Special Guest Damon James: L.A. and the Horror Hotel
I met Damon James and his girlfriend Veruca James at the 2012 AVNs in Las Vegas. Veruca is probably one of the prettiest girls in all of pornography. If you want to see some really great (and NSFW) photos of her standing topless in the streets of NYC shot by Driven by Boredom’s Nate Igor Smith, try here. Anyhow, Damon and Veruca stayed in the Hard Rock during the convention while Igor and myself were in the MGM Signature. When the show was over, Igor and I paid a hot $20 to stash our shit at Circus Circus until my plane left and he drove back to LA. Circus Circus is a shit-hole, but the worst thing that happened was I couldn’t find any decent food. Veruca and Damon, however, were not so lucky…
After our unexpectedly long brunch me, Veruca and David (aka The Black Hipster) decided to take a trip to L.A. We didn’t exactly have a carved out plan and being that there were three of us, it made it a little bit harder to find a place to crash. Vegas had wiped us all out financially, so our budget was really low. No big deal, We’ll grab a seedy hotel on the Sunset Strip and rough it a few nights. After scoping out what seemed like a really sketchy hotel in Echo Park, we decided to stay at The Budget Inn, Hollywood.
In my lifetime, I’ve spent some time in some pretty sketchy and desolate places. I’ve seen a lot and been around enough that I don’t scare easily. I can handle my own in just about any situation. But now that I’m in a serious relationship with someone that I love with all my heart, I am extremely protective. She shouldn’t have to be exposed to what I’ve been exposed to, ever. That, and if we got into some sort of fight with people, they could probably pick all 108 lbs. of her up and run away with her. Hahahaha.
Dead tired, slightly drunk and running on almost no sleep, we checked into the rat trap called Budget Inn. It was about 3:30 a.m. or so when we got our room key. For starters, the door of the room had dents all over it from being punched in. Red flag no. 1.
Once inside, we took a look around and it was extremely obvious that this was a mistake. The floors were sticky and missing patches out of the carpeting. The walls had random holes cut in them and the dresser drawer was filled with cards for cheap prostitutes.
The most disconcerting part about this room was the random mattress and couch barricading one of the windows. One window had bars on it, the other was held closed with duct tape because the bars had been torn off. Hence the barricade.
At this point, I decided it might be a good idea to barricade our room door with the coffee table in the room. We all nervously chuckled and laid on top of our bed sheets and went to sleep. Surely it couldn’t be THAT bad, could it?
Cue 6 a.m. It sounds like somebody is moving furniture. No, more like throwing fucking furniture down the stairs and slamming it into the walls. Our eyes all open at the same time and everyone is paralyzed. In the hallway, we can hear a guy screaming at a transvestite hooker. We can hear him hitting her and slamming her into walls, and we can hear the clicks and scrapes of her heels as she tries to get away. She’s screaming in in broken English. She’s pleading for her life, begging him not to kill her, but all he is saying is to get back in the room, “I won’t hurt you” and “I don’t want to go to jail.”
The thumping and slamming is getting louder and we can actually hear him dragging her across the tile floor to the room. A lot more thumping and we hear her heels clicking away from him right at our door. At this point, she’s threatening to call the police. Please for the love of God, call the damn cops and with any luck, I’ll get to see them shoot this guy. The smashing around in the hallway was so close to our door that I jumped up and grabbed my Smith and Wesson knife from my bag and waited, staring at the door. If living in Chicago has taught me anything it’s NEVER LEAVE HOME WITHOUT A KNIFE.
After about 30 minutes and a lot of bad noise, the commotion stopped. I fell asleep holding Veruca in one arm and clutching the knife in the other.
Cue 8 a.m. There is a guy in the hallway next door (maybe the same guy) trying to kick down a door on his hoes, screaming and demanding money. Veruca rolls over and asks me: “Why does it smell like burning plastic?” Don’t worry, honey, that’s just someone smoking crack outside our window. This is the point when I tell everyone to pack their shit. We’ll find a new place to stay.
We spent the day saying hi to different friends in downtown L.A. and regaling them with our previous night’s insanity. Between Vegas and L.A. I had slept maybe nine hours. All I wanted to do was go home. Luckily, a very near and dear person in my life put us up in a decent Super 8 hotel in Silverlake. This was the first real night of sleep I had in a week.
The next day we went down to Venice beach, ate some fish tacos, snapped some photos and relaxed. It finally felt like a vacation. The whole point of going to L.A. was to figure out what part we wanted to live in, and we didn’t even get the opportunity to do that. By the time we started to get relaxed, we were leaving. To be continued, Los Angeles. To be continued…
[Veruca and Damon finally reach civilization, or at least, someplace with Mojitos.]