The Bad-Old Days Vol. 3

ESCORTED TO HELL (PART 3)

Part One

Part Two

As I'm pulling out of the motel parking lot, Mexican Number 2 begins to change his story.

"Well, see man, I already checked out but I left my bag in the room. So we just gotta get back in the room somehow."

"Can't you just tell them you left your bag in there? I'm sure it's not a problem." I say.

"No way, dude. I think I owe'em some money. I'm just gonna pick the lock or something."

So I'm driving along, and I think: you left "your bag" full of drugs in a room, you can't just report it to the motel, and you'll have to break-in to get it back? Where's your room key? You surely didn't turn it in. How long ago did you check out? Surely the room's been cleaned by now, right? How does the motel even know you're gone if you still owe them money?

And then I think: I wonder how I'll adjust to prison rape?

It's clear by now that this whole thing is an elaborate ruse and I'm about to help these guys perform some sort of crime. Maybe we're about to rob somebody? Hell, I don't know. It's daylight by now, about 8 AM. I'd called the Whore Service around 2 AM. I'd been drunk and cranked up on coke. I had been lonely; I just wanted company. Now I'm about to burglar a motel room with two Mexican felons I don't know, in a part of town even viruses don't feel safe in. The "Great" idea had gone officially, painfully rotten.

MN2 guides me successfully to the Motor Lodge. We disembark and follow MN2 to "his" room, which is on the second floor. When we get there the Maid is working the hall--she's about 3 doors down. MN1 tries to enlist her aid. I see him walk over to her. He returns and asks me if I speak Spanish. Wait a second--YOU guys ARE Mexican and you don't speak Spanish? But no, apparently they don't--they've been thoroughly Anglicized. For some goddamned reason--possibly thinking that, after the night I'd had, how hard could merely speaking Spanish be, I tell him I speak a little Spanish.

I tried desperately to get across to the lady, a dessicated, leathery middle-aged Mexican woman, that I needed a door opened. That was all--just open the door for my friend and we can leave. Please, for the love of DIOS, open la puerta and we will GO AWAY!

But the woman remained oblivious. In retrospect, she was probably playing dumb. We weren't the savoriest looking characters, afterall. She was clearly more intelligent than me.

So we continue lingering outside the room, criminal-like, waiting for the maid to disappear into a room, which she eventually does. All this time, I am acting as cool as I can, of course. Freaks and felons can smell your fear. So when MN2 says he's gonna KICK THE DOOR IN, I say simply, "Go for it, dude."

MN1 and I watch opposite ends of the hall while MN2 kicks the door. Once, twice--three fuckin' times. Each time it sounds like someone dropping a box of bricks in the hall. I just know the maid is going to come running, but that genius stayed put.

MN2 says to me, "Hey big guy, maybe you should try this." "Big Guy" didn't refer to my bad-ass street rep. I easily outweighed these guys by 75 pounds. Now what do I do? I just want to go home. I don't want to be raped in prison. But if I say no, then I am a coward. An uncool coward.

I decide the only decent choice is to go ahead and kick the door, but to kick it as weakly, as insincerely as I could get away with. So I take up a position in front of the door and I kick it. Pathetically. I kick it again, even more girlishly. Boy, this door sure is tough, I say.

Finally MN2 takes over again. This time he kicks the door with enormous force. The hallway walls rattle. Lights dim. Babies cry. But the door frame cracks and we are in. Or rather, HE is in. I stay outside, waiting for the voice on the megaphone that tells me to come out peacefully, the place is surrounded.

He hurries out of the room, "his" bag in hand. We are all running now, trying to get outside before the shit comes down. The Mexicans pair off and start heading away from the parking lot and my car. It occurs to me that they are trying to ditch me now. Ditch me? All they had to do was ask, and I become a distant memory. I break for my car. They don't follow.

I sit in my car, nervously surveying the scene. My heartbeat slowed, my breath returned. I wasn't under arrest. I had no knife wounds or sexually transmitted diseases. Once again I had survived my own stupidity relatively unscathed.

So I drove home. An hour later I was sitting on my couch, drinking a beer. Got out some porn and masturbated. Now THIS was the life, I told myself. I hope I'm alone forever.

Prophetic words, those.

_________________________

“Drugs are a bet with your mind.”

--------Jim Morrison