It was in 1964 when I last walked through the doors of a YMCA as an overnight guest. That had been in downtown Manhattan as I was heading to Europe for the summer between my junior and senior year of college. I distinctly remember that the room was not much larger than the bed, but it was clean, and the lobby and halls seemed to bubble quietly with normal, or what I perceived as a mid-60s college kid, to be normal people.
Twenty-two years later, in May of 1986, I was coerced into staying again at a Y, this time the Minneapolis YMCA, by a close friend with whom I had spent two summers, 1981 and 1982, doing research at NASA Johnson Space Center, in Texas. We were attending the annual meeting of the American Association of Geographers (AAG), not my first choice for my only professional conference for the year, but Jim was a great friend and a university geographer from Texas A&I Kingsville (now A&M). I was a university ecologist from Nebraska. Jim was a devoted tight wad, who cut corners wherever and whenever possible. He frequently stayed at YMCAs and fleabag motels to save his per diem money provided by his university.
I soon discovered that the YMCAs of the 80s were not the YMCAs of the 60s, especially in the big cities. The clues of serious deterioration were all there, but I chose to ignore them, at least initially. When I called several months in advance to make my reservation, I thought the desk clerk had lost his voice. The silence was audible. After I introduced myself, he yells into the office, thinking he has the receiver covered with his hand,
“Hey Rip, this guy from somewhere in Nebraska is trying to reserve a double room with his buddy from Texas. Do we do that kind of stuff? Yeah, that’s what I said, a double. How the Hell am I supposed to know? He don’t sound like one.” There is a long silence while Rip was apparently going through records, probably to see if any policy existed on making reservations to gays in advance. Back on the phone, Buck says, “We don’t ordinarily make reservations, either you’re here or you ain’t, but we’ll try to reserve you and your buddy a double even though they’re hard to come by. Bye.”
May, 1986, 10th floor, Room 1005:
“What the Hell have you gotten me into,” I blurted to Jim when we reached our $15 double. Having just walked through the chaotic, inert body-choked lobby, we now faced the worst accommodations I had seen anywhere, and that included Mexico and South America. Jim said nothing but carefully deposited an army duffle bag full of popcorn, oranges, and bagels, onto a heavily charred table. The table appeared to have suffered from a previous tenant’s attempt to build a winter warming fire. I sympathized completely; you could see your breath in the room even in May. I couldn’t imagine that they would have had the AC on.
I had seen that same duffle bag before, in 1982, in Houston. Only then, the since-patched corner was dribbling popcorn into an immense Houston cinema. Then it had a hole that only a dedicated mouse or squirrel could drill. Jim and I had entered the movie late with the popcorn and a 6-pak of Diet Pepsi concealed under our coats. I had the Pepsi and Jim had the duffle of popcorn somehow stuffed under his coat. I’m not sure how he managed to hide an entire duffle of popcorn under his army surplus trench coat without looking pregnant, but he did.
The movie that hot Texas afternoon, was the newly released ET, and the theater was completely full except for two empty adjacent seats in the second row, mid-row. Our eyes had not adjusted to the dark, especially against the light of the mega-screen as we indiscreetly maneuvered toward the two seats with our sustenance to keep us alive for 2 hours. The children we sat on were as stunned as we were, and they screamed. The office saw our duffle of snacks and still refunded our money.
Back in our now icebox room, Jim casually dropped onto the solitary metal folding chair. I cautiously lowered myself onto one of the cots and sank into its depths to the point where my feet lifted off the floor and my butt bottomed out. I could see only the upper half of Jim. I started to itch immediately.
“You know why I do this, don’t you?” he said.
“Well, I assume it has something to do with the fact that you’re writing a book about the Third World,” I replied.
“That’s only a part of it. The other side of that coin reveals the simple truth that I am trying to beat the Texas university system of providing a lump sum for lodging and meals.”
Then he launched into telling me about last year’s AAG meeting in downtown Detroit, one I intentionally missed because Detroiters had, at that time, a penchant for wasting each other at an uncomfortable rate, especially in the heart of the city. I, as a biologist, was interested in life, mine most especially. In Detroit, Jim had managed to locate a YMCA very near the convention center for under $10 per night. But he was unable to find a cabby who would take him to the front door, even in broad daylight. The best he could arrange was a moving drop-off, several blocks from his destination.
When Jim and I returned to the Y our first night after an excellent KFC dinner, the lobby was packed. The crowd did not represent what my original impression from 1964 of a good socio-economic cross-section. As Jim and I cautiously snaked our way through the inert bodies, the pervasive smells of regurgitated burgundy and cigarettes added a latent dimension to our greasy dinner. Almost to the elevator, an elderly woman blocked our way to freedom.
“Would you nice-looking young gentlemen help me with my luggage? They don’t seem to have a bellhop in this establishment,” she said. Her “luggage” were of the Safeway label. No Samsonite anywhere visible in the lobby.
“You go on up to the room, I can handle this,” Jim said, as he shoved me through the closing door of the elevator. “This is right up my alley. Third World to a T.” The elevator, under normal circumstances, is an improvement over the staircase when you’re tired and on the 10th floor. There are exceptions. Had the Y made the decision to rip out the shag carpet floor cover to allow for frequent and thorough cleaning, it would have been a wise decision. After the doors sealed me in, my olfactory system hit Red Alert. Simultaneously, my peripheral vision detected a grayish, lump of something propped up against a corner of my tomb. The lump was urinating into a half-pint chocolate milk carton that appeared to already be full of a chocolate-urine combo. I could see that, under the low lighting in the elevator, it could have been misconstrued as a urinal.
One hour back in our room, Jim had not yet returned. My mind envisioned bag lady accomplices dragging Jim’s bullet-riddled body toward the Y dumpster, having fleeced him for his empty wallet. I met him on the staircase coming up with a blanket under his arm.
“She doesn’t have any covers on her cot,” he explained. “Furthermore, I’ve found her fascinating. She is an intelligent, articulate woman down on her luck. Come along and have a chat with her. You’ll see what I mean.” Within seconds after introducing us in her doorway, Jim had evaporated.
Have some ice cream, my good man,” she said, and offered me some cream out of one of the paper grocery bags that filled the tiny room. She had no cones or cups and it was already oozing out onto the floor.
“That’s okay. I’m stuffed with KFC,” I said.
“So, what meeting did you young gentlemen say you were attending?” she asked. After telling her that we had an all-day field trip, she said, “Would you mind if I joined you? I love field trips.”
“Unfortunately, the trips are restricted to the conference attendees,” I quickly countered, not knowing if that was true, but I was fairly certain she wouldn’t have passed for an academic.
Then she asked, and I never saw it coming, “Do you perhaps have a twenty that you might loan me?” Her voice had dropped considerably. “I afraid that I need money for a heart transplant.” I glanced futilely over my shoulder for some invisible support for Jim. Long gone. The hallway was empty. Even Jim, with his alleged Third World mindset and frugal tendency, would have balked. Twenty dollars would buy him one helluva lot of popcorn and maybe even a new Army duffle.
“Do you think I would be staying in this place if I had that kind of money?” I said.
“No, that’s true, you wouldn’t be,” she conceded. “Well how about any loose change? I need to make some long-distance calls to my surgical team in New York.”
The following day, Jim and I transferred to the Minneapolis Marriot, where the meeting was being held and the other Third World geographers were staying.
Originally published Feb, 24, 1987. Potpourri Writers’ Bloc #5. Texas A&I University Literary Magazine, pp. 26-28.