It\u2019s the summer before middle school and my cousin Tonya and I are having a sleepover at Motel 6. Her mom got a job as the manager and so they moved in. My aunt has a very hands off approach to parenting so she got us our own room and take out pizza.<\/span><\/p>\nYou might be thinking: wow, Motel 6 is a terrible place for two pre-teen girls. And you\u2019d be right. But to us, it is paradise.<\/p>\n
Tonya\u2019s sprawled on one of the twin beds with an open pizza box on her chest. She\u2019s flipping channels with one hand and cradling a slice of pizza with the other. She lands on HBO, which is playing a show called Real Sex Live. In this episode, a stout bald man in his 40s is hopping along the beach completely naked, playing the saxophone. Watching him in frightened awe, I notice that he\u2019s not only comfortable but almost giddy in his nakedness, as if romping around nude with a saxophone on a beach is what he was born to do. This is in stark contrast to my own feelings about nakedness because it\u2019s the summer I started sprouting pubes. I promised myself I\u2019d pluck each one as it came in so puberty wouldn\u2019t get me.<\/p>\n
I get up to go to the bathroom and Tonya follows me inside. It\u2019s kind of our thing, a sort of tradition. We just can\u2019t be apart, that\u2019s how deep our friendship goes. I sit on the toilet, she leans against the sink, and we try to come up with a great prank phone call idea. Tonya decides we should call the mechanic across the street. We have the number memorized from seeing the sign every time we swim in the motel pool. I tell her to pretend to be his mistress, tell him she\u2019ll leave him if he doesn\u2019t choose her. I lifted this all from an episode of Jerry Springer and have no idea what I\u2019m saying. We leave the bathroom and Tonya sits on the bed and picks up the phone from the nightstand. She dials the number with a neutral face, getting into the zone. When the voicemail clicks on, she transforms into a sexy southern vixen. In her fake southern drawl, she gives him an ultimatum: her or me.<\/p>\n
Behind Tonya, through the open windows, I can see Doc\u2019s, the strip club, across the parking lot. Its neon sign is glowing red like the hot coals of hell. Tonya told me that naked ladies dance on the roofs of cars come closing time.<\/p>\n
She finishes her call by adding a phrase we\u2019d heard around the motel, \u201cand no more BJs unless you choose me,\u201d and slams down the phone. We burst out laughing, rolling on our twin beds, before collapsing into sleep.<\/p>\n
The next day, we wake up late to full sun in our eyes. Out the window, Doc\u2019s sign is turned off. We missed the naked ladies. The parking lot is empty except for a shopping cart. I wonder if it\u2019s Wild Bill\u2019s. He\u2019s the homeless guy who hangs around the neighborhood. I saw him once riding a shopping cart like a scooter. To me it seems he lives out a Huck Finn fantasy, never brushing his teeth and always sleeping under the stars. It\u2019s like the best of childhood and adulthood all in one.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s already hot so we change straight into our swimsuits, grab our towels, and head for the pool. But there\u2019s a sign on the gate that says \u201cCLOSED\u201d and Pat\u2019s standing there. She\u2019s the motel employee who always smells like baloney because that\u2019s all she eats.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a tampon in the pool,\u201d she tells us. \u201cI have to fish it out and probably drain the water. No swimming today.\u201d<\/p>\n
We start to turn back when Pat says, \u201coh, and you better make yourself scarce today. Your mom\u2019s looking for you about some prank call.\u201d<\/p>\n
The spit evaporates from my mouth. I feel sick. It\u2019s that horrible, itchy feeling you get when you know you\u2019re about to get busted. We go back to our room and gather as much change as we can so we can drown our sorrows in a frosty from Wendy\u2019s.<\/p>\n
We sit in the back. There\u2019re only three other people there. My frosty tastes watery, the chocolate chalky in my mouth. Me and Tonya don\u2019t speak. Then the bell above the door sets off a sharp ding. A man shuffles inside with long matted hair covering half his face. It\u2019s Wild Bill.<\/p>\n
He goes straight to the pick up side of the counter and holds up his wrist. He tells the teen employee that he just got out of the hospital. He says he doesn\u2019t have any money and hasn\u2019t eaten in a long time. I can see the white plastic bracelet lit up in the florescent light. He asks for a bowl of chili. The teen ladles some brown goop into a styrofoam bowl and pushes it across the counter. As we watch him, it feels like the only sound in the restaurant is his weak slurping.<\/p>\n
I feel a build-up in my throat of a rolling, unstoppable thing and before I can raise my cupped hand to my mouth, I\u2019m laughing. Tonya looks at me with her eyes wide like a cornered animal and she laughs too, a pinched, squealing laugh full of tension.<\/p>\n
Wild Bill looks up from his chili, pieces of bean sticking to his stubble. He puts his spoon down and stands up. He\u2019s walking towards us in slow motion. All the air leaves my lungs and chokes off my laughter. He reaches our table and leans down.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou girls think you know,\u201d he says in a wet voice. \u201cBut just you wait. You don\u2019t know a thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
He goes back to his chili and me and Tonya walk out the door, leaving our half-melted frosties behind. When we get back to our room, I go straight to the bathroom. I don\u2019t wait for Tonya, I just close the door and sit on the toilet seat. I run the events of the last two days, of the entire summer, through my head with the rewind button on. How far back do I have to go to be the kid I was before? I have the feeling that I\u2019ve lost something I can never get back. I hear Tonya\u2019s voice coming through the keyhole but I\u2019m not listening. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This is a story I’ve been working on for years. I’ve told bits and pieces of it in various forms, and for a long time had the story end with the Wild Bill encounter. It never landed with audiences because…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[39,38,36,37],"class_list":["post-109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing","tag-mary-karr","tag-memoir","tag-motel-6","tag-wild-bill"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/taylorgtower.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/taylorgtower.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/taylorgtower.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taylorgtower.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taylorgtower.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=109"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/taylorgtower.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":113,"href":"https:\/\/taylorgtower.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109\/revisions\/113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/taylorgtower.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taylorgtower.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taylorgtower.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"notes\"](\"https:\/\/taylorgtower.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/notes-300x300.jpg\")
hether you want to know more about this time, these characters, and what makes and doesn’t make sense to you. It’s a slice of something larger and a way for me to figure out how to tell this as a longer story.<\/p>\n