Rick Moody - Hotels of North America

But what were our needs, exactly? Our needs were to feel that a bed was a place of sanctuary, especially after the many ups and downs in the housing area that we had experienced, up to and including living in our car, and not because our parents were awful to us or because we were recovering from joyless marriages or what have you, but just because a bed is where a sense of shared purpose first takes root, and so we tried to evaluate our needs, in whispered urgencies, while the sales adept awaited us, and then of course he added that the two-inch memory-foam topper, while admittedly a bit pricier, was superior to the one-inch in terms of simulating the memory-foam experience, and so K. said, That’s right, that’s what we need, she said, we need to simulate the memory-foam experience, and so we charged it on our card. A week or ten days later, we had a two-inch memory-foam topper that did not off-gas significantly and that adequately simulated the memory-foam experience. I will say that when my child visited, which she began to do more regularly in those early days of the topper — that little gremlin of the interior spaces, who was happy, at least, that the space of visitation was an improvement over recent living conditions, I love it, I love it! — she immediately referred to the bed in question as the bouncy bed and exercised upon it in ways suggested by this sobriquet, such was the profundity of the two-inch memory-foam topper in terms of its luxury and enveloping qualities. To lay your head on the topper was like laying your head on the breast of your slightly soft librarian friend. It was like sinking into an acceptance of the afterlife.

The child loved the bouncy bed, but K., after sleeping on it for a couple of weeks, turned against it, thinking there was something almost swampy about the two inches of memory foam, which did not off-gas, it’s true, but which were otherwise a little bit too much for her. I can vividly remember the day she called the online mattress-ordering company again and described her experience to a different sales adept, who was probably exactly as good as the other. The two inches, she said, were just an inch or so too much, and even though the all-natural equivalent was a bit too hard on its own, now the bed was a bit too soft. The sales adept gave us the bad news, which was that our topper could no longer be returned, though he would be happy to offer us the one-inch memory-foam topper, which was more reasonably priced, because it was only half the size. (To this point the bed-shopping experience had been in the mid — four figures, or way beyond what was feasible without advanced use of credit card debt.) Accordingly, we purchased the one-inch memory-foam topper and removed the two-inch to K.’s former apartment in Long Island City, Queens, now sublet to her cousin, which she was hanging on to in case it didn’t work out with me, a fact that was understood without necessarily being acknowledged.

In due course, during which we reflected on our bedding experience so far, the one-inch memory-foam topper arrived, and we put it on the all-natural equivalent, and there were a couple of nights where K., like a cosmetic-surgery addict who is certain that this procedure has fixed all the problems, pronounced the one-inch memory-foam topper a profound success and claimed she was sleeping better than she had ever slept, although I could tell when K.’s praise of a certain thing was a ★★★ instead of a ★★★★ based on certain tonal features of her voice. She could say the exact same words— Awesome! Now that’s what I’m talking about! — and yet if you listened carefully to the tone, you would definitely hear in the tone the ★★★ instead of the ★★★★. So some time passed, and maybe we were simply exhausted by the bed problem, but despite the clear ★★★, we both pretended, as one, that the one-inch memory-foam topper was adequate to our bedding needs, because that is the way that cohabitational bliss sometimes works. The child, when she visited, that blob of single-digit girl matter who made me a better person, had no idea that we had gone from a two-inch topper to a one-inch topper, and still referred to the bed as the bouncy bed, and had to be relieved of her mud shoes, on more than one occasion, before getting onto it.

More time passed, and then, as you knew would happen, K. began to complain about the all-natural equivalent with one-inch memory-foam topper and said that it sagged in the middle a little bit, and so I volunteered to sleep on the side that she said sagged a little bit, anything to prevent K. from sending back the all-natural equivalent mattress altogether, because I knew when she did so we would again have to face the off-gassing problem. Her solutions would no doubt include scenarios in which I would, e.g., wait until she was traveling for her job, which at this particular juncture was the job referred to in certain circles as party planner, though this was no permanent gig, and then put the memory-foam mattress in basement storage for a week to allow it to off-gas while she was away. Or she would sleep in the “foyer” (three hundred and fifty square feet, remember) or return to her apartment in Long Island City (where, you will recall, the two-inch memory-foam topper now resided) while the off-gassing took place, whereas I was in favor of intermediate solutions: for example, rotating the all-natural equivalent with one-inch memory-foam topper 180 degrees and seeing if the sag was still present in the same spot, which would suggest that the sag had somehow to do with the bed frame or box spring and not with the mattress itself. This we did. And for some days it seemed as though K. was trying to say that the situation was now a ★★★★ situation again, but I could tell, each day, that the rhetoric of contentment was getting scaled back, however slightly, to a ★★★, and as a result of her ★★★, I myself started to feel a little bit ★★★, though this is not my normal rating, and, as a motivational speaker, I need to be operating from a ★★★★ or even a ★★★★★ position if I’m going to be able to spread the word of self-confidence and positive messaging to the denizens of towns such as Jackson, Tennessee.

It was against the backdrop just described that I booked the room at the Days Inn. ★★★★ (Posted 1/25/2014)

Sleep Inn and Suites Tyler, 5555 South Donnybrook Avenue, Tyler, Texas, March 24–25, 2012

What the hell were those guys doing carrying plants around in their wheelbarrows at 7:00 a.m., and why were they yelling in Spanish? More like the Do Not Sleep Inn! I distinctly heard cámaras, or ocultación, unless that was a hypnopompic distortion brought on by the night before, about which more anon. Why the hell in Tyler, Texas, anyhow? you ask. Well, I’ll tell you why in Tyler, Texas. I had this idea that I might take my motivational-speaking business and give it a bit of sizzle, in order to create notoriety for my brand. And if you want to get real attention these days, you need a little religion, a little institutionalized ethical certainty, and I was thinking that perhaps I could get my foot in the door of that megachurch in Tyler, whose name is __________; the folks there agreed to take a meeting with us, with myself and my girl Friday, because we are attractive and presentable fellow travelers, well spoken, forward-thinking, and it was a pleasant meeting where they actually gave us lattes, which I wouldn’t have thought was a __________ kind of beverage, expecting, as I was, something a little more utilitarian, perhaps in the traditional Styrofoam.

If it’s useful, I can bullet some of the talking points of the meeting with the staff, which involved my describing the outreach and on-point messaging associated with my brand and the way I had in the past been able to bring men, especially men, back to the theological fold, at least where pride in family was concerned. I noted too that I had on many occasions spoken on the subject of the pollution of the spirit (or so I told them), and how the spirit should not be polluted, and how I personally looked askance at, for instance, a latte, although the one I had in hand, I hastened to add, was tasting mighty good, and if a person of my particular credentials should be needed at the megachurch called __________, I would be happy to render services, especially in pastoral settings, in the one-on-one of listening and sharing, in which I felt waves of compassion for the suffering of others. I liked teen groups, I continued, and K., who smiled brightly and wore a used diamond ring we had bought at an antiques store so that we would not appear to be partisans of any kind of alternative lifestyle, would chime in often, repeating the end phrases of my most powerful assertions. If I said positive outreach, K. would also say positive outreach. The fellow we were meeting with was called Peterson, and we had a fine conversation with him, and if he had administered a polygraph test, I would have passed a polygraph test on any subject.