The Black Hole Soul of Hotels and Diners

Hotels draw energy from all the life . . . and death . . . that goes on inside them. I need to take a holiday. I need to go on vacation from all this life and all this death and all this suffering is this going on within and without me. Even the most scuzzy 4am motel armpit of the freeway stop and breathe sleep-joint has its own kinda neon charm. Those parking lot cacti that seem so scabby in the brilliant light of the mid morning sun look jazzily deshabille in the heat of the moment, in the cool of some early fall rainy night which has an insistent drum beat all of its own.

Pulling up in the middle of the night, can’t find a place to rest your head. Those rest areas where people pile in, haphazard, overbearing semis, 8 wheels to the wind, with serial killing truckers drinking mountain dew right from the bottle that they will then use to piss on once its processed are no place to get some sleep. Not unless you really have to do. You might go in there, pulling off the road, always at the last moment possible with the shout the back of the van of “Does anybody need to pee!” as you haul on the bowline and swing around that beast of a machine that you are throwing down the endless highway hoping that nothing, no one, nowhere will get in your way as you try beyond all sense of self preservation to both make the turn and also deaccelerate in time not to knock over some half blind grandma and her dog that pisses in the bushes of eternity.

You dodge hondas and hyundais, you squeeze past country kings with their class A rambling states of mind decal of the United States of America, with haphazardly applied stickers telling the world where they have been since they retired, scrawled across their hundred thousand dollar tin can sides, telling you exactly where grandma and gramps have been spending their children’s meagre inheritance by seeing as much of this sea to shining trash filled sea as they can before the Grim Reaper goes a-calling them back home. Home. Home on the road. Home on the freeway. Home in the campgrounds, and home home home in the rest stops. There is no home for me apart from the horizon, that always just beyond the pale, just after the next turn, at the end of a six hour trawl down some seemingly never ending low numbered interstate.

Welcome to the 5. Welcome to the 101. Welcome to Route 66. We are gonna get you some kicks, Boy! Head rests on the cold glass and the world flashes by wondering who you are and what you consider kicks to be. How can the universe know what will get your brain lit up like one of those signs, if you don’t dare speak the deepest darkest rainy night desires that do not speak your name out loud?

We are gonna get you some pancakes and some fake sugar syrup – mind the diabetes, it will not give you no sugary quarter in Denny’s or in Little Susie-Lou’s, or any other Edward Hopper diner, where the coffee is stewed and the waitresses are hard faced and all given up on living, waiting on that Big Tip, that ‘lemme pay your way outta perdition, that awkward state between heaven in tutti fruitti fresh and fruity waffles and yesterday’s congealed American cheeze grits. Hold the salt. Forget the savor. There ain’t no savior in these places that keep life going. Barely. And take it by artery clogging degrees and minimum wage paychecks day by never ending torturous heart attack and vine day. Let’s pray! Let’s pray to the little G_ds of diners and hotels whose small faces shine from neon lit signs that say ‘room!’ and advertise vacancy, from sea to shining sea, like some Buddhists monk who knows emptiness is the only way to fill up with compassion, like eight dollar gas in Big Sur, where you can’t even buy a chocolate bar without taking out insurance or at least a loan which might just push you over the edge into some horror show debtor’s prison that screams ‘you didn’t do enough good to earn that chocolate bar!’ Ain’t no one can afford that eight dollar gas of compassion. Not on this road. Not in this vehicle. Better hope for some dollar stale pizza at the next walmart pit stop. It is food, but not for the soul. It is food, but not as you need it, Jim.

Back to the hotel and the way the air smells in Los Angeles and those nights where a room and a shower and a can of toxic Fresca with a bag of sunchips was about the most luxurious thing I could ever imagine. Coffee tokens in Weed in my pocket but not much else jangling around in there. I was broke. Dead broke. Dead scared. Dead everything, but alive. Alive is overrated, my friends. It is the biggest hit, the most precious gift, but all that hooey, all that phooey is philosophical chop suey. Mix it up, and make em eat it. Make em believe that all they got to do is exist and that happiness thatta way lies, down the yella brick road.

Come man, let’s go get high. Let’s eat us some of that country pie in the sky. But it has gone stale in the case and the sugar has separated and the eggs are out of a carton. Life is meal that you have to eat, whether you like it or not. No one asked me if I wanted to be alive. No one asked me if I wanted to live. All I asked for was some love. And there is moments in storms that make the freeway slick and black and deep and full of mirrors and shadows, where the neon drips into the puddles that form and floats right back into your retina.

I bet ya, you have never seen a more beautiful sight than ‘rooms: $40 a night. The ‘No” blinked out and the ‘vacancy’ shining bright in red or green or blue. Blink. Blink. Blink. Oh to be on the 101. I wonder is there is a 102? There must be, but it is not a road for me. Or you. You don’t need that road. I just know it. You need a greatest hits. A been there, done it, lived it….died on it. On the back seat of a Ford, no Cadillac for me, Baby, on the back seat, head on the window, watching the neon drip. Drop. As the bald tires squeaked and the wheel felt like it was set in concrete and some man’s band shouted about Crazy Horse on the CD player. He had a knife between his teeth for that fork in your tongue, but what about the fork in the road? What about knowing whether to go this way or that? What about that forty dollar room and those open prefab steps and that card that clicked the door to heaven open.

TV barely working, showing drag races on other roads. Hot water in the shower, though is always welcome. Air conditioning when its hot and stuttering heating in the cold and damp of winter feels like heaven as you run from vehicle to temporary shelter of the motel room. Shampoo on the wall smelling of lemons or Irish Mist, and patting my bottle of cheap brandy, feet up, head on pillow that so many heads had laid on, I went to dream other people’s dreams. Who cares if the carpet is sticky, at least the roof is holding and the rain stays out?

There might even be a cup of coffee when I wake up, to throw into my tin can cup and gulp down wondering if I will ever wake up again. The black hole soul of other people’s dreams seep into the fabric of motel rooms and soak into the atmosphere, falling down like rain. Every girl crying on the bathroom floor, every drunk holding onto the Gideon bible with one hand and a bottle of Everclear with the other, staring at the phone wondering if he called AA would anyone care anyway, every single child that was grateful for a real bed and cartoons in the morning, every dog that got smuggled in along with the greasy pizza boxes, every chemical tasting coffee poured out of a hot water pot that tastes of industrial furniture polish, every single hope and fear and naughty afternoon motel affair liaison, every moment of living, every sad death dying sits in front of the fuzzy TV screen and hangs around waiting for someone to listen. The black hole souls of motels gather together and dance to faded jazz, holding old typewritten newspapers and whisper sweet nothings to road-weary ears.