My Wife the Orangutan

NOTE: THIS IS AN IMAGINARY STORY FROM SOMEWHERE DEEP IN THE IMAGINARY GRANDMA SLUMP UNIVERSE. I DON'T REALLY HAVE AN ORANGUTAN FOR A WIFE. IT'S TOUGH TO GET ORANGUTANS. BUT I HAVE A FRIEND (TRICKY THE DEMON) WHO PUT THE THOUGHT IN MY MIND: "WHAT IF A MAN HAD AN ORANGUTAN FOR A WIFE?"

It was a dream come true. So many times I'd dreamed of having that one true love. Which then always eluded me. You know how dreams are, this becomes that; it's all inexplicable, and forms don't persist, and the normally imaginable is replaced by the utterly fantastic.

That happened one morning, in the last dream of the night, that I was in love with a huge orangutan. She and I were sharing a deep moment of eye contact. I hesitate to share my thoughts at that moment, but thank goodness I woke up or we might have prematurely erased the boundaries of propriety, absent marital vows. Crossing this boundary with an orangutan would be put me in a Huff Post story, destroying my life and opening me to the threats of bullies, and then stories about that.

The thought, though, wouldn't go away. Her size, the muscles, the tenderness of her fur, the depths of the eyes, even the quirkiness of her smeared-on lipstick. It's that desire for mature relations where there's still a hint of innocence that does something to you. It's true for the saint and the sinner, the witchdoctor as well as the man of medicine. They see it everyday and they're not turned on -- nothing they'll confess to, anyway, but flutter those eyes in a motel room, and pucker those tentative, quivering lips, and Katy, bar the door! Cigarette time.

I drove by the zoo -- must've been 800 times, thinking, Is this right? Neighborhood Watch noticed me after 100. I was trailed by cops every time after 300. I ran out of gas around 500 and was beat up by boy scouts. Some time between 798 and 800 -- I guess it was 799 -- I turned in.

I hustled myself to the orangutan exhibit, where our eyes met again and again. Must've been 800 times. The zookeepers noticed me after 100. I was monitored by the other orangutans every time after 300. I was exhausted around 500 and beat up by the aviary. Some time between 798 and 800 -- I guess it was 799 -- we fell in love.

It was only a matter of her downing a case of energy drink, washed down by a single pot of whole bean coffee, and a touch of Tabasco on the tongue, before she broke loose. We fled immediately to an ordained friend, an extremely traditional hidebound guy, outspoken in his opposition to any deviation from societal norms. So strict is he there's no plumbing the depths of it. He readily married us, me in my normal clothes, she nude except for a lampshade on her head as a veil. We said, "I do," and I carefully lifted the shade and beheld my bride.

We were understandably nervous about what would come next. I hesitate to write about something so tender. But we drove by the motel, must've been 800 times. Some kids sneaking in the pool noticed us after 100. A guy looking for handouts stood up every time we went by after 300. I stopped to check a tire around 500 and was beat up by a gang. Some time between 798 and 800 -- I guess it was 799 -- we checked in.

Then it was off to our room, which we went to directly the first time. I will let it fade to black, leaving aside the close to 800 times we consummated the marriage, and the other way stations it took us to get there -- the 100, 300, 500, 798 and 799. We didn't have time for all that, working as we did through the entire King Konga Sutra. Had I known orangutans were so tireless and persistently demanding -- Downtown's an entire city itself -- I might have found someone else, a goldfish or even a woman.

But the deed was done, and the marriage was real.

The story doesn't end there. I'm writing this account on the eve of our 85th anniversary. Yes, it's now the year 2099, and, yes, the zoo still drives by occasionally, looking for her. No one told me orangutans lived so extremely long. Or me, for that matter.

Everything I Know I Learned in Motel Lobbies

You know how I'm always working to expand my knowledge, particularly having to do with the human race. It helps me keep my keen edge in understanding, which translates into bigger bucks in my field, the group dynamics racket. More and more I'm getting the recognition I deserve as the "King of Group Dynamics," which, you might easily guess, isn't automatic. You forever have to prove yourself more insightful than the next idiot.

Recently a sociology professor friend of mine -- himself scratching and clawing his way to the top, and hoping to stay there -- told me, "Everything I know I learned in motel lobbies." Of course I knew better than to take that literally. No doubt you can learn a lot in motel lobbies, but it has to be an exaggeration, right? Or did he mean it? He didn't learn anything somewhere else? I had to test it for myself.

So the other day I took up residence on one of the couches in a motel lobby. Right away I learned a thing or two about motel staff and their suspicions. These couches are sat on about five minutes a week, when some weary traveler is arriving to check in or after they've carried their bags back out. No one sits on them for hours at a time. But there I was, holding a newspaper, peering over and around it.

I was focused on their everyday demeanor. Motel staff, in addition to being suspicious, are passive/aggressive to the max. They checked on me a few times, trying to discern why I was there, all the while calling me "Sir" and going through various superficial bowing and scraping. Maybe I owned the whole chain, like on Undercover Boss. They didn't know. Their bowing and scraping would've been sufficient to afford them plausible deniability if they were accused of being rude to a guest.

Getting past that, I took in some people-watching, as I said, wanting to learn about the human race. One of the biggest reasons I didn't major in sociology myself was I'm no fan of scientific rigor; the dean said my admission paper showed I was too anecdotal. Hence this extraneous anecdote about the dean in an article on motel lobbies.

Editor's note: This is my normal cutoff length for a post, so I'm going long. If you haven't got time to read the whole thing, I advise that you only read the second half. It's more on-topic than the above.

My learnings in the motel lobby:

-- People live forever in the motel. I've been here for hours and there hasn't been one fatality. But the pool's still empty.

-- About 2/3 of the men here are with women not their wives. I have nothing to base this on except my nature is even more suspicious than that of the motel staff. There's no doubt in my mind that adultery's been rampant ever since they got rid of the paper registry book. But can infidelity be that high? Of course it can, if my hunch is right.

-- All types of men are here. Big men, little, long hair, short hair, greasers, regular guys, professional men, amateurs. But all the women are clean-looking and nice, indicating hanky panky, married couples tending to resemble one another.

-- People take full advantage of free continental breakfasts. But they're quite patient when they're waiting for the waffle griddle. At an early hour feeding frenzies just aren't cool. I know around 2 p.m. the same creatures will be red hot with road rage, which might be why the griddles aren't out afternoons.

-- People multitask. I've seen several guys walk by carrying four or five suitcases. Their own, and likely their illicit girlfriend's.

-- The average motel guest seems to plan well. With four suitcases, that's a no-brainer. That said, some marketing genius put in a vending machine for toothpaste at $4 an ounce tube. I haven't seen anyone using it, so I'd say it's losing money. I say sell it for a buck and make it up on volume.

-- I'm really noticing that motel staff over-thank and over-Sir and over-Ma'am the guests. They really are worried about Undercover Boss! Come on, staff, we're not convinced you're such extremely nice people. We know you're punching holes in the wall as soon as we leave. Then charging our card.

-- The Number 1 thing motels are suspicious of is non-guests sneaking in the pool. Probably mostly driven by insurance and liability issues. Then because they'd have to stay working long after their shift if someone drowned. From the inquests I've been part of, they're usually quite lengthy.

-- As an aside, I've learned that if you wear a light blue smock under your shirt, then switch, you can meet guests in the hall as they're departing and ask them to leave the door open for cleaning. Then you can shower and sleep for three or four hours before the actual cleaning folks get here.

-- Some guy just drowned, quite the commotion, a great time for me to sneak out of this room unseen.

And so I proved it true. I didn't know anything before. Like my friend, literally everything I know I learned in motel lobbies.

Motels: Something's Always Wrong

I was out of state a couple days and needed to stay in a couple of motels. Which is always an adventure, since you never know what you're going to get. But one thing you can pretty much count on is there's always going to be something wrong.

The first one wasn't bad. Really, I can't think of anything wrong with it now off the top of my head. I checked in, they had a luggage cart with a tire that was almost flat. And when I checked out the next day the motel staff was using it -- and complaining about the tire -- so I had to carry my luggage back to the car.

In between those two times was my stay, which was comfortable enough. I should say, I guess, that the pillows were extremely out of my comfort zone. Too mushy and flat just to use one, but too bulky to use two, meaning I used only one folded, which also wasn't comfortable. So I guess I do have some complaints. But other than the cart and the pillow, I can't think of much wrong. And it was my own fault for not taking my own pillows, since I've had that problem lots of times.

The next night the second motel had a few more problems, causing me to reflect on how hard it must be to run a motel. The number one problem was that there weren't enough electrical outlets. The room, apart from the bathroom sink area, had one main electrical block that was accessible. And in that they had gang-plugged the coffee pot, the refrigerator, the TV, the cable box, and the lamp. The cable box had a bigger plug, that could only be wedged in crooked. There's was nowhere to plug in my computer.

As to the alarm clock and light by the bed, the outlet in for those was somewhere under the bed, inaccessible unless you moved the bottom springs. That left the outlet over by the bathroom sink, meaning I had to carry the table across the room to have a place to put my computer. Not an ideal set up!

Apparently 40 years ago when they built the basic motel they figured no one would ever need electricity. So that's Challenge Number 1 for the motel operator. Because no one is going to willingly check in there if they know about the problem.

Among the other problems: No luggage cart, a filled-in ex-swimming pool, a weird perfume smell when I got to the room, and the fact that someone from the staff, probably in error, tried to get into my room. I had the deadbolt thing on, but it's still a shock when someone's fidgeting with the door, then opening it! I cried out, "What are you doing!?" and heard a muffled, "Sorry about that." It was still early.

It seems like it'd be hard to run a motel. All those rooms and all those things that can go wrong! It'd be expensive after a while. But it also costs a lot in the long run if you don't keep up. Such as having electrical outlets. Because my obvious resolution to myself is, I'll never stay there again!