The Rough Drafts Writing Blog

I’m sitting in my room on the fifth floor of the Best Western in Marlboro, Massachusetts.  Aside from waiting for tomorrow, I’m trying to amuse myself by thinking of better names for a city than Marlboro.  So far, my answer is: everything but Blumpkinville, which incidentally is in Arkansas.  I’m ready to declare that this is not, in fact, flavor country. 

I’m really only doing this to avoid being disturbed by my room.  It has this if Amityville were a trailer park appeal to it that I uh … just can’t abide.

I was a little scared coming into this.  I made my reservation myself so I knew I’d be here.  “But”, I thought, “how bad could it be?”  I remember staying in places that were $30 a night back in my younger days.  “You’re acting like a douche”, I told myself, “it’s the Best Western in Marlboro, it’s not like it’s the Super 8 in Kabul.”  So I was going to buck up and make a go of it.  “Don’t be so bourgeois”, I said to myself.  I always book my travel in a beret.

As I went to the hotel tonight, I felt a mixture of emotions: fear, embarrassment, trepidation.  I was twitching ever so slightly.  I was happy to realize that it was a convention center.  For some reason, this made me feel like it had to be a bit better than the average Best Western.  I’m not sure if the Lord works in mysterious ways, but I know that my mind does.

I parked my car feeling a bit better about my prospects.  I walked up to the door and I was excited to see that they had a rotating door.  Somehow, the rotating door confirmed my feeling that this might, just might be not horrible.  Nutty.  Like I said. 

I noticed the fountain as I entered the lobby.  Now I was excited.  I was right, you see, it has a fountain and (holy fuck) a bar.  I was right about that convention center thing.  I checked in at the front desk and it took less than ninety seconds.  By this point, I’d already mentally booked Best Westerns for all of my future business travel. 

Then one really minor thing happened.  This is going to sound horrible, but fuck you, I travel a lot so I get to be a baby about one thing.  I made one single request: a room on a lower level.  My room was on the fifth floor.  “SO WHAT”, I thought.  “Who cares?  This place has a fountain, and it’s a convention center.  Fucking hell, they even have a bar.”

So I take the elevator upstairs.  At this point, I’ve let the floor thing go.  I’m happy, all is right with the world.  I open the door to the room.  I don’t want to say that it stunk, but it has an odor.  It’s not quite Bea Arthur’s vagina, but it might be Sally Field’s.  “OK”, I think, “it’s just a tiny odor.  Who cares?”  As it turns out, I do.

After the odor, the second thing that I notice is that the bed is practically on the floor.  There are hotels where you don’t need a ladder to climb into bed?  Apparently so. 

The bathroom floor is green tile.  The tiles are all faded and cracked.  Frankly, this reminds me of all of the other people that have stood there bare-footed.  I really don’t want to think about this. 

Then I notice that the television buttons are all worn back to black.  Immediately, the mental image I get is of some semi-homeless, toothless man, hands covered in semen turning off the TV.  It doesn’t exactly make me want to eat dinner without washing my hands six or seven times.

Then I notice the really old couch and chair in the room.  It’s the kind of furniture that you have when you’re nineteen and you get that first apartment off campus.  It has a cat piss smell that will never come out and a color pattern that hasn’t been sold in a store since Betty White had her own teeth.

The carpet is stained and faded.  I wonder what color it used to be.  There’s no way, really, to tell.  The faux marble end tables are streaky.  I really don’t want to think about what they’re streaked with.  The ‘desk’ is actually a tiny little kitchen table for sad, old bachelor shut-ins; there’s barely room on it for both my laptop and my keys.  The desk chair?  Wicker.  Yeah.  The table top?  Glass.  What would I be doing at this table?  Working on my computer.  What doesn’t work on glass surfaces?  That’s right, optical mice.  I’m presently using the room service menu as a mouse pad.  And it’s not like an optical mouse is the space shuttle.  I mean, they should’ve seen this coming, no?  I’m sitting here typing this in the dark because I had to unplug all of the lights to plug in my computer and charge my phone.  YEAH.  No bullshit.

Naturally, I felt gross so I took a shower.  It was like… you know when you’re a kid and you kink the hose so that your brother will investigate and then you let go and he gets it in the face?  The water pressure was like that.  It was choppy and uneven; much like a garden hose with a kink in it.  I’m thinking of asking for a note from the front desk in the morning.  “We’re sorry that this man smells so badly.  It’s impossible to shower here.  Sincerely, Earl.”

So the place is scurvy and inadequate.  Everywhere I look, I see drunken business men having unprotected anal sex with hookers.  Messy anal, the kind where brown, viscous lube winds up everywhere … like on the carpet or the couch.  After all, this place is a convention center.

Look, the truth is simple.  I’ve been traveling on business a lot lately.  I’ve gotten used to a better class of hotel.  And so this feels inferior and oddly crunchy.  Imagine that you had dated Britney Spears when she was eighteen.  It would ruin your fucking life.  You’re never going to be happy again, because every woman that you’re ever with after is going to feel like a busted tranny by comparison.  You’d be better off dating amputees; hell, you might even wind up feeling lucky.  It’s the same for me.  If I’d never been to a Starwood or a Marriot property, I wouldn’t mind the occasional night at the Best Western.  To be quite honest, this is instructive; I’ll avoid hotels nicer than the Marriot from now on.  Imagine how much of a come down it would feel like after a night at the Four Seasons or the Mandarin Oriental.