Your First Fun FirstNations Fact!

 That last post got me thinking. I worked as a maid for years, and I worked my way up from the hot-sheet places to The Hilton, and finally into private home situations where all I did all day was listen to the lady of the house reminisce. One nice lady who lived in Golden Gardens used to make me Swedish Krumkakke! THEY PAID ME TO EAT KRUMKAKKE!!

Out of all those different places over all those years, the place where I ran into the most creeps was the one I wrote about when last we met - The RoseVilla in Portland, Oregon. 

-YES yes I know I called it the City Center in my last post. I was wrong. The City Center was on the other side of the river and was all kinds of skanky. The Rose Villa was plush.  It also had the worst customers by far.  And hey, look at you, you lucky thing! Here comes another sleazy tale from the Rose Villa!

One fine day I was going down the line cleaning the poolside suites. Now for those of you who have never been a chambermaid/bellman, your opening 'maid service' gambit goes like this:

1. Knock in a sharp, no-nonsense way. This is best accomplished with the knuckle of your pointer finger, and I have the arthritis to prove it. RAPRAPRAPRAP.

2. Announce 'Maid Service!' in a cheerful yet businesslike tone of voice. Make sure people in other rooms can hear you. Not kidding. 

3. Listen at the door. Don't flatten your face up against it, just bend near. Keep that shit classy.

4. Knock again. RAPRAPRAPRAP.  Say 'Maid Service!' in a cheerful yet businesslike tone of voice again. Make sure people in other rooms can hear you again. Listen at the door again.

5. Count to ten. 

6. If you hear nothing, open the door a smidge and announce 'Maid Service!' in the same cheerful yet businesslike tone of voice that is also loud, and enter s l o w l y.  

7. Cautiously draw your gun make sure nobody is in that room - not in the closets, in the shower, under the sink, in the cabinets; not in the bed, not suspended from the ceiling in a leather harness like Dabney Coleman. NOBODY shouldn't be in that room that didn't say there were going to be in that room, which makes enough sense for now.

8. Leave the exterior door open behind you at all times. This latter was a rule specific to the RoseVilla Hotel*. 

9. Commence cleaning the room. Top to bottom, back to front.

On this particular morning I made it as far as #7.

 The instant I turned the bathroom doorknob I heard someone inside. I said "Excuse me!" and stepped away fast.

 It doesn't pay to be too careful when you are a woman working alone in a room, and our policy at the Rose Villa was very clear: whenever something iffy happened, you immediately went to the office in person to report it.* I was halfway across the lot when I heard a shout behind me. I turned and looked. 

There on the sidewalk outside stood a naked, red-haired man shouting in a squeaky tone of voice and waving something over his head. I could not make out what he was saying, but I could tell that what he was waving overhead was a pair of red swimming trunks. 

Let's revisit that image just so we get it firmly fixed in our imaginations, shall we? He had blazing red hair, was blazing red naked, was out on the sidewalk in front of his room; and was waving his bathing suit over his head.  And shouting. 

I ran into the office like wild dingo doggies were after me. "There's a naked guy on the sidewalk out there," I said to the desk clerk. 

The desk clerk looked out the window. "I don't see anybody."

I explained the whole thing.

"I didn't see him," the desk clerk maintained. 

"Oh!  You caught me you sassy lil' peckerhead!  I just ran into the office on company time to lie to you!" I didn't say. 

Just then the phone rang, and the desk clerk answered it. I could hear a high-pitched voice ranting down the line, while Desk Clerk kept up a steady stream of 'I'm so sorry' and 'Oh my.' 

"That was the man in room 220," he said. "He said you...were in there."  And he said this was an odd little lilt in his voice. 

"I was," I said. "Briefly. I told you -"

"Well he just said...you were in there."  The desk clerk sat there like a watery mole and blinked at me. 

"I was. I just said. I knocked, and -"

"He said you made him an...offer," said the clerk.  "I mean...he's checked in as Reverend Paterson, so I tend to believe, I mean..." and this utter waste of skin had the nerve to give me this little moue of disapproval. "I mean after all, you're a maid."

I was to find out that Reverend Naked not only complained about me 'propositioning' him, he complained about his room not having been done that day (it was, later, by a bellman.) 

He stayed for a week. By the end of that week we were all refusing to do his room.  He ended up being stuffed into a squad car because he'd gotten drunk and disorderly - and handsy - in our lounge. The cops took him down to Burnside** and kicked him out, which was common practice in those palmy days of carefree police harassment.  We never heard from him again - and we still had his luggage.

 Now that I think back I wonder if the owner had been pouring tales into the desk clerks' ear, or if he just hired the guy on the 'water seeks it's own level' plan. As for the Rev?  If it weren't for nuts there wouldn't be a hotel trade.  

There's no decent ending to this one. -well, I left for greener pastures, yeah. That's good. 

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Your Fun FirstNations Fact:  This is the second time in my life that I've been chased by a naked man waving a swimsuit over his head! 

 

       There is no picture of a man waving a swimsuit overhead, so here is a picture of a Guy Fieri swimsuit instead. You are welcome. 

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*Specific to this place because a. Just the year before a maid had nearly been raped in one of the rooms b. The place was in the center of town c. A lot of our customers were part of a test study being done using DMSO as a carrier agent for psychiatric drugs - so yeah, lots of good reasons. 

**Burnside was the scabrous Skid Row of Portland. Now the entirety of Portland is the scabrous Skid Row of Portland. It's a damned shame too. 

Aw Cheer Up Bunky:  Best Kitsch Theme Hotels in California (& the Rest of the US) (vice.com)