Sunday, June 10, 2007

Highways and Bibles

After a really uneventful Drive through Kansas to get here, I entered Missouri last night at about 6 pm, and drove to the Camelot Inn in Higgensburg Missouri. Which, I’m not sure yet, may just be the asshole of the west-central portion of Missouri.

I drove all day, and when I was tired, I pulled off onto a random highway exit and went into the Camelot Inn. About 10 miles previous, I saw a spectacular billboard, light up so bright it almost eclipsed the adjacent “PASSIONS: ADULT SUPERSTORE” and “I’m Glad my Mom chose adoption and not abortion” signs.

The billboard for the Camelot Inn promised free wireless internet, a pool, and most importantly for me, a lounge. I thought, “great, after 600 miles of Kansas or whatever the fuck distance it is, I’ll get a room, grab a cold beer in the lounge and drift off to sleep”.

When I arrived, I was really dissapointed. It was this busted, bullshit little motor lodge, in which the front-desk lady was sitting squarely behind bulletproof glass. “The lounge is closed until further notice”, and “Intranets?!”

I managed to pick up a 32-oz can of High Life from the next door gas station and went to my room. Now, I was told by a few people at work that Missouri is kinda mixed. There’s a Midwestern feel there, but its also mixed with a lot of southern influence. Think of the kitchy behind-the-times feeling of portions of the upper Midwest, mixed with the blissful ignorance and shallow kindness of southern baptist community.

I’m not sure if I agree with those descriptions yet, but whatever...

Anyhow, I was sitting in my room, and I noticed a few things that really bothered me right away:

1. someone had left burn marks from a cigarette on the toilet seat…not the lid for the toilet, not the tank lid either, but on the actual seat, the part where you put your butt… So think about it, someone was smoking, needed to set a cigarette down, and chose quite possibly the most disgusting horizontal surface possible. The burn mark was about ½ inch long…suggesting it had been there for a few minutes. What the fuck? If your done with your cig. Butt, why not throw it into the toilet? Or flick it outside? Why set it down such that it lays on the toilet seat and burns a little trench into the cheap plastic? And, did this person pick it back up and finish it off? Fuuuck I don't want to meet that person.

2. There was a bible out on the nightstand. It was left open to a passage…it had obviously been sitting open to this page for quite some time as the book was flat-open, and the spine was cracked. I figured it was the standard “john 3:16” page where you go up to the open bible, glance down at how jesus died for your sins, and you were supposed to think “how thoughtful and clever to leave the bible open to this page”…

When I got up close, I noticed it was not the John 3:16 page, but strangely, Songs of Solomon, Chapter 7:

How beautiful your feet in sandals, O prince’s Daughter, The curves of your thighs are like jewels, the work of the hands of a skilful workman.
Your navel is a rounded goblet; it lacks no blended beverage. Your waist is a heap of wheat set about with lilies.
Your two breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle.
Your Neck is like an ivory tower, your eyes like the pools in heshbon by the gate of bath rabbim.
Your head crowns you like Mount Carmel, and the hair of your head is like purple; a kind is held captive by your tresses.
How fair and how plesant you are, O love, with your delights!
This stature of yours is like a palm tree, and your breasts like its clusters.
I said, “I will go up to the palm tree, I will take hold of its branches” Let now your breasts be like clusters of the vine, the fragrance of your breath like apples…..


Amazing. Why that chapter? I Have never read that before yesterday, and I sat in my room sipping my beer thinking “why this page?” Did two religious people come here to have sex and enticed each other with the bible…accidentally leaving the pages open? Did some lonesome trucker stop and read this passage like an overweight secretary reads a romance novel? Did the cleaning staff leave the bible open like this…of so, why this passage?

No matter how many explanations for leaving the bible open to this page, I can't seem to find a scenario that isn't disturbing.


Despite the completely awkwardness of my hotel room, combined with the tangy smell of feet in humid-southern-summer evening, I managed to sleep fairly well and drove off from the Camelot at 7 am.




Is this your fucking bible?

2 comments:

Karen said...

Ummm ... you had me at "twins of a gazzelle."

asphaltliberty said...

Wow, smutty bible. I never knew the bible could double as a crotch novel.