011 ☼ Motel Chronicles

on O'odham land

I met a man on Daylight Savings Day on Moonlight Beach, right as the sun sunk beneath the sand. We went on a 35 day road trip. We drove through three states and stayed in 12 hotels. Our rubric was snappy: We judged rooms by cleanliness (he, obsessed with finding stray hairs in sheets), bathtubs (tub? Or no tub?), and if they had my favorite channel, Turner Classic Movies. Our biggest priorities were strong wifi and free breakfast. We befriended the housekeepers and the concierges, we loaded up on fruit from complimentary breakfasts. We made syrupy phone calls to the front desk to ask for more towels or longer check out times; sometimes a better view. One woman laughed at me when I asked about room service. N’s very good at asking for discounts and negotiating prices based on the quality of rooms. When asked to report why we were traveling we simply wrote, “On our way home,” yet we live nowhere, at least for the time being. Some hotels take your temperature, others forget. Some cleaners will slip your printed receipt under your door at 3am like a night stalker and disappear down the hall by the time you get to the door. 

Reading hotel reviews became our favorite road poetry. We invented our own. People complain about all sorts of things: weak water pressure, slow elevators, mask policies...you get the gist. The 2 for 1 deal is a joke! etc etc. Guests express anger when amenities aren’t free. In a sense, our tour showed us how different communities dealt with coronavirus. It seemed to reflect the nation as a whole: divided nearly clean in half, some with masks and some refusing to even wear them because of “freedom” or whatever. 

Now it feels like the trip didn’t happen at all and I didn’t have the wherewithal to write about it as it happened, save for a few scrappy notes. So this is me recounting a dream I think I had, how I kinda fell in love but wasn’t supposed to, how I lived outside of time for a month. I’ll be sending my reviews as I write them from memory about the liminal places I existed with a stranger turned friend. ☼

I recommend:

☼ Listening to Herb Alpert’s Tijuana Brass “Ladyfingers” from Whipped Cream & Other Delights with desert wind sounds on in the background.

☼ Watching Spaceship Earth (2020), a documentary about a semi-failed living experiment in a living dome named Biosphere 2. If you visit, please wear a mask (obviously) but don’t miss chatting up the tour guides. They’re SUPER bored and filled with knowledge.

☼ Learn about saguaros, quite possibly the most special cacti in the Sonoran Desert!!!

☼ Make a donation to Border Angels, a group who deliver water in the remotest parts of the southwestern desert for those who are traveling by foot across the border. Important work.

That’s all for now, write back soon. xxA