We were definitely in the thick of it. We tried a few of the nicer places on the block, and it was clear our charm had been washed away with the booze. The only other option was the "Relax Inn", which was $35 a night...
I was surprised at the amount of accommodations off the highway in Amarillo, Texas. Maybe I've watched too many movies, but it seemed like there was more going on in that town than I had expected. I had expected a run down, shitty gas station, and maybe a crappy motel. While I was pretty disappointed in the abundance of domestication in that town, we picked the right place to stay.
The "Relax Inn" is the type of place you see in movies, or a TV show. Run down, the windows all had some kind of weird film caked over them. It was clear they weren't washed in months. In Chicago, it is pretty easy to spot the hooker motels, but since I had never been to Amarillo, Texas, I had no idea what to expect. The pool was half way filled with water and what looked like human feces. I appreciated the fact that the place was run down because it felt like it gave us the real road trip experience. The type of place people are murdered in.
I knew it couldn't be the best place, but we were drunk and exhausted. We each threw in $20, and we had a place to stay.
"Wait a minute", I thought. "Don't they cook a lot of meth in Texas?"
YESS!! The odds of this being a real life meth lab was well in the realm of possibility. I've never done meth, nor do I ever plan to, but it was exciting. There had to be at least a tweaker or two just hanging out.
Sure enough, we weren't even there for five minutes, and these two odd looking fellows turned the corner. One was small, wearing typical gangster attire. Fitted flat, oversized hat, off to the side with two braids on either side of his head, like Snoop Dogg. Dark skin, most likely Latino, and a matching basketball jersey. He was into some crooked shit. The other kid, who was white, looked rather normal, for a Texas tweaker, that is. Both of their jaws were going crazy. They were tweaking, thats for sure.
What I saw in the next 5 minutes depressed the hell out of me. It was pretty clear these two guys were stuck in Texas, to do nothing but crystal meth. They would most likely end up in prison in the next year or so, and hopefully not for the murder of two guys from Chicago.
Neil tried talking to them, seeing if they knew where a party was, but it was pretty obvious we didn't want to go to any party these cats were going to. It would be pretty hard to make the jump from doing shots at a Buffalo Wild Wings to hanging out with a bunch of crystal meth addicts. Not exactly what I would call a fun night.
But I could tell Neil wasn't serious, he just wanted to screw with these guys. I told him that probably wasn't the best idea, but he motioned to the tire iron on the floor, and that gave me an odd sense of safety.
It was pretty clear we couldn't have any kind of conversation with these weirdos. The gangster type was talking a mile a minute while the random ass white kid hung out in the back letting his jaw take over his entire face. It was like his teeth were trying to escape his mouth. Then his arm started to get the willies. He just kept saying "yeah, yeah, yeah!" over and over again, almost like Beavis.
As they do, the tweakers began to get really paranoid. They started asking us if we were cops, which would have been too late anyway since they basically describe their entire meth life story to us. Then they asked if we wanted to party.
"Nah, man. We just got back from a party. We're extremely tired, and we gotta hit the road in the morning", I said. Neil didn't have the same answer.
"Why, where you guys partying at?!", he said.
It was hard to understand, but I think what the gangster was saying was that he knew a girl staying at the same motel. Most likely a hooker, I thought. He was speaking far to fast for him to make a coherant sentance. The only thing I could clearly make out was "Lets go up to your room, yo!"
Shit...
While messing with these guys was fun and all, the last thing we wanted was them in our room. The most important fact is that they are crystal meth addicts and those aren't the type of people you let into your strange motel room in a strange town, unless you out number them. Even then, it isn't the brightest idea.
Neil and I tried getting a word in edge wise, but it is as if they weren't even listening to us. They probably weren't. While we were saying things like "Nah man", and "We don't want to fucking party, go the fuck home" they heard things like "Please follow us to our room while your friend next to you goes bat shit crazy".
As they kept following us, Neil and I looked at each other. We thought this might be another case of attempted robbery, although neither of us had anything worth stealing. Neil's guitars and my camera maybe, but they didn't see those. Neil secured the tire iron with out drawing too much attention to himself, and I gripped my skateboard pretty tightly.
We made our way up the stairs to the second floor, and they were right behind us, spouting off more babble that you only see on the show "Breaking Bad". We were in the thick of it, thats for sure. I kept thinking about how we might have to explain ourselves to the wonderful Amarillo, Texas police force what the reason was for us to beat up some tweakers. Although the more I thought about the circumstances, the more I figured they would probably understand, and think that we did them a favor.
As we reached our door, it became clear we would have wedge them out, or beat them up. I still couldn't figure out their motives. Maybe they just needed a place to do more crystal meth? Maybe they wanted to wear our skin as a hat. I wasn't willing to find out. Then, before I could even think something up, the situation dissolved itself.
We made it to the door, and Neil swiped his card. The red light beeped. The card didn't work. Genious, I thought! He must have given them the wrong room number, just in case. He swiped it again. Nothing. This made the tweakers very upset.
"C'mon man, open the fuckin' door. Are you a cop?!", the white guy asked.
I'm not sure exactly how not being able to open your motel room door makes you a cop, but I was willing to run with it. Neil swiped a few more times, and it didn't work. It was pretty obvious it wasn't going to, but the tweaker had to show us what was up anyway.
"Here man, gimmie that fuckin' thing. I'll show ya", he snagged the card and was so shaky he couldn't even get the card in position. He struggled to even flip the card over to the right side. Before he even made one attempt, he dropped the card.
"I don't know man that shit is fucked up I dunno what the fuck maybe you fuckin, I don't know fuckin' know it ain't fuckin working", he said.
The gangster tweaker offered to try, but before he could, the white guy had a change of heart. He exclaimed something along the lines of "We gotta go", and his emotions spiked, as they happened to do.
They ran off into the night, with out so much as a goodbye. And as quickly as they showed up, they were gone.
Due to exhaustion and the drinking, we woke up past check out time the next day. Luckily we had all of our stuff ready to go. We awoke to an Indian guy in our room telling us that we couldn't have two people in the room. I'm not sure why he bothered telling us, but perhaps he thought we were two gay dudes hiding from our wives. It was clear it was time to get the fuck out of Amarillo, Texas.
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