Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Greg/Still Alexis: Any Minute Now

There are people, usually families, who spend their vacations every year going to the same place every year. My aunt and uncle were like that and I always thought it was pretty boring. Now I'm the same way, by default. Every year I check in to the same little hotel in Old Orchard Beach and go through something bizarre and other worldly that has become almost routine for me. Although I do get the added bonus of going home to a new place every year.

This year that place is Tulsa, Oklahoma. I toyed with the idea of keeping the readers in suspense by not saying who I was going to become after I read the note, but I scrapped it when I realized that it was mean and might seem silly if I dont become that person.

That said, I'M GOING TO BE A GUY AGAIN!. The previous tenant in this room was one Kurt Chalker of Tulsa. He's 27, single, and works as a manager at an electronics store. Took a tour of the upper Eastern Seaboard and wound up here. And then turned into a Chinese business man looking to invest in Portland. He's over there right now, and he does NOT speak Chinese. Still, worse things could have happened.

Malinda is all set. Her suitcase is full of her old clothes and things and her purse and wallet are all there too. She's super giddy all the time so we do normal vacation stuff to keep her mind off of it.

Of course "normal vacation things" are always going to be tainted by the knowledge that everyone you see at the hotel is going to have their life changed and there is NOTHING you can do about it. I'm sure at least someone else is here to be changed, but its hard to start that conversation. We inn goers need a code word or something.

We spend a lot of time at the beach, tanning these bodies so their real owners will look like they were on vacation. Sometimes we act as wife and wife and hold hands while we walk down the beach, just to see who notices and stares. Nobody really caused any trouble though, but staring at each other in swimsuits all day did kind of work us up a little bit to the point where we would go back to the hotel and fool around, being very very careful to be in our correct rooms in case the change happened that night.

Its weird waiting for it. Its near impossible to get a full and exact count of how many people are in the rooms at once so you never know if it's 13 when youre in yours. So I stay up late at night, waiting for that familiar tingling only to fall asleep and wake up, waiting for the next night.

Until then it's shopping, tanning, and waiting

-Greg

3 comments:

Scott said...

Good luck!

Roxy said...

Hey. I know you have a lot going on, but I had an "Incident" at the inn earlier this summer and liked to share it on this blog.

Trav- I mean Lydia.

Alia said...

Ooh! E-mail me: alia.rob@hotmail.com (Yes, I still keep an eye on this place!)