I sat down in the passenger side of the silver Jetta he’d borrowed from his mom and pulled the door shut behind me. As I fastened my seatbelt, JR shifted the car into reverse and he backed out of the parking lot of the Flamingo Bar and Grill on the corner of 9th Street at 5th Ave. His long lean arm was wrapped round the back of my seat so he could see better out the rear window; neither of us was speaking, the volume turned low on the stereo so you could barely hear the music. JR drove up to the Hampton Inn on 34th Street. He told me to wait in the car. I found out later he cashed a check from his grandmother he’d gotten for Christmas to pay for the room. JR is my one true love.

After a little while, he comes back out and motions for me to follow, grabbing also a liter of Jameson from the trunk. The air outside feels colder now, so I pull my leather jacket tight around my body as I walk behind him inside into the lobby, then the elevator, down the long corridor, and through the doorway to our hotel room.

There’s something about hotels that really gets me going. I don’t know where it started, but they drive me wild. I took my shirt off then, and lay down on the bed. JR had the bottle of Jameson in his left hand when I pulled him down on top of me, feeling the full weight of his body on top of mine. JR feels exactly the same as he had before-- it has been two years, 7 months and 11 days since we have been together.

I lifted his shirt up and over his head as he hands me the bottle.  I took a sip then poured some into my belly button. I’m always doing stuff like that. Pouring whiskey on my belly so men can lick it off. When he did, I arched my back and wrapped my legs around his neck. JR has these real pale blue eyes and over the right one he has this tiny mole. It’s funny because when you really love someone you fixate on stuff like that. We started really going at it then, he put his hands around my waist and I knew then that I’d never be able to quit him. I think I really wanted to feel guilty, but I just couldn’t. This was the only way I could have him, and for the first time since the whole thing got started, I realized that. This was our world. Hotel rooms and broken hallelujah’s.

Later that year, he came to the City to see me. I’m not really sure what he told his wife, but he stayed through Sunday. He drove my car way out to Carnasie where he got us a room. He was always doing that, paying for us to get a room. We could have stayed at my place but it just didn’t seem appropriate. There’s a way you can only be really honest with someone if you’re paying by the night.  

That was the time I’d outfitted myself in JR’s discarded button down shirt. I was wearing these stockings that came up past my thigh. When I took my panties off, I left on my high heeled shoes. I put on this real slow show for JR, and he’d take pictures with his vintage Hasselblad. The room smelled full of cigarettes and sex. I was breathing it all in as JR was taking my picture. The click-click the camera made was invigorating, the sound carved into my brain creating a candance that kept me going.  

Standing at the window staring out, I watched as afternoon came down and into the room through partially closed patterned drapes. On the nightstand to the right of the bed sat a half empty bottle of Jack next to a bucket of ice fast melting. I’d wished so desperately that the daylight wouldn’t end. It was so beautiful and sad, coming in through those heavy curtains.

I was lying on the unmade bed and it was then that JR told me a story about this time he’d been out in LA, years back when he was just 24. He was going on about how he’d walked around Hollywood all day by himself--from La Brea to Melrose. He had this feeling, the kind where you just couldn’t shake it-- mostly because he’d been cheating on his girl again. JR didn’t feel bad about it, really. I think that was the hardest part for him, admitting to himself that he’d do just whatever he could get away with without ever experiencing any remorse. He wanted to be good, but he just wasn’t. 

I guess he had to come to terms with all of that, so he’d started to write these letters, you know, apology letters to people that he wouldn’t ever send. And he wrote them all on these tiny pieces of hotel stationary. One by one, he wrote those letters and then he just let them drop to the ground as he walked around. He just left them there, for whatever was to come of it. He left all those words and feelings and everything back in California. JR knew then. Zebras don’t change their stripes.