Inns and outs

I thought I was finally free.

In the past week and a half, not only did my apartment lease in Tulsa run out, but my place in Lawrence has been rented for the rest of the summer. The financial obligations are gone.

One problem, though: For now, I'm still working at the Tulsa World.

I actually tried commuting from OKC. But 300 miles round trip put a hell of a lot of miles on the car. Going back to school means my Honda needs to last another couple years. And putting 7,000 miles a month on my car isn't helping.

For anyone who's driven up the Turner Turnpike into Tulsa, you notice all these cheap motels. They all offer weekly rates, and one even has three- and four-day rates. Considering I go to OKC every weekend, a four-night stay would actually make sense. I mean, for less than what I was paying for my Midtown apartment, I would get a room with maid service, cable TV and all bills paid.

I got a chance at a test run at this motel, the Interstate Inn, when I was given the wrong shift on a Monday, having to work too early to be able to drive home at 1 a.m., then come back to work an noon.

Several of you have heard this story already: The room was a bit small, maybe a little larger than a cargo van, and a shower/bathroom the size of a broom closet. What was disappointing was I found no movie network while channel surfing.

So after I got off work that night at 1 a.m., I went to my room and turned watched Adult Swim and read my copy of "The Phantom Tollbooth." As it got close to 4 a.m. I needed to turn in. For some reason I flipped through the channels one more time, this time stopping on a station with a topless women jumping up and down.

Maybe there is a movie channel, I thought.

Oh, it was a movie channel. It was "The Erotic Network."

Porn.

Harcore porn.

I didn't even know it was legal to show that kind of stuff in Oklahoma. My reaction was to be a little freaked out and a bit pissed. Freaked out because the Tulsa World had done an article a few weeks earlier about the high number of registered sex offenders living in these motels along this stretch of I-44; it's one of the few places in the city they're allowed to live. Hardcore porn doesn't seem like the best thing to show them.

But why was I pissed? While I spent three hours with cartoons on TV while reading a children's book, I could have been watching porn!

Part of the deal of my mom buying me a new laptop was that I spend my workweek in Tulsa; she doesn't want me on the road that much. So last week I spent three nights again at the Interstate Inn.

I used to think of Tulsa as a very safe city. But there's a record homicide rate this year, and add what I already said about the sex offenders, well the stay in the seedy hotel for a few days had me a little on edge.

My first night there I got in just before 2 a.m. I was pretty tired, so I just had a bite to eat and turned in. At 4 a.m., I got a phone call:

"Hullo?" I said.

"Hey, dude!" the voice on the other end said. "I saw you come in a little while ago. You still up?"

"No."

"Oh. Well, my taxi's letting me down. Can you give me a ride to work?"

You might think, "Oh, George ... you're tough. You were in a gang. You were a jock. You can do a nice thing, and if something does wrong, you can take care of yourself."

Yeah, right. I'm afraid years of working technical support and editing and designing for newspapers, where my shift involves me sitting on my ass for hours on end, means I'm no longer hardcore; my physique is now soft and doughy. I didn't know if he wanted to steal my car, take me away from my room so an accomplice can ransack it, or if he just wanted to make me his bitch.

"Um, I have to get up early in the morning," I said to him. "Sorry."

This might also be the place where you say, "Sure, George: You were 'sleeping.' When you had free porn?"

Well, the sex offending thing keeps the mind racing. Sure, I turned on the porn. But then you can't help but think how many others were in that very room, on that very bed, with those very sheets -- watching porn. Animal Planet helped keep my mind off that.

Really, what got me through it was Fa, a German shower gel kc and I bought at Brits, the English store in Lawrence. The back of the bottle has this claim: "fuhl dich selbstbewusst in deiner Haut und zeige deine Identitat."



I translated this to mean: "Specially engineered to be extra concentrated for additional protection whenever staying in seedy motels."

So what now? There's always Tent City on the other side of the Arkansas River.




LF: $101.82