The air conditioner in the motel room was cranked up to deliver a subarctic blast. I lay next to Rebecca beneath the thin blankets. It was a little chilly to be completely comfortable, but it felt kind of refreshing. The last time we were outside, about six hours ago, the humid evening air still hung heavy from the day’s heat so this had been a nice change of pace.

The TV was on, tuned to Cartoon Network or something like it. I had just woken up and was barely conscious, but could make out enough of the dialogue for a later google search to tell me that the show was “Tokyo Ghoul.”

Rebecca was asleep at the time and would not have chosen to watch this. She likes cartoons, but isn’t a big fan of anime. To be honest, neither am I. I watched my fair share of “Speed Racer” reruns in my youth, but even as a kid I thought they were pretty stupid. Most anime I’ve seen since is just as dumb. It just happens to be more pretentious. However, a tentacle-porn element can vastly improve it.

“Speed Racer” could  have used some of that hentai goodness. Though for a change of pace, I’d like to have Trixie be the one to grow the tentacles and start going to town. Not on Speed though. That insufferable goody two shoes has been in the limelight for far too long. Trixie could spare one tentacle for him, just to coil around his neck and snap it like a twig. She could then turn her affections on a more deserving target, the hard-working but overlooked mechanic Sparky. She would be gentle at first before really showing him what’s what. Spritle and Chim Chim watch this for a while until their own lust overcomes them and they embark on an interspecies bucking 69.

Yeah, that’s the shit.

Now where was I? Ah yes, I was half awake at the Palms Motel in Portland with the air conditioner blasting and the TV on with its volume a bit louder than I would have liked. And now I needed to pee, which wasn’t surprising considering the beer consumption earlier. I got out of bed and went from a chilly bedroom to the equally chilly bathroom. When I got back, I planned to turn the TV off and go back to sleep. I’d leave the air conditioner going as I enjoyed both the cold and the sound it made.

I fumbled in the dark trying to find the power button of the TV. I then heard a knock on a door. I wasn’t sure if the knock was on our door or another room. Maybe the television was too loud. Even if that were the case, I was not about to open the door at that hour. This was a motel. Outside the room was the outside world with a very un-Portland neon palm tree in the parking lot and Intersate Blvd. beyond it. Who knows whay could be lurking out there?

As if rational concerns weren’t reason enough not to answer the door, I also had a nasty dream from a few nights before. In this dream, I was living in this one-room shithole not unlike the $300/month hovel I rented in Santa Barbara in from 1986 to 1988. I walked past these two guys standing by a vehicle parked outside my door. Shortly after going inside, I heard someone knock and I answered the door. It was the two men. One asked me if I heard about the recent robberies. I said I did. Well, he said, we’re the ones doing them and they forced their way in.

I managed to shake myself awake before any harm came to dream Dave. This is a valuable skill I’ve picked up after many years of nightmares, but it doesn’t work worth a damn in the real world.

I couldn’t find the power button on the television. I crawled back into bed, tapped on Rebecca’s shoulder, and asked if she could do it for me. She was the one who had turned the TV on and knew how to work the remote (I am often useless with such things despite being techie scum). Without saying anything, she went to turn off the TV and got back into bed.

Now the only sound was the air conditioner. Until there was another knock, that is. Like the one earlier, I couldn’t be sure if it was our door or someone else’s. Maybe the air conditioner was too loud as well. This seemed less likely than the television noise being a problem, bit with thin walls it was possible. This I did know how to turn so this I did and returned to bed in a perfectly quiet room.

Staring up the ceiling, I felt like I was in a submarine running silent. Granted, the comparison didn’t hold up to any scrutiny. Eliminating sound from the room did not make my location uncertain. Still, the “I’m being quiet, go away” part of it was spot on.

My thoughts turned to what an ugly place the world can be. The previous day, I learned that an online friend of mine had died. I did not know her that well, but I liked her fine. Cancer killed her. She was 48, which is too young to die. That same day, the shit storm in Charlottesville turned deadly. A woman there was killed by a cancer of the human variety. She was 32, which is way too fucking young to die.

I heard voices in the next room over. It was two women. They sounded both young and drunk. I couldn’t make out exactly what they were saying, but it sounded like a topic that had nothing to do with noise coming from our room. I started to drift off to sleep, content at that at least for the moment, the outside world was no concern of mine.