I was living in a welfare motel.
It was, as these things go, rather large. You could imagine that it had seen finer days, perhaps when it was first built. You could picture it in the 1940s or early 50s as a sparkling, clean, sunlit motor lodge — a place where weary families traveling through Cape Cod might stop for a night or three, children running laps around the building, mothers and fathers shaking beach sand from towels and talking out the next day's vacation agenda. You could imagine it as a place capable of joy.
That time had passed. At some point, things had changed. Maybe the construction of the Mid-Cape Highway had stolen traffic from the road and quieted the heart of the business. Maybe it was a change in ownership, or a shift in the river that gave it a name and transformed the river's bend into a swamp, ripe with cattails and great clouds of hungry mosquitoes. Maybe it was the decision to put a roof over what had once been an open atrium — a choice made to protect against the elements that instead plunged it into darkness.
But now, it was a welfare motel. And more than that, a welfare motel on Cape Cod: a place stereotyped as a beachfront playground for families, a vacation home for the rich, a destination to which travelers could escape their problems and lose themselves in the warmth of the sun, the chill of the Atlantic, and the infinite promise of summer. As with many stereotypes, it held elements of truth — a truth, to be sure, but not the whole truth.
This was the hidden Cape Cod. A place vacationers never saw, nor would want to. A place of poverty and violence. A place where children struggled to grow up, and people went to disappear. Or hide.
That's why I was there. In an attempt to crawl from the twisted wreckage of an epic-romance-gone-bad – the self-immolating consequences of which had left me more than a little unstable and unhealthy – I'd made the logical choice to abandon friends and family and instead isolate myself hundreds of miles away. Alone. Working two jobs for minimum wage, barely making rent. Living in a welfare motel. Which also housed a vile dive bar the motel's owner had named in his own honor. Which, I discovered after I moved there, had been the site of two (2) stabbings during the previous calendar year. (Separate incidents. Not sure if that's better or worse.)
Have you ever seen One Crazy Summer? This was just like that, only swapping out the laughs with a creeping, all-encompassing sense of despair and removing any possibility of a Demi Moore-style romantic interest.
The fact that it was a summer of loveless was probably for the best, as my accommodations would have almost certainly repelled any and all female visitors. Beyond the splendor and glory of the motel itself, my bachelor pad proper was… somewhat lacking. It was, to begin, a single motel room. A motel room like virtually any other cheap roadside motel room you can imagine, with the great exception of the fact that since the atrium had been roofed over… the wall of windows on one side of the room were draped in always-closed curtains, lest they let the gloom of the atrium inside. Which meant, subsequently, that my room was lit in its entirety by a) a small table lamp with a 40-watt bulb; and b) a small, 3×2 window that did open… but did not have a screen. It did, however, offer a wonderful view of a large, overhanging eave and a small, decrepit parking lot in the back.
I also had no fridge. It wasn't something I really thought about when I first moved in, but soon enough the challenges of a life without refrigerated food or beverages – in the middle of summer – became apparent. Fortunately, I was almost completely destitute, and so my lack of refrigeration was somewhat balanced by the fact that I lived almost exclusively off leftover slices from the pizza place where I was being groomed as an oven jockey.
It had a bathroom, but the light did not work. It had yellowing wallpaper, slowly peeling at the edges. It had ridged carpeting — industrial carpeting, the kind you use at storefronts so consumers can wipe their feet before they enter. Beige, or something close to that. 40-watt light did not allow for nuance of color.
There was, needless to say, no air conditioning. So I always left the window open. I was relatively untroubled by mosquitoes, which was a saving grace, but otherwise the room was thick with warm, static air that never moved. The room felt paralyzed by humidity, and hidden far from the world.
Summer passed. I worked. I slept fitfully. I tried to socialize, and largely failed. I called my family once a week, to let them know I had not been stabbed.
One night, in early August, I lay in my terrible welfare motel bed. I was reading. Eventually I tired, and put the book away. I turned off the table lamp, and then turned over, closing my eyes and steeling myself for what dreams might come. Then, in an instant, the world behind my eyes turned white with pain — a shocking, burning pain that filled my skull with piercing light and clarity of purpose. I rocketed out of bed, and – holding one hand against my head – turned on the light with the other.
On my pillow lay a yellowjacket. Its wings were shivering, but it did not attempt to fly away. Apparently, I'd rolled onto it, and it had stung me defensively. In the head. I remember leaning in close to look at it, trying to understand what had attacked me. I remember looking at its stinger, trying to see the venom. I remember struggling to focus, with the dim light and my vision blurring from pain.
I crushed it.
Paranoid, I closed the window, and then studied the rest of the room as closely as I could. I checked the bed carefully, unsure if more yellowjackets lay in wait. Eventually, I fell asleep.
The next morning, I studied my room, trying to determine where and how and what had happened. It didn't take long for me to look over to the window, where I saw – unhappily – two other yellowjackets flying just outside.
I walked over and gently opened the window. Trying not to make noise, for fear of attracting their attention. (My head throbbed, and I lamented (not for the first time) my lack of ice.) I looked left, then right, then down. And finally, I glanced up. And saw, beneath the large eave that hung several feet over the window, one of the largest nests I'd ever laid eyes upon. Dozens of winged insects crawled across it, circled it, cycled in and then out again. Dozens, and dozens, and dozens more.
I don't know how I could have closed the window any faster.
Half an hour later, I was in the motel manager's office. We walked together to the back of the building, and I pointed out to him my small window… and the large nest that had been constructed adjacent to it. He nodded his assent that something had to be done, and walked away. I returned to my room, and a little while later I heard a knock. I opened the door carefully, and it was him. He was holding one of those cans of nest-killing poison; the kind you can use from 20 feet away. He told me to close my window.
So. I closed the window, and then peered out at him as he came around the side and positioned himself. He took careful aim, and then let fire. The fluid streamed through the air, arcing gently, and quickly poured across the nest. Instantly, hordes of outraged yellowjackets streamed out of the nest. Some were caught in the deluge and died; others flew and buzzed and circled with infinite anger and confusion. Then the spray stopped, and he walked away. I left the window and went down to his office. "Keep your window closed for a day or two," he said. "Hopefully they'll find another place to live, and you'll be all set."
Which is how I came to live in a small, unventilated room with my one small window closed. In August. But if this was the price of safety, I was
willing to pay it.
My willingness proved irrelevant, as the following days made apparent that the poison spray had done nothing to dissuade the yellowjackets from living in the hive. It might have been more wet then before, but it was still their home, and they seemed disinclined to leave.
Two days later, I was back in the motel office. Soon enough, the manager accompanied me to my room. He held a long metal pole in his hand — the kind you can attach a brush to, in order to paint something up high. He positioned himself strategically within my room, and then told me to open the window. I did, and he maneuvered the pole outside… and then he struck. With three or four quick thrusts, he pummeled the yellowjacket nest, until a large piece of it – perhaps 75% of the nest – fell off the eave and plummeted to the ground.
In an instant, he pulled the pole back inside and I slammed the window shut. And they swarmed. Hundreds – easily, hundreds – of yellowjackets filled our entire frame of vision. It was a surreal sight, like something out of a movie. The hive mind was one with fury. "I'd, uh… I'd keep that window closed, if I was you" the manager said, as he left the room. Leaving me there, alone, to face this army of angry life.
I remember looking at my watch, realizing I was running late to job #2, and grabbing my keys as I quickly left the building. I remember thinking, "I'm glad that's over, more or less."
I came home late that night. Not sure why; probably another attempt at socialization. It might've even been one of the nights I made one of my first, furtive, failed attempts at social drinking. Grab a 'Gansett? Sure. (moron.)
What I do recall is waking up the next morning. I slept late, and awoke to a room half-lit from the outside. I remember being momentarily confused, as what I'd heard before I opened my eyes didn't jibe with the sunlight I saw. And then my eyes fully opened, and what I saw was so much more than sunlight.
I saw yellowjackets. Hundreds upon hundreds of yellowjackets. Hurtling themselves against my window. Over and over and over again. Hundreds and hundreds of them, blind with vengeance, sacrificing their lives to pierce this wall of glass. My eyes opened wide, in near disbelief, at the sight of so many living creatures united in hatred. They tiny bodies electric with rage, creating sheets of pulsating yellow and black that clawed and stabbed and stung and collided and collided and collided against my window. Against me.
They sounded like rainfall.
(I swear, it sounded exactly like rainfall.)
This continued for days, until eventually it subsided. Not because the yellowjackets died, or went away, but because they started building a new nest. On. My. Window.
Which is how I ended up spending an entire month of August in a small room with no ventilation, and the window shut. Listening to the world outside as it tried to break in. A world brilliant with anger and the promise of pain and punishment.
Hiding.