I don’t know how I got to this place I am now in, maybe it is just how it is supposed to be, does it really matter now that I am no longer homeless? While I think it really and truly does, all I do know is that while I was on the downward spiral of being homeless, I found myself living in cheap motels as I struggled to make it one day at a time. Some people would consider living in a motel far better than living on the streets, and maybe it is, but this was just a slow transition into the real thing for me! Some people are born to greatness while others slowly struggle until they find their own version of either greatness or their own sort of living hell, but along with those unfortunates there is a group of people who no matter what they do never get any further than just barely making it and sadly I believe I am one of those people!
So along with those cheap motels came the multitudes of sleazy people who called them home! There is almost a complete surreal sub-world that is part of the cult of people who live their lives in cheap motels in an effort to make it in this world. Much like in any major town in the United States lives and breathes a small sub-culture hanging on at the fringes of society. These people are exactly as you would see in everyday life while shopping at the grocery store, or at the local hamburger stand, or where ever you see people, with the exception of the fact that they are mostly poor, desperate and only looking for some way out of their shitty predicament, and sadly because of one reason or another they have found themselves in the same cheap motel circuit I began living in.
Forget about race, color, upbringing and the rest of your candy assed preconceived notions and whatever prejudice you may have, this sub-culture of motel dwellers, or motel hoppers, or whatever the politically correct name is for them live in poverty, and poverty along with cancer, alcoholism and death does not discriminate, and while this country is driven and governed by greedy, selfish and self-serving politicians who smile in your face while they fuck you from behind are allowed to run this country, the poor people who live from hand to mouth in the world of cheap motels and do all they can to just make it will never get the help they both need and deserve.
Ok, enough of my soapbox rant…the motel people are a big mix of the good, the bad, and the ugly, and the ratio of each tends to differ depending on which part of the country you happen to be in at the time. Most of us are just mostly honest people with our own mix badness and ugliness, but when you peel away the clothes we wear, the city we’re are stuck in, we are all just the same people with one goal in mind, and that is just trying to make it through the day as best we can and hopefully, when the eleven o’clock check out time rolls around, we either have the money for the next nights stay or will have it shortly after we do whatever it is we need to do to get the money we need for some food and our next nights stay in whatever cheap shitty motel we’ll be staying in tonight.
While I was in Southern California I tried to confine myself to areas where there was a bit less crime, and while nicer cities meant higher rates at those motels, sometimes I felt it was well worth it. I was paying $50 a night for this run down cheap motel in the Lakewood, Bellflower area and it was only because I was still well enough to be able to work that I had a decent hustle doing on-site computer repair for a man who owned a busy used computer business with a large and steady stream of customers willing to pay the $75 an hour plus for my skills. I say the word “hustle” because I tried to upsell on every call I went on if there was a legitimate need. I was lucky I had the skills necessary to make it, because, for every guy like me who had a valuable skill that allowed him to earn enough money on a daily basis to be able to afford the fifty dollar nut for the dank, dirty and stale room I would call home the following night was someone who would either be forced to beg borrow or steal for the money they had to have or they would be seeking shelter in weeds or some freeway overpass or in the Los Angeles riverbed or some other shitty inhuman place.
I have met my share of hookers, dopers, scammers, low life stick up men and a fair general mix of everything in between while I jaunted from motel to motel in an effort to not become known by both the local police and any potential thieves since everything I owned in my small dismal life was in the trunk of my beat up Buick Century, and so I kept to myself as not to draw any attention to myself by would be robbers or local law enforcement.
In three days I was able to amass close to $800 cash, so I decided to look for a weekly rate somewhere so I could save some money. so after looking in all of the local papers, the Pennysaver, etc, I found a motel on Beach Boulevard in the lovely city of Anaheim that had small rooms with wifi, microwave, and a small fridge for only $150 a week, so after calling to make sure this wasn’t a mistake, I loaded my life into my Buick and made the run to Anaheim so I could get their last room available at that rate.
It wasn’t a bad place if you were into tweakers, thirty dollar hookers and the mix of lowlifes that seem to follow them both. I was fortunate that I checked in during daylight hours as both hookers and tweakers are as afraid of the sun as vampires are, so I paid the motel clerk, moved my belongings into my room, and settled in to take a nap. It wasn’t long until the sun dipped far into the west and darkness began to take hold. As dusk melted away and darkness took over, Beach Boulevard’s night people began slowly take over like fat cockroaches that slither out when you turn out your kitchen lights. I was so tired of eating cup O’ Noodles and Baloney sandwiches so I jumped into my Buick and drove to the local Jack in the box for some poor people’s gourmet cuisine. I guess there is a bit of lowlife within myself because I love Jack in the box two for 99 cents tacos, so I picked up a sack of Jack’s greasy tacos, some fries, and a Coke and drove back to my new home to have a private celebration while I watched HBO.
Along with my daytime computer repair gig, I was also hacking marketing articles for this highly popular motorcycle personal injury lawyer in the Valley and another lawyer who specialized in medical malpractice type litigation. You have seen them both on late night TV…”If you or a loved one took Blah Blah medicine and were seriously injured or died as a result, you could eligible for a large cash settlement!” I even wrote TV ad content for one of those scumbag lawyers who had become popular with his “I’ll fight for you” catch phrase. Sadly the richer the lawyer the higher their wallets were in their asses, so I was lucky to grind five cents a word out of these legal hustlers. but as long as I had money coming in then it was all good…Those shit heal lawyers will get there’s from the god that hates lawyers, so fuck them I thought to myself as I enjoyed my Jack in the box Tacos and Coke.
After I finished my dinner, I turned off the television in my room and began working on the long list of marketing articles I had for these three lawyers I had secured as customers. While I despised them personally, their money was very important to me, so I began hacking out 500-word articles on my laptop that each of them would use for publication on their blogs, newsletters and the variety of social networking sites they used to blanket the internet with their marketing messages. I had been working for roughly two hours when I was jolted out my working trance by a soft knock at my motel room door. I got up and looked out the peephole to see a short, but attractive latina girl, so I unlocked and opened the door.
“Hey, what’s up?” I said as I looked at the short haired girl standing at my door. She looked to be in her early twenties, and she was innocently eyeing past me in an attempt to take a quick inventory of my room, but I had the door only slightly open. “Do you have any tin foil?” she asked in a soft overly sweet voice. As she leaned in closer to me she let her flimsy robe fall partially open exposing one very firm “C” cup breast. She had her nipple pierced and that caught my attention right away since I used to own a very popular body piercing parlor in Orange County in the late 90s, and I was very into piercings. “Ahh no, I am sorry” I replied, the girl didn’t waste any time as she asked me for a cigarette so I pulled out the pack from my pocket and handed one to her. “My name is Cece,” she said softly as she put the Kool I had just given her in the pocket of her shiny blue bathrobe. “Good to meet you, Cece, my name is Rob,” I said in what I thought was my coolest voice. I continued to sneak a few peeks at the Cece’s very firm breast as she began her small talk that I was sure was going to lead to her in getting me asking her into my room. While I was 100% sure she was either a tweaker, hooker or both I calculated the potential risk of letting her into my room as I began wondering what she looked like naked and if I could afford whatever she charged for her services.
“Sooo do you like to party?” Cece purred as she inched a bit closer to me and my motel room door. As she moved closer to me she let her robe fall completely open exposing her other breast which wasn’t pierced. I quickly surveyed her firm body all the way to her very small panties that barely covered her pronounced camel toes, then quickly back to her face! “No, I said, I am working on a deadline I have.” “Oh, what kind of work do you do she replied?” “I am a writer I said”, and then as she quickly said, “hey could I have another cigarette for later?” “sure,” I said as I fumbled the pack out of my pocket. I am sure It was now obvious to her that I was trying to inconspicuously eye her exposed body as I handed her a second Kool. Clearly she was uninterested in what I did for a living, and all at once I noticed her impatience as she closed her robe and seemed to stand back a bit. “well, I live in 121 if you wanna party tonight” she quickly replied. “Ok, sure,” I said and before I could finish my two-word sentence she was making her way to room 121 which was the room next to mine.
As I closed my door, I knew I did the right thing not letting her into my room, but my quickly waning erection said otherwise! I sat back down in the sagging chair and finished the first article for my ambulance chasing lawyer customers, and briefly thought about that sexy tweaker chick at my door. Roughly forty-five minutes later I could hear the headboard of the bed in room 121 as it smacked the wall that faced my bed. Cece was both a Tweaker and a hooker as I heard her customers walk past my door to her room the rest of the night. While it had been a long time since I had had sex with a woman, I took the two or three-minute look at her naked breasts and panty covered camel toes as payment for the two Kools I gave her as I hacked out the rest of the marketing article orders I needed to deliver to my customers in the morning.
While I desperately wished I had my own place, or could somehow find someone to let me rent a room in a house somewhere, I sat in the dirty sagging chair in my new temporary home and was, at least, grateful I wasn’t sleeping in the back seat of my Buick and had some money in my pocket, a place to stay for 6 more days, and more money coming in. All in all, It could be worse as I would soon discover in the coming months, as not only would I would be broke, but I would lose all of my customers to a competitor with prices I couldn’t beat. In order to survive, I would slowly begin selling off my personal possessions one at a time to the evilest person in the entire world….The local pawnbroker!
This the conclusion of the first part of “You Meet the Nicest People in Shitty Motels”, be sure to subscribe to my blog so you will be notified by email when I publish the second part of my story about trying to overcome my homelessness!
The post You Meet the Nicest People in Shitty Motels appeared first on The Nocturnal Writer.