March 14, 2002

• Note: I’ve tried to post this three times now. Ignore duplicates. You know the drill.
  
  
  

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  I’m on the road. I’m in a motel just south of Little Rock, AK, typing away.
  
  This isn’t the first motel I’ve stopped at tonight, either. The first one had the prisoner transport bus parked in the lot. No joke. The second wanted $60 for a room for the night. The third was nasty. The fourth one…
  
  The fourth one was a Motel 6, which is a chain that’s usually done OK by me. Not the Savoy, but what do you want for $33?
  
  So I pulled up, and went to the night window, because it was around 11pm. Everything went smoothly with getting the room, except there was something that struck me about it, for reasons I couldn’t quite figure out. At one point, the silent two-way radio on the desk sprang to life and whoever was at the other end said, “You OK?” The woman who was helping me answered back, “Yes, it’s fine.” Then we continued with a little bit of banter and I got the room.
  
  Went out to the car, got my stuff, went back into the motel. On the way in, there was a young woman outside the front door, who hadn’t been there before. She looked a little nervous and a little drunk at the same time, like maybe she had just slammed a beer in order to deal with something horrible. I thought, ‘Oh, great. Some couple is having a drunken yelling match in this motel. Maybe it’s on the other side of the building from my room…’
  
  Room 227. I went in, and up the elevator to the second floor. 227 is just to the left of the elevator shaft. I’m standing in front of it. I notice some people in the hallways; a man who looked to be in his 40s, a young woman, a young man, all black. The older man standing in a room doorway, giving orders to the younger man, who’s leaning against the wall opposite. Standing guard. The woman shuffling down the hall, looking dejected. They all seemed to know each other. My room is next to the older man’s. They’re looking at me.
  
  Some part of me took over and feigned not being able to locate my room. I walked down the hall, through and past this scene, looking clueless, comparing room numbers to the little cardboard sleeve the keycard had come in. No, that’s not it… No, that’s not it either. Finally I doubled back to my room and ‘found’ it.
  
  I went inside. No noises from the next room over. Very quiet. Just the sound of a young woman in the hallway outside saying something. Then a bit later, some traffic in the hallway, and another young woman saying something. And so forth for about five minutes. I decide to split.
  
  Gather my things, go to the elevator. Yet another pathetic young black woman wearing a t-shirt, a towel around her waist, and glitter makeup approaches the elevator while I’m waiting. She’s mumbling to herself and gives every indication of being psychotic, probably due to some illicit substance ingested earlier. The door opens, we both get on. I push 1, she pushes 3. She’s still mumbling to herself, oblivious of me until I glance at her, and she smiles a very practiced smile and says, “Hello, sir.” This smile immediately vanishes, she turns her head away from me, and she’s back to mumbling.
  
  Thankfully, the elevator goes down. No telling who’s waiting to enter on the third floor.
  
  Get off the elevator, head to the night window. “What you need, hon?” I love that about the south; you become ‘hon.’
  
  I say, “I’m just here to get some sleep, and there’s a lot of, ahem, activity on the second floor. And I think I’d just like to get a refund.” I actually said ‘ahem.’
  
  She spoke in carefully-chosen words, with a certain slow cadence, “Well, we have, you know, security posted.”
  
  “Well, how about you just give me a refund?”
  
  “Things quiet down after about midnight, and, like I said, we have… security.” She smiled like the Cheshire cat.
  
  “I appreciate that, but I just want to get some sleep, and I don’t want to be in anyone else’s business.”
  
  This convinced her, but she added:
  
  “OK, but if you think it’s, er, noisy here, then let me tell you. Just west of here is the Hampton Inn, the Comfort Inn, and the Days Inn. And if you go past those, then don’t stop until you get to Denton, Texas, because if you think this is bad, it ain’t nothin’ compared to every place in between.”
  
  She handed me a form to fill out, which asks for a reason why I’m a dissatisfied customer. Should I put: ‘Wasn’t expecting den of iniquity’? I write ‘Too much noise.’
  
  So now I’m in the $60 Hampton Inn room, but I have to wonder if this isn’t just a higher class of whorehouse. It’s certainly… quieter, though.

  • 9:17 pm
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