My Bed’s Underbelly

If there is one place I don’t want to explore it is the underbelly of this motel’s bed. The rest of the décor of the room barely scraps the surface of respectable or acceptable. I don’t even want to begin imagining what grim, dust, and let’s-not-go-there-at-all stuff grows under the mattress.

I’m here in this small town for a university work term. This motel is apparently the only place I can rent for the duration of my stay. The lady at the desk is surprised at my request to rent a room for four months, when, “Heck, we usually get more requests to rent by the hour”. I am not certain how much enthusiasm I am supposed to show at this news, since it is not clear whether she services those pit stop interludes for the trickle of motley travelling salesmen passing through.

This is small mind small town Ontario. There is a one central road going through the town with a few commercial buildings, including the town’s diner, where I eat breakfast and dinner every day. It only takes one walk along that street, a five minute walk, to know the town and it’s history (a statue for war veterans) like the back of my hand.

I’m working at the town’s major employer, an electronics company. I am the only female working in the engineering office: a first for the other engineers. They are polite, but not helpful, and definitely not friendly. I can understand, really I can. I’ve seen it at other places I’ve worked. It’s that sandbox dilemma; if a boy offers a girl his shovel, the other boys tease him so relentlessly. He quickly regrets making the kind gesture, let alone having, for one crazy moment of time, contemplated making friends with the girl.

So, the other engineers just go about business as usual. One or two fellows offer me the use of their shovels, but strictly out of sight and sound of the other guys. Yeah, I accept their kind gestures, but we know, the guys and I, that no one else is suppose to know they did this. So, all the hoped for social invitations: being invited over to meet wives and children, a drop by at the weekly baseball game with the guys, coming over to the Sunday bbq, just do not appear.

Instead, I walk to work from the motel each morning, stopping for breakfast on the way at the diner. They make me up a sandwich for lunch. After work, I do the same routine, but in the reverse order. I always carry a book along, which I read at the diner until they close at seven in the evening. Then I head back to my motel room to read some more.

Eventually, after much humming and hah-ing, the three single engineers invite me over on the weekend to their bachelor pad, for beers and baseball. I can’t believe they actually call the place they live a bachelor pad. After a moment of hesitation (I don’t drink beer and know dit about baseball) I accept their invitation as gracefully as possible. Gracefully, not enthusiastically: I don’t want to give the impression I am too eager. Eager is not good in sandbox social situations.

The next months pass in perpetual tedium. Diner. Work. Motel. Diner. Work. Motel. An occasional beer and baseball date with the guys. I read. Oh, how I read! I escape into works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Joseph Conrad, and Bruce Chatwin. Their spirited adventures create a stark contrast to my mundane solitary existence.

Late Sunday evening, the last Sunday of my long stay, I do something very foolish. Painfully foolish.

When I was younger, I turned off my bedroom lights, take a few running steps, leap over the rest of the room, and land with a boom onto my bed. It was my way of rendering the bogyman, who resided under my bed, unconscious for the night. How the bogyman got under my bed and why he could be made unconscious in such a manner, is another story for another day. Nevertheless, this was a nightly ritual most of my childhood and early teens. Once the bogyman was unconscious, it was easy to lie in the dark, think of good things, and fall pleasantly to sleep.

So, go ahead ten years or more, to my decrepit motel room… It rains the whole day. I’ve spent it indoors reading. It’s late. While getting ready to sleep, I think about the fact that this is my last Sunday in small mind small town Ontario. In a moment of glee, I turn off the light and leap across the room to bounce upon my bed.

Boom. Crash. Gurgle. Gawd! I misjudge the distance to the bed and practically strangulate myself upon the headboard. The pain. The hurt. The humiliation.

Monday morning arrives. I wake up and realise that I have this long diagonal bruise across the one side of my neck. The problem is, it doesn’t look like a bruise, but one helluva hickey. It being summer, I don’t have any turtleneck sweaters. It being summer, I couldn’t wear a turtleneck sweater even if I wanted.

So, I take myself off to work. The regulars in the diner do their regular greeting, see my hickey, and an embarrassing silence spreads. No one mentions the elephant hickey in the porcelain shop. Off, I go to the office. Not the same reaction from my fellow male engineers. No, they not only sight the elephant hickey, they shouted out its existence loud-and-clear, and then they swing about the porcelain shop with sledgehammers. Just for fun.

There was no way I was going to humiliate myself more than I had the night before and make a futile attempt to tell them the truth of the situation. A gal got to have some pride. So, everyone in the office spends the week before my departure making bets on who the Mystery Man is. I tell them nonchalantly, “just the bogyman under my bed”.

This story is dedicated to Birdie at BlogHer, whose wonderful writing lessons helped me to find my storytelling voice.