Hope Lode

I'd been razzing the guys at work because they said I'd never find a girl in the newspaper, and boy did I ever show them. She had a classified ad somewhere. It said:

"SHARE MY BED

HOPE LODGE.

585-288-1951"

I don't know what it was about the ad that attracted me to it. It could have been the fact that she was forward about her intentions, or that she used her real name, or it maybe it was just that I was calling every number in every ad I saw and no one else answered their phones and I was too chicken to leave a voicemail. I had spoken to one other person.

"Hello?"

"Hi. I saw your ad."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah."

"What'd you think of it?"

"Enough to call." Thought I was pretty hot shit for that line.

"You're OK with that I'm pregnant?"

"What?"

"I'm pregnant."

"You are?"

"..."

"You're pregnant?"

"You didn't read the ad."

"No."

"It was three lines long."

I hung up and right after that I dialed Hope Lodge's number and she answered.

"Hello?"

"Hello, I saw your ad."

"Are you interested?"

"..."

"Hello?"

"Yeah, sure I'm interested. Should we--should we meet, or what?"

"What are you in it for?"

"Excuse me?"

"I mean, why are you calling?"

"Well, ideally I'm looking for a relationship--I mean that's where I'm headed eventually--but if you just want to screw around for a while in the interim I'd be OK with that too."

There was a silence on the other end. I thought I had said the wrong thing. I should mention that the guys at work were in the room at this point and they couldn't really believe it. They were all making funny faces, like they wanted to make noises but couldn't. I shouldn't say "like." The truth is they wanted to make noises, but couldn't.

"Tell me about yourself," she said.

It was hard to know how to answer. I told her where I worked and what I looked like (the idiots from work snickered when I said "meaty build," fucking idiots). She didn't say anything. She sounded young, and sure of herself. I sounded old and worn and like a smoker, which I am.

"Well that's it," I said. "How about you."

She sighed. "Well, usually--I don't know. I'm pretty confused, you know? And vulnerable."

At this point I kicked the guys out of the room.

Oh, Hope was a wonder. We talked for a long time, about her mostly. I want to say hours, but the guys stuck around outside the room, pounding on the door the whole time, and I doubt they would have had the patience to stick around for more than 30 minutes tops.

But oh, it was a wonderful conversation. She talked about the troubles she had with her parents, and troubles she had with her friends and the people who lived in her (our) town, how she didn't really fit in, how she thought that they only way to save herself was to find someone who needed to be saved as badly as she did and they (we, by now--did she say we or was it just so lodged in my mind now that I couldn't have shaken it loose if I wanted too?--no matter; it was we by now) would live like heroes, out of our cars maybe, just driving you know just driving any by now the word driving was ringing in my head and I told her I would meet her that night and she gave me her address and I ran outside to get the guys from work because I don't have my license and told them the plan.

They laughed. Sure, they laughed. Fucking whatever.

I was looking for an apartment building, but we rolled up to the address and it looked like a hotel. Especially because it was a big neon sign. Funny, how I saw the sign but didn't read it.

"What is she, some kind of slut?" said Todd.

"Fuck you. No."

"Hey, what did you say her name was?"

Jeff was leaning out the window, craning his neck up at the sign. It said "HOPE LODGE," or it would have had the G not burnt out. My first dumb thought was, this girl is so incredible she has her own sign. Then below "HOPE LODGE" (HOPE LODE), I saw the word "VACANCIES." I shrunk into the seat. Todd and Jeff turned around and laughed so hard at me I thought one or all of us would die. Todd threw a mostly empty Wendy's soda cup at me.

I slunk out of the back seat and towards the hotel's lobby. There was an old man behind the front desk. Could have been me.

"Is Hope here?" I blurted.

"Is that some kind of abstract, rhetorical question?"

"No." I peeked into another room and saw a bunch of women working switchboards, cooing into headset telephones. They were all older than they sounded, their voices squeaky. Also they wore nightgowns. The guy behind the desk saw me gawking and so he tried to close the door with a broom, but it didn't work out so he sighed and walked over and shut it himself. On the way back he grabbed a pamphlet and threw it at me.

"HOPE LODGE!" (the pamphlet read) "All the sexual fantasies you never knew you had! Our switchboard operators are on call 24 HOURS A DAY to just chat! Our real-live girls are here to hold hands ALL NIGHT LONG! Come on by and SHARE OUR BEDS!"

"What is this?" I asked. The guy pointed at the pamphlet.

I read it again. "So is this like a brothel?"

"Open the fucking pamphlet."

There was an inside. "THIS IS NOT A BROTHEL! We have TWO pricing plans. 1) HAVE SEX FOR FREE! Because nothing cheapens the intense, personal connection of the sexual act like monetary exchange. Sex is about a DEEP INTENSE PERSONAL CONNECTION, is it not? And that's what HOPE LODGE is all about--not tawdry sex, but DEEP INTENSE PERSONAL CONNECTIONS! However, under Pricing Plan 1, your girl will not speak to you for the duration and you must leave the room no more than five (5) minutes after orgasm (yours) or sixty (60) seconds after orgasm (hers). 2) STAY UP ALL NIGHT SNUGGLING AND TALKING ABOUT SIGNIFICANT THINGS OR JUST LOOKING SIGNIFICANTLY INTO ONE ANOTHER'S EYES FOR $399.99! No sex or sexual activity. Just that DEEP MEANINGFUL PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP you've been looking for.

"NOTE: Prostitution is illegal and HOPE LODGE does not engage in prostitution. Any customer who tries to pay for sex will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law."

It took me, I'm gonna say 8 minutes to read all that. I decided I'd pay the man my $400--I was here, wasn't I?--and go.

"It says something about the human condition, I guess, that this place is able to make a profit," I said, looking at my shoes as he eyed my check suspiciously. "About what we're really missing out on as a society."

He handed me my key. "Shut up."

I walked out of the lobby. By now I had completely forgotten about the guys. They jumped out of the bushes. "YOU FUCKING LOSER!" they shouted. Jeff threw a tomato at me. An honest to god tomato. Its skin was thick, thankfully, and it just bounced off me onto the pavement. I think they just found the thing on the side of the road or somewhere in the parking lot, remarkably, because there were no farmers' markets or fruit stands around and the tomato itself was dirty and brown and covered in mulch.

I ran past them to my room: 222. I fumbled with the key and opened the door. A girl in another nightgown quickly turned off the TV. "You a 1 or a 2?"

I looked at the pamphlet. "2."

She relaxed. She looked so sincere as she was doing it, which made me a little nervous and made my knees kind of shake. She turned the TV back on. She had been watching CNN when I had walked in; she very quickly changed the channel to the Cartoon Network and put it on mute.

"All I watch anymore is cartoons," she said. "They're the only honest thing on TV." I think she expected me to sit down or something. "And I need them. I feel so old these days, this reminds me I'm young." Her big brown eyes seemed to be growing. She was pulling the strings. I sat down.

She wasn't the one I had talked to on the phone; that was for certain. I moved closer to her, my pants scraping against the comforter. I didn't say anything. I felt very awful about myself.

"Have you ever wondered what Truth is like?"

There was a crash of glass, and a brick skidded across the dirty, compacted carpet. The guys dived through the window. Jeff hit me in the face pretty hard--ostensibly joking-like, but Christ it hurt. "Let's go, shithead," they said, and they grabbed me by my arms and lifted me off the bed and out of the room.

I looked back at my Hope. "I'll never forget you," she said, eyes already turning back to the TV, in spite of herself.

The guys took me to a strip club. I got real drunk and called out the next morning.