Nevada Writer

Motel Life—Willy Vlautin

by Melanie on 11/11/07 at 2:18 am

Reading Willy Vlautin’s novel, The Motel Life, was a singular experience in that I have never read anything that spoke so clearly to the underbelly of life here in Reno—a life I have experienced, albeit a couple of decades earlier than Willy, and perhaps not quite as extremely as is depicted in the novel. I did live in motels, crummy duplexes and as a boarder while I worked in casinos, and even later when I came back and became a reporter in Gardnerville. I was still renting and living here and there. My friends were not unlike the characters in Willy’s novel. For example, when I lived in the Ranchos in Gardnerville, my neighbor, Karl, was an alcoholic who was trying to sober up and was on ant-abuse. He claimed to be a Viet Nam vet, but after he died, one of his friends told me that was just a crock. I really liked Karl, though. Once I went over to his apartment (he lived right next door to me) and there was a large pool of blood soaking into the carpet. Karl was troubled, but confided that he had taken ant-abuse and had had a terrible reaction apparently when he took a drink. He had passed out and cracked his head on the cement block he was using to make a coffee table. He was surprised that I didn’t freak out at the blood. I guess it’s not the worst thing I’d ever seen. So I helped him do a little cleaning, not much; the rug would have to be ripped out. I was glad he hadn’t bled out and died right there. He ended up later being sentenced to two years in Nevada State Prison for harming someone in a drunk driving incident. They put him in with the killers, and he wrote me and my husband letters from prison. When he got out, about a year and a half later, he had changed. He was paranoid. I don’t know the cause of his illness, but he died several years later. He was only in his early fifties, I think.

I lived in the now bulldozed El Patio Motel on Virginia Street with my friends, Pamela and Patty (and possibly Valerie, too. They were sisters and we had all been friends since we met in Palo Alto.) Patty had a doberman, Diablo, and I had my little German shepherd, Tonny (pronounced “Tony”). We weren’t supposed to have pets, of course, but what can you do? We had paid for a week and we had put a deposit down. Most likely, Pam’s boyfriend, Michael, was with us. The motel was called El Patio because each unit had a teensy, fenced-in patio. We were on the second floor—which is key to this story, so pay attention. I must have had a job, because I don’t remember spending much time actually in the motel, except perhaps a night or two. One afternoon, all of a sudden, the landlady, who must have been middle eastern, she definitely was a foreigner but she wasn’t Mexican even though she looked kind of Hispanic, (Patty and Valerie had lived in Mexico and we all would have known how to tell who was Mexican or not from their language, which wasn’t Spanish). Anyhow, she is wearing some kind of ethnic head gear (I’m thinking now that this confirms that she must have been middle eastern and possibly Muslim) and she comes over, knocks on the door and starts literally screaming bloody murder when she sees Diablo.

Diablo was a sweetheart. He was lovable, kind and he was madly in love with Tonny. Those two used to gently lick each other all over, even when she wasn’t in heat. They were mad for each other and why not? Diablo was dashing, tall, and handsome. Tonny, whose mother was a Mexican mutt and whose father was an AKC silver German shepherd, was petite—only about 35 pounds, but she looked and barked exactly like a large shepherd. I’d had her since I was 20 and visited the sisters’ mother in Guadalajara. Tonny was the runt and had been thrown over the Americans’ fence into the horse stall, probably in an effort to save her life and give her a chance. I adored Tonny and she adored me and Diablo. I’d seen Tonny get raped as well as have sex with other dogs. Not pretty (especially the dog rape—poor Tonny was screaming when that bastard jumped on her). She liked some of the dogs, and she eventually had four, small litters. I had never seen her behave so tenderly toward another dog, however, until she met Diablo. Tonny and Diablo’s relationship changed my mind about some things I used to think about animals. When Patty had to move, we both regretted that we were breaking up Tonny and Diablo. They never had a litter together, which I regret.

The landlady screamed that we had to get out, and someone said, “Fine. We hate it here anyway. Just give us back our $40 deposit.” She refused and threatened to call the cops. I think we knew a little about Reno cops, or else it was pure emboldenment that led us to say, “Good. Call the cops. We’re not leaving until we get our money.” So we waited until two RPDs showed up. By that time, the woman’s husband had shown up and was trying to appear menacing. Here we were, mostly young women in their late teens or early twenties, with a couple of dogs. Reno cops love dogs, especially attack dogs like Doberman pinschers and German shepherds. When the cops looked in the room, all of us sitting around and Diablo sitting up looking perky next to Patty, they could barely keep straight faces. They remarked about what a good-looking dog Diablo was, came over and petted him under the chin. We admitted that of course we had broken the rules, but we didn’t think we should also forfeit the $40. We’d paid up for the days we had lived at El Patio. They told us we had to move on, but we would get our $40 bucks back first. It’s possible they were also partial to Americans versus foreigners, and didn’t want the city’s children to get screwed by them. As I think back, it might have helped our cause, and had it been the other way around,we probably wouldn’t have gotten off so easily. As it turns out, Pamela had also had a kitten in the room. Pamela was my best friend through my teens. Pam had been taking the kitten’s turds and tossing them over the patio wall onto the patio below. Of course, the fellow in the room complained at some point, which led to us getting kicked out.

I have another Reno Motel Life true story. When I was working at the Club Cal Neva or maybe at Pick Hobson’s Overland Hotel Casino, I was only 21. Tonny was pregnant and I found a room for her somehow with this guy named Scott. He lived in a house on the corner of Mt. Rose and Plumas, near the 7-11. It’s still there, but a huge real estate office sits in front of Scott’s house now. OK, so I didn’t tell Scott that Tonny was pregnant. I felt like Joseph looking for a manger. He knew I had a dog, and I was paying $20 a week to stay in a ratty room. She was due any day. I was desperate.

(By the way, I love the way Willy Vlautin’s hero saves the dog inThe Motel Life. I had a similar experience saving Kraut, a doberman who lived next door to me on Yori Street when Patty and I lived in a duplex there. His asshole owners weren’t feeding him, apparently the couple had split up and the guy had left Kraut behind. They were feeding their little kick dog and they kept him in the house, while Kraut was forced to stay outside all night long during the winter. It’s freezing here! I realized he was going nuts, as he would dash back and forth like a lunatic. The pound people came by and gave me a hard time about not feeding my Doberman, but they had mistaken Kraut for Diablo. The pound people had tossed a sack of food over the fence, but it hadn’t lasted long. I went out at night when they weren’t looking and hung over the fence with bowls of food and water. That dog would have died for me, he was so grateful. I finally wrote a note on the door explaining that Dobie’s can’t be outside in the winter because their fur is so short. I may have mentioned that they can’t go without water for long, either. He was soon gone. I’m hoping they at least they took him somewhere where he might have had a chance, rather than just be starved or frozen to death. I also saved Diablo’s life once at Tahoe when he slid off a peer in January. Ronnie bonds used to visit me when I lived at Yori Street, so I must have been working at the Mapes by then. There was a horrible murder on Yori Street, Robert Knight investigated it. A teen-ager beheaded a woman, cut up her body and stuck the parts in a trunk, but not before he took her severed feet, dipped them in blood and made footprint tracks on the walls and ceilings. Bill Oberding’s wife has also written about this case, in a strange six-degrees loop. Bob Knight is my Bullet Bob.)

I put Tonny in the closet and the pups came in a day or so. She was only 35 pounds, and she never had more than three or four pups. Scott and his mother were Jesus freaks and they were decorating the place with hideous purple paisley wallpaper. Tonny had four pups, one of which had perfect silver markings just like her and her AKC father. The others were ordinary mixed shepherd mutts, black with brown markings. Scott and his freakazoid mom kicked me out when the pups were only about a week old. They hadn’t even opened their eyes. I was forced to drive them across town to my new rented room—with three yahoo potheads. On the way, the silver pup fell off the seat and died. I never forgave Scott or his mother for that since that pup meant so much to me. They are typical Jesus freaks, if you ask me. Hypocrites. I got back at Scott much later. I was sitting in the lounge at some casino. Perhaps it was the Mapes. A few years had passed. There’s more to this story than I am revealing, but that’s because it’s a journal I’m turning in to a fiction class. Revenge was sweet, and inspired. It just came to me.

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