Hotel/Motel

The Hotel/Motel Overture

I don't need to know what you can see. I don’t care about your eyes. I know what I see.

I see you. Are you looking at me? Stop. Because I want your eyes to be useless. Keep them shut. Turn them off. I’m going to make this easy. Your job is to listen. Look at me with your ears. Hear me and imagine the things I am telling you to do. By listening. Not looking. My words will be your eyes. My words will be your will. And right now all my words are saying “let me look at you.”

I want to do more than look at you. My voice is leading the way. My voice will be all of your senses. The temperature in this room and the color of the lights and that scent of the chamber maid’s perfume, these things all flow in and out of my mouth. I’ll tell you you’re warm. I’ll tell you you’re hungry. I’ll tell you if the ropes are too tight. I like the grimace, though. It’s my imagination that will stimulate your senses. Reality has nothing to do with you right now. Don’t try to imagine which of your senses is being stimulated. Everything inside of you is forfeited.

Everything inside of you is mine. Smell the hint of sweat. If I cut you, I will find that you are whole and clean and raw. And my attention will make you. The heat of my hand and the char from my kiss will sear you and you will sizzle. Feel how flat and hard my hand can be. And you wondered why I didn't want to see your eyes? Yes, you did. Shaking your head no doesn’t stop me from climbing inside of you, little one. If I take a step back, it’s because I am taking panoramic pictures. I am capturing you from head to toe. Your muscles are forgetting how to fight.

I am the camera, and you are a thing. A thing doesn't look at the camera. The thing is a bowl of fruit or a foggy field. I compose you. I crop you. I am the guts of the camera, and I am the way the camera works. It’s not for you to worry about the way that I work. You should be worried about the way the air conditioning in this room makes that light shirt of yours sit perfectly on you like a bib or a waterfall. That's why I can crop. Because if I were to see your eyes looking at me I might not like what I see. Because then I might be your object. And you could be the camera. Only your camera isn't a machine. Your camera was human long before I met you. And the things of this room - the television, the mirror, the bathroom sink - they don’t care about you or me. And I don't want that. I don't want to be seen by them, but they are not mine to control. Everything sees me, and that's part of why I'm here. That's my fantasy.

You asked me to reduce you. You wanted to be small. You wanted to be a pebble in my pocket. I told you I could erase you, but I don't want to be seen either. Your fantasy might not have allowed for that. You’re not the only one trying to unleash your shameful fantasies. I’ve had my traumas, too. How do you think we wandered into this scene? And so I need you broken down in the bathroom or crucified to the bed that’s been stripped of the filthy comforter. They never clean it, you know. No matter how much the maid scrubs this room, there are always germs everywhere. That’s why I take pictures. You can’t get sick from a picture. I am going to infect you, my dear, but nothing is allowed to get inside of me.

I offer words that you realize are life-altering. The neural pathways shift. You are now “thinking” about things like the sheep in fog. Your thoughts are a slow iron train with its endless exhale and the sounds of warning. Take it. Take the train. Escape. These are the ancient passages that you imagined so long ago (but not too long ago), but you never imagined the train…just the field of sheep and the bells of some church for which you often thought you would pledge yourself.

But now….

All you want is to be on the train that follows from one station to another.

I am the train, my love. I am the way out of your familiar footpath. There is something ancient about me. You came into the world for me. For this. For the showers and the baths and the warm white towels. I am not a beast; although I will admit to being a monster with larger eyes (the better to see you). I saved the row of my sharp teeth to feast on your nervous “yes” and “yes” and “yes.”

I am loaded with film, f-stops and apertures. I “click” and “click” and you might as well be naked, modeling your submission (can’t you feel how tangible it is?). I find you hidden inside of you. I pry the doors open, and you step right out, smiling (because I say “smile big for me.”) It’s hard for you to find the beginning of the string or the rope or the belt. With everything now, you feel you are simply in the middle of my love for you.

And I do love you and your beautiful consent. We will fill the small plastic cups with white liquor. We will get drunk, but it’s useless. You’re already drunk, and I have barely touched you. With more and more of me, you detach from the hotel/motel. You ache into space. Your cries for the moon or the sun or the stars that spell your name. It surprises you because you forgot your name long, long ago.

The Hotel/Motel Lament

Just so it's straight, everything was ripped away and then you decided that even after your photos, you were going to stay and grow and feed off of me? Is this your plan? Because as plans go, I can say that this seems like a winner.

For many years you lived inside of me. You were in my head of course but you were also inside of many other parts. I was new. And you found ways to get inside of me where I was always forbidden to go. You knew how to do it. And it was terrible to everyone, but it was never terrible to me.

Walking and talking, I seemed just like everyone else, but having you living inside of me meant that so many parts of me never really learned how to grow. So many parts were useless.

You were my desire. You were my fear. And nothing was really mine. The only thing that was mine was my devotion to you.

I was faithful to the fact that you were invading me. And I got to the point where I couldn't live without it. I couldn't live without you. And then one day out of the blue, there was no you. You were gone. And the only thing left inside me was the skeleton of you.

But it turns out that the trick was mine. I became the magician. I found a way to keep you alive. And all of the things you once whispered to me I could now whisper to myself. And all of the ways that you used to twist and turn me, I could now do it without your body rubbing up against the insides of me. I could slither, too.

I could rub and find others to rub. When no one was looking, I nailed your skeleton to the insides of me. It continues to grow. It is still having an effect. Still in control. While it babbles and sings and guides me with nudges, everything else about me falls apart.

Because there is no plan other than you. You are all that makes sense. And yet no one else understands you. Somehow we developed a shorthand. And the language that you made up inside of me, when I was fresh, is a language I can speak to myself.

In fact I have brought on others to speak with me. We are a committee. And when I effortlessly switch back and forth between the different members, there are no misunderstandings. Not amongst each of us. However, having you inside of me, so intimately, has indeed proven to be a problem because I can't live inside of myself the way you could live inside of me. And when I try to inhabit the body that no longer seems to be mine, I get myself into a lot of trouble.

Because the world doesn't understand how that can happen. The world can't see you. The world can't hear you. What the world knows of you the world condemns. I don't blame it. I understand it. But I can't make sense of any of it. The loving world condemns you and ultimately condemns me. And there is no space for me on the shrinking planet. And I can't make sense of what the world is trying to say. It looks at me with horror and desperation.

Even those that would reach in and try to help, they leave me more damaged. It's treachery. Your skeleton is more painful than ever, and yet I can't imagine my life without you. You became my life long ago. You are still inside of me. I slither with my tongue stabbing anything that looks like it might still be alive.