by Rick Moody
Hyatt Regency Cleveland at the Arcade, 420 Superior Avenue East, Cleveland, Ohio, October 19–20, 2012
I have stayed in Omaha, and I have stayed in St. Louis, and I have stayed in Manchester, and I have stayed in Springfield (it almost doesn’t matter which Springfield), and I have stayed in Sarasota, and I have stayed in Albany, and I have stayed in Providence, and I have stayed in New Brunswick, and I have stayed in Trenton, and I have stayed in Columbus, and I have stayed in Milwaukee, and I have stayed in Davenport, and I have stayed in Worcester, which may be the saddest American city I have ever stayed in, and I have stayed in Stamford, and I have stayed in New Haven, and I have stayed in Albuquerque, and I have stayed in Fort Worth, and I have stayed in Moscow (the one in Idaho), and I have stayed in Tacoma, and I have stayed in Denver, and I have stayed in Edina, and I have stayed in Rutland, and I have stayed in Lewiston, and I have stayed in Elko, Nevada. In each of these municipalities, you could feel these American cities grabbing you by the lapel and trying to remind you that they were not nearly as bad as they manifestly appeared out the window of either the hotel or the rented vehicle. And yet in no case was any American city as woebegone and desperate to change its story as Cleveland.
This particular trip was my third trip to Cleveland in a year, and perhaps it is simply that the people of Cleveland are in need of additional motivation. On this occasion, I was speaking to a church group in Shaker Heights on ideas of fitness. Prior to these three trips, despite being in my sixth decade, I had never been to Cleveland, notwithstanding my admiration for the hard-luck baseball team that hails from this locale. You would think, from its hard-luck veneer, that Cleveland wouldn’t boast a good hotel, excepting, perhaps, some four-hundred-dollar-a-night thing lodged in a distant safe area accessible only by helicopter, which would make it possible for candidates for higher office to avoid the masses of inconveniently underpaid and underworked individuals downtown, but you would be wrong, because in the nineteenth century, Cleveland built this arcade, this marvelous cathedral of indoor space not unlike something you would see in Milano or Köln, and tried to fashion a downtown around it, and this arcade has now been largely gobbled up by a luxury hotel chain.
Few downtowns are as ghostly and despondent as the downtown in Cleveland. Well, there are some other dead downtowns. Detroit, as is well known, is so crowded with the afterimages of failed capitalism that it is impossible to take a step there without the sharp in-breath of astonishment at how shattered destinies can be. It is also where I first met the woman who became my ex-wife. But Cleveland is bad, and that hall of fame, with its neon hagiographies about musicians, is far enough away from where you would ideally want pedestrians to circulate that it can do nothing to help. And so dust accumulates, and disenfranchisement festers, and not even a rat would bother to come by. The arcade that the Hyatt now occupies is no exception to this spree of desuetude, and were it not for the grandiosity of its initial conception, it would be just a footnote in the barely-holding-on narrative that is Cleveland. Indeed, the words that best describe the arcade and most of downtown Cleveland are the words deferred maintenance.
But that does not mean that it’s not worth staying in the Hyatt Regency, which occupies the entire block of the arcade between Superior and Euclid. There’s no way this hotel throws off an abundance of profit; it’s so enormous, and each and every stall of the arcade, on the upper floors, is a room, and there are hundreds and hundreds of them, scarcely occupied, unless maybe there’s a wedding taking place. Hey, wait! That’s exactly right! There was a wedding taking place. Beneath the used-car-dealer-size American flag that hangs in the middle of the arcade, there was a slightly zaftig Midwestern girl showing a lot of back and a lot of cleavage, and a Midwestern guy with a shaved head, and there was a whole host of friends, not-exactly-beautiful girls in blue, circulating past the miserable post office and the shoe repair and the knitting-supply store and the travel agency, each of these enterprises the folly of someone loaded with antidepressants who didn’t really need to make money but just liked to have a shoppe in a location with jaw-dropping woodwork and glass and gilded edges; yes, there was a wedding, and some canned violin through the loudspeakers, and a wedding cake standing at the top of the main staircase, a beautiful marble passage up from the ground floor to the second floor—you could walk forty-five persons across that staircase—and here were K. and I observing from the third-floor terrace, like marriage itself was a lower circle of hell than the one we occupied. We had learned about the wedding not from the groups of worried-looking couples entering the arcade just as we were, but from the stack of photocopies at check-in that indicated there was an event in the arcade and that some of us who had spent good money to come and stay at the Hyatt could instead expect music and unrestrained laughter from 6:30 to 11:30 p.m., and that if we were noise sensitive, they would attempt to accommodate us. So said the photocopied handout from the assistant manager, who had probably labored long and hard over the specific wording.
K. advised me that Cleveland had a thriving dance-music scene, as do all hard-luck Midwestern cities, and although I’m not even sure what that means, a thriving dance-music scene, I think it has something to do with very loud and very repetitive music being played near dawn for people who are on self-administered medication, and my anxiety upon reading the flyer at Reception was that there would be a lot of hallucinating people with purple hair vomiting and shouting about the Apocalypse as they ambled around the arcade, but it was not that kind of wedding. We went first to our room for a quick nap and found that we did have an extremely deluxe view of one of Cleveland’s finest multistory parking facilities; our room was nice, that was the best you could say about it, and Meg, at Reception, was kind to put us here in the corner, facing the garage, far from the elevator and far from the wedding, so that we could sleep deeply on the memory-foam pillows, and the thing about our almost excellent room at the almost excellent Hyatt, with its absence of ice machines and its overreliance, decorating-wise, on tan, was that our room made us want to go wander in the arcade and try to get the attention of the Chinese guy who had the pan-Asian takeout place, who was probably just trying to hold out one more year. We hoped he would make us a spicy broccoli and bean curd something or other, but the arcade was closed off during the hours of the event, which the flyer at Reception did not properly refer to as the wedding between Jenny Gartz of Sandusky, Ohio, and William Blunt of Bloomington, Indiana. She had met the groom at a state school where she was studying social work while he was studying sports management. Since we could not go to the arcade, and since we certainly couldn’t wander around downtown Cleveland, because there is no downtown Cleveland to wander around in, there was nothing to do but watch the wedding.
K. was dead set on trying to hurl a penny from the railing of floor three into the cake, which looked more hatbox and less cake from this distance and which had no figurines on top. There were no persons dressed in NASCAR racing uniforms, there were no vomiting-at-the-altar moments, there were no last-minute speeches about how Jenny really should have married Travis Ritter, the urologist who had given up his true love—comparative literature—in order to procure a more stable income for Jenny during their stormy two years in Columbus, when Jenny really did have a few lesbian experiences, before she met Billy at a sorority-reunion event at a golf-driving range in some forgettable town out in the exurban farmland. There was no self-lacerating speech from Travis (I took my eyes off the ball, ladies and gentlemen, and I know it each and every night, Jenny, each and every night). It was not that kind of a wedding. Beyond the girls in blue, each of whom, we decided, might have bulk-e-mailed malicious gossip about us, given the opportunity, and the great-uncle in the bright orange ski jacket who apparently didn’t get the memo about formal wear, it was just another wedding in a nineteenth-century architectural marvel in a city bleeding red ink during presidential-election season, which didn’t stop K. from turning to me, at the railing of the third terrace, with a tear in her eye. ★
★★ (Posted 9/5/2013)
Windmere Residence, Windmere Lane, Charlottesville, Virginia, December 3–5, 2002
My wife’s great-aunt was a woman of great resources. She was four and a half feet tall and had osteoporosis of the severe kind, but her rapier wit was never in short supply, nor her recall of trivial facts from the lives of extended family members. A slightly raised eyebrow (which one would have just been able to see beneath the enormous spectacles) was a signifier of abrupt turns in her storytelling. I rarely missed a chance to visit with this great-aunt, even if visiting meant agreeing to a family reunion to be held in the Windmere Residence, the aunt’s independent-living address.
It bears mentioning that the wife’s family was already well organized around the opinion that I, Reginald Morse, was insufficiently job-locked. The older feminine members of the clan, all of them given to macramé and tiered desserts, liked to take me aside, banter, and then introduce the surgical lancet: Why aren’t you pursuing more conventional employment? This proved to be the case again at the Windmere. After admiring the recordings of the big-band era played through a public-address system in one of the reception halls and claiming to be unable to hear anything but the highlights of any conversation, and after helping the excellent great-aunt back up to her heavily festooned chambers (she was fatigued and wanted to get to bed early), I let myself be the subject of harassing remarks by one or two relatives whose idea of a good time was televised dancing competitions. Let it be said that my particular talents were not effective in a conventional transnational corporate setting, this is undeniable, and indeed because of my natural desire to innovate, I was not terribly good at serving as an employee. In certain circles, however, these things would have been considered advantages.
Uncle Don wanted to talk with me about ice hockey and he seemed genuinely shocked when I did not know who was playing in my division, and after several times through this particular rondo, I excused myself and went directly back to the guest suite, leaving my wife in the Rosewood Room with her fifty-nine or so relatives, along with their epidemic of obesity and their belief that the fossils of pre-extinction-event cretaceous sauropods were sculpted a mere six thousand years ago. Upon arriving in the guest suite, I laid myself grimly upon a multiply quilted bed, all of its bedclothes synthetic, and, using a new lightning-fast Internet connection in the Windmere, I began to attempt conversation with a certain professional, as shown herewith:
ManilPhil91: hello you wanna go priv
RegRomantic: ?
ManilPhil91: add time by put in credit card mc and visa
RegRomantic: oldfolkshome in VA, wife downstairs talking to second cousins
ManilPhil91: hahahahahahaha you put in numbers
RegRomantic: one sec where are you
ManilPhil91: Manila
RegRomantic: you 18?
ManilPhil91: 21
RegRomantic: parents know?
ManilPhil91: thx for putting in numbers want to party with this boy toy now?
RegRomantic: just had enough bourbon to preserve a dead body for a week
ManilPhil91: have cam?
RegRomantic: you don’t want to see me
ManilPhil91: i am real person you are too real persons should…
RegRomantic: saddlebags of middle-aged flesh
ManilPhil91: what is name?
RegRomantic: Stu
ManilPhil91: hahahahaha that is a funny name Stu what is your job
RegRomantic: what is your name
ManilPhil91: my name Maurice
RegRomantic: real name?
ManilPhil91: do you have cam? turn on cam?
RegRomantic: I am just another guy sweating out droplets of desperation and heartache in the 21st century, there is no reason to look.
ManilPhil91: same guy from yesterday?
RegRomantic: no
ManilPhil91: day before that?
RegRomantic: no
ManilPhil91: i like to see you bc i like to see if u turned on then i am too because one person turns on the other person and this is way of love
RegRomantic: what is the weather like?
ManilPhil91: typhoon come in and sweep everything away bodies wash out and all the trouble
RegRomantic: a poem?
ManilPhil91: do u like when it’s rock hard
RegRomantic: Doesn’t everybody?
ManilPhil91: hahahahaha u r funny what do you want me to wear
RegRomantic: taffeta ball gown and a string of pearls and very dark lipstick, perhaps something like African violet or black honey or midnight orchid, some kind of extremely stylish but sensible heel, not like a stiletto, but something more square, and maybe some kind of perfume, you know, something expensive that has an exotic animal part in it, adrenal gland of mongoose.
ManilPhil91: hahahahaha would definitely wear if i had but is mostly very tight underwears and short pants sexy
RegRomantic: I see.
ManilPhil91: i like men who is going take care and maybe we could meet up in usa and you fly me over we go to expensive clothing store and visit tourist attraction like world trade center excavation
RegRomantic: you want to come to the usa?
ManilPhil91: more opportunities not to get beat up and drag through street
RegRomantic: what do you do with your days?
ManilPhil91: u touching self?
RegRomantic: does not work without tadalafil
ManilPhil91: your time run out eleven more minutes will have to buy more minutes
RegRomantic: money is no object
ManilPhil91: i take class engineering at university in Manila to get degree want to study nuclear engineering very interested in thorium as different way to use nuclear energy almost waste-free not like uranium plutonium half-life decay ninety or one hundred years instead of 24,360 years opportunity with thorium for Philippines energy independent rise up from economic backwardness become powerhouse in 21st century tired of western countries controlling Asia
RegRomantic: so sex work is your day job?
ManilPhil91: like to have sex with men and i get to do it online also talk with men who are sad and help them to feel better in western countries because then they pay for my education that i cannot afford also i go to clubs and listen to dance music and shake moneymaking parts with friends and not think about the western men or my family that has no money
RegRomantic: I find this story very moving.
ManilPhil91: one time a child i admit to friend from advanced physics class that i am attracted to my friend he tells everyone and no one ever talk to me in that class again except to call me karne ng baka so i just decide if no one will pay attention i will go make love to men and do my own homework as student of physics in order that i more brilliant than any other physics student of manila and especially more brilliant than men who like girls
RegRomantic: you have that barely sketched in mustache thing that young Asian men have?
ManilPhil91: thank you sir for buy more minutes i take test for to be in military thinking that i will be effective in study of intelligence because i speak tagalog language and spanish language and some of arab and french and know how to get man hard and to cry with joy during release in English and other languages can get man to give up state secrets if necessary at first they take me in military but then realize that i am karne ng baka but probably only i sleep with recruiter and then he tell others in military that i am karne ng baka even if he is too and now nowhere to go but engineering school or usa or to nightclubs of tourists while still beautiful
RegRomantic: When I was young I wanted to be a stock trader or a radical theologian, or I wanted to be some kind of cult-oriented psychoanalyst. But I never got around to these things. I am interested in neurobiology, and during my brief period with the department of defense, I studied hiring patterns in the military. (I definitely would have hired you.) I consider myself a keen student of human behavior, and so I have read widely in the theory of personality. Just so that you know: I pref
er women.
ManilPhil91: u don’t want this boy toy?
RegRomantic: I assume you are used to men signing on here and picking through the boys as though they are no better than shanks of beef and picking you or your friends based on your thumbnail without any feeling about how you might approach the task and what kind of human values you might bring to the table, but I am not like those other guys. I have genuine feeling about you and your predicament, don’t need anything from you but just the conversation that we are having.
ManilPhil91: i have pride in job try to do a good job make men feel love whether they want mouth or ass or rock hard boy and it better for me if you want…boss watch video and men that do not achieve release make it harder for boy toy to get shifts
RegRomantic: I admire your work ethic. I feel lucky that I have gotten a chance to talk to a man who takes his job so seriously.
ManilPhil91: if you don’t want body then i will talk about oak ridge laboratory and how full courage men who made first bomb were if only use thorium instead plutonium and uranium benefit industry and industrialist but not good for environment and especially not good for Asia and third world—
It went like this only a few more seconds in the earth-toned Windmere before my wife entered, and I engaged in that time-honored maneuver known as the rapid shutdown so that while what is on the computer screen is no longer visible, it does not, at the same time, seem to an observer coming upon the scene as if the closing of the computer is happening in any way but the routine way. There must be a formula or a differential whose purpose it might be to correctly identify the exact velocity that will appear to be a task-completion computer shutdown as opposed to a guilt-related computer shutdown (a complex-sexual-identity shutdown), though this formula or differential will fail to take into account the engagement or nonengagement of the wife in question, who was functionally disengaged from the likes of Reginald Edward Morse. By functionally disengaged it should be assumed that we mean physically disengaged, and by physically disengaged it should be assumed that we mean in a painful, isolating way.