But he must

Had a nice lady staying here a couple weeks ago. Good-humored, gracefully aged Latin American woman. When you work at a hotel, especially an old one that used to be a crack den, all kinds of problems are going to arise. You get guests that roll with the punches and smile and you get guests that are total bitching bastards, and you love and hate them in direct proportion to their flexibility. Something had gone wrong with this lady's reservation, either with the travel agency she used or on our end. She had some people coming to join her a few days later that we hadn't known about, so we had to blah blah blah who cares, point is, she was a good sport, and we sweetly charmed each other across the generation gap for a day and night.

Fast forward to the morning of the third day, 7:30 or so, truly the gloaming, the loopy time for me, and her guests have arrived: Two gawky teenage boys with shaggy brown hair, obviously her sons, and a handsome, wry, yet bumbling man with gray hair and glasses. His English wasn't great, but it wasn't that bad either.

"This trip it is very important. This my first wife," he said, almost proudly. How refreshing, to see divorced parent remain on good terms for the sake of their children, I thought.

"But now we try again!" he said, hopeful but nervous. Its important to remember that the first wife in question is standing right next to him, along with his children, and that this conversation is in no way private.

"So do you think you will finally get some sleep?" The woman asked kindly. The question of sleep is always a rueful one between me and my favorite guests.

I shrug, gesture lightly with my hands. C'est la vie, I am saying.

"Well, hopefully with us,"the man says, not at all discretely glancing between me, a hotel receptionist whom he's never met, and his wife. and he probably would have winked at his boys if they hadn't been standing behind him, "hopefully," he says, "there will be very little sleeping, eh?!?"

In the service industry, besides starting an anonymous blog, there's very little you can do when a customer says or does something totally embarrassing. Your only option is to just sort of let the remark or action hang in the air, and let the discomfort speak for itself. It spoke volumes.

Regrettable comment of the week

Man, speaking with one of The Concierge(s)* across the lobby. Evidently the Concierge(s), who doesn't speak English very well, is telling the man about jazz clubs in the neighborhood.
"Iridium? I-ridium, You-Ridium, Everybody-Ridium!"
Hey!

Phone Calls are Full of Possibility

"Hotel Idiotica"
"Hello, is this 846-5554?"
"Oh, no, sorry, this is 846-5555"
"Oh, that's alright. I'm pregnant. I'm always doing the stupidest things. And my fingers are fat"
"Hey, I mean, it's no big deal. Just a wrong--"
"Do you know anybody who's pregnant?"
"Excuse me?"
"Are any of your friends pregnant?"
"Um, well, no, they're pretty much all too young,"
"I'm 28. This is my first pregnancy"
"Oh, well...congratulations"
"So you don't know anyone who's pregnant?"
"Um...well, an old friend of mine from middle school is pregnant with her second"
"Really?!? Wow, how far along is she?"
"Uh, I dunno...could I put you on hold for a second, miss?"
"Sure."

But when I picked up again she was gone. If this was a prank call, please, whoever you are, come forward and claim your prize, because you did a really good job. Otherwise, well, I'll let you know if she calls again.

Five Drunk People Walk Into a Hotel

Five drunk people walk into the hotel.
---A cute, sunny, busty beanbag of a girl in her early twenties, wearing a tight, sheer, black shirt
---A thin gay guy with short, wavy blonde hair or similar age
---A slightly shrewish but enthusiastic older woman with glasses, probably about fifty
---An unmemorable girl with dark brown hair
---A pretty, taller, well-put-together black girl with beautiful, medium-toned skin and sleek black hair

It's about three in the morning. They've met back at the hotel from two separate locations, although its unclear who came back with whom. They are all very drunk, but loopy and exuberant drunk, not belligerent or slurry drunk. I'm not sure whose mother the woman is, but it seems like she's matched them shot for shot and that she's having a good time, not acting like a mom or anything.

As soon as they walk in, the pretty one saunters right behind the desk and drapes herself over me. I am pleased but, honestly, not really in the mood. Not bitter or anything, or even tired really, just nonplussed, I would say.
"What's your naaaaame?" she asks.
I turn my neck and give her a look that I want to be slight bemusement.. "{The Concierge} ," I say evenly.
She gives a drawn out whoop. "Hooo, I'm gonna come back for you later. We're gonna have fun tonight, Mr. {Concierge}." But she says this genially, not sexually, as if we might be going to the county fair sometime this week.

Meanwhile, the other four are swapping stories of their evenings, which I can't really follow, and I still can't figure out who was out with whom (to be fair, I am a little distracted). Gradually, for some reason, I don't really know why, I tune out everyone until I'm just listening to the girl in sheer black, who is like this big, fat, rosy-cheeked, beatnik strawberry.

"She broke mah bra," she is whining, her head lolling a bit. "Some bitch at tha club broke mah bra! She bit it like this, and it broke!" She had chomped down on her imaginary bra-strap and shook her head back and forth like a dog. "She thought I was a lezbian," she mewls, her lower lip hanging down in a mock frown.

"And now ever'body can see mah tigg ol' bitties," she says, sounding like a very saccharine old prospector, pretending to be ashamed, secretly enjoying the attention.

I had indeed noticed her busoms; her shirt is as sheer as it was black, and it is very, very black. Her breasts are pendulous, and they are, well, tigg.

"I'm sorry about your bitties," I murmur, so only she could hear me.
"Did you hear him?" she cackles, but no one else is paying attention.

Gradually, the herd decides to go to sleep. The male heads for the door. "Where you going? someone asks. "Honey, I got a boy's house to sleep over," he responds as he pushes open the door.

Eventually the ladies shuffle off to their rooms. The last in line is the attractive African-American girl. As she's passing by, she abruptly turns to me and says, in a disembodied, prophetic tone, "I ran, {Concierge}. I ran from the man."
Then she turns as if that were a perfectly normal thing to say and clicks off to bed.

Subtext in context

Beginning of my shift, young guy standing over me with his girlfriend. He looks pretty tired. "You look pretty tired," I say gently.

The guy shakes his head. "I tell you what, brother, I am tired,"is approximately what he said.

"Hey, me too, brother, but I'm here all night, so if I can make it, so can you," I say with wry resignation, slowly pumping my fist.

"Aright, man, well I'm up for it if you are,"he says, smiling a little doggedly. He and his girlfriend then go up to their room.

It's always fascinating to me to think about how two seemingly similar things can be pretty different depending on the circumstances. For instance, both he and I made pledges to stay up all night.
But while I was promising to stare blankly at a computer screen for 9 hours without crying, he was vowing to ceaselessly make love to a beautiful woman until the sun rose once more.

The same...but different.

~~~~~~~~~~

Also, I had to open bottles of wine for two different Romeos last night. I used the really cheap corkscrew that we keep at the desk, the one that looks kind of like a crackpipe. Both times, turning my back to them because I"m embarrassed to display brute strength, I popped the corks, spilled a little on myself, and handed the bottle back over. Then I sort of cocked my head, and said, "Good luck,"

And with both of them, I think there was something in the look I gave them that said, "You know I mean good luck in pleasuring your girlfriend, right?"

Unknown man, not, as far as I could tell, Campbell Robertson of the Times, nor anyone from the Post, or the News or the Observer to my knowledge, on the rise of Clay Aiken, who's from my hometown and actually my old job at the YMCA, and is currently starring in Spamalot:

"It's a true rags-to-riches story"

Funniest shit I heard all day

Young and wholesome-sounding woman calls me up to make a reservation.

Woman: "Hi, I'd like to make a reservation for the weekend of April 11th"
Me: "Ok, Miss, what kind of room are you looking for, one bed or two beds?"
Woman: "Two beds, please"
Me: "Oh, Miss, I'm sorry, but we're out of rooms with two beds for that weekend

Woman, flummoxed: "Oh. Poop."

Fashion Week

It's Fashion Week in New York this week, and the place where they set up the tents where the people walk around and stuff, Bryant Park, is only a few blocks from the Hotel. So I was hoping that there'd be a lot of really beautiful models staying at the hotel who might fall in love with me. because if there's anything models appreciate, it's a good value. But we must not be publicizing our discount enough or something, because, sadly, there are no models staying at the hotel this week. (Update: One model came into the hotel today, but she was ugly. She was stupid, though).

There are a number of journalists, however, which is almost as good. Most of them are really nice. There's one guy, he covers fashion for The Pittsburgh Gazette, I believe, who has been staying here for years. Really smooth, snappy dresser, but also really nice and easy-going.

Sometimes, though, especially when they've been flying for the better part of a day, people, particularly writers, can feel a little entitled.

Two older women, mid-fifties probably, with bronzed, rough-hewn skin, came into the hotel in the early evening, after we had already given most of our rooms away. As they're heading to the elevator, after we've checked them in, one of them casually asks with slight concern, "It is a good room?"

Now, normally as a front desk attendant, it's understood that you're supposed to be as sunny and promotional as possible. But sometimes, out of apathy or torpor or sheer loopiness, you don't feel the need to answer with anything other than honest nonchalance.

"It's an OK room," said GWNTSLACD with a shrug.

"Just OK??" one of the women frowned with some outrage.

"Yeah, you know, not the best, but clean, a good-sized room."

"We reserved this room three weeks ago!"
(People say something like this all the time when they're not satisfied with their room. #1: I would say that the appropriate time to reserve a hotel room is about three months in advance; in New York, probably four. #2: We really don't care when you reserved the room. I mean, obviously I don't care, but it's really much more important how early in the day a guest arrives)

"Well, I hope you enjoy your room! Good night!"

"But...," sputters the woman, "but we are journalists!"



p.s. About ten minutes later, GWNTSLACD turns to me and says, "I wish I had told them, 'Yes...and we are front desk attendants. Nice to meet you!'"

{Blushing}

Just received a note written to me by a guest, a plump, rosy-cheeked, really sweet French girl who left yesterday. Apparently she asked Joey if I was Jewish when she gave it to him. She didn't remember my name, but I must have been massaging GWNTSLACD's shoulders when last she saw me.

(on the outside of the note) Mr. Massage

I'm leaving NY, so I write you these few words to tell you goodbye. I wish I accepted a date with you cause you are a very nice guy. I didn't accept because I thought you were laughing on me (I don't trust in me enough but I'm working on it). Email me and give me news about you, I rely on you! When I'll be back in NY, I hope we'll do something together if you are still OK. Take care."

Probably a little weird to be publishing that, but you wouldn't be coming here if you weren't a little bit of a voyeur, too, no?

Also, just to balance out the picture so you don't think I'm some flawless, charming Boy Scout, when I give the key to a guy or to a girl that I think is ugly (on the inside), I just sort of drop it in their hand. But when it's a hot girl I'm handing the key to, I sort of lay it in their hand so that my fingers brush against their fingers for a second. Usually, I think their fingers are cold and feel nice!

Creepy, right?

Dasein: Poscards, bizarro edition

With 1 hour left on a 16-hour shift, this came in over the fax:

In small type at the top of the page: "Hallo Ladies and Gentlemann please be so kind and handover the Fax to Cathrin _____ Room 1015. Thanks for your cooperation"

In large, bold type, arching slightly across the page: Happy Birthday
Smaller, immediately below: Date 06.02.2008
In large, hollow letters across the page: Hallo Cathrin the best for you!!
Smaller type, immediately underneath: Viele Gute wunsche fur Dein neues Lebensjahr, wir hoffen das Du einen schonen Tag hast. (Translation: "Many goods wishes fur your new year of life, we you hope have that an already day.")

Then it is signed below, going clockwise: Papa, Patrick, Mama, Hone. To the right, separated by a vertical dotted line. is a paw print with "Amigo" written below it.

The mother just called, presumably to wish Cathrin a Happy Birthday.

Yusuf = Larry Birkhead

I hesitate to pass this along, as at this point we may as well just rename this blog Sexual Hijinks of A Zealous African Man (SHAZAM!), but there have been startling, if by startling you mean utterly predictable, developments in the relationship between Yusuf and the mysterious African-Norwegian woman known only as dioubate2005.

When I first heard of dioubate2005, I assumed she was merely the latest, and certainly not the last, in a long line of pseudo-mistresses (conveniently for both parties, they're separated by an ocean). All I knew about dioubate2005 was that she lives in Norway and she really wanted him to send her some pictures of himself and his family. This didn't seem like a big deal to me because I had previously seen Yusuf keep in close contact on the phone with a number of women he had met in the hotel. But as we pieced together her email address over the past four weeks (Yusuf isn't terribly familiar with the internet, which probably explains his vitality), the tale of dioubate2005 grew much more intriguing.

Dioubate2005 has never stayed at the Hotel Idiotica. She has never met Yusuf. She has never seen a picture of Yusuf. Dioubate2005 is a friend of the wife of one of Yusuf's "20" brothers. Dioubate2005 has fallen in love with Yusuf, based solely on his sister-in-law's descriptions of him. Such is the power of Yu's mojo. Maybe I shouldn't be surprised; I suspect a few of you have fallen for the Brack Panther in spite of my caricaturing him. But let me ask you, have you fallen hard enough to send him checks for several hundred dollars every month?

Yes, apparently dioubate2005 has access to quite a bit of money. From what I can tell, she was a live-in nurse for a very old, very rich man, a widower perhaps, who has since fallen madly in love with her. He's opened the spigot, and the cheese is flowing pretty smooth, but, well, he "canno jugujugu," and so part of the flow is being directed my buddy's way, because, I mean, well Yusuf sounds pretty awesome.

"Have you send her my peeture?" Yusuf would always ask, and then we'd go through the photos on the computer. He'd always say we should just send one or two and then inevitably end up selecting nineteen or twenty, mostly of him lying on his elbow across some flat surface or delivering a jubilant high-kick, or close-ups of his face in some artificial fram, like teacher's bulletin board or a lavender, lacy heart shape. There were several shots of his kids and, sweetly counterproductively, one of his wife. he nixed the ones of him with other girls, GWNTSLACD, a pretty laundry woman named Tina. These finals would never go through, so finally I spent one night that Yusuf wasn't there painstakingly sending the pictures one at a time to dioubate2005.

The next time I saw him, I asked him how she liked the photos. His eyes got really wide, and he exclaimed, "Ohhhh, Sparkleeman! [he's started to call me Sparklyman occasionally. I have no idea why] She love it, Sparklyman, when she see my peeture, she scream [here Yusuf really does scream], 'Yuuuusuf, Ohmigod, you are so handsome, I see the peeture, I almost die!' [He tells me that now they are talking on the phone almost every night. I ask him what they talk about, and he indicates, rather unsubtly, that its more than just the weather.] Pretty soon I send her anudda peeture,"he says, miming a snapshot of his disk.

"You are a whore," says GWNTSLACD flatly.

I ask Yusuf what he likes about dioubate2005. "She's a very nice girl," he says emphatically. "Very nice. Also [this is from my notes], big everywhere, I like the big girls. [He jiggles his mouth and waves his hands rapidly back and forth] Bwwwwww, breasts. [he turns his hands up and jiggles them again] Buttocks, bwwwww. Bottom-big!"

So who does that make me? Bobby Trendy?

Hoop

The Hotel Idiotica was proud to play host a few weeks ago to the Lady Gators of Pine Manor College. A relatively obscure women's college outside Boston (obscure enough that all of my extra-Bostonian friends have never heard of it), PMC prides itself on being the most diverse liberal arts college in the country.

After reading reports of last year's games that spoke of sixty turnovers between the two teams as a source of pride, I didn't have much hope for the Lady Gators. Also, I thought the first two members of their team that I met were in middle school.

Herewith, a scouting report, based solely on my impressions and recollections from the front desk:

---Their uniforms, judging from their warmups, are green. Does anyone remember a successful team with green uniforms, besides the Boston Celtics, who once won 11 championships in 13 years and currently have the best record in the league?

---I first came upon the team as I entered the hotel for an afternoon shift and a few of their players were walking away towards the elevator. They had large asses, big booties. Large asses are good for getting rebounds.

---Their point guard, who looked like her name was Tasha, seemed a little wispy and indecisive, and also she looked younger than my little sister looked when she was twelve. I just can't imagine she's that strong with the ball. On the other hand, she did seem to have a good rapport with the girl I marked as their star player, who just seemed like she knew her way around a defense, when to take it to the hole and when to find holes in the defense for a mid-range game. Its always important for the star to have a good relationship with the girl who gets her the ball.

---One girl with a milky complexion had some type of piercing hanging from her lip, like a wishbone or something, and generally wants it to be known that she doesn't need nothing and she knows where the baggage room is, thank you. It's very likely that she does not possess any basketball skills, but she probably tries really hard to set a lot of picks and gets fired up too often.

Obviously the parts are all there, but you never know how its gonna translate onto the court until the ball is tipped. Well, I'm happy to report that the Lady Gators trounced the Brooklyn College Women (that's the actual name of their team) 68-57.

They got lots of rebounds!

Postcards

Going to try to make this into a regular feature, mostly because it doesn't take any effort.

2 postcards addressed to Austria. They're pictures of the Empire State Building at sunset that say 'Sunset from the Empire State Building Observatory.' So they're pictures of the Empire State Building at sunset from the Empire State Building Observatory, which is a neat trick.

On each of the postcards, which appear to have been written by different people, the authors have drawn little stick figures sitting on the ledges on opposite sides of the building and staring out into the distance. On one of the postcards, a figure seems to be pointing and says "Here is California" The other faces the opposite direction and says "I wu coteola hom" (? German?)

On the other postcard, one of the figures exclaims (the speech bubble has sparkles around it) with a flourish of his arm "Austria ist diese Richtung" while his doppelganger sits on the other side and warns with a measure of caution, "Nein--Austria ist diese Richtung"

So the captions say something like "Austria is a red balloon," "No--Austria is a red balloon"

Is the state religion of Austria dada or something?

Online Translation Super Happy Fun Time Update: Apparently its, "Austria is this direction," "No, Austria is this direction" Ohhhhhhhh.

p.s. One of the cards is signed with two smiley-faces and one of them has glasses. Sprecken se cute!

Like a baby's buttered bottom

Had a little filly in here from West Virginia over the past few weeks. More of a thoroughbred, actually. Full-figured, but not overweight, with a really sweet personality and a beautiful voice not overwhelmed by a pretty thick accent. I guess normally I would have found it obnoxious, but she was really nice and pretty so I liked her.

She came in followed by a kind of creepy, older black man, who had a very round head and a deeply faded, multi-colored jacket. They sort of awkwardly said goodbye and then he left.

She was staying for two weeks, some kind of business thing, so we talked about that a little, flirted, made a little small talk, I said I was glad she was staying for a while and I'd definitely be seeing her a lot.

She pauses before she heads upstairs. "Is that normal?" she asks confusedly.
"What?" I ask.
"Y,know, fer them to meet ya at the train station and then take ya all the way back to the hotel?"
"Do you know that guy?"
"No"
"Then, uh, no, that's not normal"
"Hmm." she shrugs, and skips up off to bed.

~~~~~

Over the next few weeks she comes in and out and we greet each other warmly every time.
She's there when I come in with my new haircut, and I think even she's a little proud of me.
I smile wryly and she smiles broadly every time we see one another, and we've got a nice little rapport

~~~~~

Fast-forward to the night before she's leaving. She's heading out the door, and I don't remember how I found out, but she's about to go to meet the sketchy man who followed her here on the very first night! I casually ask her if she thinks this is a good idea, with an expression that said, 'I'm concerned about you but I think you're an idiot'

"It's alraht!," she protests theatrically, in a manner peculiar to Southern girls. "My freeiend tawlked to 'im, n' turns out he's a playwraht! And she's a New Yorker," implying that her friend would be able to see right through some flimsy scheme.,

"Oh yeah?" I ask curiously, "How long she lived here?"
She scuffs the floor. "Three months," she says begrudgingly.
"And where's she froooom?" I ask teasingly.
"Texas," she admits with a laugh.
"Alright then," I nod.

"So.... you don't think its a good idea?"
II make a face like I'm weighing her decision gravely, but don't respond.

"Awww...yer alwaays lookin out for me. Ev'rbody else's just makin' fun o' mah acceeent"

Now if there's one surprise benefit I've gotten from this job, it's the authoritative ease you get just from standing behind a desk. This quality is completely lacking in every other aspect of my life, but somehow, when I'm behind that desk, I turn into a smooth motherfucker. Unfortunately, when this quality deserts me, it does so spectacularly, and before I know it I've run off the cliff without noticing and now I'm blinking twice and looking down into a canyon. This was one of those times.

"But I love your accent," I say with genuine sympathy. Uh-oh. What to follow up with?
How about, "It's like honey in my ears"

Saturday Night Fever

I got a haircut last week. This was a pretty momentous in all circles of my life (one of my friends said the reaction was "like you just came home from the war"), and things were no different here at the hotel. The powers that be had been dropping hints for weeks--The White Bitch always witching (whoops), The Owner kvetching silently and raising his eyebrows--but I'd just whistle and shake my sexy hair out of my face and randomly stab at my beard with scissors every coupl'a days.
But then one day I had half an hour to kill before a lunch date with some British floozy, and since I only keep my hair like that because I'm afraid of rejection, I took the plunge and chopped it all off.

There was much celebration when I came into the hotel that day. GWNTSLACD's eyes widened and she covered her mouth with her hand. There was a lot of pointing and whispering in foreign languages from the maid staff. The Boss Lady's eyes got wet, and she said, "I'm so proud of you!"
It was all a bit much.

Since, I've gotten my haircut, two people have independently told me that I looked like Harry Potter. I used to get that all the time the last time I had short hair, to the point that I was pretty fixated on having a Halloween costume of "Harry Potter, if he let himself go" (Most of my Halloween costumes follow the formula "_________, if he let himself go"

The other person that people used to tell me I resembled back when I had short hair was Tobey Maguire. So it shouldn't have come as much of a surprise when Yusuf walked through the door that evening, took one look at me, and proclaimed, "Spidaman!"

This is now pretty much the only thing he calls me. I'm honestly not sure if he remembers my name. It took me about ten seconds before I came up with a matching nickname for him. In keeping with his sworn duty to protect the guests and staff of the hotel, and also because some Japanese lady is fascinated by his skin, Yusuf is now known as The Brack Panther.

I am Spidaman. He is the Brack Panther. Together we are Saturday Night Fever.

Keep reading this post to the end, its really worth it (Update: money line added)

January and February are the slowest months of the year for hotels in New York, and the Hotel Idiotica is no exception. It's crazy, sometimes we only see one or two posts a night here, and sometimes it is completely empty! We all think the proprietor has no idea what he's doing.

Anyway, much of the downtime that hasn't gone over to breathlessly filing or eagerly entering data--have you ever done clerical work to Bruce Springsteen?--has been spent discussing the sexual habits of a certain Yusuf.

This isn't anything new, of course. Yusuf has been humbly informing me of his carnal proclivities for months now. The difference is, now that I'm working some evenings towards the end of the week (Yusuf comes in at about 7 o'clock), GWNTSLACD is here to balance his accounts.

After a careful vetting of all rumor, hearsay, and innuendo, it's been determined that Yusuf has bedded between four and forty women in the three to ten years he's worked here at the Hotel Idiotica.

Adorably enough, when you ask him directly, Yusuf seems to take the low end. This could just be because he's embarrassed in mixed company, but I actually think I can tell he's being honest here, if typically evasive.

My hot-blooded Spanish colleague's estimate seems to depend in part on her extremely dilated definition of "girlfriend" (I have had three friends come visit me [you should too! it's all you've imagined!] at the hotel during the day; they are all my "girlfriends"), but it rests mostly on the fact that a small plurality of the women who come into the hotel are obviously quite taken by the Big Guinean

I'm not talking about Yu's seductive psychological battering of twenty-somethings ("You want you' key? Only 500 dollars, my baby") or his genially egregious harassment of his coworkers. No, what's surprising, or not surprising if you've been around him as much as I have, seen him dote on the Boss Lady, seen him gather clothing and blankets and all kinds of random shit for dozens of family and friends in Africa, and, yes, seen him hurt and weary, what's surprising is just how quiet and tender he can be with the single, lonesome women just on either side of forty.

A lot of the time, these are transplanted Africans themselves, usually living somewhere in Europe like Holland or Belgium. Yusuf nearly always has their phone number within about four hours. Lately he's been trying to email pictures to a woman living in Norway, which we're finding a little difficult since he doesn't understand what goes into an email address (send suggestions to www.diaboute2005.com)

So I'm sure you're all asking, do they jugujugu or not? Jugujugu is Mandingo (Yusuf's first language, and, according to him, also the world's) for "boinga boinga" or "choo-choo, here comes the meat train, next stop: tuna station" (thanks,Wikipedia!). Pronounced jugujugu, Alexander Kimenyi considers it to be an ideophone of the Kinyarwanda language that indicates "rapid repetitive movement."

Yusuf is always on the lookout for potential jugujugu; I chronicled the first time I heard him use the phrase, but I wrote it like a week later, so I couldn't remember exactly what he said. This is WJCITH's Jayson Blair moment, but let's just move on.

So to get to the point, and the payoff to this is huge, I promise, I thought for a while that Yu was jugujuguing whole bevies for the duration of his tenure here at the Idiotica. He's often mimed for me how the whores of Times Square would come around the desk to give the clerks handjobs back in the hotel's glory days.

But lately I've come to think of him as more faithful. I've realized that even though he's fifty, he's only been married less than a decade, and the legends of his promiscuity seem to disperse at just about the time of his marriage.

But, oh, what legends they were. The Israeli girl. The two young African women who showed up at every day at the hotel for months. And the his delicate chrysanthemum, the pure white, crimson solar glory of his Japanese consort. Yusuf recalls her so fondly. "'Oh you so very strong,'" he says, imitating her high, clear whisper. He strokes his own hand. "'And your skin so soft,'" he breathes.

"Hoooo," he sighs. "I love brack men"

Ol' Lang Signs

So the New Year came and went here at the Hotel Idiotica, somewhat quietly according to Yusuf. That assuages my conscience a bit, because to be honest I was feeling a little bit guilty about skipping out on NYE here at the hotel, theoretically the most critical blogging night of the year. I wasn't scheduled to work that night, but for a second I thought about scrapping my boozin' and whorin' for a night of sober correspondence. And although that second passed quickly, it did lead to some very quiet reflection as to just what the hell kind of a place this web-hotel (bhotel?) was occupying in my life, and how was it relating to the actual, physical hotel that I work in, which really does exist (some readers have vastly overestimated my imagination by assuming I was just making the whole thing up).

My relationship to this hotel, and this bhotel, has deepened and become considerably more complicated over the past few months. In a way that doesn't exactly translate well into a series of vignettes about Who Just Came into the Hotel, batshit crazy as some of those may be. And if you, cherished (seriously) bhotel guests, are to understand what goes on behind and before the front desk of an utterly average Manhattan hotel, these are things you need to know. So, in lieu of resolutions, I want to address some behind-the-scenes developments that are driving the unconscious remodeling of this bhotel, and what these trends hold for our beloved Hotel Idiotica in the new year, which will be glorious.

First, the hours of this job are a tad disruptive to my sleeping habits, sort of like how Genghis Khan was a tad disruptive to the peoples of Central Asia. I'm not sure if I've ever explicitly spelled out when I'm clocked in at this job; I work Saturday and Sunday nights from 10 at night until 8 in the morning, and then around 8 hours a day in the afternoon on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday afternoons, usually until 10 pm. Staying up all night twice in a row, and then trying to adjust back to a normal snoozing schedule for five days before doing it all over again, is, according to mental health professionals, "unsound sleep hygiene."

And, I'll be honest, its starting to make me tweak out a little bit. For the first few months, I thought I had a pretty good grip on it, but slowly and surely--insidiously is really the only word for it--I'm losing that grip. Who can say where the uncertainty and anxiety of growing up end and the ill-effects of sleep deprivation begin? All I can say is that I think I have a better idea of what women go through with PMS, except I'm not just talking about a few days out of the month (menstruating insomniacs have my deepest sympathies).

So there's that. And this apnea (I dunno what apnea is, but I'm gonna assume I have it) isn't doing any favors to my posting regimen. My "writing" style is probably best described as...finicky. I pretty much just stare at the screen and chew gum or something until God himself tells me what to write. Well, God only speaks to receptive vessels. He doesn't talk to oatmeal. So I haven't really been posting. And then, even though I know this isn't supposed to be much more than a whim, I feel some guilt about not posting, to You and to Qwertye, Muse of Blogs. And no one likes to feel guilty, so I end up playing online Boggle (171 wins, 224 losses), and you end up wondering what happened at the hotel this weekend, and we both end up less happy than we could be. This is the seedy underbelly of graveyard shift hotel blogging. It ain't all like they make it out to be in the pictures.

So I'm hoping that by turning this blog/bhotel into my online diary just this once, I'll evict these here lil' demons that have been refusing to leave the Hotel Idiotica for some months now. To that effect, I'm going to be trying to put up shorter, this-shit-just-happened posts at the expense of turning that shit into gothic comedies worthy of O'Connor or Waugh. If He speaks, He speaks, but otherwise I'll be saving longer pieces for Meet The Idiots features or more abstract posts like this one, god forbid. And yes, sweetheart, I know that's all you ever wanted.

Stick with me baby

Going through a bit of blogging fatigue at the moment. You all should be thankful, really. If I didn't have creative demons that I fold before like a cheap suit, then I would be already be at the Times or the Post or something, and this blog wouldn't exist. In fact, now that I think about it, that's what this whole 2008 vanishing act has been about: trying to dampen the buzz around WJCITH a little bit (thanks Two Zoos!), so that the editors of national magazines will quit calling me.

I'll have a LOT more to post about all this later, but for now i just wanted to reassure all of you that we're still in this thing. It ain't over. I'm sitting here at 8:30 on a Sunday morning, my eyes look like bizarro solar eclipses, but I'm still here. The BOV just sort of sitting in the corner near the door, clutching his bag of trash to his chest; he's still in it. We both think that these next two weeks are gonna be the best ever here at the Hotel Idiotica. So keep tuning in!