At least it’s not the Parc Lincoln.
I just did a photo shoot of my fabulous apartment. I went for the
mountains of detritus in the closets, the fingerprint mounds on the
doors, and the footprint stains on the floors. I did not reach the
Parc Lincoln for a couple of months after this day in 1990, but for years
after escaping that shit hole I could never set up anywhere without
thinking “At least it’s not the Parc Lincoln.” I remember thinking those
words when I checked in to a Los Angeles Marriott for a patently bogus
corporate boondoggle. And I thought those words in late 2005, when
circumstances forced me to check in to a Motel 6 in Norfolk, Virginia,
and contemplate not only the bonus that this was not the Parc Lincoln
but the fantasy I maintain that some doors are magic doors, and opening
these magic doors sometimes requires a magic key, but passage through
these doors transports one not just from the physical hardships of their
lives but the spiritual anomalies too. I fantasized about that as I
pressed the key into the slot at the Motel 6, and I was sour to see that
the room behind the door was just another motel room, all-white walls,
itchy sheets, cushioned chairs no human could stand to sit in… But at
least it wasn’t the Parc Lincoln.
It took years for me to get over the sensation of the Parc Lincoln roaches
crawling into my mouth as I tried to sleep, and of the sounds of clucking
pigeons on the needfully-opened window sill, and of the hot, hot summer
nights.
This place is more than fine. I have been here 12 years, and this place
is all kinds of good things. No bed bugs, no roaches, no sounds of the
transient neighbors’ beds creaking through the night. I do not mean to
compare this abode to the Parc Lincoln, except to remind myself that it
is not the Parc Lincoln, and on that basis this place is paradise.
