Stand-Up

The Worst Motel at the Jersey Shore

Back in the summer of 2016, there was one meme that I think really encapsulated the state of the world. At the top it said, “1950: Wow, by 2016 we’ll probably have flying cars, a cure for cancer” and all that sort of stuff. And then at the bottom, it said “2016:” and under it was a picture of a real-life LED highway sign that had the message, “Don’t Pokemon and drive.”

Remember when that was the world’s biggest concern? People playing Pokemon Go during their daily commutes during those first weeks it came out? I was a rising senior in high school and my friends got me all into it… which is to say a little too into it.

See, they were into the actual Pokemon mythology. When you think of sneaky high schoolers you probably think of them stealing alcohol from their parents’ cabinet, taking the vodka out and replacing it with water… the classic charade. Well, while most of our peers were busy with that, my one friend was busy scouring the recesses of the internet for a bootleg version of the app he could use to capture one specific Electabuzz character without having to actually leave his home.

So as you might be able to guess, my friends and I weren’t exactly the “cool” kids. And nothing made that more painfully clear than prom weekend. If you’re from the NJ area, you know that’s when the entire senior class heads down the shore for the weekend. You rent these cheap houses and 40 something kids live in them for three days. These “prom houses” are to sanitation as the New York Jets are to winning: just no overlap whatsoever.

But, again, while our peers were busy organizing these houses, my friends and I had more important matters to attend to: finding the next Pokestop to add a 54th Pikachu to our collection—you know, as cool high schoolers do.

By the time my friends and I snapped out of it we were stuck with days passes to a prom house, meaning there were only certain hours we were allowed in. Can you believe that? Day passes, like this was Six Flags or something! But I guess it’s not so different. Music is blaring, that one group of teenagers is way too out of control and it’s all topped off by the sound of someone screaming as their ride reaches its climax.

But we still needed somewhere to sleep and so we bought the cheapest motel room we could find. When we show up on that first night, it’s clear there’s a problem. This one class from a different high school rented out every single other room at the complex. So they’re all staring daggers at us and we feel about as out of place as someone wearing a mask on a beach in Florida.

We file into our room and the smell of weed is as if they just finished filming a Seth Rogen movie. The furniture is all beat up, I’m ducking because the ceiling fan is shaking uncontrollably like it’s about to fall off. As for the decor, well, I’m no interior designer (save for the three seasons of Love It or List It I’ve accidentally watched over the years) but I’m pretty sure everything in a room isn’t supposed to be a series of different, contrasting, hideous colors and patterns.

And thank God we didn’t have a UV light. Remember that ‘the floor is lava’ game that everyone plays as a kid? Well we figured here it was the floor is semen, and instead of the furniture being the safe zone, there’s actually only more semen. Then all of a sudden we hear a beeping. Not as high-pitched as a smoke detector alarm, but certainly annoying. Every few minutes: beop-beop-beop. We’re looking around our room, checking our phones, nothing seems off when BAM, our door flies open.

It’s one of the seniors from the other town. He’s a tall, well-built guy wearing nothing but shorts and a fanny pack. He looks at us and we look at him, completely unsure of what’s about to go down. Then he blurts out, “Are you using your lamp?”

We turn and notice there’s a small lamp on the nightstand in between the beds. The first thing that came to mind was the security deposit we had down. Now, I didn’t read the terms, but I’m pretty sure it’s frowned upon to give random pieces of your room away. So I calmly say, “Yeah, we need it.”

And he just swivels his head to look at each of us, waits and beat, then says, “Are you sure?”

We scream in unison, “Yes!” and escort him out the door. He seemed more confused than angry by our response. Like he genuinely couldn’t believe barging into a random motel room full of strangers didn’t result in the acquisition of a lamp. God knows why he wanted it, but it was borderline concerning how dejected he looked. It was like that face you make when you thought you were gonna make the light but it turned yellow and you wimped out of speeding up to make it, so you sit there all disgusted with both yourself and the traffic light.

It’s around 1:00 am at this point and we head off to our prom house a few blocks away only to discover that our “day passes” truly are only valid during the daytime. Funny how that works, right?

Defeated, we make our way back to our motel and the whole time we’re still hearing the mysterious beeping. We’re floating all these strange conspiracy theories of why it’s following us like, “Maybe it’s in the transformers all around town and they’re running some test!” That’s when we get close to our motel and make the horrible realization that the door to our room is wide open. Now obviously we have a bunch of our personal belongings in there, but the first thing my friend blurts out is, “I swear to God if they took that fucking lamp!”

So we sprint on up to our room and there are two guys in there just standing around. Nothing in our room looks out of place and the guys seem more or less oblivious to our arrival. And so I ask, “Uh… can we help you?”

They look at me as if I just asked them to explain what love is, they’re so deeply concentrated in thought. My other friend starts snapping his fingers yelling, “Hey! You two! Why are you in our room?”

And one of them replies, “This isn’t our room?”

“It definitely is not.”

They both look around and take it all in before shouting, “Oh, shit, it’s not!” And without another word they just walk out the door.

I go to close it and make sure it’s locked, but the doorknob completely falls off into my hand. Now, when you’re at a shitty motel, you know you have to lower your expectations. So there’s no hot water in the shower? Fine. Maybe there are few bed bugs? We’ll deal with it! But the fucking doorknob falling off the door?

The real problem is that without the knob we can’t get the door to open, so we’re stuck inside. We realize we need someone from the outside to push it. The front desk is closed and all our other friends are passed out in a house somewhere, so we’re trying to talk through the little hole, begging for someone from the other school to come over and help us.

All the while mysterious beeping is somehow getting louder and now it’s even more annoying. But all of a sudden it stops completely. My one friend goes, “Uh, I think I know what the beeping was.”

And we all look at him and he continues, “It was my bootleg Pokemon Go app. It beeps when it finds a Pokemon. I must’ve accidentally opened it in the background.”

My friends are about to put his head on a spike when finally a voice offers to help push our door open. We thank him and tell him to just push it as hard as he can from his side.

“Sure thing boys,” the guy says. But then he laughs. “But you have to promise me one thing…”

We all wince. And that’s when we realize the voice is all too familiar.

“The lamp,” he continues.

Before we can say no, he bulldozes the door open and demands it. We’re all too tired to put up a fight, so I gather the lamp and place it in his hands. His face lights up like he’s Thanos collecting the final Infinity Stone. This is it, this is his moment. He hugs it tightly, whispers “I love lamp” like Brick in Anchorman then proceeds to hurl it over the balcony, watching it shatter into a million pieces in the parking lot. And with that, he just walks away without saying a word, as if the whole thing never happened.

So that, dear audience, is how we managed to lose our security deposit for the shittiest motel on the Jersey Shore.