Hotel Madras

I wanted to make it to Bend to see my husband and rest, but I couldn't drive any more. My eyes were playing tricks and my judgment was waining. I spotted an old building with an interesting neon sign and pulled over. The lobby was a real estate office and law firm. The man had an x-files feel, and I gathered we were the only ones in the hotel. He proceeded to take me on a tour of all the rooms, which he had restored and decorated himself. Each room had a different theme, and yet the general decor matched that of my grandma's house. Is this a 1940's asthetic? Flowered heavy drapes, cloth covered lamps, wood furniture, and polyster beadspreads? The hotel had been built in 1911, and although he tried to convince me that all the furniture in the "president's suite" in which I stayed was from that year, I suspected the burnt orange velour lazy boy may have been from a later era. Before I realized that the bathrooms had motion sensored lights, I thought the place was haunted, as lights and fans popped on when I walked down the hall. I spent a heart pounding fifteen minutes thinking of the Shining and Barton Fink- isolated hotel movies in which people die. When the lights clicked off of their own accord ten minutes later, then popped on again when I tiptoed back down the hall to use the toilet, i decided I could relax. Later I heard the unmistakable creaks of foot steps in the hallway. I thought maybe he was stalking me, waiting till i went in the hall to use the bathroom again to kill me. I pretended that I was in conversation on my cell phone saying the name of the place and the time I could be expected in the morning, even though I didn't get reception. After two hours of bad TV, I finally fell asleep, and in the light of morning everything felt harmless. The green linoleum, silk flowers, and ceiling fans in the hallway held no more threats, and the flowered runner on the stairs made me marvel at a lonely elderly man's aesthetic.

Segunda noche

We stayed in a hostel where things were clean. We cooked a meal of salmon with lemon and butter, sald with shitakes, and brown rice cooked slow. The lighting was gentle, and we shared a bottle of wine while reminiscing about her mother's soups that we both loved when i lived with her family in mexico. We spoke of the markets and the crazy italian who visited the house for a while, smoking mota in the bathroom and cigarettes in the kitchen while her mother shook her head in disgust and my friend tried to make her stop. Everything seemed less desperate on day two. She found an apartment and we navigated, together, the world of social and public services- everyone should have their own personal advocate, for this was the role I played. She said many times, I can't go back to him, and it is true she can't, not without damage to her body, soul, and psyche. I hope that things improve for her. Suerte, mi amiga.

The Aloha Motel

If this hotel room could tell its story, what would it reveal? What secrets lie behind the cigarette smell deeply lodged in the carpet, the burns in the bathroom linoleum, on the microwave, on the toilet seat. Why did I choose this hotel that makes me feel as if someone is continually exhaling in my face? Did i think it was the apppropriate backdrop for this scene? The curtain opens on a young wife fleeing her appartment after rifling through her abusive husbands backpack for her green card, passport, work visa, and social security card (he has been keeping them from her because he doesn't want her to work, go to school, drive the car, or ever be out of his supervision). Did this hotel seem the appropriate place to inform the audience that she speaks very little English, knows almost no one in the states, and has very little money, no place to stay, and so of course winds up in a place where the comforter could easily be confused with an ashtray? I try not to let my feet touch the ground as she shows me on her digital camera (for which the chord, along with so may other items, is now gone to the site of her flight, to which she cannot return for fear of more bruises or losses of consciousness) pictures of her husband, a boy really from Washington, not much different from so many I know. How did this happen? I try to ignore the carpet, it's smells and colors, and yet find myself remembering a night 17 years ago when I attended a room party in southern California. Just as i had officially declared "dead head" I crossed the track to a party definately labeled "punk rock." I think a drummer I met that night, then dated for a summer, and I had sex in the bathroom, but I think we were both too drunk to accomplish the deed or know if we had. Did I sleep on the floor of that beer sodden place? Looking at the carpet here so many years hence, I shiver to think I may have and hope that even then I knew better.

Thoughts on Betty Crocker

cake!!!!!!!!!
Originally uploaded by Cameron/Duff.

I learned that it doesn't have to be home made or organic to make somebody feel really special.

Mt. Princeton Hot Springs, CO

DSCN1370
Originally uploaded by Cameron/Duff.

Taking a stroll on a random evening of our honeymoon, we were asked to take a photo of an interesting threesome enjoying the view off a redwood deck. They invited us for dinner in celebration of a 28th birthday. They all hailed employment at the Fairplay Hotel, Fairplay, CO. They were, respectively: the bartender, the server, and the cook. Four steaks and a salmon filet later, the wind was blowing around the napkins, wet with spilled scotch, and the stray cigarette ashes were turning into a pasty mess. We found ourselves bound for their hotel room, bathtub filled with PBR. Chickzilla transformed into a person who chain smoked marlboro reds and threw his beer cans out into the bushes. I began calling everyone darlin and hon, and everything was lovely or brilliant. The server, am attractive woman from Maine, got mean as the Whiskey wained, and her boyfriend the bartender banged out some incredible blues on my guitar. It was all over when we were widdling our way into the hot springs at what felt like two in the morning, but was actually 9:00 at night, and she began cussing up a storm and, on unsteady legs, stormed off into the night. I said to the boys, why don't you just stay here by the river and let her go. The bartender said "shit," and grabbed his satchel of PBR from my arm. The cook (who was celebrating his birthday) followed, but turned around with a shrug and said pleadingly, "Can't break up the the team."