On the Road With Jess, Alyssa & Kyle

Though I’m completely neurotic and chronically nervous, I fancy myself a pretty comfortable person in terms of situations that might be considered “dangerous” by outsiders. I’m never the first to move to lock the car doors while driving through North Philly or cross to the other side of the street if someone sketchy is walking towards me late at night. I think this is partially due to two factors: one, that I live in New York and I’ve developed some pretty good street smarts because of it; two, my earlier formative years were spent in a pretty rough neighborhood where I came up through a shitty public school system with a small percentage of educated and/or families above the poverty line in the district. Therefore, I’m pretty steeled to situations that might be considered “sketch.”

That said, last night was fucked up.

There was a freak thunderstorm across most of Oklahoma, so we finally go to the Motel 6 in a torrential downpour. We check in and our room keys don’t work, so we have to go back to the front desk. Strike one. They put us in a street level room that faces the highway/parking lot. There is a fly buzzing around the bathroom and the carpet is stained with God knows what but I suck it up and attempt to not be a germaphobe for one night and we get our pajamas on and watch the Olympics. Not an hour into the stay we hear a knock at the door. A glance through the peep hole reveals it to be some random white guy pacing back and forth and trying to slide his key into our door and jiggling on the handle. He keeps banging. We bolt the door and try to ignore him but we are getting increasingly freaked out because it is very obvious he is on some sort of substance, probably crack or meth, that is making him tweak the fuck out. We’re afraid if we open the door he’ll be confused since he obviously thought it was his room, and start freaking out at us. This crackhead is strike two. He keeps fucking knocking. For 10 minutes straight he is knocking and trying to get into our room. Finally we try to call the front desk but THE PHONE DOESN’T WORK. Strike. Three.

I swear it’s like something out of a horror film: crazy crackhead attempts to break into our room in stormy Oklahoma City while we’re miles away from home, and when we go to call for help, the line is dead. And the wireless was out because of the storm. Eventually I find the motel number in my cell phone and get the girl at the front desk to come, but she is in her early 20’s and basically defenseless, so when she shows up and starts questioning us like it’s some sort of routine, we decide to leave. She immediately offers us a full refund, which in my mind kind of solidifies the fact that this is a fairly regular occurrence and um, we’re fucking dumb for staying in a Motel 6 near the Oklahoma City airport.

We run to the car, check out, get our refund and go to the Holiday Inn. We’re pissed because we don’t have money to spend on a hotel, but we’re so freaked out and exhausted and terrified that we’ll only feel safe in a place where the doors lead to a hallway and not the outside. Well, apparently in most hotels in Oklahoma, you have to be 21 to rent a room, so we get turned down.

At this point I’m hysterical. We’ve been sitting in the car in the pouring rain with all of our shit, homeless, trying to figure out what to do for about a half hour. Some guy in a van comes up and asks us if we’ve seen his puppy, he’s lost his puppy, please help him look for it. SERIAL KILLER PICK UP LINE MUCH? It was 10 o’clock at night on a Monday and pouring rain. You did not lose your goddamn dog.

Eventually I call my Dad and he comes to the rescue and gets some guy from hotels.com to get us a room at this Suburban Extended Stay hotel. We get directions and drive, almost crashing a few times because the storm was so bad, but eventually make it. We slept and then woke up at 7am to continue driving to New Mexico, which is where we’re staying now.

In short, it was terrifying. Terrifying because we were alone in a dangerous city far away from the comforts of home with no backup plan. Terrifying because this is the first time any of us have done anything like this. Terrifying because we all crumbled under pressure, but me the worst, because I started having a full fledged panic attack and barking orders and hysterically crying. To my credit, the Motel was really bad, egregiously overrun with prostitutes and drug addicts and various other transients. But I could have handled myself better. I guess that’s part of the learning process.

Because we did learn a few things:

1. Always have a back up plan.
2. Don’t stay in a motel near the airport.
3. Never go to Oklahoma City.

-Jess