Straight No Chaser

Grim

aaron, i'm thinking there's no way of ever knowing whether it was your hotel, because in my experience, all hotels (particularly those under the same management) look exactly the same and are equally frigid. anyway, though, if it was us, then what you saw was a platoon of about fifty black people, all ages, some fat, most with cigarettes. jay brought the rolling papers because he was on this kick where he wanted to "get back to his roots," which meant, not visiting africa for cultural clarity, but getting high with his cousins in the civil rights museum parking lot. he didn't get to, because aunt debbie found the papers and probably used them to grease her pincurls.

they put us on all different floors, because we all registered at different times, some of us ultra last minute ("triflin' ass niggers," said aunt ruby), and generally, besides the ohio crew, none of us see each other more often than every other summer, so the under-twenty-five crowd didn't even make the effort; everyone stayed on separate floors, plugged in their phones and spent each of three nights gabbing desperately with significant others back home. i sat by the elevators talking to marcus, nick paced around a few floors above talking to the white girl he got pregnant, david trotted up and down the stairs juggling two different conversations, elbow-waving at any cousins he ran into.

if it was your hotel, and if you worked the same ridiculously long, ridiculously late shift you seem to work now, then you probably know the evil fat guy who came up to yell at each of us, individually, for disturbing sleeping guests and blocking the sockets where the lady was supposed to plug in the vacuum cleaner. at three in the morning. which makes perfect sense, because even though our low, sexy, i-love-you-i-miss-you-what-are-we-gonna-do-when-i-get-home, negative five decibels talk was an unbearable disturbance, the scream of a vacuum cleaner is akin to a gentle lullaby.

i have the hundred-count crayola box with the not yellow but gold cardboard, to celebrate the company's anniversary, one hundred years of color! so i was thinking you could draw me a johnny depp, much like your own drew barrymore, and similarly clad, and then i will color his underwear green and purple, for chromatic harmony and maximum gayness. my walls are so ugly! no cinderblocks, this year, just white white overbright white with little pockmarks where people hung posters, begging to be covered with prettier things. i'm coming to terms with the fact that i probably left my blue folder at home, meaning i'm without most of my cutouts from the tiffany catalog, meaning i can't collage the emerald forest or platinum pond yet. but i can color things in.