I didn’t go deaf

Many people know that I spent almost 13 months with my Mother in Denver, apart from my siblings who were still in Santa Barbara with our father.  How that happened is a story for another time.

And many people know it was a horrendous time during which I saw things no young teen needs to be aware of.  Hardly any teen of any age wants to be conscious of their parents’ sex lives; certainly teens approaching puberty are curious about sex in general, but shudder at the thought of their own parents doing it.

While in Denver, we lived almost entirely in one-room locations, most often in transient hotels downtown.  These were the type of hotels where you have a room with a bed, a dresser, maybe some other furniture, and a little sink in the corner.  A couple of locations had actual bathrooms connected to our room.

Mother wasn’t working. And I, being just 13 years old (I turned 14 while there) certainly wasn’t working. Mother would meet a man, most often in a bar, and would end up convincing her prey to let her stay the night, which often meant both of us staying the night in whatever accommodations there were.  Sometimes, the guy would actually get a hotel room.

One guy in particular had a larger Oldsmobile or Buick.  Mother had taken me into a bar, and she got pissed that she was carded.  She was about 35 years old then, but she got her drink and got me a soda of some sort and told me to go sit in a booth while she sat at the bar.  Next thing I know, I’m being told to go sit in this guy’s car.  After a while we went driving around, and then we ended up at a hotel.  This hotel offered a full-size bed for them, and (if I remember correctly) a roll-away cot for me.  Mother and this guy were making so much ‘noise’ I quit trying to go to sleep and ended up taking my pillow into the bathtub so I could sleep with the door closed.  It made sense to me at the time.

Another time, we were at the Shasta Hotel (another transient hotel) with a basic room, with a shared bathroom down the hall.  Mother was out  somewhere for the evening drinking, I was sitting on (again) a roll-away cot.  Mother came in told me to quickly get into bed, that someone else would be coming in shortly.  So I did as I was told, and soon enough a tall man tapped on the door.

I should interject here that the Shasta had a rear emergency exit down a flight of stairs to a door opening on a side street from where the main entrance was.  Mother would go open that side door for someone to come in without being seen at the front desk.  She didn’t know that every time that exit door opened, a bell would ring at the front desk.  I don’t remember if there was actually a closed circuit TV camera or not, but one day the manager told me to tell Mother to stop using that door to let other people in.

Anyway, so this guy comes in, I’m lying on my side facing into the room but pretending to be asleep, and they get busy doing what they’re doing, with the light off but street lights shining in the window were enough to see plenty.  When they were done, Mother put something on and went to the bathroom down the hall, while the man stood there with his manhood proudly swaying, and I’m trying to not be obvious in my observations since I was supposedly asleep.  Mother came back and the guy slipped into his trousers (commando for the time being) and also went to the bathroom down the hall.

For some reason this guy had emptied his pants when he undressed, so when he went to the bathroom, I watched Mother dip into his wallet.  OMG.  I must have coughed or something because she dropped his wallet back down and told me, “Close your eyes, roll over the other way, and go back to sleep.”   So I rolled over.  The guy came back, took his trousers off, got himself redressed, and slipped out into the night, returning down the back steps the same way he’d come in.

Similar events happened over the time I was there in Denver, different men in different locations, especially with Ralph with whom we stayed 6 or 8 months at several locations.  I would usually be sleeping in some ancient smelly overstuffed chair or something similar.  And I could not help but observe, through firmly squinted eyes, whatever was happening in the night.

And more than once I would cough or shift or otherwise accidentally let the adults in the room  remember I existed.  And more than once Mother would say, “Close your eyes, roll over the other way, and go back to sleep.”

And I kept thinking, “Closing my eyes will not make me deaf.”

I heard as much as I saw that year in Denver.