asleep as is usually the case. The stuffiness of the room even with the fan turning gets to him and forces him, begrudgingly, to get out of bed and slide open the window of his room. A large reading chair is next to the lamp, in between the bed and the window. It is ugly, but looks comfortable. Covered in a standard black and red flannel pattern, Erik wonders how many lumberjacks were killed so that it could be made. Deciding to have one last cigarette before bed, he steps back on the bed and pulls the other chain down, turning the light off, but leaving the ceiling fan spinning.

Moving back to the chair, Erik sits down. It sucks him in, hugging him in all the right ways. He takes one long, first drag after lighting the cigarette and sets it down in the black, plastic ashtray on the nightstand. Nicotine fails at its job as a stimulant and now with a breeze drifting in through the window Erik falls asleep without even considering it.

The rumble of a truck engine shutting down and car doors slamming yank Erik rudely out of his slumber. His room smells of ash and he remembers the cigarette he only took one drag off of and sits up to see a cigarette’s length of ash leaning, propped up in the ashtray. The cigarette had burned itself out. He feels lucky to have not started a fire. Without thinking of it, Erik pulls out another cigarette and lights it, as is his routine upon waking.

The digital alarm clock’s red numbers glow 3:07 in the darkness. He had only slept for maybe an hour. Burning eyes force him to blink and he looks out of the open window to see what awoke him.

His room overlooks the parking lot behind the motel and he sees two men walking away from their Ford pickup holding what seems to be the figure of a woman between them. One man is tall and appears gaunt and pale wearing a black, leather, motorcycle vest with no shirt underneath it. He has long, black wavy hair that rolls back down his head all the way to his shoulders in a greasy waterfall of a mane that shines under the one bulb that illuminates the parking lot. The other man is at least a foot shorter, but is squat and round like an old Volkswagen Beetle. The fat man has a black t-shirt that’s probably a triple extra large but still looks painted on to his massive arms and stomach. His head is completely bald and he attempts to compensate for it by wearing a graying beard that is long and wiry. Erik immediately thinks of the beards he saw flipping through the sepia-toned photographs in the textbook for his American History: The Civil War class last semester. Together, the men look like some freaky biker version of Laurel and Hardy.

Erik sits up and leans in closer to the window’s opening. The lighting is poor, the single naked bulb not giving off enough light to let him get a good glimpse of their faces. The two men each have an arm around the blonde’s shoulders. Her head is lolling back and forth like she’s drugged or unconscious. As her hair reflects the light, it appears a platinum white. Erik thinks that it just might be Sheila before catching himself and realizing where he is, it couldn’t be.

Erik brings his cigarette up to his mouth, but then quickly pulls it down, worried that the men might see its glowing tip or the smoke rising from it. When he leans back away from the window, one of the men looks up towards his room. He doesn’t think the man can see him in the shadows.

Grinding the cigarette out in the ashtray, Erik listens to the men open the door and gently close it behind them.

Erik is afraid to move. Not sure that he understands what he just saw, he tries to decide if those men were just helping the woman to their room or if it was something else, something he really didn’t want to imagine.

Their silence is most frightening to him. They weren’t joking, laughing, or even angry, they just seemed calm and serious.

Another cigarette is lit although he had just put one out, if he could just find out for sure what is happening down there in that room. He has had too little sleep and doesn’t believe he is thinking straight...

-Dan Fleischhacker of Oakdale, MN

dear world, you are awesome: two postcards

Dear World,
I have found a nice storage locker for my self. Details are, let’s just say, fuzzy: strobing, traumatized, subjective, slurring, radically unpleasant. A kind of amber womb. Sheets like ski runs. Oopsy-daisy. I appear to be on a floor of some kind. In a last flicker of decency, I have wound up here rather than driving 100 miles to visit a friend, as promised, because I knew I was endangering people. I will call tomorrow and lie.

Dear World,
You are awesome. I am sitting with friends of mine, in lounge chairs outside our rooms. We are spending a weekend in a town in the Midwest. We do this every year. We seek grottos, lonely private sculpture gardens, places where we can hide messages in Tupperware containers, abandoned buildings, houses which have been crashed into by rocks and turned into tourist attractions, breakfast joints, odd intersections and dead-ends, churches, supper clubs, stories of locust invasions, grave sites, the rumored location of the Garden of Eden, and museums filled with phones, antique soaps, 19th century medical scenes, or polish crafts.

-Kevin Fenton of St Paul, MN
http://unprintableversion.typepad.com/

last bucket in numbville

I was 17 years old and a senior in high school. My god parents (Fred and Cheryl Mithouer) were to be given a training session in Hong Kong for new innovative ways of practicing massage. They had a son named Seth who had just recently been barmitzvahed. He was chubby, short and had braces. I was skinny, tall, and unproudly adorned a face consumed of acne. My parents and Seth’s decided it would be great for Seth and I to travel around China with a guide for some months to then meet Fred and Cheryl in Hong Kong to end our trip. This trip by our hippy parents was to be our coming of age experience.

Seth and I first arrived in Beijing to meet with our guide Mr. Zang (which translates to excellent in Mandarin but in reality he embodied the antithesis of the word—Just like people named Joy are so seldom joyful). We had Zang who didn’t speak English buy us pre paid tickets on shitty trains, shitty camels, and shitty buses taking us all over the “for the love of god don’t go there” backwoods parts of China. 4 days into our trip Seth and I got a note under our door saying in broken English “my wife dislikes you- I leaving now– happy holiday.” This chubby kid barely at 13 and I of 17 were stuck in the middle of Nowhere Fucksville China without a clue and no guide. We didn’t speak a dick of Chinese nor were our metabolic and digestive systems prepared for China’s bacteria and other air /food born nasties.

Hotel Experience:
After a long day of site seeing of all the absolute wrong stuff to see in Xian (mutant freak show in a converted buddhist temple and being followed by an old lady trying to sell us half eaten pomegranates), Seth and I discovered a KFC. An amazing fucking sent from god KFC. You see Seth and I’s trip thus far had consisted of a diet of wrong, parts of animals that even the most famished Hyenas would leave behind, sauces that made trash water leaking from a glad bag seem savory. This KFC was as close to god as we could have ever find, a taste of the ferociously missed familiarity of home and a taste of nutrition (as scary as that sounds). Seth and I bought buckets and buckets of chicken -- 6 in total. We planned out how we were to savor our coveted booty. We were to scarf one bucket and then save the rest to travel with, hopefully providing us with enough rations for week —just enough to make it Hong Kong where it knowingly possessed the holy trinity of food—McDonalds, Burger King, and Pizza Hut. We got to our hotel and immediately stuffed our faces. Cramping and digesting we noticed that we were not alone in our disgusting hotel room. We had cockroaches. These cockroaches came in numbers, big numbers, numbers higher than I could count and they were super freakishly large at that. The cockroaches reached in sizes that of a Pringles chip. Seth and I panicked at the site of these creatures all around us like lions circling two sick and really slow pigs. I grabbed my bug spray and doused them. My attempt at chemical warfare came to no avail. Seth and I luckily had lighters so that we could smoke opium with (helped pass the time) -- and we took our drug lighters and combined them with bug spray forming mini blow torches unleashing a fiery hell upon the cockroaches. With some flame plus the sole of a boot the numbers began to diminish. Roaches then took upon a new strategy of escape by crawling underneath our wallpaper like a mouse under a rug—little bumps fleeing from death. We got em—We got them all! Relieved and hours later Seth and I retired still holding onto our joy of obtaining week’s full of beautiful KFC future and victory of slaying our enemies. Morning came and we felt refreshed and wonderfully constipated from our KFC (our entire China trip up until KFC consisted of vomiting up and having diarrhea from Chinese cuisine -- thus constipation was a welcomed friend.) We looked around to see if our enemies the cockroaches were still dead and gone --A sigh and relief to find they were no more in the room. For most KFC for dinner and then cold KFC for breakfast would seem like suicide but to us it was a beautiful option. Seth grabbed one of our buckets to start our breakfast feast—in a chubby braces whistling shriek Seth dropped the bucket. As it fell to the floor in slow motion I heart crushed then turned to horror as dozen of cockroaches spilled onto the stained carpet. The cockroaches had devoured the entire remains of our chicken bucket. No bones no sweet grease residue just the writhing and chirping cockroaches. In shock we watched them all scurry away from the bucket into the walls, into their evil dens. I said to Seth, “Let's not freak. They got to one bucket but we still have four more buckets and the odds of them all getting through 4 buckets surely must be impossible." We then grabbed a bucket, dropped it in horror and then moved to the next. Each time we found nothing left but the enemy inside our buckets. As each bucket’s examination came, we found ourselves going through all the typical stages of emotion when dealing with the loss of a loved one. Our emotional train finally stopped on the last bucket in numbville. I only now at the age of 31 can speak of our horror. And when memorial day comes around I can't help but think of our fallen hero KFC on that fateful day.


One more hotel story for the road.

I was 6 yrs old, my sister 3. We were staying at a motel. Our parents were in another room so they could hump. I found a gun under my bed. My sister and I played with it. I then accidentally murdered my sister. The end


Ok the first story is true. The second story is not—but could be a great made for tv movie on the Lifetime network.

-Drew Beam of Brooklyn, NY
www.drewbeam.com

wild, wonderful west virginia

When Matthew McConaughey was promoting the movie We Are Marshall, as an alumnus of Marshall University and a celebrity writer, I was invited to the school's campus in Huntington, WV to watch a football game and interview him from the sidelines. Because it all happened last minute, all the hotels were booked by the visiting football team and fans from out-of-town, so the movie studio put everyone up in a crappy Days Inn.

I should have known I was in for a treat when I checked in and the girl at the desk described my room as "up on the second floor overlooking McDonalds." I wasn't expecting an ocean view -- as if there was one on the landlocked state -- but to tout the view of the Golden Arches?

The room was definitely a "sleep with a chair propped against the door" type of accommodation. I put towels on top of the sheets. There were no fewer than 10 holes in the carpet, which had to have been bought from a second-hand store. Despite this, there was a sign in the room -- laminated! -- which listed the prices of everything in case I decided to steal anything. And we're not just talking about the TV ($275), it listed the prices of the full and fitted sheets, washcloths, alarm clock, etc. I'd never seen anything like that in my life!

But the best was at 3am in the morning when I woke up during a nasty storm because water was literally pouring through the ceiling. I rubbed my eyes, wondering if I was dreaming, then I did what any seasoned New Yorker would do – I grabbed a trash can, put it under the leak, moved my laptop and suitcase to the other side of the room and climbed back into bed to sleep on my $10 sheets.

An hour later, the water was coming down from another spot, then another. Luckily, they gave me three $5 trash cans which caught the rain.

When I checked out a few hours later, I told the girl at the front desk that there was a major leak in my room. She just looked at me, then added it to a list of other complaints I assume she received that morning upon check out. On the list: an alarm clock wasn't working in room 212, a light bulb was out in room 106… Then she calmly wrote: "Water pouring through ceiling in 326."

Apparently the dam breaking above my head didn't classify as an emergency in Wild, Wonderful West Virginia.

For your amusement, the price list is below.



-Suzy Byrne of Irvington, NY

anymore

Touring with a ballet company, in a small nowhere town in rural Washington state, we were forced to stay in a roadside motel much like a Motel 6. We walked into our room which smelled like years of filth covered up by industrial cleaner. The rugs were heavily stained, lamp shades dented and curtains tattered. The highlight was the crumpled paper sign sitting on the bathroom sink which read, "Hunters, please don't use the bath tubs to clean deer anymore."

Oy!

-Kel Christofferson of New York, NY

the only thing missing

We were positive that the hotel we were about to stop at would give us a decent price. It was, after all, outside Seattle’s city limits. My husband, Jeff, drove our little black car up to the office door and I jumped out, eager to check in. We had spent the entire day on a friend’s ski boat on Lake Washington. We were exhausted from being in the heat and playing in the cold water. We had forgotten to pack a lunch for the day, too, so by the time we left the lake, it was evening and we were really hungry.

As I pushed open the hotel’s heavy door, cool air blew on my face and I realized I hadn’t had a break from the sun all day. The air felt wonderful. The hotel seemed to be a diamond in the rough. The outside of it was non-spectacular—which we figured meant an okay price. I was shocked, once inside, to be surrounded by new furniture, decorations and artsy flourishings. I breathed in new-carpet-smell, and noticed an entire wall made of glass dedicated to housing large, bright-colored fish—this place had undergone a beautiful remodel. The furniture was my favorite part. I decided we’d be willing to stay here even if the price was a little spendy. I loved the round, orange couches and the squiggly bright colors on the hip, new throw rugs. Even the hanging, retro lamps made me want to splurge a little. I approached the front desk noticing that there were only young people hanging around the lobby. Three guys with reflective, shaved heads sat in a perfect row at the computers, two girls sat close together on a couch in the back and talked quietly, and the front desk person looked like someone I’d seen in a local band recently.

“The rooms start at $300,” he said. I swallowed and looked him in the eye. I was not prepared for that price. Giving him the look I had practiced numerous times with my husband, I fluttered my eyelashes just slightly and asked if he had any discounts for me.

Just at the moment when I was enjoying my own charming abilities, his cell phone rang loudly and he immediately lost his connection to me and grabbed his phone. After waiting for several minutes while he talked to someone about band equipment, I decided that he was rude, and I didn’t want to give him our business. Just as I decided it wasn’t worth the wait to hear if he had any discounts, one of the guys on a computer gave me a look as if to say, “That guy is crazy!” I took it as validation in leaving.

“Sorry, honey, we’re not staying here.” I said when I returned to the car. I told him the details and we decided to head north, further out of town.

“I’m hungry, aren’t you?” Jeff asked over the loud Tusk album. “We forgot to eat lunch, didn’t we? I ate some chips on the boat but they were too salty.”

“I had some carrot sticks but I felt bad about forgetting to bring a lunch. They didn’t have that much food, anyway. Now I’m starving!”

Eventually, I got grumpy. We started discussing if we should eat first, or find a hotel first. We argued back and forth about this, and then agreed that whatever we came to first was where we would stop. But we wouldn’t settle for fast food or a cheap, one-story hotel.
When we found ourselves far north on Aurora Avenue, things started feeling a little creepy. I think we both realized that we’d gone too far, but no one said anything. I turned down the music.

The street was dark and seemed to have an unusual amount of cars with tinted windows and loud stereos. A few girls were out walking and each one held a beverage in a paper sack, and wore similar, short mini skirts and high heels. It dawned on us that we were probably not in the best area of town and that a hotel out here was a really bad idea. We talked about returning to the orange-decorated, hip hotel. For some reason, we had lost interest in trying to find a nice place and a decent price.

We decided to turn around and head south on Aurora Avenue when all of a sudden a white tower stood before us on the right side of the road. It appeared to be a brand new hotel, with beautiful white stucco walls lit up by a series of pretty lights. There were plush, green bushes spaced evenly all around the driveway, and it looked sharp, so we decided to end our hotel search here.

We learned on our honeymoon, two years ago in Belize City, that if you are in a bad part of town, you can always stay locked up in your room. Jeff pulled into the small lot at the front door to the hotel. I jumped out, looked back at Jeff and winked, then walked confidently into what I assumed would be our lodging for the night.

The young guy at the front desk was watching me when I walked in. “Can I help you?” Covered in tattoos with symbols, numbers and strange diagrams, his eyes met mine. I looked him over quickly and didn’t feel like his tattoos fit the innocence I perceived right away in his light, blue eyes.

“Do you have a room available tonight?” I asked without batting my eyes at him. I scanned the lobby. There was a giant sign that read, “NO SMOKING. NO PETS” and a small counter with two coffee thermoses and a plate of organized sugar packets.

“It’s $60 for the night and I can put you on the third floor away from the street. Is a queen-sized bed okay?” he asked. His voice was soft and friendly, and I pictured him for a moment with white arms.

“We’ll take it! Let me go outside and check with my husband first. I’ll be right back.”

“It’s only $60 a night! I can’t believe it! Can we check in and then go get some food? Maybe we can just order a pizza and have it delivered.” I was hyper and excited to have found a place. It was 9:30 pm and I was starving, but somehow, I wasn’t grumpy anymore—it must have been a second wind.

“Let’s do it.” Jeff agreed. I grabbed my wallet and skipped inside to pay for our room.

After paying, we drove to the back of the hotel and into the “underground parking” area, which was ground level parking underneath the second story. We parked and looked around us. The lights were dim and yellow, and we both secretly noticed that our little black car was the nicest one in the lot.

“This car looks like it’s been through a fire!” Its roof was missing and replaced with duct tape. Jeff nodded but didn’t say anything. The other cars seemed really out of date and a few looked as if they hadn’t moved in months. When we gathered our luggage, we stepped up onto the walkway and noticed someone exhibiting strange behavior. A homeless man was pretending to wash the windshield of a car we had overlooked. It was a brand new Mercedes convertible with shiny silver hubcaps. The man in question had a dirty rag that he dipped into a plastic bag and then pretended to scrub the glass windshield of the Mercedes. It looked like he was hardly touching the glass, however, and he looked nervous as we walked by. Jeff and I glanced at each other and kept walking. I made up a silly question and pretended to be pre-occupied by Jeff’s answer until we were safe inside. We both let out a sigh at the same time and set our luggage down in the hallway. I raced him to the back window to spy on the man out in the parking lot. As we both had secretly suspected, he was no longer at the windshield, but walking slowly around the Mercedes looking inside of it with its top down. We whispered to each other and decided that we should go upstairs to our room. We had no valuables in our car and neither of us felt like doing anything about that guy.

We entered the elevator and pushed the button to the third floor. The doors closed and graffiti surrounded us on all sides. The inside of the entire elevator was covered with graffiti-not spray painted, but rather all four walls had been keyed from top to bottom. We rolled our eyes at each other and smiled. We were at last checked in and done looking for a hotel. When the elevator opened at the third floor we were immediately greeted with the stench of thick cigarette smoke like you would smell at a small bar with no airflow.

“The sign said ‘NO SMOKING’!” I told Jeff. “I can’t believe it! It reeks up here!”

“Our room better not smell like this…” Jeff’s voice trailed off as a door opened and two women stepped into the hallway, obviously intoxicated. The stench of cigarette smoke increased as we walked past their room. I tried casually peeking into their room but someone was on the other side of the door pushing it shut. Silently, we arrived at the last door on the left, and swiped our key card.

Having been in the car for hours, looking for a place to eat and a place to stay, I had put off using the last available restroom we had access to earlier in the day. The power of suggestion of having my own little bathroom overwhelmed me as I pushed the door open to our room. All of a sudden I had to pee immediately or I was going to explode. I shoved my luggage into the small room and flicked the light switch on. Nothing happened. I saw the shadow of a lamp sitting on a small entertainment center and quickly pushed the button to turn it on. Nothing happened. There was a tiny little kitchen area with a small, unplugged refrigerator sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor, and I saw another light switch and flicked it. Nothing happened. I could feel a flow of frustrated heat start in my chest; move through my neck and into my face. I had to pee but I was angry that the lights didn’t work. Jeff had set his luggage down in the middle of the room and was fidgeting with the television remote by the light of the outside street lamp. I had to pee!

“Ughhhhhh!” I let out an angry sigh and grabbed the doorknob to the closed bathroom door. I would deal with the light situation after I relieved myself. The light switch worked in the bathroom but I wished it hadn’t. The bathroom was filthy. The first thing I noticed looking at the toilet seat that I was about to sit down on, was that it was covered in little drops of light yellow liquid. “Great,” I thought to myself, “someone peed on the toilet.” I almost decided to not use it, but I was seriously hurting. I took a giant wad of toilet paper and made a quick swipe of the seat. Then I hurriedly folded about five layers of toilet paper and lined the seat with it so I could sit down. “Ahhhhh…..” as I was feeling totally relieved, I looked around the bathroom some more. The floor was covered in long, black curly hairs. The shower curtain had once been all white, but the bottom half was pinkish orange from mildew and mold. I stood up and as I reached to flush the toilet, I saw that the lid to the back of the toilet was largely cracked in three places.

“Oh my gosh, you’re not going to believe this!” I yelled through the door to Jeff. He did not respond. I reached for the tiny bar of soap sitting on the bathroom counter and as I did, I stopped myself. It was used and filthy. My hands were just fine as is. I reached for another piece of tissue to blow my nose, and when I looked down for the garbage, it was nowhere to be found. I opened the little wooden cupboard under the sink and took a step back. Other people must not have been able to find a garbage can either, and the cleaning crew had failed to check under the sink. There was a pile of garbage that I tried not to look at as I added my tissue to it. I tucked my hand into my sleeve and opened the bathroom door. The room was still dark and only lit by the glow of the television.

“Grab your bags, we’re leaving.” Jeff said with no-nonsense authority.

“Oh my…” I stopped in mid-sentence as I glanced down at the carpet, now visible by the television light. “Do you see the pile of fingernails down there?” I pointed to the carpet at the end of the perfectly made bed.

“That’s nothing, look at this!” There were giant stains throughout the entire carpeted area. Some looked dark and still wet. The only thing missing was a chalk outline of a body.

“The bathroom was so…”

“Let’s just get out of here. Tell me in the car.” Again, he spoke with resolute authority and I did not question him.

Instead of taking the scenic elevator back down, we walked rapidly down the back staircase and through a dark hallway to the front desk. The guy at the front desk looked up from folding towels. “Do you want your money back?” he said without missing a beat.

“Sometimes the cleaning crew doesn’t get to all the rooms….” He stopped talking and looked down at the towels he was folding. He looked embarrassed all of a sudden.

I wanted to be nice and let him know we were dissatisfied with the room, but not with him. He looked like he had a hard life for someone so young. Looking more closely at his face in the fluorescent light, I noticed hard lines around his eyes that only a 60-year-old person should have. I felt sorry for him. This was no life for an apparently sweet, young man.

“Here, I’ll take your card and swipe it again for your money back. I’m sorry about this.”

Jeff immediately looked at me as if to say, “Do we trust him with our card? He just put us in a pit!” I shot him a look that said, “Trust me.” I trusted the guy behind the counter for some reason. I actually really liked him. I couldn’t help but wonder why he was working here, though.

After scanning our card and handing me the receipt, he apologized again.

“No problem-you’ll want to have that room cleaned, though….” There was nothing I could think of to say that would let him know that I wasn’t upset. My husband was waiting for me with our luggage. “Thanks…Have a good night…” I said over my shoulder as I walked back to the hallway were Jeff was standing.

“Oh my gosh, do you think that homeless guy will still be out there?” I whispered to Jeff.

“Let me look,” he said with that no-nonsense authority again. I knew he was being extra protective of me. He knows I think it’s adorable.

After glancing quickly through the tiny back window, he grabbed our luggage and said, “Let’s go!”

I gripped my purse tightly and followed behind Jeff. A girl in a mini skirt and high heels was talking to the “homeless” man who was now holding an expensive leather briefcase. She had a hand on his arm and held a shiny yellow purse in her other hand. She never looked our way, but starting giggling just as I sat down and shut the car door. The man was talking quickly and quietly and making gestures toward the back door of the hotel. Something caught my eye and I quickly observed that his shoes were expensive, Italian leather shoes with elegant sharp angles at the toe. All of a sudden his grungy jeans looked like fashionable jeans made to look grungy. I had seen a pair of jeans like that once in Neiman Marcus. His disheveled hair also looked all of a sudden trendy and rock star-ish. As our car drove past them, I could hear the woman giggle again.

“No way!” Jeff and I looked at each other and laughed as we rolled out of the parking lot.

“We almost stayed at a Pimp Hotel!” I yelled.

“You should have seen the bathroom floor…..” I started but Jeff stopped me.

“I’m sorry, honey, tell me later. I’m a little stressed out because we still have to find a place to stay. Do you mind doing me a favor and calling information for the number of a Comfort Inn in Federal Way?”

For some reason that made me instantly grumpy again and I immediately tuned into my growling hunger pains. I was stressed out, too, but I couldn’t believe what we had just seen.

“Whaaat?! We’re driving that far south tonight? I’m starving! Can we at least stop somewhere to eat first?” Oh, my stomach was really mad at me.

“Please call information, honey. I’m really tired and we need to find lodging before too much longer or we’ll be in trouble.”

Jeff and I drove south and eventually found a place to stay, but we went without dinner that night.

-Nicole MacDonald of Battle Ground, Washington
http://myyearwithout.blogspot.com
http://betterlivingthroughsimplicity.blogspot.com

the usual ting

Earlier this year, in February, I went to the island of Jamaica with a friend who had lived there for many years. While my friend stayed with her longtime Jamaican woman friend, I stayed at an inexpensive motel across the street. This motel was owned by a French woman married to a Jamaican man. The place was clean, but had nothing much by the way of luxuries. I didn't mind, though. Most of the other guests were elderly Americans or Europeans who knew the owners - it was kind of a family place. I called it the geriatrics lounge. The most exciting thing was hanging out at the motel's outdoor roundbar where the drinks were served by the pint. Periodically, I would shout to my friend from across the highway to come over for breakfast, lunch, dinner, a snack or a drink. Unlike most of the sodden guests, neither one of us drank alcoholic beverages, so we would just drink fruit juice. When the talk at the bar got particularly raunchy, we would go to my room. And since the majority of the conversation consisted of talk of Viagra and sex, that was pretty frequently. Frankly, it was rather boring to hear these older guys wax on.

One morning, my friend and I decided to go into the neighboring parish just to walk around. We were actually hoping not to run into any men that she knew because she didn't want to be harassed. After the long ride and a long hike, we decided to go to the beach there. No sooner had we gotten to the beach than we heard a man's voice calling her "Patti, Patti!" And so we joined him. He was a graceful Rastafarian man who grew up in the area and knitted "tams" - the Rastafarian hats - for a living. So we talked, took pictures, and I told him that I had recently fractured my shoulder and that it was still sore. He then massaged my shoulder with such skill that it almost immediately felt much better. By that point, it became clear to me that he and I were sexually attracted to each other. In fact, we agreed to meet up at a dance the following night. Coincidentally, earlier that day, I had wished for someone to have a little fling with. I had actually prayed for a little adventure. Having just broken up with my male friend , I had wanted a little fling while in Jamaica.

That night, my friend and I hung out at the round bar drinking the usual Ting -- a very delicious natural Jamaican grapefruit juice drink. Afterwards, I went to my room and fell asleep. I slept for about three hours. But an unusual dip in temperature woke me up. I was really uncomfortable. I had no blankets and I was cursing myself for not getting any. Just then, there was a tap at my window. I was startled and a little apprehensive. So I raised my voice - with force - and said, "Who is it?" And he responded, "It's me, Peter." I gladly opened the door and let him in. When he asked why I was awake, I told him that I was cold and he responded ,"Well, I'm here to warm you up!" He later explained that the reason he came in late was because he knew the owners were peculiar and would not have wanted a nonpaying overnight guest at the motel. Particularly a Rastafarian guy. And so for the rest of my vacation, he snuck in late every night and snuck out early every morning....and it was...great...

-Delilah Rivera of New York, NY

greyhounds in lyons

I was forced to go to Lyons for my work every week which was about a 5 hour drive so I decided to take my two greyhounds for company; we'd enjoy an evening walk and then I'd get a pizza or numerous chinese food dishes (company was paying) and some beer and watch a soccer game in the room. One week my girlfriend came with me and we were enjoying breakfast in the room before I had to go to work and had put the dogs in the little 'entranceway' of the room with the door closed. We hear some kind of noise coming from where the dogs are and open the door to see in horror the female with a piece of wallpaper hanging out of her mouth; she had dug a small hole in the wall! Of course I was going to tell the hotel owner later but at the moment I had to get to work. So we are getting in the car as the owner's wife appears at the entrance to the hotel shouting something like "why didn't you tell me what happened". We hadn't been out of the room 5 minutes and she had already gone up to 'check on us'!

-Richard Roehl of St Vallier de Thiey, France

the ones that live in your head

I was itching. Red bumps appeared in clusters, first on my wrists and eventually on my arms and torso. I went to my doctor; she advised that I take dairy out of my diet. The rash persisted. I'd wake up in the middle of the night scratching. I went to another doctor; they prescribed a cocktail of antihistamines. After several visits, it was decided that if the rash persisted unexplained, it be wise to have a biopsy.

"For what?" I asked my dermatologist.

"Well, to rule out things like Lupus or Leukemia."

Being Jewish I am a natural born alarmist; I left that office convinced that I was going to die. It was March of 2006, over a month since I fist started noticing the itchy red bumps on my body. As I walked into the one bedroom apartment I shared with my husband in Chicago, I gently told him what the doctor had suggested. His Libran brain gives him the ability to be rational; my Leo personality needs his balance in moments like this. Like any young couple faced with such uncertain news, we ended up sharing a bottle of wine as I asked him questions about the girls he will date after my certain death. We laughed it off and went to bed.

It was a Sunday; we were driving over to the condo we were buying. As we made our way I looked at my husband and said, "I have a feeling some really fucked up is about to happen only I have no idea what."

His eyes squinted a bit and he said, "I hate when you say things like that because you are usually right."

That evening we were home flipping channels. Dateline NBC is showing a story about a woman and her daughter that stayed in a NY hotel. Apparently their room was infested with bedbugs (something I always thought were more myth than real), the woman was covered in bites, ending up in the hospital. She was suing. They showed photos of her legs, covered in these deep red clusters. They itched. They were in straight paths along her blood lines. The anchor of the show went through the process of how to determine if you have a bedbug infestation. My husband and I looked at each other and then he said the words that would send our lives into a wreck for the following months, "Those kind of look like the marks you have. Should I go check our room?" I wanted to say no, only because I feared the possibility of it being true. He pulled the bed back from our wall and there we found the moltings, evidence of the infestation. The image of his arm holding that dustpan and the look of disbelief on his face is forever imprinted in memory. After my mother and brother came over to help us get rid of the bedding and random objects in and around the bed, I packed a plastic bag with my toothbrush and left wearing only the clothes I had on. Somehow my husband managed to spend the night there, and we slowly began to deal with the problem.

I knew immediately that we must have brought the bedbugs home from our recent vacation in Mexico. As public school teachers, we decided to treat ourselves to a top of the line all inclusive resort in the lush Riviera Maya. While there, my husband noticed a few small bites on his back. We assumed they were mosquito bites or some strange tropical bug. We didn’t really worry about those bites, we were preoccupied with the pool and the endless supply of alcohol; the perfect remedy for stressed out teachers. Once we discovered the problem in our own apartment, and did a bunch of research on this critter, the only likely source was our hotel room in Mexico. We had lived in our apartment for close to three years. We even got engaged in that apartment. After we discovered the bugs, we never spent another night in our apartment. We stayed with our families until our condo was ready and we only went back to the old place to finish dealing with our belongings. Our landlord, even after seeing the bugs, accused us being paranoid, calling us disturbed. Damn right, I thought to myself. I am paranoid. We are deeply disturbed. We’d been sharing our bed with bugs that used my dreaming hours to get fat off my blood. Our landlord agreed to have the apartment treated once by a professional. He would not allow us to treat it again; apparently this was some type of punishment he deemed reasonable to bestow upon the paranoid and disturbed. My heart breaks for the poor soul that moves in there next. Bedbugs can live close to two years without a blood meal. They will simply wait for a new host to feed on.

We lost almost everything we owned, as we couldn't properly treat our belongings thanks to our landlord, and because I didn't want to risk moving the problem to a new condo. The pest control company we hired to treat the pieces we were trying to keep, kept repeating when we’d ask specific questions about the bugs being in certain items, “Well it’s possible, but not likely.” Since I felt we had just experienced the unlikely, we thought it best to start replacing instead of saving. We never really bought much furniture when we got married, so we decided to take our savings and buy it all in a one sweep. We also disposed of most of our clothing. I cried as I lowered all my shoes, tied up in black garbage bags, into the dumpster. It was like burying a pet. On the bright side, I’m no longer wearing my mother’s clothes as I was those first few weeks. Also, getting dressed is much easier as I currently can count my shoes on one hand, and if a pair of jeans goes missing, I actually miss them. We lost a lot, took extreme measures to save our book and record collection, but placed very little value when deciding on the rest. The fear of the invisible stays with us both. I guess that is what we miss the most, something that will take ages to come back. Peaceful sleep.

A few weeks ago my husband and I stood in the alley behind our old apartment building. The scavenger company came and broke apart our furniture and sofa and kitchen table with a mallet. We watched shreds of wood spread around the alley, landing in rain puddles. I stood there freezing, slowly inhaling a Marlboro. A neighbor called down, wondering what we were doing getting rid of perfectly good furniture. We just smiled and sort of laughed. We could get away with such behavior now. After all, we were paranoid and disturbed. We went home, disrobed in the hall, and showered immediately. The whole experience from start to finish, not counting the loss of our personal items, cost us close to $12,000.00. That's a lot of money for a young couple starting out. I try to concentrate on the fact that physically, I am healthy. Mentally…well that might just take some more time. As a pest controller I telephoned recently said to me, while I begged him to sell me bedbug sprays for our new condo, “Honey, the only place those bugs are living right now is in your head. No spray is going to kill the ones that live in your head.” Needless to say, he was right.

-a traumatized soul in Chicago, Il

sometimes i forget the details

When our children were younger, we were taking them to visit some relatives. Mitch, my husband, and I had worked long hours that day. About halfway along our way, we stopped in a motel on the freeway in Corsicana, Texas. We were dog tired and figured it didn't matter where we stayed since it was just one night. We had to rethink that idea after our stay at this inexpensive motel.
Mitch tried to lock the door which lead directly to the parking lot. The lock was broken. He placed a chair under the doorknob hoping that at least this would deter someone from coming into the room (if not make it harder). And, if someone tried to come in, then we would maybe hear them first.
Around midnight, there was a knock on the door and Mitch answered the door wearing only his briefs. It was a little Indian man. He wanted to ask Mitch about the credit card he had used for the room. Mitch explained to the man that he had paid in cash. The man wanted the information from Mitch's credit card for "security". Mitch asked the man who he was, and he was convinced that he was the owner of the motel. He was tired, so he gave the man the information.
He came back to bed, and I asked him if he realized he was talking to a man only in his briefs, and that the door was open and there was a freeway just yards away. He laughed and said the guy didn't seem to mind. All he wanted was the credit information. Then, he woke up a little more and said that he hoped it was actually the owner and not just someone off the freeway that he had given his credit card information to.
I had problems sleeping with our 2 young children in the room and the room being somewhat insecure. But, as luck would have it, we were on our way the next day. No one used our credit card. We still laugh about that motel room in Corsicana. And all bad motel or hotel rooms are compared to that one; but, so far, there hasn't been a worse one.*

*When my husband Mitch read the story, he said I left some stuff out. He said, "Don't you remember I had LOADED 357 Magnum (handgun) in my hand when I answered the door, because it was the middle of the night and we weren't sure WHO was at the door? My son said he even remembered the gun, because it scared him. Mitch also said, "And remember that only station on the TV was a porn station that you had to PAY for?" I guess it was worse than I remembered! I told him HE should have written the story, because sometimes I forget the details.

-Sandra Fielder (with some help from her husband Mitch) of Oro Valley, AZ

the campus inn

The Campus Inn

The wallpaper, a black and gold metallic pattern in my room at the Campus Inn did not absorb the generations of tobacco smoke, bug spray or malfeasance. The bad vibes hung in the air like a frozen fog.
The window shades turned yellow around the edges in self defense. There were cigarette burns on the night stand and on the rugs. A sound track…sho nuff…. the girding rumble of the all night Campus Rd buses, back fires from sputtering untuned muscle cars and calls from the whores, their customers, the cops and the crazy people.
You wouldn't kill yourself in the room. You wouldn't have the energy.
The TV buzzed on some of the channels and flickered on the rest. The only channel that came in any good was an independent station from San Jose. They played a lot of Tom and Jerry cartoons. Which was ok. Most times, drunk, stoned, depressed or asleep, I enjoyed feline/rodent combat.
Bare mattress. Stolen blue plastic milk crates for shelves. A record player I bought at a flea market. A poster of Billie Holiday taped to the wall.
My imaginary "beat generation" pad. I missed out on that scene. By about 25 years. By the time I moved from the Midwest to Berkeley, the Beats had passed into the realm of mythology. I'd read most of Kerouac. And I dreamed about a mad, mad community of artists and writers, blowing weed, sleeping down in cool rail cars, chasing and scuffling the white negro blues in smoky choruses.
Etc.
The reality was somewhat less romantic. I rented by the week. They weren't any phones in the room. They were yanked out after it was discovered that one of the city's largest drug rings had been operating on the third floor.
There was a sandwich shop across the street. When I needed to, I used their phone. I needed to.
The shop was a store front with a big window looking out just off the corner. A few formica tables. A counter with three stools. I hadn't showered, shaved, or brushed my teeth so I fit right in.
If Linda, the waitress noticed anything foul about me, you couldn't see it in her face. Indifference and pancake makeup was her window to the world. I hadn't found my window. Seemed to be more of a door person.
Linda sounded like she was from Alabama or Texas. I'm not one of those guys who can hear two words and tell you where a person is from. What difference does it make? If you get to know someone eventually the conversation will come around to 'where ya from', 'what you been doin', So what was the big fucking hurry in picking up an accent? About half of what passes for cleverness is just people who are too busy to listen to anybody else. And the other half who really clever and have nothing do with me.
Anyway, Linda didn't feel much like talking. I ordered a pepper and egg sandwich and a coffee, heavy sugar; heavy cream.
A radio played on the counter. Top forty. Playing a Stevie Wonder crossover. I dug it. I nearly smiled.
There was only one girl working the street. Maybe it was too early or too late or the other girls were taken or the cops had just made a sweep. The sun was out but not enthusiastic about it. There was a small canyon created by the 6 story Campus Inn, the Dodge, an SRO, and a white stone office building that was either being renovated or condemned.
Eleanor Rigby played next.
'All the lonely the people'
Sentimental middle class Brit bullshit. How can you look at a bunch of people and know anything about them? You need to follow them around for a week. See their pads. Meet their folks.

The pay phone was behind the counter, through the swinging doors. Up against a wall, the phone was squeezed between cases of soda, a box of paper towels, cans of tomato sauce and a broken TV set. I fished in my pocket for some change. I dialed my father's office. He was usually in on Sunday mornings writing up orders and avoiding my mother.
"Hello, Krinksy Associates," It was my brother, Phil.
"What are you doin' there Phil?"
"Danny is that you? How ya doin'?"
"Yeah, it's me. Listen what happened. You get disbarred finally or what."
"Yeah, No, I’m helping out. But you’re not into the whole corporate thing.'
"Well Phil, I feel about the business like I feel about you. I need to talk to dad."
"So do I, I'm trying to get him out of this fuckin' office and out to the golf course."
"Gee, I'm really sorry I'm missing it. Nothing like crunching some brown grass and chasing a lousy ball. C'mon get him on the line."
“Dad...the young radical is on the line.” It sounded like Phil pulled the receiver away from his mouth but was still yelling into it.
I waited.
"Hello Daniel.”
"Hi dad, what's happening?”
"Everything. Listen where are you? You sound like you're in a tunnel."
"Well, just about."
"You calling me at work? You want to take on a few lines? I got some good territory in Nebraska. No accounts but lots of territory."
"Yeah, well dad. Listen how's mom and everyone?"
"Mom, she's fine. She just has that redness in her eyes from crying herself to sleep over her baby. Other than that she's fine."
"Mom had a baby and you didn't tell me."
Dad sounded good. It had been nearly a year since his heart attack. Phil’s wife, Helene came into the business, leaving her floundering career as a voice coach. She managed the accounts and managed to keep the place in operation.
My brother asked me to move home and work at the company. There was no shame in being a rack jobber, selling kitchen gadgets to small grocery and drug stores.
No shame. Not much grandeur but certainly no shame. I’d planned to keep painting and get back into art school. Phil didn’t believe me. He turned out to be right, the asshole. I didn't go back to school. I avoided commitment like it was a bad tattoo.
So, every few months, I’d have to put in the Call. I didn’t really mind asking for money. Or even feel that guilty about it. After all, I was an artist who just happened be lying fallow. Or just lying.
I kept a running tally, although my father didn't. The plan:kick back what I owed to the family, out of whatever I inherited.
"So, dad, listen. I'm really going through some changes."
"How much are these changes?"
"Big changes. New place to live, school. looking for work. A good couple of hundred changes."
"You know I don't think I'm helping you like this."
"Of course you are. You just don't know it."
I don't know if he was convinced. I don't know if I was convinced. He told me to call my mother and to come home for a visit. And that he loved me. And he’d wire the money.
The pepper and egg sandwich tasted good going down and better than it would the rest of the day. I worked on the coffee and snoozed through the paper. Things were staying pretty much the same. No rain was expected. There was something going on in Cambodia that I didn't want to know about. Some of the county Sherriff Slim Jim Meever’s, pals wanted him to be governor. The mood on campus was quiet. Radicalism it seems had flushed through the system like diarrhea, leaving behind an odor and a sore rear end.
Suddenly feeling flush, I gave Linda a big tip and a Clumsy wink as I left. She kept her head down, staring at the ash tray and her cigarette.
The air was nearly brittle as I crossed the street. And the lobby looked worse than before I'd left. As if it were in a continual state of decline and I'd managed to see some of the sands flow through the glass.
A TV fluxxed its images to the desk clerk who had his hand on his bony chin. A junkie nodded off on the couch. His eyes open. His mind gone. Under a rain coat, he had on a greasy sweater and shiny black pants with cuffs. A couple of Mexicans read the paper. They wore straw cowboy hats and pointy black shoes. On their way back home? Or just getting into town?
Standing near the stairs were two men wearing suits and ties and uncomfortable shoes. Before I could back away they approached and introduced themselves.
“Mr Krinsky, we’re with the FBI.”
“And your parents must be very proud.”
“They are,” said the taller of the two. “But we really want to talk to you.”

-Cheetah Liberty
http://613aday.blogspot.com/

T-R-O-U-B-L-E

I've drunk eight Modelos and three Pacificos and should like to continue in Spanish but, pleased to have remembered the past participle of ‘"drink" and the weird Fowlersian will/shall - would/should shibboleth, have decided to relate a brief tale in my native tongue about my stay in a Holiday Inn. It is noteworthy that, in the Texas panhandle, the hierarchy so clearly established by early rappers between hotels, motels, and Holiday Inns is inapposite; the landscape there, excepting the canyon itself, lacks peaks and valleys, and each inn is as good as the next. It ought to be noted, too, that not enough attention is paid to the ossified forms of emphatic prepositions: "Inn" is the same word as "in", "bye" the same as "by", "too"’ the same as "to", for instance. There are also innings and outings, and why not? The h/motel was as fine as any other, but lay in a dry Texan county, and was no place to revisit after having spent ten hours peddling myself to a hiringcommittee in search of an Anglo-Saxonist-Chaucer-scholar-Classisist-German-teacher with interest inilliterate students and university drudgery. Things were hopeless (can a medieval Germanist speak to a remedial summer English class aboutnineteenth-century English medievalism and to deaf faculty ears about theArmenian Physiologus in northern Texas with success?) and my host, the chair, knew it. After dinner he drove me to a liquor store in another county, which had just closed. I returned, lachrymose but well-dressed, to his hail-beaten pick-up, only to be driven across the street to another store, still open, and bought drinks with his Quebecois wife. "Yoooou're stayin at the hotel, aren't you?" a teenage blonde, who stood with three others in line and whom I recognized as the receptionist, yelled at me. "T-R-O-U-B-L-E" spelled out a well-tattooed man behind her, to me. The chair laughed; what a player, I thought he must have thought. My hosts deposited my back at the h/motel, where I drank my cross-county booze in solitude, aroused myself with the thought of liquor store check-out-line girls, and went to sleep watching sportshighlights. Great plays at second base, but no job offer.

-V. Pakis of Minneapolis, MN

super deluxe

Four summers ago, I was in Boston, juggling a long-term relationship, a full-time job, my senior thesis, and an internship. I was exhausted. I wanted nothing more than to steal away to a romantic locale, to meet up with my indirectly aforementioned boyfriend, and to relax. The trouble was that we were poor. All we could afford were bus tickets. And a motel. In Chinatown NYC. But that didn't sour our hopes for a steamy weekend getaway. Nothing could! No, not the roach bait just inside the door, not the reception-area wood paneling that was buckling from water damage, not the autographed Henry Rollins photo in a peeling gold frame next to the sign-in desk, not even the suspicious black mold covering the entire air-conditioning unit in our "super deluxe" room. Nothing could ruin our weekend of love and relaxation! Until we pulled back the covers to reveal a blood stain on the sheets about the size of a head. Fresh.

-Jordan Ross of Brooklyn, NY

we should have known

We should have known it would be bad when we checked in and found a large chunk of human fecal matter floating in the toilet. Under normal circumstances, we would have just left the place. But this was Grandma’s 90th birthday party and this was the hotel that my mother and aunts had picked to host. It was the nicest place in town. When we complained about the excrement the desk clerk, a nineteen-year-old with a frizzy blond pony-tail whose mouth remained slack and eyes did not move while she informed us she could do nothing about the poop, neglected to apologize, and went back to filing her nails.

It was the end of June in the upper-Midwest. The hotel was full of our extended family, their dog-travel companions, their uninvited boyfriends and girlfriends, and everyone who had descended on the town for the state-wide paint-ball championship. For Grandma’s party we would be squeezed into a smaller room than the one we reserved because the hotel had double-booked the main conference room and the paintball guys were slightly more in number and considerably more in weight. For this, we would not receive a discount. We would also, find countless hairs in our free pancake breakfasts, watch my cousin declare that all women are stupid or else sluts and most are both, while my uncle leaned in to my fiancé to say “so many beautiful women in this room too bad I’m related to all of them,” sleep on sheets that smelt of old milk in rooms where most of the air conditioning didn’t work, where the cleaning women didn’t restock the acidic coffee and when Aunt Marion dressed as a nun and made us all call her Blessed Hildegard, my fundamentalist Cousin Doug—who had been busy introducing himself to everyone as being a member of MENSA— grabbed his wife’s arm so hard she bruised when he jerked her, probably, all the way back to North Dakota. Anyway, none of us saw him again but that was also when the army arrived, covered in red and blue paint.

-Shana Youngdahl of Iowa City, IA
http://www.madetomint.blogspot.com/

hello!

Hello, and welcome to the guestbook at the Thunder Lodge motel.

At the website for my novel, How Far Is the Ocean from Here, I asked readers to write in with their best worst motel stories. (A great deal of the novel takes place at a rather down-at-the-heels roadside motel in a dusty stretch of the southwest.) The reward for such troubles? A handmade chapbook containing an extra story about Frankie, one of the characters in the book.

Anyway, I was impressed and horrified (in a pleasant way) at the stories people wrote in with.

And thus, I am posting them here.

Thank you to everyone who wrote in!