New York City, September 26-29th, 2003.
Given my love of driving, it's not a shock that I don't like being without a car, even in a place where a car is utterly useless like Manhattan. Makes me feel slightly trapped, for some reason.
With memories of the California fiasco fresh in my mind, and the fact that I was late arriving at the Detroit airport despite driving up to MI to stay at a hotel the night before, I was fully expecting my suitcase not to arrive at LaGuardia when I did. I had the camera kit, I had my backpack, and I waited at the baggage claim in a state of almost beatific calm.
Of course the suitcase made it this time. The universe just loves to snark at me.
There was a massive police presence on the East side of Manhattan for some reason. I was the second-to-last person to get out of the shuttle van, so that meant the trip from the airport to the hotel took about two hours. (As usual, I hadn't slept the night before traveling. I was sorely tempted to lie down across the seat in the van, but I feared how it would smell up close.) The wait in the front desk line at the hotel took another 45 minutes. So it's no surprise that I got to my room on the 13th floor and literally fell onto the bed, face down, and didn't move for quite some time.
When I finally got back on my feet, I went and ate a rather crummy hamburger, gathered some supplies, and checked the weather forecast. Once again it was dark and rainy, but supposedly going to clear up later. I opted to take a shower and possibly head out in the afternoon to shoot my street footage.
I walked into the bathroom and pulled aside the shower curtain. On the floor of the shower stall was a pile of plaster. I looked up and noticed a huge bubble in the ceiling, with a big hole and many cracks trailing away in all directions. I called housekeeping and said, "Um, hi. The ceiling seems to be caving in on me." Housekeeping transferred me to maintenance. They said they would send someone.
I waited.
The maintenance guy showed up, looked in my bathroom and said the room shouldn't be occupied in this condition. He left and said he'd tell the front desk they needed to move me.
I waited some more.
The phone rang. The front desk told me to come down and switch my room. I collected all my belongings and went downstairs.
I waited on line.
The first room was tiny, with just one double bed, but also a refrigerator, a desk, a radio and a hair dryer.
The second room (which was still on the 13th floor) had two single beds, a clean bathroom with a whole ceiling and a tub, but no hair dryer, fridge or radio.
I don't get it. Usually there is some level of standardization in hotel amenities.
With all the waiting, I didn't get any footage on Friday. The only things that redeemed the day were going to John's for dinner with loki and getting to walk through Times Square at night for the first time (I'd been there during the day but it's so not the same). Miss loki and I went back to the hotel and talked voraciously as we tend to do, and finally fell asleep.
Now this is going to sound like TMI but bear with me, there's a point. I have this tendency to fall asleep and then wake up about an hour later needing to use the bathroom. Friday night, despite being exhausted, was no exception. I drifted awake and debated whether I should just get up or remain lying there and hopefully drop back off.
I became aware of a noise, which is not all that surprising in lower midtown Manhattan. This noise, though, was coming from the room next door, 1374, which had a connecting door to our room. (We theorized our room was a "kids room" for traveling families, given the two twin beds.) It sounded like a woman was crying.
I woke up a bit more and realized the crying was, how shall I put this? Rhythmic.
This was the second time I overheard someone having sex in a hotel this year, the first being during Chicagopalooza. But in Chicago, it was someone in a room in another corridor and I was passing by on my way to the ice machine. This was in the adjacent room, and my bed was closest to the connecting door, and it was about 3:30 in the morning.
They started out trying to be quiet, other than the woman's mewling. She went ultrasonic at one point and I started to laugh at the thought of dogs in the neighborhood waking up going, "What the hell was that?"
Unfortunately, that high pitched exclamation did not mark, erm, crossing the finish line, if you catch my meaning.
The noises got louder (the gentleman was invoking the name of the Almighty by the end) and loki, who sleeps like the dead, didn't wake up, so I was alone in the absurdity of the moment. Lying in an extremely uncomfortable twin bed in a Manhattan hotel, with a full bladder, listening to two people have very satisfying sex next door to me in the middle of the night.
I started giggling hysterically, trying to muffle the noise in the pillow, when the following quote popped into my head:
"But you..."
"Yes."
"And I..."
"Three times."
And yes, it is entirely accurate. I counted. Not like I had a choice.
I waited until they were done to go to the bathroom, in hopes that the sound of a toilet flushing right next door would shock them. Then again, they were doing it with the lights on (I could see the light from under the connecting door) so probably they didn't care.
After all that, Saturday was something of an anticlimax (heh). I got a shot of a cute boy sitting on one of the lions in front of the New York Public Library, taped interviews with the whopping three people who showed up, and had a lovely dinner at a nice little place on the upper West side with loki, Margot le Faye and Mircalla.
Ironically, even though a number of people have said that we don't as a group sit around discussing "Buffy," I realized that a lot of the trips this summer have involved some analysis. I think it's sort of a post-mortem. Now that the show is over, we're able to look on it as a whole and evaluate.
After several extensive discussions about the series during the day, I was getting out of the shower that night when I heard loki call my name, "You'll never guess what's on!"
It was "Welcome to the Hellmouth," the first ever episode of "Buffy."
I take that as a blessing from the Powers That Be on myself, this project, and all Bronzers everywhere.
~ DarkLady
- Filed with the Bronzer Documentary Mission on October 12, 2003