THE LOVE MOTEL (A SHORT STORY)

My side of the story:
The thing about love motels is that they really have nothing to do with love. They could just as easily be called sex motels or lust motels, or sleep motels or hide-and-rest motels.

Recently, I had a bad birthday meal with my parents on a bad summer trip back to Taiwan. The meal culminated in tears and shouting, which led to me storming out of the house with my backpack. I stopped at the first hotel I saw, because it's just way too hot to be storming down the street with air that thick.

The closest hotel was two blocks away, with multi-colored neon lights spelling out "DI BAO", loosely translated as 'emperor's castle' or 'god's treasure' depending on the characters. Either way it was something grand. I needed to pee and I needed AC.

It was August 2nd , my birthday, but I'd been unsuccessful at keeping my big mouth shut and had gotten into a fight with my mother. This summer I had been home for a month, working and staying with my parents in Taipei. I should get a medal, but this is what they call a "quiet accomplishment." It's like taking the perfect dump but having nobody to tell and you can't really take a picture because that's just weird.

Fights never come at a convenient time. They pick the most disruptive times to occur, usually when you need to go to the bathroom or maybe you got really hungry and made a grilled cheese sandwich and was just about to take a bite. My advice is, don't have a screaming match with your mother on a full bladder. And don't throw away newspapers, even if they are not just month-old but years-old. My mother is a hoarder, and has passed the gene on to me. But even I drew the line at year-old newspapers. My father tolerates this madness, shrugging: "she thinks she'll find time to read them later." The newspaper stacks sat next to the television in two-feet-high piles that resembled reception bars on a cell phone. This made our white leather couch look overdressed.

This is also the same reasoning that led to us having the same Christmas tree in the living room for the past decade. I can't even remember when we put it up, but it has never been taken down. It just sits through all the seasons, living each day to the fullest as much as a plastic tree can do. I heard that we once had a real tree, in the beginning, but it was too hard to clean up after, what with all the needly leaves dropping everywhere.

"When did you become so fat? Your shirt is too low!" I had travelled thousands of miles to see them, but my mother always greeted me with a frown. "What happened to your skin? Why is it all red?" Once when I mentioned suicidal thoughts, my mother responded with, "Why don't you think about your degrees?" But tonight, even with our differences, the fight was like a tired play. We've done it too many times. I just wanted to yell and prove a point, which was that she didn't own me, arguably.

"You can rest but we can't allow a single girl to stay overnight." The young man said somewhat apologetically. I looked at the row of rooms behind him, each one with a private garage. A couple could stay overnight for sex purposes, no problem, but not a girl by herself. If I was a prostitute, I would be the worst one in the world. I was wearing an old t-shirt and shorts, my back soaked with sweat. Even my ponytail was sweaty. I paid for a "rest" period, which was 30 bucks for 3 hours, and then a garage door lifted, like in a game show. Except this door led to a room made for sex.

The walls had pink accents, gold trimmings, and more neon light, but the bathroom had no wall. The bedside panel contained a row of sound effect buttons that created ambient noise for different surroundings: office, train station, subway, airport, street, karaoke. This was especially useful if you were committing adultery, which was 80% of the clientele, namely people who cannot mess around at home. If your wife happened to call, she would never notice the difference between canned subway sounds playing in a bedroom and the real subway.

I sat on the Hello Kitty bedspread and emptied out my bag. I had brought a copy of East of Eden and a bunch of papers I was working on, but I hadn't brought any clothes so taking a bath was out of the question. There wasn't much else you could do here that wasn't sex, besides watch porn and use the unwalled bathroom.

I decided to text message my friend Ben. I had put off returning his call because it seemed like he might be asking me out and I didn't know him well enough to know if I wanted to go on a date with him yet. This was tricky, trying to spend more time with someone to see if they are someone you want to spend more time with.

Either way, I made sure Ben knew that just because I was inviting him to a love motel didn't mean that he should expect sex. It wasn't my vanity, it was the conclusion I'd drawn after years of dating men: if he's a guy and you're a girl, he wants sex. In fact, I texted, it would be ideal if he pretended we were not in a love motel. I was terrified of awkwardness but wanted company. I always felt chatty after a fight, ready to vent my side of the story with an audience that agreed.

The Di Bao love motel had an impressive room service menu. You could get anything from duck tongue to stinky tofu. There was even a light that notified you when your food was ready. They bring it to your door and press the notification light. It was brilliant. I looked at the time. The real reason I wanted Ben to come over was that I didn't want to be alone on
my birthday. The realization hit me that I was turning 29 and running away from home. After fighting with my mother, no less. The thought depressed me until I remembered that before I left, I had viciously dunked her toothbrush in the toilet.

Her side of the story:
I tried to raise her right, to be respectful of her elders. She's just too sensitive, ungrateful wench. Tons of clothes with the labels still on them in her closet, never worn, so wasteful. And still she tells us how she doesn't have money to eat. I told her to get Burger King! But she should really watch her weight. Aiya, I can't believe she threw away perfectly good newspapers, I was going to read them on my days off. Or when I retire. Now I will miss out on things that happened. All we ever want is for her to be happy, we plan a nice birthday meal for her and she thinks she has enough money to waste! And you see ,how she just walks off? Well, I don't care where she sleeps tonight. Last time she came back for Chinese New Year, that was a good trip, only four days. She should only come back for four days from now on. I'm going to go brush my teeth, I'm not calling her.