Mr Pleasant

Mr. Pleasant – The Kinks

‘It is not blood sir! I am telling you, madam, it is not blood!’ the short Indian guy is gesticulating appropriately as he tries to convince us that the stains we just discovered in the bed sheets of his Pleasantville motel room are not of human or animal origin, but rather an unfortunate yet most sanitary side effect of the extensive cleaning process he subjects these same sheets to every single day. Although we haven’t made any mention of blood up to this point, it was admittedly the first thing that crossed our minds when we pulled back the sheets. Of course, I was still recovering from the dozens and dozens of tiny hairs (‘Hey, look, someone shaved a small animal in this bed’, my sweetheart Scot suggested) that first grabbed our attention when we opened the covers.

The outer rims of Pleasantville, New Jersey make for the perfect place to spend a night when you’ve been chewed up and spat out whole by nearby Atlantic City. Atlantic City is the gamble capitol of the East Coast; think Leaving Las Vegas, only without the glamour. Our motel is the kind of place that will embrace you when you have lost everything you hold dear in one fateful game of craps. It’s the ultimate rock to crawl under when you cannot and will not go home, if only because you gambled away the car keys in an attempt to win back your kids’ college funds. Our motel is the place where you wash up after you have gone down the drain. What’s worse: it’s probably the place you think you deserve to be in for being such a royal flush. The hair and blood on the sheets serve merely as reminders of your miserable human condition. I guess the Indian guy who owns the place doesn’t get many complaints.

We, on the other hand, are rich and happy, and healthy, and – however adventurous we think we are on our weekend road trip to Maryland in search of crabs (not craps) – we still appreciate a basic level of sanitation, even at a 40 bucks a night motel. I mean, it boasts having free HBO; we just sort of assumed grown-up TV comes after clean sheets. Of course, when we pull up the car we don’t know that this motel is the type of place that laughs in the face of hygiene. We don’t find out when we walk into the room either, largely because the main light switch doesn’t work. Sure, there is a certain musky whiff of fish wrapped wet newspaper in the air, but we naively attribute it to New Jersey in general – it always smells funny in Jersey.
We only realize something really isn’t quite right when Scot feels along the walls for any bedside light switch and notes that they feel strangely sandy to the touch, leaving a curiously sticky residue on his fingers. The bathroom light works. Its smudged glow finally allows us to size up the room. We are standing in what appears to be the remnants of a heavily flooded and then abandoned pet project by the love child of a suicidal electrician and a home decorator from hell. Everywhere we look, blackened sockets appear to have been ripped out of the walls in a fit of rage, umbilical cords of unprotected wires connecting them to a moist system hidden behind layers and layers of peeling, flaking wall paper bulging from water damage.



The walls actually give way to the touch – there must be at least three inches worth of wall paper slapped up against the boundaries of this room. Neither the refrigerator nor the microwave balancing on top of it, are plugged in; the plugs sway aimlessly over the grubby carpet in a sluggish hunt for the crab lice undoubtedly living it up in the fiber. Someone left food in the fridge, in a dewy plastic bag. Scot, ever the scientist, actually begins to pick up and poke at the bag for closer examination before the muted smell leaking out of it sincerely advises him to leave it be. The air conditioning looks like it blew up the last time anyone tried to hook it up. It probably blew up the person who dared to touch it, too. Whatever is left of that person is probably scattered beyond identification across the room, we reason – it would explain for the indefinable pattern on the ceiling. The TV works. Sort of. Lots of static. No HBO.

In the grand scheme of health hazard things the not-blood stains and the hair should probably be the least of our worries, but we decide it’s a good starting point to request another room. I am sent out to get us relocated.

‘Hello!’ the Indian guy at the check-in office cheers as he sees me. He doesn’t bother to wipe the soggy crumbs of whatever he was eating off his sweater. He smiles a wide grin, exposing his soggy-crumbed teeth. ‘The sir and madam decided you wanted a remote control for ten dollars after all?’ No, I explain, we would like a different room. The guy looks positively baffled. ‘What do you mean?’ he cries, his hands already halfway to heaven.
I tell him about the stains and the hairs in the sheets. ‘No no no, our rooms are very, very clean,’ the guy assures me. I point out that we have actually been in the room, and it is most definitely not clean. ‘You are most definitely mistaken. Our rooms are always clean,’ the guy insists. I tell him about the water damage and the pulled out sockets and the general stickiness. His smile fades into a look of disappointment and affront.
- ‘I cannot believe you. You are a most strange person. I wish to see this,’ he snubs my summary, and storms out to inspect the room, where Scot is trying to stay away as far as possible from all four walls and the ceiling, rendering him fairly vulnerable and faintly reminiscent of a magnet in a magnetic field, simultaneously pushing towards and pulling away from an unstable center.

‘Look!’ we tell him. We point out the hairs.
- ‘What are you talking about? I do not see anything.’
- ‘Right there! On the sheets!’
- ‘I do not see anything wrong,’ the guy insists.
- ‘Seriously, just look!’ we point out the holes in the walls, and the bulging mess of sticky wallpaper. At this point the little man is starting to get a bit agitated. ‘What are you trying to tell me? That my rooms are not clean? My rooms are very clean!’ That’s when we show him the stains. The guy responds as if stung by a bee. As he hits us with his this-laundry-only-looks-dirty-because-it-is-so-clean defense he is bouncing with indignation. By now he is gesticulating so laboriously that we fear he might propel himself into the dark night – or off to the ceiling for a closer inspection of the stains we haven’t pointed out yet. But no. When he sees we are not impressed with his story he redirects his flailing arms towards Scot and steers him to one side of the bed. ‘Alright, I will give you another room. But only this once. Now help me remake this bed.’

Scot stares at me, then back at him. Is he serious? ‘Please, take the sheet in your left hand and pull it straight into that corner, please,’ the guy says as he neatly tucks in the stained, hair ridden sheet on his side of the bed. We are both too confounded to do anything but comply. ‘No no no, not sloppy like that!’ the guy instructs Scot. ‘Be more careful. Pull the sheet up to precisely… That is better… Now do the same with the covers… Now fold it back exactly two inches. Are you watching this?’ he suddenly turns to me. He can rest assured I am glued to the scene. ‘Ha ha, you watch very carefully young madam, so you can make the bed for your husband when you get home,’ the guy chuckles as he attacks the dusty bedspread with vigor. ‘It is very important to make a good bed. Now,’ he turns back to Scot, ‘What are you doing? Help me get this straight! Pull there! Tuck in that corner! And pick up that pillow!’

Five minutes and one flawlessly remade – and still as outright dirty as we found it – bed later we trot to our second room of the night. Quick inspection learns that it is in slightly less decomposed state than the first. The sheets are clean. It’ll do. What about the promised HBO? we ask the guy as he is about to leave the room. ‘Yes, of course we have HBO! It is on channel 3!’ Our host is obviously fed up with our ridiculous requirements. I turn on the TV; it jumps to channel 47. ‘Push down to 3! Slower! Slower!’ the guy says impatiently. When I get there, two minutes after infinity, the TV channel jumps from 4 to 2. ‘See?’ I can’t help myself. ‘No HBO.’ Grudgingly, the guy pulls out a remote control. ‘You, hold the ON button on the TV. And switch the button behind you, on the wall. Now!’ As I hold and switch, he pushes 0-3 on the remote and holds it down, and, as if out of nowhere, a new station appears that could be anything – it could even be HBO. The second we switch channels, some ten minutes later, we never find it again.

For now, the guy is certain we must be content. ‘Now, have a good night.’
- ‘Wait!’ we call after him. ‘There was food in the fridge of the other room, you might want to…’
- ‘Of course. You are most allowed to bring it to your new room,’ he says and turns on his heels, undefeated. The house always wins.