Have you been waiting for hot stories about our trip to Portland? While I did feel like I was in a perpetual state of arousal (shooting Delia always does that to me), the most action I got was from listening to the people fucking in the room next to ours.

At first I was nervous when they arrived while we were dirty-talking during a Delia-as-schoolgirl video and felt like they and the bellboy must have heard everything we were saying. I imagined the words "slut" and "cum" and "stop teasing me and show me what you've got in your panties!" echoing down the hallway.

Half an hour later I realized it was all good and maybe an appreciated dose of inspiration when I heard what sounded like crying on the other side of the wall. Of course, being the weird little voyeur I am, I hopped out of bed and ran to the wall to listen to a chick's rhythmic whimpers and a man moaning quietly. And "oh yeah, yeah"s.

The next day we wound up leaving our rooms at the same time they did. For some reason I'd imagined the woman was going to be an Asian girl in her early twenties -- I pictured her looking like Sierra on Dollhouse and the guy fucking her as a puffy white guy in his early thirties. Of course they didn't look like that at all. They were about five years older than we are, the woman short with dark curly hair and sharp, smart features and the guy tall and dopey with shaggy hair and a bandana.

It's weird how we populate our default images of "couples who enjoy fucking"; I'd never have conjured those two up in my imagination, but seeing them it did make sense. It was also weird riding ten flights down in the elevator with them, never acknowledging how we'd heard each other's intimate moments. I know it wasn't the kinkiest thing they'd done and it wasn't the kinkiest thing we've done, but still . . . it seems pretty kinky the way people check into hotel rooms and fuck in them and hear each other fucking in them just a few feet away, overlapping sex sounds and depositing DNA in all sorts of places that housekeeping might miss. All those boxes of hotel rooms and all the cum dumped in them by strangers. There were visible food stains on our comforter -- it looked like barbecue sauce -- and I can't help thinking about all of the remnants of human fluids from total strangers inhabiting the room. Layers and layers of spunk.

You never hear people acknowledge this weirdness of paying money to sleep and fuck where thousands of other people have fucked and jacked off. I find that very bizarre in a country where people are obsessed with sanitizing everything and showering once or twice or three times a day, but they think going to a nice hotel is like sitting in the lap of luxury instead of a germ and sperm depository. Like the people next door -- before they fucked, one or both of them took a shower. To be clean for fucking and letting total strangers listen in. It's not that I personally think hotels are disgusting cesspools of nastiness -- I realize the bedding and towels in nicer establishments are hypercleansed for our protection and I embrace germs up to a certain point -- I just think the double standards are weird with so many people being OCD about supercleaning everything and protecting themselves from germs that they never talk about hotel rooms as cum dumps.

Do you really think they sanitize the television remotes and all the little things you touch that traveling businessmen sully with semen? And how about all of those decorator pillows (especially in bed and breakfasts) that you yourself have stuffed under your bare ass during or after a fuck? Am I the only one and other people just don't fuck in bed and breakfasts or make sure to say, "no honey, not on the decorator pillow -- it will be hard for them to wash"? Personally I just think, "I wonder how many other people have gotten their fluids on this thing with the brocade upholstery." Other times I just count all the stains that remain, visible to the naked eye, like the semi-washed-out spots of blood on the bedspread at the LAST place we stayed and the crusty spots on the carpet. Or how about the blood on this wooden toilet seat (which DID totally gross me out)?

On top of the illusion of cleanliness, I'm fascinated by the illusions we have of privacy, or maybe the willingness Americans have to accept and embrace a total LACK of privacy not just in hotels but in general. I knew exactly when the people in the room next door woke up -- I could hear him draw up the mechanical shades and give her a wake-up spanking. Why don't we demand thicker walls? I'll never understand that. And security recording camera feeds of the four of us in the elevator together, pretending we didn't know how we used each other's genitals the night before.

I wonder how the couple next door expected us to look and if they were surprised by the reality of us.

*****

Unfortunately our friend Krissy came down with a sore throat last week so we've postponed Delia's shoot with her. It will probably be better on a longer trip anyway. I do not understand how people can travel and shoot and get to appointments on time and tan and get all their nails and hair done AND visit with friends and go out and have fun -- we didn't do anything except walk around Portland and try to find reasonably-priced yet delicious places to eat (we failed most days, except I did love a certain sandwich shop in an office building with a delightfully surly cashier).

I also spent an extended amount of time lurking in the aisles of Rite Aid eavesdropping on a not-at-ALL-surly cashier being extraordinarily kind for at least ten minutes to a mentally-ill homeless woman who had a lot of questions that weren't altogether unreasonable:

Sir? Listen, sir -- you can probably tell I'm missing a lot of teeth and my mouth hurts . . . do you think this food is soft? Because that's a lot of money and I'll just be throwing it away if I can't eat it because it's too hard . . .

The guy seriously fondled the bag she handed to him and tried to explain that he couldn't make that determination because it was entirely subjective. She also had a lot of questions about pickles and cucumbers and tried to engage the man behind the counter in that age-old debate pitting sweet pickles against dill. It was heartwarming. Unfortunately I missed out on seeing someone steal a couple cases of beer the next day -- Delia was the only one who got to enjoy that scene.

Anyway, we had great weather for traveling, bought some new ponytail-holders and shot some good content. We did not go to Powell's or down the street to Mary's or visit any friends or enter any sensory deprivation tanks, though. Maybe next time.

*****

Here's Delia's post with sample images from our little trip.

Labels: Pacific Northwest, SEX, stains, travel, voyeurism, work

posted by Trixie at 4/26/2009 11:19:00 AM -