By Katitude © 2011
Hot, dry wind whipped her hair around her face, fast enough so that everything seemed to be blurred with red.
Above her she could see the sun beating down on this desert place from a clear sky, the pale expanse broken only by a single jet contrail slicing across it from east to west.
On the ground in front of her a roll of 35mm film, pulled from it's canister to lay on the dry ground in a twisted curl, like a skin shed from some modern animal.
To her left she could see her car a half mile away, visible just as a green shape through the waves of heat coming up off the desert.
A dry stream bed, white with alkali, snaked away to her right.
Yes, the signs were all here. This was the place and it was almost time.
She took a long drink from the water bottle, draining it. she let it fall from her hand with a small pang. She hated littering. But she knew that they would find the car and the bottle and assume that she was dead, sacrificed to the heat of Death Valley. It didn't matter, no one would miss her. She had no close family, no close friends, and no lover.
She turned away from the car and pushed her hair back from her face. A tangle snagged on her fingers and she brought it forward to look at the colour again. She loved this colour, and it had been worth the time and money spent at the salon to change her mousey brown to this deep red. This unnatural colour was not dreamt. It was her small defiance and she suspected he would hate it. The thought of an unknown reaction made her smile. There was a feeling in the pit of her stomach that she had not felt in a long time, and she welcomed this return of anticipation. It was surprising how much fun was sucked out of life when you knew what was going to happen.
For the first time in months, she had no idea what was going to happen next. It felt wonderful.
****
Jane could not say exactly when the visions started. When she thought about it and looked back it seemed that they started around the time that Frank left. They may have begun before that, but somehow she doubted it. It would be just the sort of thing that Frank would be into, it would have made her less boring, less bland, more interesting in his eyes.
It began slowly. Something would happen and she'd think that maybe she'd done that before or said that before and she would shrug and pass it off as deja vu. A week or two would go by and it would happen again.
Then it started happening more frequently, like every three or four days and it began to freak her out a little. Am I losing it? she thought, had Frank's leaving been the final straw?
She went to see a therapist, someone she found in the phone book. She could have gone to see the one employed by her company, but she wanted this to stay under the HR radar. Who knows when this kind of shit might surface and prove to be a career limiting move. Career. Hah, that's a joke. Like she was ever going to be anything more than just another cog in a big multinational corporate machine.
She could tell the therapist didn't really take her all that seriously. He thought it was some sort of sleep issue and prescribed a sleeping aid. What a mistake that was.
She took one that night. Instead of the deep sleep she normally had, she dreamed a vivid, silly dream that she remembered clearly upon waking. In the dream, her terminal froze and the IT guy came to fix it during his lunch. He brought his sandwich with him and as he was eating it, a big blob of mayo landed on the m key and slid into the keyboard. He cursed and had to go get her a new one.
Well that was odd, she thought when she awoke.
Odd was not the word in her head 6 hours later, when the blob of mayo from the IT guy's sandwich landed on the m key.
It seemed that floodgates had opened. Every night Jane dreamed something, and every day what she dreamed, happened. She cursed that therapist and his goddamned sleeping pills.
She tried to fight it. One night she dreamed that at 4:17 she walked into HR and quit her job. Oh hell no, she thought and called in sick. The headache started around noon, and slowly increased in intensity. By 1, she had swallowed twice as many Advil as the package recommended. By 2 pm, it was so bad it was starting to make her nauseous. At 3 she wondered about taking a sleeping pill to sleep through this, but decided against - who knows what Pandora's box a second might open.. At 4, she was curled up on the cold tile floor of her bathroom wondering if she should call emergency. She crawled to the hall phone, meaning to call 911, but was only mildly surprised to find she had called work. 'HR department' she told the operator. Oddly, the nausea and headache receded a bit. She meant to say "I'm taking tomorrow off too' but what came out of her mouth was 'I quit'.
And just like that the headache and queasiness vanished. completely. What the hell?
She looked at the clock. 4:17. Jane thought, are you kidding me?, and fainted.
That night she dreamed she stayed in bed for two days. Which was good because she didn't think she could get up anyway. She lay there with her laptop, Googling keywords like deja vu, sleeping pill side effects, psychic episode, mental breakdown, insanity and trying to decide if she was crazy. After two days she dreamed that she got up, showered, and had a nice healthy breakfast at the diner around the corner.
Screw that, she thought and ordered the most heart-stopping bad-for-you breakfast they made. She braced herself for the headache, but nothing.
She tested the dreams, the visions, the deja vu, the whatever it was, over the next few weeks and learned that while she could not change an event without consequences, she could easily change the details.
The visions showed her walking away from her apartment, her possessions. She sold it all on Craigslist. She saw herself buying a used car, something nondescript and reliable. She bought a green 1974 convertible MG with the money she had made selling her crap. The next dream had her heading across the border to the US and driving south west on the interstate. She headed south west all right, but took all the backroads and stopped at all the roadside attractions along the way.
Something happened after the first few days, something that had never happened to her before. People started to notice her. Not in a blatant way, but she had never been the kind of girl or woman that people looked at. She was called Plain Jane in high school, and was constantly forgotten about in college or at work. She knew she had always been forgettable. Even Frank, the one person she had ever really opened up to, was so unimpressed that he said when she asked him why he was leaving, that she was too...too...well too Plain Jane.
But now, people would start a conversation with her rather than overlook her. She just put it down to the fact that folks in the US were nicer than she had been led to believe. What Jane didn't realize that she was no longer Plain Jane. She looked the same, but her attitude was different and noticeable.
She kept meandering south and west. If she ventured too far away from that general direction to see something of interest, the headache would begin until she turned back south and west. On the one hand she was having a great time driving. The car was a bit temperamental but she loved it, and she felt like it was her great adventure. On the other hand, she felt like she was being herded toward something, and that pissed her off.
The visions kept showing her the basics of each day, traveling, getting food, finding a motel. Nothing too beyond what was her new normal. It soon became as boring as her old life.
She was pleased when the visions took her to Las Vegas. She splurged on an expensive room at the Bellagio overlooking the 8 acre "lake", and spent much of the night sitting in her darkened room, silently alternating between watching the famous dancing water show and waiting for the next one. She didn't remember drifting off, and was awoken by the morning sun streaming across the bed. She smiled and stretched, feeling eager to move on, yet a bit wistful. This is it, she thought. This is my last day.
On a whim, she went to the expensive-looking salon in the casino complex. The colourist had been up for the challenge when she pointed to a red rose in and said 'This colour. And I don't care how long or how much it costs". She paused for a moment after she said it, waiting for a headache that didn't happen.
Hours later, she strode through the casino looking nothing like the Plain Jane she had been merely weeks before. It was more than the hair; it was in the confident way she walked, the way she stood, the way she smiled back at the handsome man standing at one of the blackjack tables.
Jane went to the teller's cage, and exchanged all the money she had left for a very small pile of chips.
"Good luck," said the cashier automatically.
"Oh no," replied Jane, laughing. "I expect to lose everything I've got."
The cashier, who had heard odder things, only nodded in response.
She moved to the closest roulette table and put her meager stack of chips on black to win.
She was already walking away when red was called.
She didn't bother going back to the hotel room. She just went to her car and started driving to Death Valley.
****
So here she was. The plane overhead had just passed from view when the wind died suddenly, unnaturally. The silence was so complete it made her ears ring.
And there ahead of her was a shimmering. It looked like someone walking in the distance through heat waves, but it was much closer. The waves stopped, and there he was. He looked at her hair and she could tell this was a surprise. She smiled, greatly pleased that she could surprise him. He recovered and smiled back.
'Hi Jane,' he said.
'Hi Frank,' she replied.
Then he reached for her hand and led her through the shimmering waves, leaving only an empty water bottle and a car to show that she was ever there.
Katitude is a writer from Toronto, Canada.
Showing posts with label Katitude. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Katitude. Show all posts
April 01, 2011
July 21, 2010
Baby Boo and the Canyonlands Motel
By Katitude ©2010
You can always tell the people who have never really "ridden off into the sunset." They're the ones who still think it's romantic.
The reality is anything but romantic. The sun is blazing into your eyes, and no matter how you squint, you can't really see what's up ahead. You can feel the mother of all headaches begin to take up residence between your temples. You're hot. You're tired, and tired of being on the road. You're hoping that a decent motel will magically appear over the horizon, one with air conditioning and a mini bar. And you discover that hell is an empty, westward highway that never ends.
That is where I was late one August day. Keith and I been riding since the morning, through a desert heat that we were not used to. We were both dehydrated and tired. Monument Valley was visually dramatic in the late afternoon sunshine, but the view was not enough to stop me from wishing I'd forced a stop in Mexican Hat, Utah, a half hour before. We hadn't seen another vehicle on the road and I figured we were about halfway between Mexican Hat and Kayenta, quite literally in the middle of nowhere.
I looked in my rear view mirror and saw a view I had to photograph. Keith was ahead of me and I knew he wouldn't be happy about a delay, but I pulled over anyway. I watched him ride off, taking the camera gear with him. While I waited for him to notice I wasn't there anymore, I took the water bottle out of my pack and took a long swig of the tepid water that did nothing to wash away the bright metallic taste of the heat and the dust.
The look on Keith's face as he pulled off his helmet matched the tone of his voice as he said, "What now?" I gestured back the way that we had came, at what I had seen in the mirror.
"I need to take a photo."
He looked the view, really looked at the vivid red desert bisected by new blacktop so straight that it seemed like it went through the distant red cliff rather than curve around it. He saw the same thing I did, and handed me the camera. He smiled and said, "Good eye. I'd have missed that one."
He gave me some hints on composition, and we talked sporadically while I aimed the camera at the scenes around me.
"I'm about done with this", he said as I sat in the middle of the road, focusing on the distant hills. I pressed the shutter button twice before I answered.
"Yeah, me too. Where do suppose we are?"
Keith helped me up and took the camera to take some shots of the dusty bikes in that golden sunshine.
"Middle. Of. Nowhere."
"Literally. What do you figure, we're about halfway to the next town?"
"I guess. The question now, " he said as he put the camera away, "is do we go on? Or do we go back?"
I remembered the two-story hotel I had seen beside the river in Mexican Hat, the one with the all-important air-conditioning grills under each of the windows that overlooked the San Juan River. I mentioned it to Keith and added, "Plus, we'll have the sun at our backs for the half hour, rather than it glaring in our eyes."
"Sold. Let's go."
The ride back seemed quicker, as it always does when you know that the end is in sight. We pulled into the hotel's courtyard and smiled at each other in relief as we walked into the office. An older woman with long white hair, wearing a white t-shirt over an ankle length red peasant skirt, smiled at us and gently explained that there was no vacancy, hadn't we seen the sign?
I know I blinked in surprise. No vacancy? WTF does that mean? It took me a second to remember that it meant no room at the inn. In all of our travels over the previous years, we had never encountered No Vacancy in any of the budget or mom and pop motels we tend to frequent. There was always room and we had grown complacent.
The wind had been knocked out of my sails, but Keith still had the presence of mind to ask her if she could recommend another hotel in town, someplace clean and cheap.
"Go to the Canyonlands Motel. It's up the hill on the left, beside the gas station. Don't even bother with the other ones, they're crap."
Off we went, up the hill and turned left into an uneven gravel parking lot. The Canyonlands Motel looked pretty dismal, with cracked stucco around each door and a broken neon sign that now only said "Budget Rat s."
"Well, this is special." I muttered to Keith as we headed to the office after making sure that the NO part of NO VACANCY was unlit on both sides of the sign.
“At least it will be cheap," he replied. He really is a most frugal man.
We opened the door, and I worked to keep my face blank. I'm sure it was a tidy place once, but now it had the look of a place that had slipped quietly by inches. It wasn't dirty, just messy as hell. People had put stuff just anywhere rather than put it away. Folded linens were piled high on the end of the counter in a tower that had a decided lean to it. A large dented industrial vacuum squatted in the corner in front of red vinyl chairs that had been new a few decades before. One of the chairs had a dirty white plastic bucket on it, filled with cleaning supplies with a pair of used yellow rubber gloves tossed over them. A box of cheap garbage bags sat on the other chair. Magazines and rolls of hotel toilet paper and boxes of thin motel soap were heaped around with no attempt at organization.
A teenage girl sat at a computer on the other side of the counter, sitting back in an old office chair with her feet up on the counter. She slowly put her feet down when we asked her if they had any rooms available.
"Sure," she said, giving us a wide smile through snaggle teeth. It was my turn to get the accommodations so I chatted with her as I filled out the card. She was friendly, if a bit odd. Her hair had been dyed black, but a while ago and her roots were coming in a mousy blond. Frankly, it looked like it had been cut by a lawn mower, choppy and spikey in the most peculiar way. She wore black eyeshadow which only served to highlight how small and porcine her eyes were in that round, white face, and the scarlet lipstick had been applied outside the lip line giving her a clownish look. She stood up as I finished filling in our information, and I saw that her glitter nailpolish had been picked off and chipped halfway down each bitten nail.
The crowning glory of her look had to be her t-shirt. It had to be at least 2 sizes too small and covered her ample form like a sausage casing ready to split. A black and red banner design had been airbrushed on it and the words Baby Boo was written in a bilious purple script that warped and distorted as the t-shirt stretched over her chest.
"If ya need anythin, just call. I'm ______ and I'll be happy to help ya."
We both forgot her name immediately. To us, she would always be just Baby Boo.
A green rental car pulled into the parking lot as we walked out of the office, disgorging two couples that spoke in German to each other. The men talked to each other in that hearty tone that said what a great adventure this is and sauntered to the office. The women stayed by the car with slightly shell-shocked expressions and looked silently at the motel buildings. One caught my eye and we exchanged a smile and a slight shrug, silently commiserating with each other that we had ended up here in this cheerless spot.
Keith started to unpack his bike while I wrestled with an aged sliding glass door, trying to get into the room. Finally he had to come and help. So much gravel and dust had settled in the tracks that the whole exercise took far longer than it should have, and nothing we did could get them closed again. Frankly that was just as well; the room was stuffy and hot after being closed up all afternoon and the faint breeze was more important than security right then.
The room held no surprises. It was as dejected as the rest of the place. A brown and beige shag carpet filled the room and was matted with more gravel and dust from years of travelers coming in from the parking lot. Both double beds slumped noticeably in the middle and the cheap nylon comforters had pulls and snags distorting the shiny satin-like surface. Everything seemed clean though and the scent of bleach overlaid the smell of heat and dust. I won't touch anything but the sheets, I thought. And NO WAY am I walking on that floor in bare feet.
While Keith fiddled with the TV and looked for the air conditioning controls I checked out the bathroom. Clean but dingy pretty much sums it up. While the porcelain and tiles were clean, everything was just a little chipped and shabby. I wondered how I would ever get dry with towels as threadbare as the ones hanging on a pitted chrome rail.
"You're not gonna believe this," Keith called from the other room.
"Only one channel?"
"Worse. No air conditioning."
"Are you fucking kidding me?!?"
"There's this space up near the ceiling, but I don't know if that's it."
I sighed. "Well, let's go ask on our way to get some food."
"You going to shower first?"
"No, let's just go. I'll just get all sweaty and dusty again. I'll shower before bed."
Baby Boo was still in the office, and looked genuinely puzzled when Keith explained that there was no air conditioner in the room.
"Oh there totally is. There's one in every room. It's just a little different that what most people are used to."
That was our introduction to swamp coolers, also known as evaporative coolers. It is not, as Baby Boo claimed, an air conditioner. It is a fan that blows air over water, and cools by adding humidity into the room. She told Keith how to turn it on, and I waited by the road while he went back to the room to get it started.
"It's going to be a special night," he said to me when he came back.
“Special how?”
We started walking down the road to find a restaurant.
“The room is getting damp, but not cool. I think separate beds tonight”
I sighed. I didn't like it very much, but we'd learned that a night spent trying not to roll into the dip in the middle of an old bed didn't make for a good night's rest. Add heat and we'd both be grumpy as hell in the morning.
We passed another hotel as we walked, and we tried to peer into the dim lobby as we passed it.
"How bad does this place have to be, if it's worse than the Canyonlands?" I asked Keith.
"Maybe the woman at the San Juan Inn gets a kick back."
"Just how much of a kick back can one expect from a $60 a night room?" I wondered.
Mexican Hat is not a big place, one of those blink-and-you-miss-it towns, so we soon found a sign for the Swingin' Steakhouse. The smell of barbecue was too good for us to look for another restaurant. We walked around a fence to find ourselves on a partially covered patio. There was a bar at one end, and about 10 old-style melamine tables with mismatched chrome chairs. The flag stones were uneven, and everything wobbled no matter how we shifted our chairs or propped up a table leg with a folded napkin. We turned our chairs so we could see the other end of the patio.
Here was a large firepit, maybe one meter by three meters with a grill hanging from chains suspended over the glowing charcoal fire. It was attended by a young man in a dark cowboy hat with black jeans and t-shirt, who drank from a steady supply of long-neck Budweiser bottles as he tended to the orders on the grill and kept it swinging steadily over the flames.
"You want chicken or beef," asked heavily tanned blond who could have been 30, could have been 50. "There's nothin' else."
We both settled on the beef, and I added a Bud to my order. Keith wondered idly what vegetarians would order.
"There's salad and beans and bread that comes with," said our waitress helpfully.
"Guess this isn't the place to be a vegetarian," Keith remarked after she left.
“Umm...no,” I said, laughing as I looked at the big slabs of steak on the grill
We sat on the patio and watched the stars come out against a perfectly clear sky as we enjoyed what is possibly the best steak dinner we have ever had. I splurged and followed it up with a piece of home made apple crumble a la mode, that was so good it made me sleepy with contentment.
We walked back to the motel hand-in-hand, pleased with the dinner at the Swingin' Steak. and the night in general. While I waited for the eight daddy-long-leg spiders that had been lingering in the tub to wash down the drain before I stepped in for my shower, I thought about what had been a good day's ride followed by a good dinner with good company. And as Keith later remarked, even though it wasn't the best of accommodations, Baby Boo and the Canyonlands Motel made for a good story.
**********
The next morning, we rode along the same route. It turned out that where we stopped so I could take the photo had actually been much closer to Kayenta than Mexican Hat. If we had carried on another 15 minutes, we would have been in the kind of town you find where two highways intersect, with chain hotels, Denny's and MacDonalds. Air conditioning a-plenty, but no Baby Boo or swinging steak.
Katitude is a writer from Toronto, Canada.
You can always tell the people who have never really "ridden off into the sunset." They're the ones who still think it's romantic.
The reality is anything but romantic. The sun is blazing into your eyes, and no matter how you squint, you can't really see what's up ahead. You can feel the mother of all headaches begin to take up residence between your temples. You're hot. You're tired, and tired of being on the road. You're hoping that a decent motel will magically appear over the horizon, one with air conditioning and a mini bar. And you discover that hell is an empty, westward highway that never ends.
That is where I was late one August day. Keith and I been riding since the morning, through a desert heat that we were not used to. We were both dehydrated and tired. Monument Valley was visually dramatic in the late afternoon sunshine, but the view was not enough to stop me from wishing I'd forced a stop in Mexican Hat, Utah, a half hour before. We hadn't seen another vehicle on the road and I figured we were about halfway between Mexican Hat and Kayenta, quite literally in the middle of nowhere.
I looked in my rear view mirror and saw a view I had to photograph. Keith was ahead of me and I knew he wouldn't be happy about a delay, but I pulled over anyway. I watched him ride off, taking the camera gear with him. While I waited for him to notice I wasn't there anymore, I took the water bottle out of my pack and took a long swig of the tepid water that did nothing to wash away the bright metallic taste of the heat and the dust.
The look on Keith's face as he pulled off his helmet matched the tone of his voice as he said, "What now?" I gestured back the way that we had came, at what I had seen in the mirror.
"I need to take a photo."
He looked the view, really looked at the vivid red desert bisected by new blacktop so straight that it seemed like it went through the distant red cliff rather than curve around it. He saw the same thing I did, and handed me the camera. He smiled and said, "Good eye. I'd have missed that one."
He gave me some hints on composition, and we talked sporadically while I aimed the camera at the scenes around me.
"I'm about done with this", he said as I sat in the middle of the road, focusing on the distant hills. I pressed the shutter button twice before I answered.
"Yeah, me too. Where do suppose we are?"
Keith helped me up and took the camera to take some shots of the dusty bikes in that golden sunshine.
"Middle. Of. Nowhere."
"Literally. What do you figure, we're about halfway to the next town?"
"I guess. The question now, " he said as he put the camera away, "is do we go on? Or do we go back?"
I remembered the two-story hotel I had seen beside the river in Mexican Hat, the one with the all-important air-conditioning grills under each of the windows that overlooked the San Juan River. I mentioned it to Keith and added, "Plus, we'll have the sun at our backs for the half hour, rather than it glaring in our eyes."
"Sold. Let's go."
The ride back seemed quicker, as it always does when you know that the end is in sight. We pulled into the hotel's courtyard and smiled at each other in relief as we walked into the office. An older woman with long white hair, wearing a white t-shirt over an ankle length red peasant skirt, smiled at us and gently explained that there was no vacancy, hadn't we seen the sign?
I know I blinked in surprise. No vacancy? WTF does that mean? It took me a second to remember that it meant no room at the inn. In all of our travels over the previous years, we had never encountered No Vacancy in any of the budget or mom and pop motels we tend to frequent. There was always room and we had grown complacent.
The wind had been knocked out of my sails, but Keith still had the presence of mind to ask her if she could recommend another hotel in town, someplace clean and cheap.
"Go to the Canyonlands Motel. It's up the hill on the left, beside the gas station. Don't even bother with the other ones, they're crap."
Off we went, up the hill and turned left into an uneven gravel parking lot. The Canyonlands Motel looked pretty dismal, with cracked stucco around each door and a broken neon sign that now only said "Budget Rat s."
"Well, this is special." I muttered to Keith as we headed to the office after making sure that the NO part of NO VACANCY was unlit on both sides of the sign.
“At least it will be cheap," he replied. He really is a most frugal man.
We opened the door, and I worked to keep my face blank. I'm sure it was a tidy place once, but now it had the look of a place that had slipped quietly by inches. It wasn't dirty, just messy as hell. People had put stuff just anywhere rather than put it away. Folded linens were piled high on the end of the counter in a tower that had a decided lean to it. A large dented industrial vacuum squatted in the corner in front of red vinyl chairs that had been new a few decades before. One of the chairs had a dirty white plastic bucket on it, filled with cleaning supplies with a pair of used yellow rubber gloves tossed over them. A box of cheap garbage bags sat on the other chair. Magazines and rolls of hotel toilet paper and boxes of thin motel soap were heaped around with no attempt at organization.
A teenage girl sat at a computer on the other side of the counter, sitting back in an old office chair with her feet up on the counter. She slowly put her feet down when we asked her if they had any rooms available.
"Sure," she said, giving us a wide smile through snaggle teeth. It was my turn to get the accommodations so I chatted with her as I filled out the card. She was friendly, if a bit odd. Her hair had been dyed black, but a while ago and her roots were coming in a mousy blond. Frankly, it looked like it had been cut by a lawn mower, choppy and spikey in the most peculiar way. She wore black eyeshadow which only served to highlight how small and porcine her eyes were in that round, white face, and the scarlet lipstick had been applied outside the lip line giving her a clownish look. She stood up as I finished filling in our information, and I saw that her glitter nailpolish had been picked off and chipped halfway down each bitten nail.
The crowning glory of her look had to be her t-shirt. It had to be at least 2 sizes too small and covered her ample form like a sausage casing ready to split. A black and red banner design had been airbrushed on it and the words Baby Boo was written in a bilious purple script that warped and distorted as the t-shirt stretched over her chest.
"If ya need anythin, just call. I'm ______ and I'll be happy to help ya."
We both forgot her name immediately. To us, she would always be just Baby Boo.
A green rental car pulled into the parking lot as we walked out of the office, disgorging two couples that spoke in German to each other. The men talked to each other in that hearty tone that said what a great adventure this is and sauntered to the office. The women stayed by the car with slightly shell-shocked expressions and looked silently at the motel buildings. One caught my eye and we exchanged a smile and a slight shrug, silently commiserating with each other that we had ended up here in this cheerless spot.
Keith started to unpack his bike while I wrestled with an aged sliding glass door, trying to get into the room. Finally he had to come and help. So much gravel and dust had settled in the tracks that the whole exercise took far longer than it should have, and nothing we did could get them closed again. Frankly that was just as well; the room was stuffy and hot after being closed up all afternoon and the faint breeze was more important than security right then.
The room held no surprises. It was as dejected as the rest of the place. A brown and beige shag carpet filled the room and was matted with more gravel and dust from years of travelers coming in from the parking lot. Both double beds slumped noticeably in the middle and the cheap nylon comforters had pulls and snags distorting the shiny satin-like surface. Everything seemed clean though and the scent of bleach overlaid the smell of heat and dust. I won't touch anything but the sheets, I thought. And NO WAY am I walking on that floor in bare feet.
While Keith fiddled with the TV and looked for the air conditioning controls I checked out the bathroom. Clean but dingy pretty much sums it up. While the porcelain and tiles were clean, everything was just a little chipped and shabby. I wondered how I would ever get dry with towels as threadbare as the ones hanging on a pitted chrome rail.
"You're not gonna believe this," Keith called from the other room.
"Only one channel?"
"Worse. No air conditioning."
"Are you fucking kidding me?!?"
"There's this space up near the ceiling, but I don't know if that's it."
I sighed. "Well, let's go ask on our way to get some food."
"You going to shower first?"
"No, let's just go. I'll just get all sweaty and dusty again. I'll shower before bed."
Baby Boo was still in the office, and looked genuinely puzzled when Keith explained that there was no air conditioner in the room.
"Oh there totally is. There's one in every room. It's just a little different that what most people are used to."
That was our introduction to swamp coolers, also known as evaporative coolers. It is not, as Baby Boo claimed, an air conditioner. It is a fan that blows air over water, and cools by adding humidity into the room. She told Keith how to turn it on, and I waited by the road while he went back to the room to get it started.
"It's going to be a special night," he said to me when he came back.
“Special how?”
We started walking down the road to find a restaurant.
“The room is getting damp, but not cool. I think separate beds tonight”
I sighed. I didn't like it very much, but we'd learned that a night spent trying not to roll into the dip in the middle of an old bed didn't make for a good night's rest. Add heat and we'd both be grumpy as hell in the morning.
We passed another hotel as we walked, and we tried to peer into the dim lobby as we passed it.
"How bad does this place have to be, if it's worse than the Canyonlands?" I asked Keith.
"Maybe the woman at the San Juan Inn gets a kick back."
"Just how much of a kick back can one expect from a $60 a night room?" I wondered.
Mexican Hat is not a big place, one of those blink-and-you-miss-it towns, so we soon found a sign for the Swingin' Steakhouse. The smell of barbecue was too good for us to look for another restaurant. We walked around a fence to find ourselves on a partially covered patio. There was a bar at one end, and about 10 old-style melamine tables with mismatched chrome chairs. The flag stones were uneven, and everything wobbled no matter how we shifted our chairs or propped up a table leg with a folded napkin. We turned our chairs so we could see the other end of the patio.
Here was a large firepit, maybe one meter by three meters with a grill hanging from chains suspended over the glowing charcoal fire. It was attended by a young man in a dark cowboy hat with black jeans and t-shirt, who drank from a steady supply of long-neck Budweiser bottles as he tended to the orders on the grill and kept it swinging steadily over the flames.
"You want chicken or beef," asked heavily tanned blond who could have been 30, could have been 50. "There's nothin' else."
We both settled on the beef, and I added a Bud to my order. Keith wondered idly what vegetarians would order.
"There's salad and beans and bread that comes with," said our waitress helpfully.
"Guess this isn't the place to be a vegetarian," Keith remarked after she left.
“Umm...no,” I said, laughing as I looked at the big slabs of steak on the grill
We sat on the patio and watched the stars come out against a perfectly clear sky as we enjoyed what is possibly the best steak dinner we have ever had. I splurged and followed it up with a piece of home made apple crumble a la mode, that was so good it made me sleepy with contentment.
We walked back to the motel hand-in-hand, pleased with the dinner at the Swingin' Steak. and the night in general. While I waited for the eight daddy-long-leg spiders that had been lingering in the tub to wash down the drain before I stepped in for my shower, I thought about what had been a good day's ride followed by a good dinner with good company. And as Keith later remarked, even though it wasn't the best of accommodations, Baby Boo and the Canyonlands Motel made for a good story.
**********
The next morning, we rode along the same route. It turned out that where we stopped so I could take the photo had actually been much closer to Kayenta than Mexican Hat. If we had carried on another 15 minutes, we would have been in the kind of town you find where two highways intersect, with chain hotels, Denny's and MacDonalds. Air conditioning a-plenty, but no Baby Boo or swinging steak.
Katitude is a writer from Toronto, Canada.
April 03, 2010
Pie
By Katitude © 2010
We were somewhere in the Southwest, maybe Utah, maybe south Colorado. We were on a two-lane secondary highway, the kind that used to be the main road before they built the Interstate. It was August, and it was hot.
The area was bone dry, and the sun and lack of water had bleached the scenery we rode through into a study of beiges and tawny golds. The only breaks in the brown landscape were the blacktop that we followed and a meandering line of green trees along a small river.
We passed a small gas station, the first building we had seen in more than 100 kilometres. We rode past it, and then an impulse made me look at how far we had gone since the last fill up. I realized that I'd need gas soon. I pulled over and waited for Keith, the maker of coffee, the fixer of motorcycles, the holder of the map, to see how far until the next town. Too far for comfort, so we turned and rode back.
We stopped in front of the pumps and no one came out of the building. We assumed it was self service and filled up. It was my turn to pay. I fished my wallet out of the tankbag and headed inside.
Stepping through the door was like stepping back in time to the kind of place that progress forgets, and though there's a bit of wear at the edges, it likely looks much the same now as it did when it first opened. A diner counter ran along the length of the back wall. At one end of the counter, right in front of the door was an enormous manual cash register, grey and squat with a clear window at the top where the numbers popped up. Cards were pinned to the wall above the cash register, the ones you used to see in truck stops with the die cut slots that held black combs and flints for zippo lighters. Starting from the cash register, the counter curved to the left. Chrome stools with red vinyl seats were bolted to the floor every few feet or so. In front of every stool, the charcoal and red pattern of the melamine countertop had been worn away, leaving a plate-sized spot of the underlying red.
Only two people were inside; a Native American man and his son seated at the counter. The man wore a cowboy hat, boots, dark jeans with a crisply-pressed crease down the centre and a gingham-checked western shirt with the pointed pocket flaps and the mother-of-pearl snaps. It all looked well-worn, but clean and looked-after. Not Sunday best, more like going-to-town best. I was fascinated; being from Ontario meant I'd never really seen anyone wear cowboy gear when it wasn't Halloween or Pride week. He glanced and caught me staring. I nodded a hello, and then turned my gaze to the three glass cake stands by the coffee machine.
Pie. They had pie. And it all looked homemade.
An older woman walked slowly through a swinging half-door from the kitchen. She looked tired and as faded by the years as the surrounding countryside was faded by the sun. Her gray hair was caught up in a bun that had become untidy and thin wisps had escaped it to frame a pale face. A much-washed pastel pink t-shirt proclaimed her to be the “World's Greatest Grandma.”
Her watery blue eyes did not reflect the polite smile she gave me as she wiped her hands on an old white tea towel. I handed her the money for the gas and asked her if the pies were homemade.
She looked slightly insulted. “Of course!” she replied.
“Give me a sec. I'll be right back!” I told her.
I went out to get Keith. He had already suited back up while I paid for the gas, but he took everything off again as soon as he heard me say “They have pie!”
We never turn down an opportunity for pie. Within moments, we were back at the counter to coffee and pie in front of us, lemon meringue for Keith and cherry for me. While Keith engaged the man and his son in conversation, I focused on the slice of pie on the scratched ironware plate in front of me. I closed my eyes with the first bite, and I think I may have hummed with pleasure. The filling of sour red cherries and sugar had that perfect sweet/tart ratio. It was a summer taste, one that reminded me of those lazy childhood days between one school year and the next. It was as close to being like my mother's as I'd ever tasted, and I told the woman so when she came back to top up our coffee cups.
This time her smile reached her eyes. I looked at the lines of her face, a mixture of laugh lines and frown marks. Her hands, big knuckled and chapped, were working hands. On impulse, I asked her, “How long have you been here?”
Her smile faded. “Too long,” she said, and walked back through the swinging door into the kitchen.
Katitude is a writer from Toronto, Canada.
We were somewhere in the Southwest, maybe Utah, maybe south Colorado. We were on a two-lane secondary highway, the kind that used to be the main road before they built the Interstate. It was August, and it was hot.
The area was bone dry, and the sun and lack of water had bleached the scenery we rode through into a study of beiges and tawny golds. The only breaks in the brown landscape were the blacktop that we followed and a meandering line of green trees along a small river.
We passed a small gas station, the first building we had seen in more than 100 kilometres. We rode past it, and then an impulse made me look at how far we had gone since the last fill up. I realized that I'd need gas soon. I pulled over and waited for Keith, the maker of coffee, the fixer of motorcycles, the holder of the map, to see how far until the next town. Too far for comfort, so we turned and rode back.
We stopped in front of the pumps and no one came out of the building. We assumed it was self service and filled up. It was my turn to pay. I fished my wallet out of the tankbag and headed inside.
Stepping through the door was like stepping back in time to the kind of place that progress forgets, and though there's a bit of wear at the edges, it likely looks much the same now as it did when it first opened. A diner counter ran along the length of the back wall. At one end of the counter, right in front of the door was an enormous manual cash register, grey and squat with a clear window at the top where the numbers popped up. Cards were pinned to the wall above the cash register, the ones you used to see in truck stops with the die cut slots that held black combs and flints for zippo lighters. Starting from the cash register, the counter curved to the left. Chrome stools with red vinyl seats were bolted to the floor every few feet or so. In front of every stool, the charcoal and red pattern of the melamine countertop had been worn away, leaving a plate-sized spot of the underlying red.
Only two people were inside; a Native American man and his son seated at the counter. The man wore a cowboy hat, boots, dark jeans with a crisply-pressed crease down the centre and a gingham-checked western shirt with the pointed pocket flaps and the mother-of-pearl snaps. It all looked well-worn, but clean and looked-after. Not Sunday best, more like going-to-town best. I was fascinated; being from Ontario meant I'd never really seen anyone wear cowboy gear when it wasn't Halloween or Pride week. He glanced and caught me staring. I nodded a hello, and then turned my gaze to the three glass cake stands by the coffee machine.
Pie. They had pie. And it all looked homemade.
An older woman walked slowly through a swinging half-door from the kitchen. She looked tired and as faded by the years as the surrounding countryside was faded by the sun. Her gray hair was caught up in a bun that had become untidy and thin wisps had escaped it to frame a pale face. A much-washed pastel pink t-shirt proclaimed her to be the “World's Greatest Grandma.”
Her watery blue eyes did not reflect the polite smile she gave me as she wiped her hands on an old white tea towel. I handed her the money for the gas and asked her if the pies were homemade.
She looked slightly insulted. “Of course!” she replied.
“Give me a sec. I'll be right back!” I told her.
I went out to get Keith. He had already suited back up while I paid for the gas, but he took everything off again as soon as he heard me say “They have pie!”
We never turn down an opportunity for pie. Within moments, we were back at the counter to coffee and pie in front of us, lemon meringue for Keith and cherry for me. While Keith engaged the man and his son in conversation, I focused on the slice of pie on the scratched ironware plate in front of me. I closed my eyes with the first bite, and I think I may have hummed with pleasure. The filling of sour red cherries and sugar had that perfect sweet/tart ratio. It was a summer taste, one that reminded me of those lazy childhood days between one school year and the next. It was as close to being like my mother's as I'd ever tasted, and I told the woman so when she came back to top up our coffee cups.
This time her smile reached her eyes. I looked at the lines of her face, a mixture of laugh lines and frown marks. Her hands, big knuckled and chapped, were working hands. On impulse, I asked her, “How long have you been here?”
Her smile faded. “Too long,” she said, and walked back through the swinging door into the kitchen.
Katitude is a writer from Toronto, Canada.
August 05, 2009
Top of the World
By Katitude © 2009
There are two ways to get from Toq, Alaska, to Dawson City, Yukon. Neither are easy, although I am sure that they are much easier than they were in the past.
You can take the Taylor Highway through Chicken to the border, then the appropriately named Top of the World Highway to Dawson City. Or you can go the long way, taking the Alaska Highway to Whitehorse and then up to Dawson City from there.
My husband and I stood in the visitor's centre in Toq and tried to decide which route to take. One was shorter but more grueling, the other longer but paved. Well, mostly paved. We had ridden along part of the longer route and had come face to face with the never-ending cycle of road repair in the far north.
We knew the longer route contained gravel patches kilometers long as well as a chunk of roadwork that had been the worst we'd ever gone through. The combination of the wettest summer in memory and the passage of huge heavy RV's and trucks had churned up a slurry of mud a few inches thick. I'd lost control of the bike in it and had ended up six feet to the left of where I was supposed to be. I didn't drop the bike, but it was close. Neither of us were eager to head back east that way, but we had talked to another biker who had gone the shorter route a few weeks ago when it had been raining, and his statement that he "had no business being up there on two wheels" had stuck in our heads.
The woman behind the counter at the Toq Visitor's Centre told us of other bikers who had recently gone the Taylor/Top of the World route. "It's hard-packed dirt mostly, some gravel. I drove up that way myself a few days ago, it was dry and in good shape."
OK, let's do it. How bad can it be, we asked each other.
Our first moment of real doubt came when we stopped for coffee about an hour in. The road had started out nicely surfaced but was becoming more broken up as we progressed. Asphalt patches were making it a bumpy ride. Keith gave me an out.
"Do you want to go back?" he asked.
"No. It might get bad but at least it's not ankle deep mud," I replied.
And we went on.
The road continued to break up until all that was left was gravel. The landscape became more barren as we gained altitude and around that point it had begun to drizzle making it even less lovely. The road twisted and curled around the mountains with no guardrails to soothe my fear of heights, and my bike was not handling well at all. The street bike, with the tires that already had a major trip's worth of wear on them, was not made for this kind of terrain. The weight of camping gear raised the center of gravity and with every curve I thought I could feel the rear tire slide a bit more than it should have.
Just after the town of Chicken, Alaska, the gravel disappeared leaving only hard packed dirt. The drizzle had wetted down the top layer of dust and made the road surface even more slippery than it was before.
I hated the bike at that point. I was so far out of my comfort zone that I even wondered where the zone really was. I was in clench mode. Teeth clenched against the fear, fear of falling, of going off the road, of this never ending. Hands clenched, wet and cold, around the handgrips in a constant adjustment of throttle and brake. Muscles clenched against the cold that was creeping in with the rain through my new so-called waterproof jacket and pants. I just wanted to stop.
Keith was able to comfortably go at a faster speed on his bike, so it felt like I was riding alone much of the time. He'd wait for me periodically, but would move off as soon as he saw me come around a curve or over a hill. He said later that he was able to get 10-15 minute breaks that way. I had none.
I remember thinking at that point that if someone told me I had to choose between riding that road again and never riding again, period, I would gladly hand over my keys and walk away.
But there was no walking away from that place, only going forward. The hope that it would get better mixed with the fear that it will only get worse, and left a metallic taste in my mouth. I sang in my helmet to keep my mind from skittering too close to the edge of a freak out. I became aware that when I was concentrating on the road, on keeping 800 lbs of bike and rider upright on two slippery wheels, I was singing Monty Python's "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life", especially the verse that goes:
I lost track of time. At the 20 mph I was going, it would take forever to get to Dawson City, but I accepted that. I accepted the road, the rain, the cold. This is the worse I'd ridden in, and while unhappy about it, I was managing.
You adapt; you go forward.
And then, as we grew close to the Canadian border, it got foggy. And THEN it was the worse I'd ever ridden in. Not only was the visibility reduced to no more than 20 feet ahead of me, the visor of my helmet began to fog up on the inside, reducing my vision even more. I had to ride with the visor up, blinking away the rain while still trying to see what line to take on the road.
Suddenly, the Canadian Customs buildings loomed out of the fog. I had read that phrase so often in books, and only now do I have a real reference for it. One minute the world is a uniform grey, then the next there's a dark shape beside you. Very disconcerting, especially when you are already borderline freaked out.
We answered the requisite six questions, and when we were cleared I asked the agent if there was a place to pull over.
"See that shape just ahead on the right? That's the Welcome to the Yukon sign, there's a pull off right beside it. Pity it's so foggy; it's a lovely view most days". Yeah, I'm sure it is.
I barely made it over there, put the bike on it's stand and got off the bike before I started to sniffle. I pulled my helmet off and rested my head against the pack and cried, letting the tension of the last five hours wash away.
After a few minutes I put the helmet back on and off we went. It was still foggy, and we still had another few hours of riding, but as the customs agent had said, the roads were better here than on the US side.
Eventually the fog lifted and the rain fizzled away. There was no more slick mud to ride over; the Top of the World Highway was gravel. I never thought I'd be happy to ride on gravel. This eventually changed to a patched asphalt, and then to smooth blacktop as we rolled closer to Dawson City. Oh, the bliss of pavement!
I couldn't get the grin off my face as we rode the ferry across the Yukon River to Dawson City. I felt a million pounds lighter, and more kick-ass than I have ever felt in my life.
I had done it. And gained little bit more knowledge about myself in the process. To be honest, there's a part of me that wants to go back and do it again. But don't tell my husband that.
Katitude is a martini-swilling, motorcycle-riding, poker-playing, cussing role model for young ladies of refinement.
There are two ways to get from Toq, Alaska, to Dawson City, Yukon. Neither are easy, although I am sure that they are much easier than they were in the past.
You can take the Taylor Highway through Chicken to the border, then the appropriately named Top of the World Highway to Dawson City. Or you can go the long way, taking the Alaska Highway to Whitehorse and then up to Dawson City from there.
My husband and I stood in the visitor's centre in Toq and tried to decide which route to take. One was shorter but more grueling, the other longer but paved. Well, mostly paved. We had ridden along part of the longer route and had come face to face with the never-ending cycle of road repair in the far north.
We knew the longer route contained gravel patches kilometers long as well as a chunk of roadwork that had been the worst we'd ever gone through. The combination of the wettest summer in memory and the passage of huge heavy RV's and trucks had churned up a slurry of mud a few inches thick. I'd lost control of the bike in it and had ended up six feet to the left of where I was supposed to be. I didn't drop the bike, but it was close. Neither of us were eager to head back east that way, but we had talked to another biker who had gone the shorter route a few weeks ago when it had been raining, and his statement that he "had no business being up there on two wheels" had stuck in our heads.
The woman behind the counter at the Toq Visitor's Centre told us of other bikers who had recently gone the Taylor/Top of the World route. "It's hard-packed dirt mostly, some gravel. I drove up that way myself a few days ago, it was dry and in good shape."
OK, let's do it. How bad can it be, we asked each other.
Our first moment of real doubt came when we stopped for coffee about an hour in. The road had started out nicely surfaced but was becoming more broken up as we progressed. Asphalt patches were making it a bumpy ride. Keith gave me an out.
"Do you want to go back?" he asked.
"No. It might get bad but at least it's not ankle deep mud," I replied.
And we went on.
The road continued to break up until all that was left was gravel. The landscape became more barren as we gained altitude and around that point it had begun to drizzle making it even less lovely. The road twisted and curled around the mountains with no guardrails to soothe my fear of heights, and my bike was not handling well at all. The street bike, with the tires that already had a major trip's worth of wear on them, was not made for this kind of terrain. The weight of camping gear raised the center of gravity and with every curve I thought I could feel the rear tire slide a bit more than it should have.
Just after the town of Chicken, Alaska, the gravel disappeared leaving only hard packed dirt. The drizzle had wetted down the top layer of dust and made the road surface even more slippery than it was before.
I hated the bike at that point. I was so far out of my comfort zone that I even wondered where the zone really was. I was in clench mode. Teeth clenched against the fear, fear of falling, of going off the road, of this never ending. Hands clenched, wet and cold, around the handgrips in a constant adjustment of throttle and brake. Muscles clenched against the cold that was creeping in with the rain through my new so-called waterproof jacket and pants. I just wanted to stop.
Keith was able to comfortably go at a faster speed on his bike, so it felt like I was riding alone much of the time. He'd wait for me periodically, but would move off as soon as he saw me come around a curve or over a hill. He said later that he was able to get 10-15 minute breaks that way. I had none.
I remember thinking at that point that if someone told me I had to choose between riding that road again and never riding again, period, I would gladly hand over my keys and walk away.
But there was no walking away from that place, only going forward. The hope that it would get better mixed with the fear that it will only get worse, and left a metallic taste in my mouth. I sang in my helmet to keep my mind from skittering too close to the edge of a freak out. I became aware that when I was concentrating on the road, on keeping 800 lbs of bike and rider upright on two slippery wheels, I was singing Monty Python's "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life", especially the verse that goes:
Always look on the bright side of death,Yes, a bit macabre. But it helped.
Just before you draw your terminal breath.
Life's a piece of shit,
When you look at it.
Life's a laugh and death's a joke it's true.
You'll see it's all a show.
Keep 'em laughing as you go.
Just remember that the last laugh is on you.
I lost track of time. At the 20 mph I was going, it would take forever to get to Dawson City, but I accepted that. I accepted the road, the rain, the cold. This is the worse I'd ridden in, and while unhappy about it, I was managing.
You adapt; you go forward.
And then, as we grew close to the Canadian border, it got foggy. And THEN it was the worse I'd ever ridden in. Not only was the visibility reduced to no more than 20 feet ahead of me, the visor of my helmet began to fog up on the inside, reducing my vision even more. I had to ride with the visor up, blinking away the rain while still trying to see what line to take on the road.
Suddenly, the Canadian Customs buildings loomed out of the fog. I had read that phrase so often in books, and only now do I have a real reference for it. One minute the world is a uniform grey, then the next there's a dark shape beside you. Very disconcerting, especially when you are already borderline freaked out.
We answered the requisite six questions, and when we were cleared I asked the agent if there was a place to pull over.
"See that shape just ahead on the right? That's the Welcome to the Yukon sign, there's a pull off right beside it. Pity it's so foggy; it's a lovely view most days". Yeah, I'm sure it is.
I barely made it over there, put the bike on it's stand and got off the bike before I started to sniffle. I pulled my helmet off and rested my head against the pack and cried, letting the tension of the last five hours wash away.
After a few minutes I put the helmet back on and off we went. It was still foggy, and we still had another few hours of riding, but as the customs agent had said, the roads were better here than on the US side.
Eventually the fog lifted and the rain fizzled away. There was no more slick mud to ride over; the Top of the World Highway was gravel. I never thought I'd be happy to ride on gravel. This eventually changed to a patched asphalt, and then to smooth blacktop as we rolled closer to Dawson City. Oh, the bliss of pavement!
I couldn't get the grin off my face as we rode the ferry across the Yukon River to Dawson City. I felt a million pounds lighter, and more kick-ass than I have ever felt in my life.
I had done it. And gained little bit more knowledge about myself in the process. To be honest, there's a part of me that wants to go back and do it again. But don't tell my husband that.
Katitude is a martini-swilling, motorcycle-riding, poker-playing, cussing role model for young ladies of refinement.
November 12, 2006
Archetypes
By Katitude © 2006
She sat alone at the end of the bar, finishing her dinner and beer. The bar had been quiet when she first came in, but three baseball teams had arrived and now the place was jammed with norms.
Fucking perfect, she thought. She could feel the glances her way, and every time she glanced in the mirror at the back of the bar, all she saw were the quick furtive movements of people who are trying not to get caught staring.
She didn't have long to wait for the inevitable question.
"You're not from around here, are you."
At least this one had the sense to phrase it as a statement. With her long black hair, riot grrrl makeup and tattoos, it was pretty fucking apparent that she was not from this town stuck in the backwaters of middle America.
She resisted the strong urge to roll her eyes as she turned on her stool to face him. A hundred sarcastic replies flew to her lips. In the end, she just sighed and said "No."
She had seen him when he'd come in with his baseball team - he was the kind of guy you noticed. He was the perfect Prince Charming archetype for a nation raised on the Disney Corporation™ version of life. He was tall, tanned and handsome in a clean-shaven, clean-cut, all-American way. Men wanted to be like him, to echo his confidence and strength. Women longed to be rescued by him with every fiber of their Barbie™ pink Cinderella™ princess beings.
She had mentally categorized him: another pretty boy; so not my type.
But she was bored, and after a few days of the drive / find motel / sleep cycle she was just a little hungry for some conversation.
She bought him a beer, then another; but refused to let him buy her one -she didn't roll that way. She could see he was intrigued. She could also see the untanned line on the third finger of his left hand, the line that meant Broken, Damaged, Recently.
The conversation started out generally enough, following the typical banal patterns closely enough that she was tempted to just get up and leave.
"Where you from?"
"Where are you going?"
"My, that's a long trip to take by yourself."
Blah, blah, blah... so boring. But the dirty looks that the women in the bar kept shooting at her when they thought she wasn't looking amused her enough to keep him talking.
So she stayed, and led him along, so skillfully that he thought he was the one leading the dance.
It amazed her just how much he divulged to her - he was recently divorced but hoping for a reconciliation with his straying wife. They had a young child, who was weathering the change well all things considered. How he had always been faithful, even though he'd had offers... lots of offers. She made the usual murmurs while thinking, "Honestly... do I even remotely resemble someone who cares?"
Apparently she did, as he stayed and talked to her the whole evening. He tried to flirt with her, but it entertained her to see his frustration when she didn't fall for his charms like so many had. She made him work for it, and he'd not worked that hard for a long time. He understood that she was dangerous and knew dangerous things, but he wanted that one walk on the wild side. Dammit, he thought, he deserved it after all he'd been through lately.
One by one, the baseball teams left, taking the wives, girlfriends and hangers-on with them. Soon, they were the only ones left and the staff was becoming increasingly noisy in their clean up.
She smiled at him.
"It looks like it's time to leave. Been nice talking to you," she said as she got up and pulled on her battered leather jacket.
He looked puzzled and asked, "Well...?"
"Well what?" She looked at him with a studied blank look.
He scrambled. "Um, your motel is a mile away. It's dark, and it's not the greatest of neighbourhoods. Let me walk you back."
She almost laughed out loud at that one - like she needed protection. She should have declined, but like a cat with a mouse, she was having far too much fun stringing this one along to give up quite yet.
She gave a sly smile, nodded and headed for the door, making him rush to gather his things. By the time he caught up with her she was already halfway across the bar's parking lot.
"You could have waited for me!" It was almost petulant. If there was one thing she couldn't abide, it was petulance in an adult.
"I could have. But I didn't want to." This response was definitely cooler than he liked.
"Oh. So it's always about what you want, is it?" The petulance was turning a bit angry.
She stopped dead which made him turn to her. She reached up quickly and grabbed his earlobe, giving it a hard twist and pulling him close. She pulled him down until he was almost on his knees. She looked down at him coldly, and put all the force of her will into one word: "Yes."
Their eyes locked, and it almost looked like he was going to challenge her.
"Do you have a problem with that?" she demanded.
A long pause, then he quietly said, "No."
"Good."
She released him, and strode away, leaving him scrambling after her once more. They walked the mile to her motel in silence. When they got to the door, she turned to him.
"Thank you for walking me back. It was unnecessary, but gallant nonetheless."
"You definitely look like you could take care of yourself (so glad you noticed, she thought sarcastically), but I needed to make sure you got here."
She smiled slightly and raised a hand in farewell as she turned to go inside. He reached out and grabbed her forearm, pulling her towards him for a kiss.
It was a nice kiss. He probably went through high school being called a good kisser. A very nice kiss. But she didn't much like nice, and she bit his lip hard when she felt him relax into her.
She had to give him credit, he didn't say ow or pull away, just a groan and a slight flinch. She broke the kiss first and pulled away. He reached for her arm again, and she stepped just out of his reach. All he said was, "I want you."
"You won't like how I play. I mean it. You really won't like it."
"I know. But I want to see how far I can take it."
That angered her. He really didn't get it - it was still all about him. "What do I look like?? A goddamn teacher? Your fucking personal trainer?"
All he said was one word, and in the right tone: "Please?"
It was so tempting. For a moment she entertained the idea of it, pictured him bound and spread out before her and thought of all the deliciously bad things she could do to him before he said the safe word.
She knew she could ruin him, could show him that right combination of pleasure and pain that would spoil him for vanilla. She wondered briefly, what would be his fantasy, his weakness? She'd put her money on anal, and the thought of fucking him, of making him her bitch, made her cunt throb.
So tempting.
But alas, she too had been raised on Disney™ and was herself an archetype. She had learned the hard way that the Wicked Witch could never fuck with Prince Charming's Happily Ever After. It just wasn't done.
So she merely smiled and moved closer to the door. He could tell he had lost, but could only stand there in disbelief. Someone had denied him? HIM?!? He could not remember the last time that had happened. Goddamn it!!
By the time he had collected himself enough to try another tack, she had already gone through the door. As the door's lock clicked behind her she could hear him yell, "You fucking BITCH!"
All things considered, it was a good thing he couldn't see her wide, triumphant smile.
Katitude is a writer from Toronto, Canada.
She sat alone at the end of the bar, finishing her dinner and beer. The bar had been quiet when she first came in, but three baseball teams had arrived and now the place was jammed with norms.
Fucking perfect, she thought. She could feel the glances her way, and every time she glanced in the mirror at the back of the bar, all she saw were the quick furtive movements of people who are trying not to get caught staring.
She didn't have long to wait for the inevitable question.
"You're not from around here, are you."
At least this one had the sense to phrase it as a statement. With her long black hair, riot grrrl makeup and tattoos, it was pretty fucking apparent that she was not from this town stuck in the backwaters of middle America.
She resisted the strong urge to roll her eyes as she turned on her stool to face him. A hundred sarcastic replies flew to her lips. In the end, she just sighed and said "No."
She had seen him when he'd come in with his baseball team - he was the kind of guy you noticed. He was the perfect Prince Charming archetype for a nation raised on the Disney Corporation™ version of life. He was tall, tanned and handsome in a clean-shaven, clean-cut, all-American way. Men wanted to be like him, to echo his confidence and strength. Women longed to be rescued by him with every fiber of their Barbie™ pink Cinderella™ princess beings.
She had mentally categorized him: another pretty boy; so not my type.
But she was bored, and after a few days of the drive / find motel / sleep cycle she was just a little hungry for some conversation.
She bought him a beer, then another; but refused to let him buy her one -she didn't roll that way. She could see he was intrigued. She could also see the untanned line on the third finger of his left hand, the line that meant Broken, Damaged, Recently.
The conversation started out generally enough, following the typical banal patterns closely enough that she was tempted to just get up and leave.
"Where you from?"
"Where are you going?"
"My, that's a long trip to take by yourself."
Blah, blah, blah... so boring. But the dirty looks that the women in the bar kept shooting at her when they thought she wasn't looking amused her enough to keep him talking.
So she stayed, and led him along, so skillfully that he thought he was the one leading the dance.
It amazed her just how much he divulged to her - he was recently divorced but hoping for a reconciliation with his straying wife. They had a young child, who was weathering the change well all things considered. How he had always been faithful, even though he'd had offers... lots of offers. She made the usual murmurs while thinking, "Honestly... do I even remotely resemble someone who cares?"
Apparently she did, as he stayed and talked to her the whole evening. He tried to flirt with her, but it entertained her to see his frustration when she didn't fall for his charms like so many had. She made him work for it, and he'd not worked that hard for a long time. He understood that she was dangerous and knew dangerous things, but he wanted that one walk on the wild side. Dammit, he thought, he deserved it after all he'd been through lately.
One by one, the baseball teams left, taking the wives, girlfriends and hangers-on with them. Soon, they were the only ones left and the staff was becoming increasingly noisy in their clean up.
She smiled at him.
"It looks like it's time to leave. Been nice talking to you," she said as she got up and pulled on her battered leather jacket.
He looked puzzled and asked, "Well...?"
"Well what?" She looked at him with a studied blank look.
He scrambled. "Um, your motel is a mile away. It's dark, and it's not the greatest of neighbourhoods. Let me walk you back."
She almost laughed out loud at that one - like she needed protection. She should have declined, but like a cat with a mouse, she was having far too much fun stringing this one along to give up quite yet.
She gave a sly smile, nodded and headed for the door, making him rush to gather his things. By the time he caught up with her she was already halfway across the bar's parking lot.
"You could have waited for me!" It was almost petulant. If there was one thing she couldn't abide, it was petulance in an adult.
"I could have. But I didn't want to." This response was definitely cooler than he liked.
"Oh. So it's always about what you want, is it?" The petulance was turning a bit angry.
She stopped dead which made him turn to her. She reached up quickly and grabbed his earlobe, giving it a hard twist and pulling him close. She pulled him down until he was almost on his knees. She looked down at him coldly, and put all the force of her will into one word: "Yes."
Their eyes locked, and it almost looked like he was going to challenge her.
"Do you have a problem with that?" she demanded.
A long pause, then he quietly said, "No."
"Good."
She released him, and strode away, leaving him scrambling after her once more. They walked the mile to her motel in silence. When they got to the door, she turned to him.
"Thank you for walking me back. It was unnecessary, but gallant nonetheless."
"You definitely look like you could take care of yourself (so glad you noticed, she thought sarcastically), but I needed to make sure you got here."
She smiled slightly and raised a hand in farewell as she turned to go inside. He reached out and grabbed her forearm, pulling her towards him for a kiss.
It was a nice kiss. He probably went through high school being called a good kisser. A very nice kiss. But she didn't much like nice, and she bit his lip hard when she felt him relax into her.
She had to give him credit, he didn't say ow or pull away, just a groan and a slight flinch. She broke the kiss first and pulled away. He reached for her arm again, and she stepped just out of his reach. All he said was, "I want you."
"You won't like how I play. I mean it. You really won't like it."
"I know. But I want to see how far I can take it."
That angered her. He really didn't get it - it was still all about him. "What do I look like?? A goddamn teacher? Your fucking personal trainer?"
All he said was one word, and in the right tone: "Please?"
It was so tempting. For a moment she entertained the idea of it, pictured him bound and spread out before her and thought of all the deliciously bad things she could do to him before he said the safe word.
She knew she could ruin him, could show him that right combination of pleasure and pain that would spoil him for vanilla. She wondered briefly, what would be his fantasy, his weakness? She'd put her money on anal, and the thought of fucking him, of making him her bitch, made her cunt throb.
So tempting.
But alas, she too had been raised on Disney™ and was herself an archetype. She had learned the hard way that the Wicked Witch could never fuck with Prince Charming's Happily Ever After. It just wasn't done.
So she merely smiled and moved closer to the door. He could tell he had lost, but could only stand there in disbelief. Someone had denied him? HIM?!? He could not remember the last time that had happened. Goddamn it!!
By the time he had collected himself enough to try another tack, she had already gone through the door. As the door's lock clicked behind her she could hear him yell, "You fucking BITCH!"
All things considered, it was a good thing he couldn't see her wide, triumphant smile.
Katitude is a writer from Toronto, Canada.
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