Sunset Strip, Hollywood

Each floor is fitted with its own art installation and if you look inside you can see the beginning of The Simpsons on a loop.

You breeze through the lobby and head straight out to the hotel bar.  

C to F list actors float around in the pool while the B list eats on the terrace below the pool.

The A list owns houses in the area and will put up a wayward relative, but the A list usually comes to the hotel only for its fabulous parties.

I stand behind the desk and apologize for the elevators not working properly. I also sneak down to the smoking area on P2 to light a cig of my own.

I’ve never worked in a hotel with anything better than an AAA rating. This hotel has four stars.

The women are powerful and sexy.
That short little Latina cutie comes to mind, what’s her name, oh yea, Salma Hayek; she’s not here today, but there are others.

Of course we always have the brainless floozies on a free ride.
A lot of hookers but only one male stud, this season.

It’s early spring but the sun is blasting away at us up here on the Sunset Strip.

Around the middle of my shift, my name is put in a hat and tossed about with other co-workers’ names; then, our manager picks a name and reads the name and he is purposely not telling us the name and he crumples up the paper and puts it in his pocket and finally says my name.

I’m the page and have to deliver packages that have not been picked up.

~

Most of the rooms are empty; others answer their door rather quickly and give me a dollar and I move on.

I come to one room where some girls are laughing and giggling and the TV is turned up so loud and I think I hear them tell me to come in; so I do.

They’re gorgeous body lies twisted on the bed.
They’re still eating each other out and I try to keep it “business like” and deliver the package.

Brunette tells me there should be three packages for a good time. Her accent is thick and I don’t understand, so I get a little closer and hope to understand.

She tells me again that she needs three packages to have a good time. She says she has two and only needs one more.

I understand all of the sudden. I hand her the Fed Ex, ask for a signature.
I tell her this is the only package she’s getting from me.

The scent of sweat and pussy are all over the room. Their serpen-teen bodies are glistening and writhing a little, still.

Brunette laughs and says she’ll sign for it and while she signs her Blondie friend starts to stroke my pants and I’ve already got a raging hard on.
Hotel creeds fly through my mind and while I’m trying to think of an answer she has my cock out and is jacking me off.
Brunette slaps her hand hitting my cock too and she lets go.
I turn and put my cock back in my pants and leave and remind myself not to get too close to the animals.

I continue on to deliver packages and come back to the front desk to tell my story to the staff.

They tell me it’s no big deal.
One of the bellmen is upstairs fucking somebody he just met.
The maids are fucking each other in the maids’ closets and in the spare rooms and filming it, sometimes, for porn sites.
It’s amazing any of the rooms get cleaned. They get paid more for fucking than they do for cleaning the rooms.

I’m told that I really don’t know the half of it and to just fucking relax and keep my mouth shut and the show will go on.
I tell them OK.
They tell me the show has been going on for 10 years now.

Nothing makes sense but then the phone rings and somebody comes up to the desk.

I stand there and zone out in the restaurant entrance.
Some girls wave at me from the lobby; they’re dressed in hot pants and bikini tops. I realize it’s the girls from upstairs and they make a funny hand motion; my co-worker sees it and laughs. They go out to the pool.

The pool sparkles and bodies splash around. Somebody has an alligator floatie.
There is a topless woman in the shallow end with floaties and really big sunglasses on. Her drink is kind of floating too, in a weird way.
She holds it just under the water and will tell you it keeps her drink cold.

I get off work, go home and masturbate.

Story by Jack Appleford.

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Short story from 101 Dirty Hot Hotel Stories by Jack Appleford.
The full book is available on Kindle or Kindle Application for Smartphones.

She makes me wanna die….*

She takes her time. Easy ~ she has it.
Easy ~ she is.

You can only wait. For her, to be back.
Your heart half stands in the green room.
Behind the velvet drapes, among the moon pollution, under the crumbling ceilings.

To cure you. For that, you call me.
As I touch you, you call her “girlfriend.”

She had to go. To town.
To that corner with no underground.

She needed a ticket. She needed a ride.
Russ took her.
I know Russ. You know him too.

Her absence fragments your words.
All. Our. World.

I cross the corridor.
To walk back. To my trashed dolls.

I sit in the darkest corner of the eternal room.
To not listen.

Then, I hear her car.
Her car, her girls and their ozonated convulsions.

To drag your virility out of its birthday of numbness. For this illusion, you gave her the power you took away from me.

I climb to the window. To look down.
At your teen whore queen.

Her wet head is looking around.
In my country yard, within my lost summers, inside the holy temple of my wax dreams.

She’s trying to park her ism of amusements.
Under my window, beneath the dwelling of my daughterness, down to the fortress of my innocence, along the sharpen alley of my wars.

But, there is already a big black Hummer, under this window.
Can’t you see?!

Your elfin whore’s insignificance cannot fit, in my pink and blue days.
Just let the red lights drive her back. To the dead hole the naive tricks of her cunt come from.

You try to learn the universe.
Can’t even converse in universe…..*

I close the window.
Then, I climb down. To lie and die on these veins of wood.

Their claws will catch me.
Screaming pieces of beaten and broken dolls. They’ll suffocate hopes and scratch rose petals out of my skinned sleep….

~~~

My ears slowly open toward a blurry dawn.
The eyes start burning into the words of this song.
I wonder what kind of creepy weirdo selected it for the early morning radio program.

Cherish the things she knows
Says if I change my stride, then I’ll fly….*

Myrtha’s laces are hanging from the wall in front of my bed.
Another day of rehearsal is calling for breakfast.

As I try to make it out of this silkless night, you come to paint of purple the orange shyness of this skyline’s rising sun.

Last night.
Spring Street station.
The Balthazar Café. The crowded air.

Then, your hand sliding down on her back.
And the sacred dream cracking down in a million leaves.
That was the exhalation of my last breath. The last for you, Scott.

The pictures of the old country house are still on the night table.
I was in search of an end. To these notes of torture.

The telephone rings.
Giselle is waiting for me downstairs, in an already congested sunrise to the Lincoln Center.

I’m trying to hurry. I wonder if my Ray-Bans are still in her car.
Huh, I cannot forget it. The most essential stage accessory.
I run back to the bedroom.

Here, as Myrtha’s silver heart lays her crown of daisies, lilies and vengeance on this bleeding psyche of mine, her Wilis crawl down to my ears to state your end, Scott.

The tomorrow yesterday you made me hate is today.
And, from today ever, the only cure for your grayness will be but the purple loneliness the now clearer lines on your face created for you yesterday.

Story by Liliana Isella.

* Makes Me Wanna Die by Tricky (video directed by Floria Sigismondi)

For the references to Myrtha, Giselle and the Wilis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giselle 

A blonde talking head wearing nothing but a push-up bra and see-through forearm warmers.
She looks straight into the camera.
The doll intonation in her voice unveils a sexiness that never made it out of the college dorms:

 ― “Hi, this is Celesta Edgy and you should stay tune ‘cause I have a lot to say. And, I know you wanna hear it.”

Her attempt to charm gets cut by the TV jingle: fleshy babes, cartoon music and the title-revelation: LA’s Hottest Models Get Wild in Vegas.

Eighteen girls ~ nine tête-à-tête interviews; a “girl on girl” thing is the promise to the audience.
And, Playboy Bunny of the Century is the TV host in charge to keep it, starting with the first question:

 ― “Ok, tell us a little bit about where we are, right now….”

 ― “We are…” ― Celesta’s lungs already need to store a lot of air ― “…in a suite in the Palms Hotel… doing a very serious interview… for RAPE TV.”

 ― “…and…”

 ― “…and they are trying to get the sexiest, dirtiest secrets of mine.”

 ― “…they?!?” ― A nervous laugh comes out of Playboy Bunny. Then, she smiles. Kind of.

― “So, Celesta… what turns you on more? Danger or romance?”

 ― “Romance…?” ― the thin beauty’s squared, tightened, polished smile takes a few seconds of hesitation. Then, it explodes into a short, frantic laugh to the camera ― “…is this a rhetorical question?!?”

Playboy Bunny of the Century laughs back a softly hysterical “No!” and tries to adjust her discomfort on the seat.

― “Are you single Celesta?”

 ― “Yes. I’m very choosy. Dating is a long interview process… that usually doesn’t go anywhere.”

― “Well, we heard you interviewed this guy for a while….” ― Playboy Bunny blinks an eye toward the camera; a moment after, the screen pops up a picture of some one-day-famous rocker. Gold framed Ray-Bans cover half of his face; the other is consumed by a myriad of sins petted and ruffled by his long, thin, blonde hair.

He must be called Shannon da Anon and “there’s a dot dot dot on my soul today”* is the refrain of his major hit.
As from the backstage they put it on as musical background, a flirtatious Playboy Bunny is humming the words to the camera.
On those same notes Celesta stays still, but her composure of feelings is slowly moving to a trembling edge of childhood tears.

― “So, Celesta… one night stands?”

The childhood tears progress into wine-all-night morning nausea.

― “One night stands?!? Me?!? I don’t think I’ve ever had one….”

― “Welcome to the club….” ― Playboy Bunny freezes her veins into seriousness ― “…yeah, I don’t wanna catch some weird disease….”

 Celesta seems suddenly inspired:

 ― “You’d probably be hangover and wake up the next day and feel like… I don’t know. I just don’t understand those girls who can get that wasted and don’t know what they are doing….”

 ― “Yeah… me either. They make it bad for all of us.”

 They both take a moment of silence. To mourn the decaying morality of the wasted girls, maybe.
Playboy Bunny of the Century eventually breaks it:

 ― “Now, ‘cigarettes.’ Sexy cool or nasty ashy?”

 ― “Disgusting gross…. Stinky, disgusting gross.”

Playboy Bunny looks down to the right.

 ― “Yeah…. I made an exception, but….”

 ― “We all did, but….”

 ― “…but you don’t want to get cancer, right?!?”

 A suddenly uninvited hint of disappointment paints away some of the ether in Celesta’s eyes:

 ― “…these days you don’t even need to smoke cigarettes to get cancer, though….”

 ― “Yeah, you don’t. Isn’t it… scandalous?!?”

Other seconds of cluelessness on both sides.
But now, Playboy Bunny of the Century is seriously done. No more shades of sadness will obscure her own bright moment. A clear willingness to cheer up the RAPE TV spectators comes through a rejuvenated tone:

 ― “Ok. Let me ask you, Celesta… where are you from?!?”

The fragile model relieves a deep breath and ecstatically turns her words to the moon, already molested enough by the Vegas night restless lights:

 ― “I come from… probably the smallest town in Northern California. In California, actually.”

Soon her brand new comfort reveals the astonishing number of its inhabitants:

 ― “Eighty. Probably seventy-nine, now.”

 And, right on her native village, Celesta looses the grip on her hands that, just like Pontius Pilate’s betrayed Jesus, betray her.
She forgets why, so far, she has kept them elegantly still, right between her garter-belted crossed legs and a French bustier.

Under her fair, delicate fingers, a painful secret had found its warm shelter: the panties they made her wear for the interview are no panties.
Between her porcelain skin and the dusty velvet of that couch, she has been left with nothing.
Nothing but a pink, black scar.

Story by Liliana Isella.

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*Dot on my soul by Monster in the Machine.

Painting by Shannon Crawford

“Do you wanna fuck all day? Yes?!? Do you wanna fuck all day?”

“…Yeah….” – It’s a whispered surrender to him, Shannon, to his enigmatically voluptuous art, his tempting eyes and his dog smile.

The abortion clinic is right on the canals.
I’m waiting with Kaylan. Her grandfather owns the clinic.

We’re looking at the melancholic water out of the window.
I ask how this growth could happen. I’d already had my regular bleeding, after Shannon.
She calls it “the trick of the first week.”

I look at the grave sky of Venice, at the fading clouds of my evanescent obsession.
And I miss to death the bright light of that afternoon there, on the Hollywood Hills.

Shannon tells me his life was laying in a dark studio in Downtown, but he exited the obscurity of his alcohol dependence and, naturally, new colors painted it – “…and you’re one of them… you’re such a real and rare beauty….”

The sun, enlightening the two of us in the reflection of the market windows at the Grove. He puts his Rayban side to side to mine, and we smile to the camera. Together we look killer, indeed.

Our last kiss in my car, between the blinding trees of that Primerose Avenue whose name makes fun of our decaying passion.

Shannon walks away his fresh promise of introducing me to his daughter. But I stare at him still, to catch the last glimpse of his joker smile.

~ 

“… I’ve just died in your arms tonight….” *
I wake up and the song is still playing.

Over the phone, Kaylan and I were hysterically laughing at her new profession.
Her grandfather owns two clinics: one for births and one for abortions. The first was full, so now she picks up phone calls in the second one.
– “…you see what happens when you wait too much to look for a job in LA?!”

I stand up from the semidarkness of my nap. I feel dizzy. My right hand checks my belly. Thank God, it’s still flat.

Flat and hollow like the consuming desperation of an abandoned lover. Five days – Shannon is lost. I know he won’t call. I read it on the sweet surface of his violet smile.

Exhausted I walk to the bathroom, to wash away the dead leafs of that horrible mid-summer afternoon nightmare.

Through the garden lighted mirror, the shade of an overblown love looks back at me. My arms are the spectral reminiscence of my strength and my tummy is the crumbling shelter of the wasted, withered rose Shannon left behind. Black tears try to gather the petals falling from that murdered hope.

His illusory compliments, his insidious smile, his fake promises and his vicious lies are stuck down here. Not by shaping me into a mother, they’ll change this painful impression of myself as a woman.

I’ll kiss them to acceptance, waiting for the next two weeks to reveal their destiny.
Hopefully, it won’t be any of its “first week tricks.”

Story by Liliana Isella.

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*(I Just) Died In Your Arms by Cutting Crew