Hotel Du Catholique

I set out this morning for Middletown after doing a ridiculously thorough house check to make sure I didn’t forget anything. This does not mean that I didn’t forget anything, it just means that I haven’t noticed what I have forgotten yet.

I took the interstate all the way, because I really love to look at roadkill and big green signs with white letters. Actually, I took it because I told my uncle I would be in Middletown, NY, in time for supper. I made it there in awesome time despite stopping a few times to pee and make a sandwich (not simultaneously). While sitting on the grass at the rest stop I realized that I was munching on said sandwich while sitting in the "Pet Area" when The Ugliest Bull Dog I’ve Ever Seen came up and peed not too far away from me. Looking around I noticed trampled presents left by other dogs that I somehow was mercifully spared from sitting or stepping on. Still, it was comfy, given all the fertilizer for the grass, so I finished up and then went to wash my hands, marveling at how adorable the ugly dog was. Walking to the bathroom hut I realized that this was the same rest stop on 81 where I had met my nameless WWII veteran friend weeks earlier. But I didn’t see him as I scanned the parking lot, just a short-haired lady in uniform sweeping the cigarette butts this time.

Leaving the bathroom I saw a large brown greyhound sniffing around some garbage cans. At the end of his leash was a hand belonging to a woman who looked insanely like a greyhound herself - she was incredibly thin, with close-cropped brown hair and brown pants. It reminded me in the scene of the animated version of "101 Dalmatians" when Pongo is picking out mates for himself and Peter and all of the owners and dogs look the same.

I quickly made my way to Middletown and stopped at a Getty station to call my uncle for directions to his church. I think I mentioned this, but my uncle is a retired Catholic priest who lives at a priory, a sort of big church + dormitory + living space + recreation area for retired Carmelite clergy. Vinny is 85 and somewhat handicapped in his old age. He uses a walker and a wheelchair but don’t let them fool you - he still has all of his mental capacities and thensome. Still, calling for directions was a bit of a challenge, because he doesn’t drive and didn’t know where I was in relation. Eventually I found him but it took some doing.

While at the gas station I asked two forlorn-looking guys sitting on the curb if they knew where North Street was. I was supposed to be on it and I sure wasn’t. They looked at me through tired eyes under sweaty brows and said, "No, we’re not from around here."
"Yeah, me neither," was my answer. I decided to pull my laptop from the car and grab a patch of curb next to these guys while I tried to pull up MapQuest. The guys - I use the word guy because they seemed like more than boys but younger than grown men, you know how it is when you describe males in their twenties; they’re "guys", they don’t become "men" ‘til they get married - anyway, the guys looked to be a little older than me, which probably means they look and are younger than me because I usually delude myself into thinking I look like a fresh spring lily when in actuality I am almost 25. I didn’t get their ages, but I did get their names, Mike and Frankie-But-We-Call-Him-Hollywood.

Mike was a balding guy in a bar t-shirt with a mischevious grin, the man-in-charge, it seemed. Frankie was quieter, his big blue eyes staring hauntingly out from under his Adidas visor, which failed to cover his thick locks of brown hair. They were both surprisingly easy to talk to, they laughed at all my jokes, and they were stranded in the town because en route to Cornell their Jeep radiator had broken. The three of us formed our own sort of motley crew, joshing on the selection of items in the Getty ("They’ve got do-rags! No maps of the freakin’ town, but damn do they have do-rags!") and the presence of oddly-placed signs ("Look at that sign, it says ‘Wet Paint’ but it’s on a stainless steel gas pump that isn’t painted...") while we waited out our respective needs. Eventually I got directions to North Street, which was embarrassingly close for all the effort I was putting into finding it on a map, and, after taking down my website and info, the boys started walking down the street to check on the status of their Jeep.

I know they got it fixed because earlier tonight I saw a missed call from an unknown number and the voicemail was Frankie, saying, "Just wanted you to know that we got on the road okay. Come up to Cornell and visit if you get a chance!" Who knows, maybe I’ll make a pit stop for a sandwich there instead of on another doggie toilet.

Finding the church was no problem once I got pointed in the right direction although I had one pissed off uncle to deal with. "Where have you been? Where did you go?" he cackled from his wheelchair sitting in front of the church entrance, chiding me on being a silly little kid. "Get over here and give your uncle a kiss, oh, you’re such a sweetheart!" he gushed as I tried to talk over him so I wouldn’t blush. I made up a story about meeting a nice lady instead of admitting that I got lost even after he had given me directions, because Vinny’s 85-year-old cadence is a bit hard to understand, especially over the phone.

We went in through the chapel and the smell of candles and incense hit me like a wave, churning up memories of childhood Sunday mornings spent in uncomfortable shoes. It was actually quite pleasant, like making a pilgrimage back to 9 years old. I wondered if I would spontaneously combust upon entering, but so far I’m alright.

It’s great here, I have my own bathroom and cable TV. It’s kind of like a hotel that serves every meal for free. And is inhabited entirely by elderly priests and staffed by little old ladies. And has religious symbols hanging ALL OVER the walls. But aside from the obvious things that would make a Catholic-cum-agnostic uncomfortable, I really like it here.

My uncle and I sat in his room awhile. He started talking about marriage and surprised me with his sound advice. "Mind games aren’t viable ways to get someone to like you. Better to be honest until you get to know and love each other, then start the games. But not malicious mind games. Games meant to increase your happiness. Games not meant for you to win, but for the two of you to win. What makes that person happy? Play a mind game based on that."

He also said, "You can’t expect perfection, no matter what happens in stories. Marry somebody who is just a person with faults and realize that you are a person with just as many faults. Too many young people nowadays expect everything to be perfect once they get married." I asked him where he learned all of this (since he’s never married) and he answered, "What, do you think I’ve had my head in a sack for 80 years?" I never knew this, but he used to do marriage counseling within the church.

We went down for recreation time before dinner. At a resort or summer camp, when you hear the word "recreation", you probably think of tennis or swimming or ping pong. But at a priory, recreation means scotch. ‘Nuff said. Before dinner Vinny introduced me to the cook, a sweet Scottish lady named Janet who has fostered 44 foster children. I couldn’t believe it. She works 2 jobs even after reaching retirement age to keep sponsoring and fostering young children. Some she has had for 14 years, until they became legal adults and she still helps them. She works at the priory 7 days a week, 365 days a year, preparing dinner for the men. She told me to have patience when I start fostering and working in foster care. She is a great bowler. She is my hero.

Everyone is ridiculously nice and the grounds here are lush and peaceful. The priests all go to bed at 8, which gives me the run of the place. I was reading under a weeping willow tree earlier, as the sun went down, and three large deer came out of the woods to graze near me. Inchworms made friends by crawling up my arms until they tried to play hide and seek in my hair, and I placed them on the ground. Inchworms are fascinating to watch. They move forward by generating a spasm of motion with their back legs that flows forward through each set of appendages and gives them enough inertia to pick up their front legs. Watching them from above, it reminds me of breakdancers who do the wave motion with their arms and shoulders.

After it was too dark to read outside but too lonely to stay in, I went for a drive into town. I pulled into a public parking that had a bunch of neon at the end, but when I got closer I noticed it was a strip club, so I flipped a quick U and parked on the street. There was no way in hell I would be caught alone in the dark outside a strip club.

I parked a few blocks closer to the center of town and went into the only place that looked open, a bar/restaurant called Old Erie’s. The dining area was shut down and the bar was empty save for one older couple and two yuppie-looking guys at the far end. The Orioles were playing the Red Sox, so I grabbed a stool near a TV and settled in. I brought my book, a gift from Max called "Assasination Vacation", for the commercial breaks. The bartender was young, sweet, and pretty. I ordered a beer and then a hot tea, realizing that my throat hurt a lot. I couldn’t tell if I was getting sick, or if I had strained my vocal cords by singing too loud in the car and then drinking cheap scotch at the priory.

She brought both the beer and the tea, and a while later, when I was the only one left, she came back and said, "That’s a strange combination you have there."
"Yeah, isn’t it?" I said, explaining my theories on how my throat came to hurt. I told her how my uncle dips crackers and veggies into a glass of Stuart’s Scotch instead of onion dip during "recreation" ("scotch time") She told me how she used to go to the priory grounds years ago and wreak havoc, the kind of havoc 12-year-olds wreak, like chasing the geese and picking the flowers. I started laughing because when she brought it up I was picturing her and her friends bumping rails of coke off the gravestones in the cemetery. When I shared that image with her, she bent over laughing and her lovely brown hair fell in her face. I really liked her.

We sat and talked for about an hour. I hung on every word she said, trying to get a better understanding for growing up in the town. Her father and his best friend have been best friends since grade school. Everybody goes to the same three bars. There is a crazy guy named Bush Head who traipses through the streets of Middletown chasing cars. The way she described him, he sounded like the dirty guy from The Beatles’ song, "Come Together". Her name is Erica and she is 20 years old. She hated the cirriculum at her high school so much that she dropped out, taught herself the rest, and got her GED. Now she’s a bartender and a secretary, working to save up enough money to buy an apartment in New York City. Not rent, but buy. God bless the optimistic.

I told her about my sex-site internship and she told me about her motorcycle accident. We had so many things in common, like not really getting along with other girls, and people thinking we’re sluts for having a lot of guy-friends. Also, each of us has one best friend rather than a group of friends, and we like it that way. I stayed until way past closing time. Finally I grabbed my things and said goodbye, promising that if I was still in town over the weekend I would stop by. I doubt that will happen, but if so it would be nice to see her.

I came back from the bar and let myself in. I half-expected to see ghosts of priests and nuns walking around everywhere but the only ghostly thing I saw was the white face of a possum on the patio. I named him Punky.