“They’re tearing it down? My hotel.” I finally acknowledged this morning. Every day for what seems to be my entire life I’ve driven what I’ve called my hotel. Even though I’ve never stayed at or even set foot inside of it.
When I was a small and effeminate homosexual my family traveled around the western US showcasing our American Quarter Horses in rodeos and horse shows. We lived on a very rural Quarter Horse ranch and sold to anyone who attended these cowboy soirées. When we traveled to these three or four day hoedowns my Dad would pitch a huge army surplus tent for us to call home. Being a small and effeminate homosexual I didn’t yet get the army butch thing, just the creepy camping in a used canvas thing. “Icky, can’t we stay in a nice hotel with a pool and polyester bedspreads?” My Dad’s eyes would roll back into his head as I stood holding the center pole while the sisters stretched out the drab green fabric.
Anytime we drove home passed a certain point where the highway rounded next to a hill just south of Denver, Colorado I would look up and see this amazing modern gleaming hotel. My, hotel. I would state out loud, swear that someday I was going to spend a lot of time there, sitting by the pool and spending days walking from my room to the restaurant. “What shalest we eat upon today?” In these fantasies I always had a Tom Selleck mustache and a washboard stomach. My commute for that last couple of years has taken pasts this seventies high rise hotel. And still every day I believed this now dog-eared building as some form of luxury. A symbol from my childhood that I still needed to fulfill. Every once and a while I’d still say, “someday I’m going to just spend the weekend there, just to treat the small effeminate gay boy inside of me.
I ignored the Murphy’s Demolition sign attached to the eighth floor for days. But then the windows were gone this morning. My hotel, this device I used to help me through a tough childhood is being taken from me. But, maybe they’ll build a better hotel. One that isn’t badly outdated from the seventies; one that I’d actually stay at. On the other hand I don’t have a Tom Selleck mustache. So sometimes things from your childhood just need to be let go and left as another little gay boy’s fantasy.
You small effeminate homosexuals sure have specific dreams/fantasies. I guess that's why you're creative and gravitate to the "arts" - must like Tom Sellack's moustache.
ReplyDeleteI haven't given up on my fantasy of the washboard abs. But it IS a fantasy - no question.
aww, it's hard to let go
ReplyDeleteI will come visit and provide the Tom Selleck moustache.
ReplyDeleteIf nothing else you need a souvenir from this beacon of your childhood. Perhaps a crystal ashtray from the lobby, maybe an ornate (but useless) hallstand from one of the corridors or even a polyester bedspread that you could fashion into a swish new knee rug for that elle-shaped sofa of yours.
ReplyDeleteOf course if you're too late for that you might just have to settle for a brick, or some signage or one of those demolition workers... basically, anything that helps keep the effeminate homosexual that you used to be happy