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MOTEL 6-LEGGED
Radio as my witness, it was inevitable...
Episode III: motel 6-legged.
(If you don't know what's going on...go about three posts down...and also, lick me).
By some undeserved miracle of a clearly unimpressed God, we arrived in New Orleans shortly before sunrise. Rick had arranged for a motel, which, he gloated, was “unbelievably affordable and convenient.” I was simply shocked that we made it this far, more so that it was done without a live studio audience. But to find lodging—less than a week from Mardi Gras?
Cramped and edgy from too many miles of bleak Mississippi non-civilizations, we stumbled out, haggard and jelly-jointed, into the refreshingly humid, pollen-laden, sinus-buggering Louisiana swelter like herniated clowns dismounting greased-up stilts and unicycles. As I reflected upon the world around me—and memories it resurrected, my gaze returned, far less enthusiastically, to the world which was actually before me. For this appeared to be something altogether different, though no less ironic. Bringing to mind slightly altered reflections of southern life, the smell of unlearned men cooking unnatural delicacies, and surely the beating, buzzing black wings all around, rediscovered my senses after nearly ten long years.
Though the Louisiana state bird has long been the Pelican, I believe it would serve the state far more honestly were they to finally break down and, rather than paint over things, recognize the more predominant winged wonders of the land—those tremendous fucking cockroaches—as the Official Fowl. Of course, we don’t actually call them cockroaches down south, just like we don’t call crawdads “mud bugs” or “river crickets.” Sure—it’s an accurate portrait, but it’s just not polite. Crawdads are “Crawfish.” This helps take the crustacean consumer’s mind off the fact that he is eating the bait and not the catch. Likewise, the buzzing, aggressive, flying four-inch Southern Cockroach is called a “Palmetto Bug.” And if they had just a bit more meat on them, they would be “Palmetto Fish.”
As we pulled into the poorly-lit lot of our motel—the only poorly-lit place in New Orleans, I will add—I felt a wind of premonition venturing forth that I was about to become quite intimate with that Other State Bird. Yes, the rusted blinking sign that proclaimed “hourly rates,” the room numbers that were but mere outlines in the peeling weathered paint, the smell of old catfish in the office, and its piss-burnt sofas, all combined with the absence of one damned palm tree that wasn’t riddled with crude carvings and cigarette burns…all of these things prophesied three days of sub-Cajun slum wherein the bug, the fish, the bird that was la cucaracha would be my host, my roommate, and above all…the very least of my worries.
Some swarthy Creole, bearing more than one piece of jewelry that involved animal skeletons, gave dear, awed Jesse two sets of worn copper room keys, and bad dreams later. Proudly flaunting my own carcass-based jewelry, I reminded the white, cocky, non-southern clerk that there were, in fact, four of us...not two. Sure, I could dream. Still, two keys would not do.
Rick, being the deep well of tact that he was, threatened to pound him. Carl and Jesse, as if on cue, melodramatically labored to hold the tensing, flexing, Rick back from the clerk. Absconding with one of the sacred keys, I roamed the unswept lobby for a phone book. Stereotypes fought, and swore, and made bad will…Crafty Bastards found key-making locksmiths in the yellowpages. Sadly, no matter how much of Carl’s money I offered in bribe, no good honest locksmith or hardware clerk would copy the jagged copper scrap. Having had more than enough of good, honest folk, I found myself longing for the corruptible old misers back home. Where are good, reliable bastards when you need them? “Well,” I sighed within, as Rick continued to be held back for however-long-it-was, “this key says ‘23’.” As for this Reliable Bastard, I walked on—key in hand. And then I called dibs on cable.
Following behind, Jesse and Carl gently inched diligent, futile Rick back in babysteps toward our room—considerate enough not to make him break eye contact with the massively unimpressed clerk. I hoped that little turd had learned his lesson—I would have hated to see Rick have to march over there and be held back some more. But a man’s got to do what a man must passively be restrained from doing…or something like that. Rick and Carl haggled for the other key, as I unlocked the 23rd mass of shredded paint fibers that appeared to have a doorknob. Jesse took assertive measures for the first and sole time all weekend, and snatched key #2 from the fidgety, meat-fingered exchange of Carl and Rick…which then continued over a key that neither still held, nor missed, for one brief but truly priceless moment.
Our room adorned by gristled shag carpet in lovely shades of creamed algae, drapes that no longer did, and a toiletries shelf lovingly papered with pages torn from an awesomely mangled Gideon Bible, I felt like checking the underneath of the motel for wheels and a hitch. Our “cable package” consisted of channels 2, 4, 7 (almost), 12, and scattered porn signals on 18-21. I still called dibs. You could almost see the fluorescent green bush and rippling, orange hooters on 19. Fortunately, our beds were made. Unfortunately, they were only made into nests for other things.
“Ah, fuck the room,” Rick affirmatively motioned, “We won’t be sleeping anyway!” Carl followed, exclaiming multiple variables of “fuck” in the affirmative sense, with “A,” “yeah,” “baby,” and such. Jesse high-fived Rick, and forced unconvincing “fuck yeah’s” from his lips. And the sight of Peer Pressure still at work in thirty-somethings was all I myself could find to curse about; but then, I only cursed the heavens for teasing us so long with just one Flood.
We had agreed to nap a few hours before beginning our day. I had my work cut out for me, no matter how exhausted I was. But it was better this way—this prepared me for crucial personality conflicts that I had somehow missed during the caustic thirteen hours preceding. Case in point: No matter how little sleep-time was involved, Carl had to sleep in the buff. Humble, quiet Jesse snored like I could only dream of—and I had a reputation. I swore I could hear his windpipe chaffing with each drawn-out hacking bellow, like a wounded tracheotomy patient mimicking the cries of an imploding duck into a well-amplified kazoo. Rick impressed me by providing the easiest stereotype I was ever blessed to observe in such detail—and on the first night. What was up with the pretty blue clay mask he wore to bed? It looked as if the head of some telepathic Smurf had exploded near Rick’s face. Compulsive cuticle-trimming? Check. Body-hair sculpting? Check. And yes, he flexed for the mirror—but that came too easily. Rick was also hypoallergenic, and needed the bed by the bathroom, so that the vicious pollens of the Deep South may more conveniently disintegrate his doomed sinuses near a sink. Readjusting just a bit myself, I expected our ice bucket to be filled with every irritable and detachable membrane in Rick’s head by week’s end. Why not? The ice machine didn’t work anyway.
I awoke, presumably after about three hours, to unwelcome daylight on the side facing me, and a bare-ass Carl on the other. The blinding yellow orb mocked its captive. But none of that seemed important at the time. This was because I did not awaken due to glaring daylight. Nor had I awoke by loud snores, or even my bladder. I awoke quite plainly to the sound of large, unnatural flapping wings. They hummed and whirred from no visible location, yet implied gusts of turbulence all about their invisible movements. I felt incapable of hearing any other sound around me, apart from this unnatural grinding and canned, raspy humming. Yet I was, once again, aware of every sound and image in the place, at least all those who moved in flesh. I felt a sudden uncommon hush descend. I felt the urge to be stubborn and willful…and to be still. I felt and heard something shuffle, and for a flickering moment caught a side-eyed glimpse of my fateful guest. It was large, owl-like and appeared to hide a lantern in its mouth. It projected a sensation of presence like locusts harmonizing in songs written for their pestilent harvest conquests. I felt the chill that wasn’t, and fell paralyzed for a moment until I pushed free of it by sheer calmness of will. I remained awake, and waited for the others before I even dared to cough.
"It's the drugs," I thought, "It's giving me sleep paralysis." I was never ashamed of my intermittant patronage of the Independent Pharmaceutical Industry...but I was never truly comfortable with it, either. I hearkened back to my "Shower Incident" of weeks past, wherein my girlfriend bumped the light switch in the bathroom. For a split second, I actually assumed that I had suddenly gone blind, and began freaking out with wild abandon. It was a light switch, for Chrissakes! This was scary: for a brief moment, I actually could accept that my Olympian levels of dope intake had caused me to go blind at some random moment; the point is that it didn't surprise me. Even my post-religious drip set in: "You've been too promiscuous," it said. "See? You've gone and given yourself some weird disease--you're hallucinating because you're going mad with syphyllis!" Thanks but no thanks, Inner Voice. I think I'll handle it from here.
Amazingly, we left on time. I kept thinking back to John Keel’s The Mothman Prophecies, and how eerily similar my demonic boogeyman was to his. But his proved to be some sort of benign-yet-fearsome harbinger. My spook was intrusive, and jumped at every shot, presumably, to enter. But not a soul around me had sensed a blessed thing either time I “tripped over.” Without chasing the “alternate reality” or “subjective reality” rabbits, it stood that one of two things occurred. Either I hallucinated, have since I was young, and just get better all the time—or I slept in a room filled with complete psychic and spiritual corpses. My companions were aggravating, and eccentric… But certainly, they weren’t idiots? They couldn’t be total deadbeats, right?
TO BE CONTINUED...
)+(
(If you don't know what's going on...go about three posts down...and also, lick me).
By some undeserved miracle of a clearly unimpressed God, we arrived in New Orleans shortly before sunrise. Rick had arranged for a motel, which, he gloated, was “unbelievably affordable and convenient.” I was simply shocked that we made it this far, more so that it was done without a live studio audience. But to find lodging—less than a week from Mardi Gras?
Cramped and edgy from too many miles of bleak Mississippi non-civilizations, we stumbled out, haggard and jelly-jointed, into the refreshingly humid, pollen-laden, sinus-buggering Louisiana swelter like herniated clowns dismounting greased-up stilts and unicycles. As I reflected upon the world around me—and memories it resurrected, my gaze returned, far less enthusiastically, to the world which was actually before me. For this appeared to be something altogether different, though no less ironic. Bringing to mind slightly altered reflections of southern life, the smell of unlearned men cooking unnatural delicacies, and surely the beating, buzzing black wings all around, rediscovered my senses after nearly ten long years.
Though the Louisiana state bird has long been the Pelican, I believe it would serve the state far more honestly were they to finally break down and, rather than paint over things, recognize the more predominant winged wonders of the land—those tremendous fucking cockroaches—as the Official Fowl. Of course, we don’t actually call them cockroaches down south, just like we don’t call crawdads “mud bugs” or “river crickets.” Sure—it’s an accurate portrait, but it’s just not polite. Crawdads are “Crawfish.” This helps take the crustacean consumer’s mind off the fact that he is eating the bait and not the catch. Likewise, the buzzing, aggressive, flying four-inch Southern Cockroach is called a “Palmetto Bug.” And if they had just a bit more meat on them, they would be “Palmetto Fish.”
As we pulled into the poorly-lit lot of our motel—the only poorly-lit place in New Orleans, I will add—I felt a wind of premonition venturing forth that I was about to become quite intimate with that Other State Bird. Yes, the rusted blinking sign that proclaimed “hourly rates,” the room numbers that were but mere outlines in the peeling weathered paint, the smell of old catfish in the office, and its piss-burnt sofas, all combined with the absence of one damned palm tree that wasn’t riddled with crude carvings and cigarette burns…all of these things prophesied three days of sub-Cajun slum wherein the bug, the fish, the bird that was la cucaracha would be my host, my roommate, and above all…the very least of my worries.
Some swarthy Creole, bearing more than one piece of jewelry that involved animal skeletons, gave dear, awed Jesse two sets of worn copper room keys, and bad dreams later. Proudly flaunting my own carcass-based jewelry, I reminded the white, cocky, non-southern clerk that there were, in fact, four of us...not two. Sure, I could dream. Still, two keys would not do.
Rick, being the deep well of tact that he was, threatened to pound him. Carl and Jesse, as if on cue, melodramatically labored to hold the tensing, flexing, Rick back from the clerk. Absconding with one of the sacred keys, I roamed the unswept lobby for a phone book. Stereotypes fought, and swore, and made bad will…Crafty Bastards found key-making locksmiths in the yellowpages. Sadly, no matter how much of Carl’s money I offered in bribe, no good honest locksmith or hardware clerk would copy the jagged copper scrap. Having had more than enough of good, honest folk, I found myself longing for the corruptible old misers back home. Where are good, reliable bastards when you need them? “Well,” I sighed within, as Rick continued to be held back for however-long-it-was, “this key says ‘23’.” As for this Reliable Bastard, I walked on—key in hand. And then I called dibs on cable.
Following behind, Jesse and Carl gently inched diligent, futile Rick back in babysteps toward our room—considerate enough not to make him break eye contact with the massively unimpressed clerk. I hoped that little turd had learned his lesson—I would have hated to see Rick have to march over there and be held back some more. But a man’s got to do what a man must passively be restrained from doing…or something like that. Rick and Carl haggled for the other key, as I unlocked the 23rd mass of shredded paint fibers that appeared to have a doorknob. Jesse took assertive measures for the first and sole time all weekend, and snatched key #2 from the fidgety, meat-fingered exchange of Carl and Rick…which then continued over a key that neither still held, nor missed, for one brief but truly priceless moment.
Our room adorned by gristled shag carpet in lovely shades of creamed algae, drapes that no longer did, and a toiletries shelf lovingly papered with pages torn from an awesomely mangled Gideon Bible, I felt like checking the underneath of the motel for wheels and a hitch. Our “cable package” consisted of channels 2, 4, 7 (almost), 12, and scattered porn signals on 18-21. I still called dibs. You could almost see the fluorescent green bush and rippling, orange hooters on 19. Fortunately, our beds were made. Unfortunately, they were only made into nests for other things.
“Ah, fuck the room,” Rick affirmatively motioned, “We won’t be sleeping anyway!” Carl followed, exclaiming multiple variables of “fuck” in the affirmative sense, with “A,” “yeah,” “baby,” and such. Jesse high-fived Rick, and forced unconvincing “fuck yeah’s” from his lips. And the sight of Peer Pressure still at work in thirty-somethings was all I myself could find to curse about; but then, I only cursed the heavens for teasing us so long with just one Flood.
We had agreed to nap a few hours before beginning our day. I had my work cut out for me, no matter how exhausted I was. But it was better this way—this prepared me for crucial personality conflicts that I had somehow missed during the caustic thirteen hours preceding. Case in point: No matter how little sleep-time was involved, Carl had to sleep in the buff. Humble, quiet Jesse snored like I could only dream of—and I had a reputation. I swore I could hear his windpipe chaffing with each drawn-out hacking bellow, like a wounded tracheotomy patient mimicking the cries of an imploding duck into a well-amplified kazoo. Rick impressed me by providing the easiest stereotype I was ever blessed to observe in such detail—and on the first night. What was up with the pretty blue clay mask he wore to bed? It looked as if the head of some telepathic Smurf had exploded near Rick’s face. Compulsive cuticle-trimming? Check. Body-hair sculpting? Check. And yes, he flexed for the mirror—but that came too easily. Rick was also hypoallergenic, and needed the bed by the bathroom, so that the vicious pollens of the Deep South may more conveniently disintegrate his doomed sinuses near a sink. Readjusting just a bit myself, I expected our ice bucket to be filled with every irritable and detachable membrane in Rick’s head by week’s end. Why not? The ice machine didn’t work anyway.
I awoke, presumably after about three hours, to unwelcome daylight on the side facing me, and a bare-ass Carl on the other. The blinding yellow orb mocked its captive. But none of that seemed important at the time. This was because I did not awaken due to glaring daylight. Nor had I awoke by loud snores, or even my bladder. I awoke quite plainly to the sound of large, unnatural flapping wings. They hummed and whirred from no visible location, yet implied gusts of turbulence all about their invisible movements. I felt incapable of hearing any other sound around me, apart from this unnatural grinding and canned, raspy humming. Yet I was, once again, aware of every sound and image in the place, at least all those who moved in flesh. I felt a sudden uncommon hush descend. I felt the urge to be stubborn and willful…and to be still. I felt and heard something shuffle, and for a flickering moment caught a side-eyed glimpse of my fateful guest. It was large, owl-like and appeared to hide a lantern in its mouth. It projected a sensation of presence like locusts harmonizing in songs written for their pestilent harvest conquests. I felt the chill that wasn’t, and fell paralyzed for a moment until I pushed free of it by sheer calmness of will. I remained awake, and waited for the others before I even dared to cough.
"It's the drugs," I thought, "It's giving me sleep paralysis." I was never ashamed of my intermittant patronage of the Independent Pharmaceutical Industry...but I was never truly comfortable with it, either. I hearkened back to my "Shower Incident" of weeks past, wherein my girlfriend bumped the light switch in the bathroom. For a split second, I actually assumed that I had suddenly gone blind, and began freaking out with wild abandon. It was a light switch, for Chrissakes! This was scary: for a brief moment, I actually could accept that my Olympian levels of dope intake had caused me to go blind at some random moment; the point is that it didn't surprise me. Even my post-religious drip set in: "You've been too promiscuous," it said. "See? You've gone and given yourself some weird disease--you're hallucinating because you're going mad with syphyllis!" Thanks but no thanks, Inner Voice. I think I'll handle it from here.
Amazingly, we left on time. I kept thinking back to John Keel’s The Mothman Prophecies, and how eerily similar my demonic boogeyman was to his. But his proved to be some sort of benign-yet-fearsome harbinger. My spook was intrusive, and jumped at every shot, presumably, to enter. But not a soul around me had sensed a blessed thing either time I “tripped over.” Without chasing the “alternate reality” or “subjective reality” rabbits, it stood that one of two things occurred. Either I hallucinated, have since I was young, and just get better all the time—or I slept in a room filled with complete psychic and spiritual corpses. My companions were aggravating, and eccentric… But certainly, they weren’t idiots? They couldn’t be total deadbeats, right?
TO BE CONTINUED...
)+(
posted by GABRIEL C. ZOLMAN @ 7:06 AM
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