Midnight at the Oasis?

You know that dreaded feeling you get when you walk into a gas station bathroom and it’s so filthy that you worry your vulva might disintegrate if it makes contact with the porcelain? And you know the more dreaded feeling of desperation when you know you have to succumb to that horrible idea simply because if you don’t you will most likely spontaneously combust in the nether regions? I think it is subtle control in the gas station industry….the attendants could care less whether the bathrooms are clean or not. They know that you’ll go if you really have to go and they’re tired of cleaning up after you if you’re not even willing to spend a dime there. I picture them thinking, “Go ahead and take a shit. You’re not going to like it. Heh. Heh.” 

Now apply that same feeling of desperation to this scenario; imagine that it is almost 1am and you have been on a manic search for a hotel room in the city for close to an hour during one of the busiest festivals the city hosts. “Sorry, we’re full. Um….do you know there’s a festival this weekend?” is equivalent in hotel front desk lingo to “Are you stupid?” Yes, we had intentions of sleeping in our tent which was already set up and ready to go, but it started to rain and we just got lazy I guess, and decided we didn’t want to be tough Canadians after all. We were succumbing to the notion of comfort. That was a very, very bad mistake. 

When we drove past the Montcalm, we cut our losses, reasoned that it was only for a night, and took the room. The thought of sitting naked on that bed sheet still makes my butt pucker. I just couldn’t do it. We should have known something was fishy when we were given room number “zero”. Yes, that is right. Our door actually said “Room # 0”. It was beautifully printed onto white paper and scotch taped to the door. What does room zero mean?! Does it mean that as soon as the door opens you’re going to enter zero gravity? No, we quickly realized that the zero means zero maintenance to the room and absolutely zero cleaning duties. 

You know, I’ve dealt with a lot of dirt in my days. I’ve worked some pretty crazy jobs, and ironically, my first job was working for a restaurant picking garbage in the parking lot. And I was a waitress in my university days and there’s nothing greasier than dealing with slippery plates all day. Plus, that was back in the days when everyone was allowed to smoke in restaurants, so not only was it dirty, it was stinky too. I can go on about a plethora of different experiences with dirt, but man, room zero was just downright gross. The toilet rim was indescribable. (Poop is supposed to descend vertically from the body, is it not?) Why was there a partially used bar of soap in the grayish, brownish, tannish, yellowish bathtub. Where were the bath towels? Did we want to use them even if they had any? Brad found a Winnipeg Sun in the dresser that was dated March 18^th, 2011. We figure that was the last time the room was cleaned. 

 And at the same time that I was appalled that we actually paid to sleep in filth, I was also appalled that I was being such a wuss about it. Am I that OCD about dirt that I can’t handle a bit of goo? I have slept on dirt in the bushes. I actually slept in a horse shoe pit in a camp ground once. I woke up with a lot of sand in my mouth and for some reason that was ok with me. And I have been puked on, pooped on, peed on. I’m a mom. It happens a lot. And I’ve also been to a lot of crazy parties where that also happens a lot.  And then there are the times that I’ve walked through the bush and picked up the occasional moose turd. I marvel in the fact that I am holding something that came out of the rectum of a large hairy mammal. For some reason, that seems ok to me. Moose poop is all natural. It has fluctuated between being washed in the rain and baked by the sun and in my mind that seems clean. 

So why was I being such a freak about this place? We were both being freaks about the place. Brad and I polished off a full bottle of wine, swig style, in a matter of minutes to try and deaden the anxiety of sleeping, hover-style, over the bed sheets. Usually in a hotel room, I take the bed spread off immediately, because I’ve seen too many CSI shows that use black lights to emphasize “stains”. But in this case, I wasn’t too sure which layer to peel off and sleep on. I longed for the soggy tent and was creeped out completely. I started making assumptions about what happened in that room to earn this status in my mind. After all, the bar downstairs is called “Lipstixx” with the token XXX. They advertise that the dancers start at noon on both Thursdays and Fridays and even give “shower shows”. I wondered if their shower floors were any cleaner than room zero’s was and then thought perhaps that is what the shower shows actually were….hotel room tenants simply trying to get clean after spending a night in room creepy. 

I also made the assumption, based on solid evidence, that they don’t even clean the rooms because the option of putting a “do not disturb” sign in the door slot was not even available. There wasn’t the distant din of vacuums and chattering that usually accompanies waking up in a hotel so there weren’t any cleaning ladies disturbing anyone that day. Again, just like the gas stations, the owners of the Montcalm monopolized on our desperation on a Friday of a festival in Winnipeg and didn’t care how grimy the experience was going to be for anyone. If you want it, you want it….if you don’t, you don’t. At least we got a key for our room. When the man standing in front of Brad at the lobby desk told the clerk, “My key to my room isn’t working,” the clerk simply said, “Oh, just tell me when you want to be let in and out of your room.” So, it’s going to be like this, is it? We are at your mercy.

I have had other equivalent experiences with creepy rooms. Once in Lake Linden, Michigan, I discovered that there wasn’t a phone in my room. When I inquired at the front desk, the eight thousand year old lady in the sailor suit and pig tails said to me, “Oh, we didn’t get into that”. You didn’t get into phones?!!! Where the fuck am I? Once on a family trip, I refused to sleep on my bed because it was clearly apparent that someone had been murdered on it, as could be seen by the splattering of blood across the sides of the mattress. At a hotel in Edmonton, I took a dip in a pool, and assumed I was blind when I opened my eyes underwater and couldn’t see the bottom of the pool. It was only 4 feet deep. Perhaps that is why I always steal the toilet paper from hotel rooms. I need to walk away from these experiences feeling like I haven’t been completely annihilated by the big guy and if it means being passive aggressive with toilet paper, that’s what I’ll do.There wasn't any extra toilet paper to steal in room zero at the Montcalm. We were lucky to even get any. 

Lesson learned. Lesson learned. Lesson learned. 1) Take your own towels with you anywhere you go. 2) Bring a garbage bag to sleep on so that anything that could potentially crawl on you will simply slide off. 3) Bring two bottles of wine not just one. Oh yeah, and 4) book ahead. That one’s pretty important, supposedly.