¡Hijo de puuuta madre!
— The Stretchered
Chicago. The plate was gone but the dream lived on.
Gary felt like it could be my staging ground. My starting point, for a life filled with bigger and better things.
As a kid growing up in Wanatah, I thought Gary was big time. One of mom's flings said Gary had seventy thousand people. I thought, "Wow! Where do they put 'em all?" Turns out, there's plenty of space.
Gary is an industrial city that's been in decline for a long, long time. It used to be a booming steel town. By 2018, it was just getting by, but so was I. Hey, you've gotta start somewhere. I chose to start there, and I felt proud for having made the choice.
I had a couple hundred bucks in my pocket, so I needed it to last until I could find an apartment and a job to pay for it. In the meantime, I needed a place to crash, so I asked the first person who'd talk to me, "What's the ugliest, nastiest, roach motel around here?"
A guy who looked like he hadn't seen better days said, "You lookin' for The Boxtan? It's a couple blocks that way. Just follow the sirens."
He wasn't kidding.
The Boxtan Inn was the color of puked out pumpkin pie, with just enough bricks on one side to let you know it wouldn't fall down. When I got there, the lovely not-orange but not-brown exterior was being enhanced by the swirling red and blue lights of a trio of cop cars and an ambulance.
Lucky for me, I found a place to live and work in one shot, as in, the cleaning lady had just been shot. She was screaming what I assume was a long list of obscenities in Spanish while getting hauled out on a stretcher.
"¡Hijo de puuuta puta! Quit! I QUIT! You fucking malparido cabrón! ¡Chinga tu fucking maaadre! ¡Me cago en tu puta vida! I fucking QUIT!"
The manager was barely even pretending he couldn't hear her as he greeted me.
"Yeah, so, whadaya need."
I said, "I need a room and a job, and I'm guessing you have both."
Too soon?
Apparently not.
Welcome to Gary, Indiana.
The manager started asking if I had any references, but as the screaming in the background got louder, I guess he realized he didn't care.
I said, "I can start today."
"Good'nuff."
"¡Hijo de puta, fucking malparido! ¡Chinga tu madre you fucking coño jodido! ¡Aaaaaaagh!"
I was only at the Boxtan for a few months, the highlight of which was when I spotted some jackass trying to rob one of the rooms.
I said, "Are you KIDDING me?"
I was coming from the parking lot, where I'd been doing my best to hose a previous incident off the side of the building when I saw a guy in a gray hoodie trying to pick the lock on room 219.
It was too late to stop him from getting in, but it's not like he had other options for getting back out. A motel room only has one door, and 219 was right at the top of the stairs.
I tied the end of my hose to the railing and I held the other end while I waited, a few feet away. The moment he came out of the room, I whipped the hose hard and high.
The hose went, "WHAP!!!"
And the man screamed, "FOHWWWWWW!!!!!"
I crotched him.
He doubled over in pain before tumbling down the stairs like a drunk slinky.
"OHHH HO HO UGHH!!!"
Flop, flop. Fump, bump. Crash.
Paper bags he'd grabbed from somebody's room scattered everywhere as he kaplunkunked his way down the stairs. But scattering them was better than letting him steal them, right? I followed him down the stairs and held him at gunpoint, with his own gun, while the manager just stood there, dumbfounded.
I said, "Seriously, man? You're just gonna stand there? Call the cops!"
"Do you know whose room he robbed?"
"Like I care," I said, as I handed the manager the gun. "Just keep him down!"
The manager watched in disbelief as I tied the guy up with the hose.
"Not callin' the cops," he said.
"Don't let anybody fuck with The Box, man! Come on! Call 'em!"
I am not like these people.
What kind of idiot tries to rob a roach motel?
What kind of manager just lets it happen?
I turned my attention to the guy I'd tied up as I went through his wallet.
"I'm new here, but I read an interesting statistic about this place," I said. "I read that one hundred percent of guys named Amir who get tied up at The Boxtan also get shot with their own gun. That true, Amir?"
"Dandy, he robbed a dealer's room," The manager said. "They'll handle it. Nobody's callin' the cops."
"Oh, shit. Well then Amir, I guess you won't be getting shot with your own gun after all. Is that... better?"
A couple hours later, I heard Amir being hauled away on a stretcher, but I'm told it was due to an unrelated incident.
"يلعن أبوك يا بنت الكلب! الله يلعنك يا وسخة! خرا عليك، ابن القحبة، fucking FUCK! آاااااخ زبي بوجعني! Bitch! قحبة! حمار ابن حمار!"
The Boxtan Inn was an interesting place. It had a surprisingly international flair, but regardless of what language was being spoken, some words are universal. I suppose that's true, anywhere in the world.
Also, regarding whatever may have happened to Amir... it was not my fault.
Bro chose his fate.
Editor's Note:
It's best to not translate any of the non-English text here. Our apologies to anyone who does.