Motel 9000
The thin veneer of human civilization gets frayed fast when you’re in a cheap motel.
We’re all animals. That’s what I tell myself as I lie in the bed of a motel in Framingham, Massachusetts. The thin veneer of human civilization gets frayed fast when you’re in a cheap motel. Especially now, in 2024. This place looked just good enough on paper when we booked it. Of course, “on paper” is a quaint term that now refers to website reviews and app comments left by complete strangers, reviews that nobody moderates or fact checks. In truth, we based everything on unseen evidence - the equivalent of online hearsay. We were placing trust in a trust-based system that’s inherently untrustworthy.
My steel-clad rule for decades was to cruise the local motel strip, inspect a place first by driving through the lot, trust my gut, and only then to slowly drive back again to the lobby entrance and book a room. In the past 10 years, though, I have gotten lax. I have also gotten away from the fleabag motels and begun to stay in more expensive places, big chain motor hotels with higher standards. I am getting older and less reckless. In the old days, I would never stay in a motel if I could not park my car in front of the door. Most of those places have been replaced with big box motels that have internal corridors. Your door does not open out onto your parking spot. I held out for a long time before giving up on that luxury.
A parking spot in front of your door used to be a glorious feature of the great American motel. Convenience! Ease! Cleanliness! Let’s scratch that last virtue here. There are no top sheets in this room, as I discovered when I crawled into bed at 9:30PM. My initial instinct was to immediately find a better place nearby, suck it up financially, and just get out of here. Of course, the hassle factor would have been great - pack up the clothes, then the car, drive a few miles, check in, unpack, settle in. And for what? A good night’s sleep? Peace of mind? I gently, tentatively ran it by Tonya, but she was already in bed and had bought into the denial of “good enough,” even if “good enough” meant “never again” for a return trip to this place.
No sheet. I looked hard and hoped against hope that it was flat against the duvet, but it was just the quilt, which, if you looked at it for more than a second, was not clean. I saw small stains and spots, then had to turn my gaze aside. I remember, decades ago, when I stayed in cheap motels all the time with my friend Peggy, she would muse on the duvets, coverlets, blankets and other bedding. “There’s NO WAY they wash this stuff every night,” she would say and I would do what Tonya did tonight - just not think about it. But I’m an impressionable, germaphobic clean-freak - at least, I like to think so - and I immediately got sympathetic itchiness. I know it wasn’t real because it came on as soon as I discovered there was no sheet. Earlier, I had ignored the drawer pull. I had idly opened a dresser drawer to check for bugs and my finger got sticky from the handle. That was gross, but the drawer was at child level and I thought, “Maybe some kid got some Kraft Grape Jelly on the hardware.” That’s what I told myself.
Nothing else was overtly filthy in this place, which looked like it had been renovated in the past ten years. What I could not overlook, though, were the neighbors. As soon as we pulled in, before we even checked in, I saw some red flags. The lobby had children’s toys all over the floor. Children, as well. Three young kids, one of them crawling over my feet as I stood in front of the woman at the counter. This woman didn’t make eye contact with me. She had a relative or a friend behind her, in a chair through the open door of the back room, and another friend draped over a chair in the lobby. She had a practiced talent for avoiding eye contact. Still, she was professional enough. I kicked a toy by accident on the way out and she apologized. I mumbled “no problem” and pushed the door open. My antennae were up and I got in the car and made a U-turn to go down the row of rooms. I was looking out a little harder than I had before we checked in.
We had only taken this motel because every other place within 50 miles of Boston was crazy expensive and we wanted to save a buck. You get what you pay for. It had gotten decent reviews on TripAdvisor, but I should have looked at Yelp. Yes, it has come to that. I should have looked at Yelp. I usually do but, as I said, I have gotten lax and lazy lately. We drove down the long row of room doors and, as we got to the end, I noticed a beat-up car in the only available spot near the room, right next to our spot. That was not a good sign, but you can’t judge someone by their car. Or can you? Maybe you can. I pulled further back to the middle of the lot, just as someone came out of a room two doors down. He was bare-chested and looked like life had beaten the shit out of him. He was an older guy who sat on the concrete in front of his room, lit a cigarette, then studied us and our car. THAT is the moment I should have gone to another place, but chose not to. I didn’t want to appear too fussy or overreact. I recalled that, coincidentally, we had just run a piece of mine in Juke called “Temporary Neighbors.” I re-worked it for a book, as well. This topic is apparently close to my heart.
Tonya went in with the first load of stuff. Between the camera gear, the pillows and the bags, we often have too much stuff to haul into a room in one shot. I used to travel with a small backpack and a mini duffle bag, but that was a long time ago. She did not complain about the room when she came out. She didn’t rave about it, either, but Tonya is a trouper and generally tries to make the best of any situation. She is my barometer. While she was in there, I had noticed the car at the very end of the row. It was a 25 year-old Ford Explorer that was patched up and painted over with matte black spray paint. Again, who am I to judge people by their car? We took the little guy on a walk and came across a young couple who were ragged around the edges. The guy had a prison look - shaved head, facial tattoos and a grim face. I could also call it a “meth head on the way to recovery” look if I wanted to be charitable. I have mixed with both types and more while living in America, sitting in church basements with folding chairs, and patronizing mini marts across this great land.
They had a dog who looked half Pit Bull and, oddly, half Corgi. This dog growled and lunged at Santo, who is 12 pounds of half Chihuahua and half other things. We pulled back and kept going, but I watched after them and saw that matte black Explorer was theirs. It was filled with crap - clothes, groceries and rolls of paper towels - and they eventually sat in it with both the hood and trunk up and all four doors open. It turns out they were not in the motel, but simply in the parking lot, living out of the car. I understand that this is America in 2024. A cheap motel, even if the price doesn’t sound cheap to me, is the last resort for a lot of decent, poor people, as well as hookers and drug addicts. Call me a bourgeois asshole. I stayed in these places when I was young and broke and didn’t care, but I avoid them now. I have a healthy respect for people at the end of their rope, people who have been driven to desperation.
We walked Santo and watched some other people walk around the corner of the motel and head to the Dunkin’ Donuts next door. Another car drove by that didn’t seem to belong there. A 20 year old Chevy SUV that had probably witnessed a lot over the years. A young woman was driving and an even younger dude was with her. He got out and sat down on a curb at the end of the motel and immersed himself with something in his lap. After a while, some regular travelers showed up. What do I mean by “regular travelers?” Some of them were contractors and they did what contractors always do in motels - they sat in the parking lot and drank beer and smoked cigarettes and weed. That was actually reassuring.
Other people, in newer cars, drove up. This is sounding real classist, I know, and I used to be the guy who drove up in a 20 year old car. I was sober, honest and amiable, if not pleasant, and people stared at me because of my car. I know what it’s like to look dingy. These late arrivals had suitcases and seemed like they were just bedding down for the night. The motel was not all crackheads and hookers, but my radar is over-tuned and my imagination doesn’t take much time off. Every paranoid person is usually given enough nuggets of genuine fear to justify another 24 hours of obsessive worry. We finished the dog walk and I grimly planned to hunker down in our room until morning. When we took him out later for the last walk, the parking lot didn’t seem so bad, but I carried a small canister of pepper spray that I had once bought in Florida.
You can’t buy pepper spray in New York City - it’s illegal. Amazon won’t ship it to a New York City address. But holding it gave me a small sense of security. I don’t own a gun - nor do I have any interest in one - and, since you can’t walk around with a baseball bat, pepper spray seemed like some kind of alternative. I had found it in the pocket of a denim jacket I keep in the back of the car. As we walked, I began to wonder if it even worked. I looked for someplace where I could test it, but there were no trees or bushes nearby. We passed a lit window on the other side of the motel and I glanced at the guy inside. He was sitting at a desk, writing on a pad, and I decided I could not spray this stuff against a wall, not when people were sitting around and doing regular things. There I go again, saying shit like “regular” and “normal.” Maybe a spot check of reality and its thin edges is important to me. That’s why I make gratitude lists.
I wasn’t thinking clearly by this point, maybe due to fear, maybe fatigue. When we got back into the room, I locked and bolted the door behind us and went into the bathroom. I shut the door and tried to spray the stuff into the sink. Nothing happened. I wanted to know if it worked. I pushed the little red plastic trigger harder and a tiny fizz came out. That was promising. I pressed it again and it came out with a bit more force. It was just a dot of pepper spray, but I was satisfied that it might work in a pinch if somebody lunged at us in the future. My illusion of self-defense returned, although it didn’t make me feel safer. It was more of a mental construct, one more box to tick off of things not to worry about.
Within 10 seconds, the aerosol component - was it Mace? I don’t know - kicked in. The dot I had sprayed into the sink drain had seemed so small and inconsequential. It had lasted for about one second, but my throat, nose and eyes became constricted and I began to cough. Not much, but enough to know that this stuff really worked. I grabbed some toilet paper to rub my eyes, then I went into the motel room, shut the door behind me, and explained to Tonya what I had done. I apologized profusely. She was across the room, but tasted it in her throat. I felt awful. Not only were we in a crappy motel, but I had just maced us both. I looked at Santo and he seemed okay, but what do I know? Dogs usually try to make the best of any situation. He was licking his butt contentedly.
The room was okay again after a half hour. I let the shower run in the bathroom and prayed that a lot of steam would ameliorate the situation. Steam helps everything, right? We decided to stick it out. I said “fuck it” to myself and prepared for an early exit, then got into bed. That’s when I discovered the lack of a top sheet. I checked for a minute to make sure this was actually true, but I could not find it. There was only a filthy coverlet. I thought back to every shitty hotel I have ever been in and how that one sheet had been my only defense against the world’s filth. Maybe I’m naive, but I always assumed that, even if nothing else were cleaned, they would AT THE VERY LEAST launder the top sheet. How could you do otherwise? I had questioned whether that was true in some places, but at least there had been an actual sheet and I didn’t have to pull up a filthy comforter, one that had seen the greasy bodies of a thousand strangers, up to my tired chin.
I was exhausted, though, incredibly tired. Amazingly, I settled in and fell asleep. Until an hour ago, when I woke up at 2:20 AM. I sometimes wake up on the road and it takes me a second to remember where I am. Not this time. I knew exactly where I was. It took me a few seconds to remember that there was no sheet, but then it all came back to me. After deliberating with one of the voices in my head, I pulled out my laptop and began to write. It’s 4 AM now. The dog is under the filthy covers. Tonya is somewhere on this king bed and I have been sitting here for a while, typing away. I guess I’m going to get under this dirty duvet and try to count my breaths and fall asleep again.
In a few hours we’ll drive into Boston and find some nice bakeries and bookstores and the other basic elements of a cushy life. First, we’ll wake up and walk the dog, then seek out some coffee. We will drive away from here. We have that luxury, the means to leave. It’s going to be easy to make a gratitude list tonight. And I need to pray for all the lost and suffering people in the world, but prayer really doesn’t help them, does it? Does prayer simply help me to feel better? Who am I even praying to? What’s wrong with this whole fucking world? Lack of sleep won’t kill you. That’s what they told me, but it sure can make you crazy. That’s how I came around to the idea that we’re all just animals, less civilized than we’d like to think. Not much separates us from the howling chasm of chaos.
In medieval times, a traveler walking by a village on the road might be invited into a house to stay for the night, to get away from the robbers and the wolves. He might sleep on a large common pallet of straw with everybody else in the family. Sheets? Clean bedding? I don’t think so. But now I really am crazy and should try to sleep. At least I got a couple of thousand words out of this, something else for the digital meat grinder. It’s all in the service of art, right? The pain and joy and love and sleeplessness and staring out windows and reading books and thinking too much and not thinking enough. It’s all for art. And art is all in the service of trying to stay sane, whatever that means.
Okay, it’s time to breathe. Time to get through the second half of a long night. I had a friend named Ed Z. He was a Vietnam combat vet I knew when I was younger. He had been shot 7 times in the U-Minh forest, down in the Delta, and barely made it back. After he returned, he was on so many drugs from the V.A. that he lost his mind. He finally got clean and spent many years sitting around, helping me and others, with a big smile on his face. He died sober. Ed used to say, “Who’s got it better than me?” To which I say, “I’m with you, Ed, wherever you are in the ether." Truly - who’s got it better than me?
All photos by Paul Vlachos.
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Great story Paul, I loved it.
I have stayed in numerous shitty hotels.
The worst was outside of Vegas, the TV in the room only showed bad porn and the bed was a waterbed, that was so hot you slowly poached in your own and others sweat. The shower had no tile and when I was showering the shower head popped off, pinning me to the wall.
Pro tip: Put your camera cases in trash bags before you move in, and Easy Off oven spray is just as good as pepper spray and easier to get.
it was in the garden district. I was there for a medical convention, consulting at the time. I usually was provided a room in a good hotel by the company I was working with. this time I went with the place my husbands company got ( they were low on the totem pole for securing rooms) this was a giant convention for the American Heart Association, 40,000 or more people show up. the place was an old victorian/New Orleans style mansion converted into rooms. reeked of bug spray and disinfectant, old furniture, a very gothic vibe. the next day we went to the Marriott where we were told there were no rooms, but I begged and pleaded and placed my life in the hands of the front desk manager. she said she would see what we could do. we ended up in the Presidential suite, for the standard room rate! we had a great time and now I have a great story from the experience.