boundcreature

So, it's been nearly eleven days since I saw Palo last and I must confess, I miss her something fierce. Going to sleep alone on my cold-to-the-touch futon pad on the floor in the corner of my bedroom just sucks. I lie there, bored and cold, wishing she was there to make the bed warm like she always does (how someone so small can generate so much heat, I have no idea -- must be her excitement from being in my presence).

One Last Night
by Jordan Giarratano

We were checking into a motel before we went out for the night. A sleazy motel, as is our style. It was just off a major highway running through my hometown, a trucker-crash-for-the-night / prostitute-turning-tricks kind of place. This assumption is based on the layout of the room:



Yes, that is a view of a large jacuzzi just over the bed in the tiny motel room. The jacuzzi is surrounded by mirrors that run to the ceiling on all sides. I kept picturing a worn out trucker taking a bubble-bath in the jacuzzi, cigarette hanging out of his mouth, beer hanging out of his left hand, his right hand holding a remote, his arm lazily draped over the edge of the tub, clicking away, looking for something half-way decent on the "goddamned" tv just seven feet away. Of course, I only pictured that until I flipped the light switch (that I assumed would turn on the room lights) and lit three spotlights focusing into the jacuzzi -- aahhh, this is one of those types of places.

We took all of this in from the doorway into the room. Within seconds, the reek of cigarette smoke hit like old-people-smell in a nursing home. One of the reasons we were staying in a hotel was that after five days in my Mom's tiny apartment with plastic-sealed windows and three smokers, I was feeling more disgusting than I have ever felt in my life. I don't think I've ever been happier about anything like I'm happy about the no-smoking ban in public places up here, being at my Mom's house was like the exact opposite, a "smoking-only" zone that challenged the healthy functioning of every sense in my poor body. And, my escape plan, failed miserably in this regard, as there were no non-smoking rooms available. Undaunted, we resolved to return at the end of our evening with friends with a solution.

Three hours later, we're both on the verge of falling asleep when we bid farewell to my boys and pile into her parent's minivan to get back to our motel room. Unfortunately, the 24 hour supermarket is now an 11 hour supermarket and we are fucked for finding candles. We end up at a truck-stop down the street and she finds a spray cannister of "organic" orange-peel odor neutralizer. Fuck-it, I'm in. I have no idea what that clerk thought when I bought an eight dollar can of anti-odor spray and a box of condoms.

We get to the hotel room, she stops in at the office and I begin the first sweep of the room. I feel like a soldier spraying agent orange into the trees, laying a blanket coat to alter the atmosphere within the room. She walks right into the thick of it, no care in the world and starts to cough:

"Get out of there! You're gonna choke to death!"
"How much are you spraying?"
"I'm laying down my initial suppressing coat."

She walks into the back and takes a breath. I finish the front of the room and then we switch and I do the back. I eventually spray the entire room three times. It helps. Rather, it coated our throats and nasal passages with a corrosive citrus-scent that completely obscured the cigartte stench.

We watched a little Conan O'Brien while I filled the jacuzzi. We were both a little nervous. Bathing together was a little weird, bathing together in front of floor to ceiling mirrors is quite another thing, especially when you can turn your head and see a bed and a tv. A couple minutes in, I realize the stopper in the tub isn't working. So, like any real, blue-collar man would do, I took it apart:



...and realized that I had no idea how to put it back together nor did I realize what was broken. I settled on stuffing a wash rag as deep into the drain as I could and leaving the hastily reassembled drain-stopper for the next guests.

Onto the next problem, every light in the room is designed to accent the jacuzzi. Eventually, after trying various combinations of lighting, I turn off everything except the ballast lights above the sink, of which I unscrew three bulbs to create that "romantic" vibe chicks dig.

I talk her into the tub and I don't think she's as comfortable as she could be:



But, we make the most of it. The water is hot and that's all that really matters. She's in my arms, water dripping off of her perfect body as she rises casually above the surface. The entire room feels awkward except for the space she and I occupy.

Afterwards, I dry her off and we go to the bed. According to a previous agreement, she owed me oral sex and I owed her a full body massage. Later, mutually satisfied, we fall asleep in our fucked-up citrus-smelling motel room.

It was the first night I really slept straight through since we were separated. We woke up together, by the nasty hotel-phone "you should check out soon" ring. We had some glorious lazy, early morning sex and left the place behind us.

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We Must Become Our Heroes

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My orientation for school is in six hours