In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

R O B E RT C O L L I N S Making Love at the Budget Host Motel Like water rising in a cistern seeking its own level I wake up sensing trouble in the dark of 3:00 a.m. and hear a woman whimpering beyond the scrim of motel wall. I listen closely for a moment before I figure out it’s the couple in the next room making love. Several times I overhear them rise from wasted passion into a sweaty furor as they start and stop and start again, their wooden bed frame pummeling the flimsy wall between us. He looms over her in darkness, furious, determined that she’ll make it all the way to him this time. She lies out of breath beneath him about to please her husband with a gift she’s never had before to give. Perhaps the strange surroundings— being on the road a thousand miles from home the same way I am— the freshly laundered sheets and scent of Camay soap, and a few too many cocktails over dinner have convinced them that this time will be different. I should stop my ears and turn The 1990s ❚ 197 away from any scene this sacred, but I hold my breath and root for them, wanting her to make it for us all. For a moment far from home, her desperate cries rising to crescendo we three are all united, as she comes as close as anyone can come without actually coming. Then without a sound from him as though it were unmanly to give utterance to pleasure, it’s over for the moment. We lie back down in silence, our separate despairs, our terrible aloneness. Feeling that I’ve failed her too, I fall asleep a second time, wondering what it is that love requires, what word or touch that we withhold, which, if we could freely give it, might bring us all to ecstasy. 198 ❚ The 1990s ...

Share