Hotel Game; A Collection of Cautionary tales.
So I am at the bar, uninspired by the usual Friday night situation.
I’m getting the predictable ‘you have an accent’ interview questions from another predictable girl.
“Where are you from, what are you doing here.”
This was the eleven thousandth iteration of the same predictable bullshit. Enough predictable is enough.
So I’m at the bar again exactly seven days later, uninspired by the predictable Friday night scene.
I get the predictable interview ‘you have an accent’ questions from a predictable girl.
“Where are you from…what do you do”
Hrrrm, how can I answer that?
Whoooooosh, down go the trousers.
Australian-flag boxer shorts.
Girl: “So you’re Australian?”
I laugh, satisfied with my execution.
Wooosh! Alex tripping over his escorted ass.
Predictable Friday night. Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahn.
There is something about doing something unexpected that makes me tick. I think it makes every guy tick. I often see guys get ‘hella’ excited when they do something that no one saw coming, all the time I’ll see guys intending on doing something unexpected and self entertaining…but not stepping up.
This is a theme for today’s blog. Here I am, at the original ground central. The closest thing I might consider to be a home. My spiritual LAX hotel.
Since I left the factory many moons ago I have since lived in hotels all around the world.
For about two months this was quite the novelty especially for a guy who is in his early twenties. But after a while I missed being able to take care of organising myself and began to hate having to rely on other’s to organise things for me.
The RSD guys do an awesome job or setting up accommodation however the accommodators generally suck. American customer service is second to none but I still don’t understand why it is ‘not applicable’ when it comes to hotels.
As a hotelier I wouldn’t think people with huge yearly contracts, investing in conference rooms and checking in dozens people almost every day of the year would validate distain for hotel guests.
This distain ignited a spark which has grown into some kind of ongoing battle that continues to rage to this day. Neither battle party is willing to give an inch.
This is a tension this is only going to continue to rage on as long as my quest for self amusement is filtered through my maturity.
Or more technically, lack thereof.
I check into hotels with camouflage paint on my face.
My game face.
The results of the tensions are note worthy for the humour value. The following is a short collection of the goings on in the timeless battle of good and evil.
More accurately a collection of things that have happened in the places I have stayed over the last two years.
Deity Liar-ism and Terrorist Response to Pubis.
Let me preface this anecdote with the disclosure of the following facts. Firstly, the movie Ghostbusters was filmed at the reported hotel. Secondly, there were five pubic hairs stuck to the roof of the bath room. Thirdly, we requested multiple times that the television and remote be serviced so to work predictably.
I was edgy because of the eerie feeling about the creepy hotel but officially fell out of love when, whilst ingesting mouthwash, I found myself eye to eye with an asshole hair.
Not just one ass hair, but a family of about five that had mystically migrated to the roof and were casually residing there.
These profiled in excess of one inch.
The situation elicited emotions similar to when you break up with a minger you have to work or live with. At first you try and block it out the sour pangs of hatred, then, nope. Open distain.
The anger came to head on a Tuesday night. We had passed the pubis in the hall a couple of times and averted eye contact. In the ultimate sign of verbal disrespect we would address the pubis:
“No eyes for pubis.”
And wear sunglasses when around the family of altitude asshole hairs.
The tension in the room was palpable.
This particular Tuesday in New York either there were no girls out or we couldn’t find them. As this is the primary night of our weekend our copious amount of girl-energies were looking to be dispensed.
Karaoke? No. Not the same as a well balanced and gracefully sexual, choreographed social interaction.
Instead of talking to girls we spoke amongst ourselves. This was mildly entertaining for a while but quickly presented itself as a no-sex outcome.
Yuk. Instead of dividing our drinking time amongst our girl talking time, the drinking time remained undivided. The former activity became the common denominator of the evening.
So much so that I found myself in a dilapidated schwarma house, behind the counter taking orders and serving people. I am unawares as to the causality of that situation.
Soon after, I debate French politics with some street squid at 3am. I remember a taxi driver threatening to drive over us.
No girls.
Pent up frustration.
So many hot girls on the weekend – not for us.
Doubly pent up frustration.
Instructor relaxing drinks time uncompromised by girl time.
Inhibited doubly pent up frustration.
Any crystal ball gazer at this stage would call for an evacuation.
It’s well documented that “IDGAFWATOM”, which is cool. However when this phenomenon is chemically tainted we have a situation where rules, laws and contracts no longer hold integrity in my consciousness.
Always a cause for concern. I mull over this on the trek back to the hotel.
We arrive at five AM.
I walked into the bathroom to wash the gritty schwarma residue out of my mouth.
Like a school bully hitting an innocent squid-bitch in the back of the head I was again hit with the asshole hair inches from my face.
I went into a state of shock and proceeded to seizure. What was worse however was my roommate found one in his bed.
He flipped the fuck out.
The TV was on from earlier on in the night.
Some fucking cunt was onscreen healing people by telling them to yell the names of deities, curing cancer, blindness and pregnancy by violently shaking them and commanding them to go in deities’ name.
These fucking hotel cunts.
When, during the check-in process, did we agree to fly fishing shit-hairs in and around my mouth and superstitious 5am liar-ism at 90 decibels?!
Before drinking the blood of a virgin unicorn and after hobnobbing about with a jovial leprechaun, obviously.
The alignment of stars at that time in that hotel room plunged us into a twilight realm where energy and rage dissipation exploded.
Events blurred together but the following definitely happened to the tune of 90 decibel deity liar-ism.
A barrage of sauced meats were thrown at the bathroom in an attempt to dislodge asshole hairs.
A picture frame believed to be associated with the asshole hairs was expelled from the room under suspicion of collusion. Expulsion occurred via the window.
My roommate experienced a state of Donky Kong like rage and beat the shit out of the roof causing it to cave in.
After this Kong-rage said roommate went into a seizure and involuntarily knocked over most of the furniture in the room. Full medical seizure, asshole hair now morally implicated.
Or there was asbestos in the medieval roof.
A lamp shade lay on the carpet. Seizure roommate arched his back over it, and in matrix bullet time proceeded to decorate it with high velocity chunks of schwarma. Turning it from cream colour to bile colour.
While attending to the seizure one of the roommates fought a rising urge to pee. In a concerted focus to not step in schwarma syrup on the way to the bathroom roommate momentarily forget about the pubis infestation and entered the bathroom.
The urination process was going smoothly until ceiling asshole hair was spotted again. From its place it knocked roommate off balance.
This was mid urination. All efforts were made to keep balance, avoid black curly hair and contain urine. Feasibility proved unobtainable. Urine all over white walls and carpet. Ass hair laughed vengefully.
Back in living room deity liar-ism is still pseudo healing amputees screaming blasphemy and what-not disturbing our peace. We make an effort to call reception to finally come and clean the roof and fix the TV. We need to sleep for – our own good and that of proximal infrastructure.
We dial 0 for reception. Nothing.
We dial 0 for reception. No response.
We dial an array of suggested hotel numbers. No response.
Phone unit is hurled against wall and broken in two, like a coconut.
Call is made from cordless hybrid half phone. No response.
In the interests of science we expel the half-phone from the room. Microsoft window style.
“No room for phone.” Disrespectful sentiments.
In a moment of clear headedness, I suggest that we eat away our drunkenness. However, I am a clever fucker and am very creative, especially when I am drunk.
The packet of trail mix made a great food suggestion and even better room-decoration ammunition. We started eating the trail mix, taking a moment to reflect on the battle zone at hand. While our destructive metabolisms slowed for a moment it provided an opportunity for the televangelists to flood our consciousness once again.
Fucking Squids.
Seemingly louder, deity preacher claims that a pregnant woman has been cured, that the demons have been absolved.
Trail mix hurled at the TV.
TV still broken.
Even though we hadn’t managed to contact reception someone starts to bang on the door.
My blood ran cold. I stopped for a moment to stock check that moment in my life.
Mattresses upturned to conceal floor vomit.
Tables upside down with vomit ‘stored’ in the drawers.
Trail mix embedded in the carpet, raisins everywhere.
Components of phone scattered around the room, phone missing but hand piece lying limp on the ground.
Hole in the roof, we could see into the room next door via another cavity in the roof.
Debris on the ground marking the crash zone, suspected asbestos contamination.
Lasagne hurled and stuck on the walls and carpet, garnished by haphazard urine.
Lamp shade covered in vomit, seemingly intentionally.
A rectangular dust shadow existed on the wall where a picture used to be.
Six am televangelist still screaming at the top of his lungs that ‘ye shall be received’.
And like a vulgar cherry on top of all of this the pubis still lodged on the bathroom roof. Looking down upon us, sneering, proud of its achievements.
Snap back to the situation at hand. Someone, presumably staff, is knocking on the door. Icy pangs of terror struck my heart. Not only was I going to be kicked out that night but I was going to be deported as well.
Green card: Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaahn.
I put a straight face, put on a clean robe, put a towel around my head to mask the traces of trail mix in my hair and confront the door inquiry, being sure not to let them see into or smell the room.
It was a hotel squid. He was wondering about the racquet and the banging. Seems they can make time to service the room when it suits them, but not when we needed the pubis removed.
I was in the right mind to serve him up some complaints then and there but for the time being I needed to buy time. This squid certainly had more to complain about than me.
I explained (fictitiously) that my friend was also Australian and was very religious and was not to be disturbed during this serious and spiritual time.
“Why is this going on at 5am!?” squid asked me.
“Oh, because its preach time right now in Australia. Time difference.” I told him authoritatively.
I asked him to bring sheets and leave them outside the room.
I walk back into the disaster site to find room mate passed out and liar-ism telling me the importance of submitting a denotation to deity with my credit card. Negative.
I wake up dude with water to face. I called for a red alert. Time to go national guard on this place, my travels depended on it.
Our clothes had been contaminated by the trail mix, bodily fluids and sauced meats cocktail. So we made togas and headdresses out of bed sheets.
Genius. It was oceans 11 all over again staring Caesar and Spartacus.
Sparta! HOO HAAA!
I unplug the television, who’d have thought? Problem solved.
We infiltrate some storage closet. And find some replacement furniture.
The one advantage of staying in hotels with pubic hair embedded in the roof is they also have lacklustre security surveillance systems.
We found the matching lamp shade. Check.
In the corridor we found a matching phone, although we had to use a paperclip to remove the security clasp attached. Check.
In the bathroom in the lobby I found matching roof tiles to replace ours. Check.
In a hallway we found a similar sized picture frame. This construction process was like playing the game ‘the Sims’.
We gather everything back to the room and move things back into place. Replace the missing pieces and gather the broken and bile stained problematic pieces in the corridor.
All the while we are tiptoeing around as if it were an integral part of the resurrection of the room. During the operation, which would forever be known as Operation Omega Uniform, we had heightened anxiety that would rival that of a WWII beach landing.
We had the room in some sort of order had landed, moved the beds over the places where the vomit had landed and closed the draw where the vomit was ‘stored’. All it needed now was a good vacuum and a professional touch.
Industrial strength detoxification would have been good too, but we had neither the time nor the olfactory capacity to realize it at that moment.
But what to do with the excess furniture? In this recovered state of reduced pent up no-girl-frustration we couldn’t justify more window action. So we approached the elevator.
We put everything in the elevator and pressed the buttons for all the levels. Gave it a salute and sent it off on its journey of Valhalla.
We slept and in the morning we consulted a maid. All the roommates collectively pooled our resources and decided to suck up the responsibility for the terrorist response to the roof-pubis.
We offered a maid what totalled the best part of a ‘Benjamin’ for her extra assistance and her confidentiality. She was flabbergasted, she looked as though Christmas had come early. In hindsight this was a good deed by us.
She did question us about the mess to which we explained that the bulimic girls we bought back to the hotel had a cycle of “binge and purge” during their stay.
The kind old housekeeper shook her head and laughed.
“Boys will be boys” She chuckled warm heartedly.
I though about this.
And realised that more of this was the way of the future. Amplified.
Everyone wins.
Except the fucking pubis.
Actually… no. It won.
Alexander~
Darth Hotel.
Let me first start by saying that this article is a testament to my maturation during the last year. I believe in honesty and transparency so here I have outlined the goings on of a certain time in my life. This is a snap shot of the guy I once was, and while it’s still embarrassing, I can say without a doubt I certainly had fun at the time.
**Do not try this at home**
Let me begin my recount by relating to you on a haphazard level. Do you know your friend, whom whenever you catch up with them you pull out all the screws and push yourself to your drunken limits?
This is a person whom when you catch up with, you feel you have a special license to let loose and inflict as much damage on yourself and everything around you as possible?
This is all of my friends.
Or maybe I just bring it out in them?
Realistically that’s probably it, for everyone I know I’m probably their inspiration to get messy and do things they will later to regret. Come on bootcamp and experience it firsthand.
I’m the guy that lives through the intentions of his inner child and inspires everyone to communicate with theirs. On more than one occasion I have harboured complete disregard for rules and expectations and bared the full brunt-wrath of the consequences.
Glory… story… whorey… handcuffs…all of the above.
Actions justified by the fun at the time or the retrospective story.
Well, imagine, that all my friends, whom inspire the worst in me lived at all corners of the globe.
And then image they all were all congregated into one place.
Place equals fucked.
Add self grandeur and legitimate achievement into the broth and you have a turbocharged situation teetering on the brink of combustion.
Situation equals fucked.
I love it.
So it was a couple of months ago that all my closest and most reckless friends had been summoned to the Darth Hotel.
Matters were bad enough to begin with… but like that movie ‘the great escape’ the hotel had agreed to house the best of the debaucherous best. A dream team of anti-harmony concentrated under one roof.
I was compelled to live in alignment with the man I am supposed to be and gather the troops. It took a brave soul to do this because it would be that brave soul that shouldered the consequences.
I am brave like a chauvinist wearing a ‘make me my dinner shirt’ at a Germaine Greer rally.
But I couldn’t resist the urge, someone had to step up and I am the nuRSD.
We were euphoric enough to begin with after a successful filming. I had spent the week seeing how many girls I could close from five dates and had enough of small talk and looked forward to again communicating in grunts.
The ignition of the fateful chain of events was at the downstairs bar where we all gathered. I was upstairs trying on some cool clothes one of my colleges generously donated to me while my phone was buzzing out of my pocket with requests from several different guys asking me to join them for the drinks they had already bought me.
I’m a social guy, how could I disappoint?
I’m also a homeless guy. Over the past five months I had been staying with each of these guys separately and I was in a lot of ways a common social hub for guys who hadn’t met. And, like I said above, I am the excuse for my hosts to get reckless when I go to visit.
Connotatively inspiring retrospective misbehaviour.
Up until this point in life I didn’t own a credit card and I didn’t have it on record as a deposit for the hotel room. I thought I could just drink freely from the minbar and eat whatever I wanted from room service.
Everyone is fiscally smarter in hindsight.
After fashion times I made my way down stairs with two travellers (for the elevator trip) to find all the crew waiting for me. I sat, socialised and fulfilled my commitments of re-hydration.
After some time it was obvious we needed to capture the flag. I was sure others’ were experiencing the same instincts but others looked at me confused, at first, then exited.
We had been using the conference rooms so we had access to the other ones as well. Myself and Saadie started to poke around in there and found a room with millions of dollars worth of audio video equipment ready for the plundering.
It was Aladdin’s cave, Saad was Aladdin and I was the genie making shit materialise out of thin air. The monkey in the story was the monkey on my back.
As much as we wanted to take the abundant equipment for larger-scale webcam-like activities with our girls we resigned ourselves to the fact that if we touched this stuff we would probably die, like Aladdin’s cave we needed to resist temptation.
So we did the next best thing and stole an American flag. Awesome. We were victorious. We marched Oompa Looma style victoriously balancing the flag pole over our shoulders with drinks still in hand.
We sing: OOOOOHHH EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE HUMMMMMMMMM, OOOOOOOOOOH-EEEEEE-UM.
We make sure our crew can hear us before we get there so that they are cheering by the time we arrive. We get great cheers and everyone gathers around the bounty.
But alas, some surgeon (roughly translated: a try hard with high pants) and wench-patron dining at the bar try to intervene. He explains that the flag is part of some conference he’s organising and it’s very important.
We are not willing to give up our hard fought territory so quickly and make him chase us a little bit. He likes our horse play and wants to join in because he is gay. There are some benefits of being professionally attractive. Gay admiration.
Jeffy, always the soldier of death, jumps on the wench-grenade. God bless his soul. I think he licked her face.
Some say that the psychological effects of war are irreversible.
Only time will tell.
The flag is returned to gay conference guy after he touches me in an ‘invasion of my personal space’. I feel queer and return to the bar and try to prevent myself from getting a reputation of ‘ungrateful’ by indulging in the drinks my friends have, as they describe, ‘invested’ in me.
Could they be encouraging me?
While reading this stop for a moment to comprehend the reality of the situation. There are about twenty five guys from the best pick up company on the planet who have just seen the best pick up seminar ever recorded. Between all of us, except me, there is an air of rivalry and guys trying to prove themself.
But there is only one decent set in the hotel bar.
It’s a solitary line of coke at a prostitute after party.
And it wasn’t just any set, the girl was a former playboy pin up girl, or so she claimed. It could well be true, we were at a high profile hotel in Los Angeles and she was genuinely drop-dead gorgeous for a twenty four-something aged brunette.
Understand as well, amongst the group there are the guys who have reputations for being good with girls and have nothing left to prove. And there are guys who are desperate to ‘get in’. These guys are friends-of-friends and somehow got involved in what would otherwise be a private company after party.
I was more interested in running amok with the boys than proving anything but I was having fun watching these guys have a crack at the girl in an attempt prove themselves. The particular guy going for the girl seemed innocent enough, as always we were friendly to him.
I was friendly until he attempted to convince me that he should be doing my job and argued how I was doing it wrong. He attempted to advise the company CEOs on how to run the company and qualified himself continually. He tried to entertain me with magic tricks.
I asked him if he was kidding? I was not kidding when I asked this.
He said “alakazam!” and fluttered his fingers.
“No eyes for Copperfield.” I concluded.
I maintained my professionalism, he wasn’t hurting anyone, plus he wasn’t a part of the company so it wasn’t my responsibility. But his constipated Copperfieldism he was using on the girls was entertaining me.
I have one friend called Derrick. Guys who know me know me will know who this is. In my opinion this guy is the best in the world. Best in terms of numbers and best in terms of quality. Why?
He has done programs with Jeffy, Tyler AND Me.
I was with him the other week in the Upper Mid West when, in an angelic voice, he dropped this line on an Ivory schooled businesswoman in a silent and populated elevator:
“My my, aren’t you just an adorable little kitten…I would just love to fuck you up the ass behind a dumpster like the crack whore you are.”
Abercrombie were hysterical and urinated involuntarily a little bit.
So Derrick was there that night. Derrick ain’t no validation seeker, he’s a guy who knows what he wants and generates the resources to make it happen. He likes to be in the company of guys who have and teach great game.
He only fucks the hottest girls.
I was sitting nearby him giggling to myself when he noticed my apparently psychosomatic infliction. He questioned what was wrong.
I motioned to the David Copperfield show and he noticed the babe.
He said it was a disgusting display of homosexuality and that the girl needed some real game. He stopped and ran the cogs in his head for a moment and said he needed me to wing him, because I am the best.
I looked at the wing target and adamantly said “no way”.
This woman looked like the mummified version of Cleopatra. She was anno- ancient Egyptian trash dressed in a Merry Kate Olsen Halloween costume. Derrick would later figure out they were mother and daughter and were celebrating that night with lots of drinks after a medical procedure.
Derrick pleaded with me to wing. At first I held true to my position and then he questioned my loyalty to him as a mate. My attitude turned from self serving to charitable.
He sealed the deal by convincing me that I could do it if I were drunk, courtesy of his sponsorship.
This is when faeces were thrown upwards towards a fan, impacted, decimated into a million pieces and come flitting back down onto all of us.
Shit hit the fan. Enter the trenches.
I said I would be in soon and Derrick approached the set. Upon arriving, without speaking he pushed Copperfield aside with a swift combination of choke hold and thrust. Copperfield attempted some AMOG bullshit from the days of black and white TV and was soon dismissed teary eyed.
I had done my duty and got myself compromised enough to wing this elder-fossil, I approached the set including Derrick who were immediately receptive to me, but when I arrived I broke into hysterical laugher at the new stimulus I had was exposed to.
Ever heard the saying, ‘good from far, but far from good’? Well this was Halloween from far and nausea up close. I took another sip of my drink… I knew if I was going to be involved with this I needed to get myself worked up and buy some time.
I ejected, Derrick was pissed. We texted boy talk back and forth, explained my situation and told him I would need to be near blind to help him out, but that he could trust me. Throughout the night he would keep me updated on his progress. Copperfield had since vanished himself.
So everyone had gathered around the bar and was getting a little rowdy, most of the guys were about twenty one. I knew I had to get the party started so I made an announcement…
HOTEL OLYMPICS!!!!
All the kids’ ears perked up and like the pied piper I lead them upstairs to the executive lounge. All this was a guise for my need to compromise my senses to help out a friend in need. In the executive lounge we found a massive bowl of apples, a microwave, lots of coffee facilities and a potential refuge location. I made a conscious note of this knowing that a good escape plan might be born of necessity very soon.
A subplot to this story is that of two guys who had assigned a problematic room by Darth Hotel that had been priority-dissed by admin during their stay there.
In their room the flush facility on their toilet was broken. At first the calls were made requesting assistance but divine administrative intervention never came. Initially alternate bathrooms were used in the hotel, until the inconvenience could no longer be tolerated. The toilet was nested.
Over the course of five days the toilet was used as per normal, but not flushed. Each faecal episode added another layer of putrification to the excrement lasagne. The guys were pissed to say the least, or more to the point they were living with it. They were vengeful. Still to this day I don’t understand why a plumber couldn’t be organised?
If I was the colonel in the spiritual hotel holy war, these two were the generals, all star players.
One of them though it clever to prepare a dish of ‘metal milk jug’ in the microwave oven. I chuckled at the notion and said “You’re crazy, you won’t do it”.
“Crazy like a fox!” he said foxily, his eyes lighting up. We crowded around to see if he would really do it. Peer pressure is a terrible motivator.
We had all gathered handfuls of apples and were poised to run should he perform the fox-like manoeuvre.
He placed the metal jug full of milk in the microwave, dialled the power setting and cued the time for 60 seconds. Sufficient time to do some serious microwave exploding damage.He moved to arms length of the apparatus and poised himself ready to run, positioned the ignition finger and looked around at each of us with a gleam in his eye.
Crazy motherfucker pressed the button. With a hum, then a sparkle then a small explosion we ran as though Charlie was in the trees.
The reality was actually worse than a Vietnam war metaphor, an alarm went off and security was only moments away, hearts racing, mummified slut long forgotten I thought quickly and creatively and lead the squadron of apple toting warriors to the fire escape and up to the roof.
I figured we could lay low for a while up top. But patience ran short and creativity soon kicked in. The group of us all engaged in a ‘who can throw the apple the furthest’ competition. It was going pretty sportingly until we found the car park on the other side of the hotel.
All it took was a dare and accusation of ‘little bitch’ before I had guys inspired to try and throw over the car park.
This was an awesome game. But if I was honest we had much more fun throwing the apples at the cars.
In the dead of night, chilled quiet air and nothing but a starry night sky above you, all you can hear is pure silence as an apple suicides maliciously through the air.
Upon apple release everyone goes silent, then with a tinny SMASH impact is made. And laughter is also made.
Simple pleasures in life.
Each car we hit had a different car alarm, after only a few minutes we had an orchestra of electronic whining and screeching piercing the night.
It was fire in the crypt.
I contemplated the notion of fingerprint recognition on a disembowelled apple and concluded the fun was worth the risk. I re-concluded that customs had fingerprinted me days before. I summarised that I am invincible so it wouldn’t really matter. Then I looked at a photo of myself in my phone and felt good.
I was in the middle of telling one of the brave crew that I was the best apple thrower when we heard a foreign voice yell with fury in the crypt “WHAT ARE YOU DOING UP HERE!”
Yes, to our terror this fiend had an Agent Smith ear piece. He came from some service elevator, so we ran back down the fire escape to the room that was to become known as ‘ground central’. I was under the misconceived perception that ground central was booked without a credit card.
I also thought I was invincible.
Sometimes you win, sometimes you learn. I felt like I was winning up until that point in time.
Motivated by terror we descended down the fire escape and to our surprise we came across Copperfield from earlier on in the night. He was crying something about ‘she was my girl’.
I invited him to escape with us but he said he had to self punish. He was acting like a house elf so I desisted and left him to Copperfield the night away.
I asked him if he could make the pursuing Agent Smiths disappear like the pens he had vanished earlier, but I didn’t wait around for a reply.
Copperfield was a fresh reminder to me of my primary plan that night. Get myself into a state where I MIGHT be capable of winging out elder hoe.
With some hallway apple throwing by the crew we arrive at delta checkpoint ground central.
My friend asks me a trivial question. I answer coherently.
Need to stitch more brain cells
I feel guilty that I’m still in state that might let my friend down. But I do feel pretty good for successfully escaping Smithchode and leading the team to safety.
In Ground Central I consult the minibar for drinks, but it seems to be locked. A challenging conundrum. The room has already been decimated by various fiascos and general habituation. Chairs are upturned, clothes are everywhere, beds unmade. Disaster zone.
Still on high alert highly aware of the microwave experience and the rooftop debacle I know I need alcohol to fulfil my solemn duties for my friend. With the minibar locked the creative mastermind in me comes out and I make the call to room service.
No dial tone…I discover there is no phone on the end of the handset chord. Doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to figure that’s why it’s not dialling. I plug him in. Still no dial tone. Phone not plugged into the wall. I remember we used this phone as the central prop in the infamous ‘dick phone’ routine earlier that week.
In an ingenious display of sexual intent you approach a girl in the club prepared for the routine. Open with “hey you have a phone call” and pass her the handset. The girl then takes the phone bewildered. Girls usually put it to their head as though they expect to hear a voice coming out of a disconnected phone.
At the height of her confusion you step back and allow the twirly chord between you and her to extend. To her delight she sees the other end of the twirly phone cord is zipped into your fly. Try this at home.
This is an exception to the no twirly routine policy.
At this point I spontaneously explode and am incensed by the fact that Derrick will have to fend for himself. I stark knocking shit over and yell at people out the window strolling down the road. The anxiety was building in me in a similar to the way you feel more and more under pressure as the clock ticks down towards the end of an exam.
With the phone broken how would I contact reception to get them to electronically unlock the minibar? I couldn’t go in person and I especially didn’t want to risk them hearing my Australian accent and identifying me as the microwave facilitator, roof Olympian or flag thief.
The hotel was essentially saying to me “Alex, time to quit the mayhem, no fridge for you.”
“Wrong answer bitch!” I said to the hotel. They will learn. I made the toilet into a coffee facility by putting the coffee in the top. Chef Ramsey like.
By this stage I was in full Tasmanian devil mode, the crew was becoming concerned for my own wellbeing. They didn’t understand the internal angst that I was suffering, how could they understand? I made a promise and actions needed to be taken to fulfil this promise.
When I was in the bathroom cooking up a ‘toilet coffee’ my friends though it be best that they lock me in there until I calmed down. At first I was ultra distressed about this confinement, further putting the stops on my plan of heroic winging. But, this gave me an opportunity to redecorate the room.
Towels: gaaaaaaahn. Bathroom condiments: toilet coffee garnish. Shower curtain, transformed into a cape, wastepaper basket: a Helmut. Some fashion thingy became my trident and the wall art became my shield. I am the ultimate bathroom combatant, beware interlopers.
I go quiet and my crew wonder what’s going on in my confined space after the initial hurricane of crashes and banging. They open the doors to find me dressed for Darth Hotel battle and break out in hysterics again. They take the liberty of photographing the historic coming of age event.
They agree to let me out, realising that I have gone beyond the point of no return and are now simply amused by the antics. They give me the token warning that I shouldn’t be potentially ruining my future, inspiring my deportation et cetera, et cetera, but if they really wanted me to stop they would have stopped me. I think they enjoyed the show.
With a clearer head I return the fridge fortress, I examine it Jack Bower style from ‘24’ and investigate the power source and the locking mechanism.
Hrrrrm, formidable I think to myself, hulk like rage swelling in my veins again.
One of the other guys suggests that I use the hotel phone we didn’t use to help us pick up girls, stumbling over a chair I make the call while lying on the ground.
As the receptionist answers the phone I realise I have made a rookie mistake that could cost me my nuts. If he hears my Australian accent he will recognise me and torture me! Like we always say about being present, when you have an empty head creativity will come to you.
For no apparent reason I produce the best Scottish accent you have ever heard. I am a Steven Hawkins smart and Chuck Norris innovative.
Receptionist: “Room service express this is Allen how may I help you?”
Alex scottish: “Ello, eeets mierser Ellen Ere, kud you pleiise Fux mai Foooking Frudge!”
Receptionist: “Excuse me?!…. what’s the problem with it?!”
Alex Scottish: “I kennot git it orpen, im fooking theirsty.”
Receptionist: “One moment…we’re sending someone right up, stay in the room”
Fuck, fuck, fuck. Agent Smith’s now know what room we’re in and they will be here soon. I have led the crew into a dire situation. Shit.
I race back to the bar and with pure will power I open the door!
Great success!
There are some power cords and stuff that are broken and an alarm going off but it’s ok.
I detach the computer thing from the fridge and toss it away. Like the discovery of the Holy Grail light pours out of the fridge and we are free to revel in the spoils. Vodka, rum, whisky, it’s all there. At last I feel some relief that I am back on task and on my way to helping Derrick.
We need to get out of the room fast. Smith is on the way as we speak probably with law enforcement. I write a note on the window for him with soap that I can’t publish here. Analysis of my handwriting would suggest that I am very intelligent but slightly whimsical.
With the contents of the minibar in our possession we go back to the roof where we can escape down one of any of the six fire escapes and return to any room. We are running hard. We have one room unbeknownst to the hotel administration that came to be referred to as ‘higher ground’. This was the room with the broken toilet. It was in good enough shape to stay in except for the fact that someone had put pornographic stickers on the wall and the toilet was blocked. The room looked like a place where an innocent person would stay.
We get to the roof, cross to the other side of the hotel and down the other fire escape, through the door and into an intersection of corridors. We are running but hear a noise and instantly freeze. We hear people running towards us, it must be Agent Smiths.
This time there is nowhere to hide. If they saw us running they would know we were guilty of flag-capture, microwavation, minibar destruction, prank calling reception and roof invasion.
In a moment of Ryan genius he advises us all to put on exotic accents as none of us have used that yet. I don’t know what an exotic accent is except for the Warner Brother’s Speedy Gonzalez so I just say “honedley, hepah! Aribah- aribah!”I still don’t know any exotic language.
The security guards and a valet guy run into sight of us casually walking down the corridor and in a moment of truth they look us over. I say “honedley, hepah! Aribah- aribah!” They look confused and aggressive!
Ryan takes over heroically.
“Why are you guys running in the corridors?! YOU COULD HURT THE GUESTS?!” He accuses them.
“Oh sorry sir, were looking for some guys who have been trespassing on the roof and stealing cars”
Oh fuck, Grand Theft Auto, I think.
Ryan continues.
“Oh! We saw those guys! Why the fuck did you let these criminals into the hotel, aren’t you supposed to be security?!They told us not to say they we saw them, they just went that way, he was wearing at hat.”
I make note to give Ryan a blowjob later.
“Oh sorry sir, we thought they were guests, we are taking care of that right away, thanks for your assistance!”
And they run off down the corridor. At this point I am sweating bullets and shitting bricks. Grand Theft Auto!? Must have concluded that because of the car alarms. This shit was getting serious. I got a message tone meaning I got a text from Derrick.
Once the security guys are out of sight we quicken our pace. But moments later we hear running coming from the direction the Agent Smiths had just left in.
“HEY WAIT-A-MINNIT! WHO ARE YOU GUYS!”
OH FUCK.
BAIL. Agent smiths come charging back
The crew scatters in all different directions, I don’t look back.
I find myself running solo, hitting a different fire escape, descending, traversing then ascending again to the room known as ‘higher ground’. The crew texts me saying that they got away from the fat fuck donut eating security chodes.
I text them back saying that I made it to ‘higher ground’ and that I’m safe all except for my olfactory capacity. Nathan is staying in the room and is just chilling out working on his program. Respect. I make a note to model maturity from him. I check my phone and find that Derrick has texted the room number of mother daughter two set saying that he was in the room with them now, his girl was ready to go, but I had to occupy cock-blocking Egyptian femme.
I’m still too sober to go down there yet. I test my coherence with some soap window writing and some milk to mirror target practise. To my own surprise I’m still very much together. It must be a case of adrenaline and all the running in the fire escapes. I chug hard the ground central bounty and sample some of my own minibar’s wares. I’m almost ready to bring some gold standard winging.
At this point my memory becomes fragmented so some of my recount is quotes from others.
During my noble self-compromise-for-the-good-of- a friend session Nathan’s phone rings.
He recalls (jovially) his phone call to Derrick Thus (and he insists that I recall it this way to which I am happily obliged):
Nathan: “Dude, wassup?”
Derrick: “Where’s Alex?”
Nathan looks around the room to see me drinking straight vodka while simultaneously using the fifteenth story window as an alternative to the broken toilet.
Nathan, diplomatically: “I’m sending RSD’s finest now.”
Click. Nathan recounts the phone conversation to me. I change clothes for the purposes of disguise and go barefoot in case I need to run then down I go. I take a traveller just for thoroughness.
I arrive at the room, buzzed but I can still speak, vision is blurred. After all our fiascos I am definitely going to come through for Derrick, he has done so well to get the girls back to their room so far even with wrinkle-slut trying to forebode his glorytimes.
It’s so weird to see a version of our rooms but all neat and tidy. In their room they have some ‘get well soon’ balloons.
But there, on their desk was an oasis in the middle of an outback desert. A massive cooler filled with ice and about twenty bottles of Heineken.
This was good for two reasons. One, I love beer and two the elder woman was still dry wretch inspiring even with blurred vision
and unstifled intentions, the Heineken would help to completely delete my vision if I was going to do this.
Derrick’s girl was wearing little bang shorts now and he had obviously already been fooling around with her. She was smoking fucking hot in her more comfortable room attire. I was definitely going to come through and take this one for the team for the good of his blood sausage.
Little hottie was friendly and introduced me to her mom who was very drunk in her bed. I dry wretched again at the sight of her but stayed strong. Dale said to just talk to her and occupy her while he closed his girl over counter in the bathroom. I’m sure I could manage that, I liked the idea of not having to fornicate the scarecrow.
With Derrick and his girl behind closed doors in the bathroom I was left with the woman who had discovered I had an accent. On hearing her talk I was reminded of the game show contestants on the Jerry Springer Show that I had watched back in Australia. That’s what I was dealing with.
For no apparent reason she was under the impression that she was God’s gift to men. Maybe she once was but she certainly wasn’t now. She began to racially insult me and my nationality. Bitch. At first I thought it was kind of cute, but I soon realised it was just trashy drunk talk from an idiot.
The woman could barely move, she was lying under the covers still in her Mary-Kate Olsen uniform. She didn’t relent with the cultural insults and targeted the late Steve Irwin. What the fuck was this blasphemy?!
Her speech was merely a drunken slur and her eyes were kinda rolling around a lot. Alex hatched a plot.
I continued to weather her verbal barbs while I proceeded to tuck her into her bed. Unfortunately this did in fact elicit sexual responses from her. While I was manoeuvring the sheets all around the Salem-Special she began to ask me if Australians are good kissers and how old was the oldest woman I have ever been with. She told me she was only thirty seven as though she were bragging. I would have guessed forty five. More hazards of being professionally attractive.
I tucked her into the bed in a way that she couldn’t move. Her head was above the covers and the rest of her body was underneath, she couldn’t move to begin with, now she certainly wouldn’t move while I executed the second part of my plot. All the while she was running her mouth about how I was welcome to spend the night but not sleep with her and that the girls my age didn’t know their “socks from their box.”
With Derrick in the bathroom I picked up the cooler with the beer. I turned on the TV to drown out the Springer-Slur coming from the MIWLF. I turned out the lights and last I heard were squeals and grunts coming from the bathroom. Wingman deluxe strikes again, Derrick closed playgirl, Alex avoided Agent Smith wrath and collected the pot of gold (Heineken) at the end of the rainbow.
I make my way to the elevator I must say I felt pretty fucking pleased with myself. I was breathing easy apart from the hefty weight of my bounty.
Recklessly I forgot to press my floor number in the elevator and wound up in the lobby.
FUCK!
From the elevator I could see the same security guards and the valet guys whom we had narrowly missed in the corridor earlier that night. In my ingenious ‘blind enough to wing hoe’ state I decided I needed to hide and did this by running into the lobby bathroom. Could have just closed the elevator doors and gone upstairs. Nope. I panicked.
Cowering in the lobby cubicle at three am I feared my imminent capture and the confiscation of my liberty.
What was I going to do?! I only know what happened next in light of what I discovered the next morning.
I remember thinking I needed a disguise. That was the only way I would escape. I was worried that elder woman might have been discovered by her daughter and called reception to track me down for talking dirty and sampling all of her Heineken oasis. I feared they would identify me by my accent and by my clothes.
The next morning I woke up at seven am in a world of pain. I was naked, sleeping on the floor of my room having not even made it to my bed, Heineken bottle next to me.
I began to piece together what might have happened. I found the clothes I was wearing but not the Heineken cooler in the bathroom where I had last remembered being.
Nathan told me that when I came back into the room I was naked, and in a slurred frantic explanation I told him that I was disguised so that no Agent Smiths would recognise me. In my brain at the time I must have concluded that taking of the clothes the Smiths would not recognise me and it would be a good way to evade their attention.
I’m told I ran though the lobby naked holding my key card and beer, rode the elevator with people naked, then ran to my room naked, safe but not able to make it to the bed.
Darth Hotel Epilogue.
In hindsight some of the historical events of that night could have landed me in some seriously hot water. As it turns out the water was only extremely warm.
The next day I went down to lunch and found all the crew from the night before. I was met with a hero’s welcome.
I didn’t remember much from the night before but as the other’s retold the stories to my disbelief I slowly pieced things back together.
The evidence of the damage itself and the photos and videos of me in action were proof enough. My blood ran cold. It was time to get busy and clean some shit up.
I managed to fix all the superficial things, but there was some hardcore structural damage that cost me badly. Ie, broken fridge, something about apples and cars.
The repercussions of this was a fine so hefty that when I arrived in Europe a few days later I couldn’t afford to buy the warm clothes I needed which really stung in a Scandinavian December.
If there was a moral to these stories let it be this. Roll this dice and trust yourself. Don’t set out with malicious intentions, I never do, but I do like to mix things up a little.
Although you do have to take responsibility for your actions every time you throw down some self assurance and some unpredictability something will come of it.
There are a lot of guys out there who forget the value of the internal centeredness that comes from experience in turbulent situations. The indifference you get to the game and social interactions themself when you have been through some risky, dangerous or self compromising activities.
When I say I got into some extremely warm water over this my company superiors were very disappointed in my lack of self control. Little did I know I was flirting perilously close with being sent back to Australia.
It was embarrassing to disappoint people who had invested faith in me. In response to this they sent me off to the Europe tour of doom in winter to develop some maturity.
Did I mature? I can certainly say that I have grown exponentially during the European scary tour called the ‘winter of paradise’ and I feel like I came into my own as a man as though it was a right of passage.
Will I do these silly reckless hotel and self destructive things again?
Yep.
But next time I will know how to get away with it.
Pass me my war paint.
Alexander~