Day 33 - Fucking Houston

It started off ok. I had slept well and the Chinese middle aged guy in the bunk underneath me hadn't complained or snored all that loudly through the night, two things he seemed extremely adept at after the first night in this Houston hostel. I hadn't been able to sleep properly and tossed and turned in what possibly was the world's noisiest bed and never before had anyone had sex on this because it was a top bunk in an all male dorm. Besides, if they had done, I say congratulations, it can't have been easy to. I will admit that half of my own noise making came about as retaliation for the fact that Mr Washington Lee (that's his name) was snoring his brains out. Whenever he snored too loudly while I attempted to get some form of sleep, I would turn in the bed and bounce my whole body off of the mattress. It wasn't that I wanted to break the beams and crush the poor man but I just wanted to get him to shut up. It didn't really work so I grabbed a fistful of top-bunk-bed-post and shook that. Of course the next morning I was apologetic to the man when we ended up discussing this and didn't mention his snoring. As a middle aged Chinese man I reckoned he was a bit of a cute hoor so I decided to keep my own weapon in hiding until the time was right and to be fair I haven't had to use it for last nights sleep was a lot better and we established diplomatic terms by introducing oursleves to one another. No longer was he to be a mortal enemy, he was to have another judgement day. Or night in this case.

I went in, secured my MP3 to the bed post so as not to leave it fall from the top bunk like it had done the night before and listened to a few choons before settling into a deep sleep. I heard a small bit of snoring if I am to be totally honest but I slept fine and didn't feel the need, at least not consciously, to hammer the bed. Waking up this morning, I had a plan to walk to Sears to get some jeans there for taking back home (lets hope the Customs lads ain't reading this for I will be arriving in Shannon Airport...yes...Shannon, fuck em it's only three pairs anyway). After breakfast and a quick shower, which in my case is anything under 30 minutes, I headed out. Sears here in Houston, or at least the one on Fanin Street, is basically a big cement block. Using my rather less advanced notions of engineering, less advanced when compared to some actually qualified, this buidling was rather simply made. A mould was made, concrete was poured and then the builders hired some children who lived under Interstate overpassses to carve out lareg openings they now call "floors". There doesn't seem to be any windows and the doors even look pretty darkly and unwelcoming. Maybe Sears got the building for cheap when the government decided not to use it as a nuclear blast shelter.
Of course if it was to be used as a blast shelter then I'm not sure how effective it would be for even walking to this place caused me to sweat profusely. In fact, when I stepped out of the hostel at about 11am, sweat immediately beagn to retreat from my skin. It felt the heat and began to seep away. Remember that this was before I even began to walk, it was and is, that hot. If you were to compare to an everyday item, then it would be akin to walking into a small bathroom with no windows or vents after the shower had been left on for a few hours. As Donal said, it is like a steam room, but without the ceremics or the ability to actually leave at will to somewhere cooler.

Walking down the streets I continued to sweat but knew that Sears would be air conditioned, even dogs kennels are air conditioned here. Tthere wasn't anything dramatic, just a big store in need of some renovation with plenty of Lee and Levi jeans for $30 and under - a bargain compared to home in my mind at least and so I took some pairs. I paid for them too if you are wondering. The real drama was on the way home. I crossed the street to Fiesta supermarket and got some uisce, turned on my mp3 player and began a slow amble back to the hostel determined not to sweat too much but it was just past midday, God and the Devil were working together for the first time ever to create the hottest place in the history of ever by moving the sun to within 10 miles of the city and trapping the heat with lots of white clouds. It wouldn't have suprised me if there was an electric blanket draped all over the ground of this massive, sprawling and roasting oven of a city. Determined as I was about the sweat issue, having showered once already I was in no mood to waste time and have another one, I wiped my brow coming through a residenital neighbourhood near the hostel.

I could feel sweat being trapped in the hairs on my forearm as I wiped it across my forehead. My determined fight was doing with tissues for this job, simply because I forgot them. But then as I withdrew my arm I could feel something was up with my left eye. I threw my hand at it, knowing that perhaps I would catch it. The lens let go of its grip to my eye lash as it slid onto the palm of my hand feeling slightly withered and dry. This wasn't good. I needed to be able to see in order to make it back to the hostel. With one eye I was more vulnerable to everything, nuclear blast, robbery, getting lost but not more vulnerable to being picked up in a Mustang convertable by the local university's cheer leading team. There's always a flip side, always. I attempted to put the lens back in but couldn't do it, it was withered and drying so quickly from the absolute heat that even if I had had access to a mirror, it would have been a challenge for my eye to actually accept it. And so, looking around in vain, I dropped it to the floor where it would in time rot away allowing me to proceed back to the hostel with one eye working. Well I lie, two eyes working, one of which can actually see things properly. It's a strange sensation having one good eye and another eye feeding very blurry images to my brain. Not to worry though it was only to be for a short period of time before Ii arrived back at the hostel and replaced them because they had been in a few days over their real limit anyway so it was no big deal to me.

This was where the good part came to an end. I left the scene of the lens falling out with a sense of hope but upon arriving at the door of my dorm that hope was crushed. To be replaced, and those of you that know me already know what I will say, by unlimited amounts of absolute anger, the pure kind they don't sell at Tesco, so pure in fact that refineries throughout the globe beg for it as an example. Well I was no mood now to sell anything but the permission for this hostel to be either set on fire, vandalised (but only to an extent that it would render the place as "destroyed" and not just "damaged") or have a bomb dropped on it. I had begun to warm to the place earlier and all, having arrived with a fairly poor first impression of the place but now this has all changed. The doors are locked as a routine, it's routine in many hostels it seems but not for all of the useful daylight hours (between about 10am and 5pm) like in this mad house. I tried the door again knowing I couldn't open it without damaging it and it's frame so I trudged back to the common room, one eye open sulking on the couch wondering where Donal was and where the owner of this hostel exactly was right now, for many various and violent reasons. I texted Donal and found out he was at a gas station but would be returning to the hostel soon so at least I'd have someone who knew the situation about the place which put my mind at ease somewhat (and even more so when he brought Oreos with him). Before he arrived though I went and tried the office door, that too was locked but I deemed it pretty breakable and had to continually remind myself that I was at an age now where my temper could get me in a lot of trouble and Texas execute more people than any other US state, although Donal has pointed out that only 8 actually practice this grusesome exercise. Still I didn't want to be fighting this after breaking a door, esepcially if I couldn't find the keys once in there. There were some emergeny numbers on the window though and I figured this was reasonable so I rang the first one.

"Hello Joy (yes that is her real name, I knew by seeing this that I really shouldn't expect too much from calling her), my name is Nevin Power and I am staying at your hostel. I lost a contact lens and need to get into my room to replace it as I can only see out of one eye essentially...I wouldn't have rang but it is an emergency for me".

"Well try the back door to the office" she said in a voice that sounded quite hesitant. It's not often you would hear someone encourage you to actually break in to their office, or at least enter without someone in charge being around. I did of course try the door and explained that it was locked, all the while conscious of my phone credit which I would need to ring another number or two and that's not counting the local assassin.

"That door is locked Joy...", Ii explained allowing my voice to trail off in order for her to think up of a response but again she was sounding hesitant and while it is very rare that I get angry over the phone (it doesn't have the same feel as in real time you know, except for when it is a machine in which case it feels good but also peculiarly empty as it doesn't ever get angry itself). Anger is reciprocal, one person gets angry and takes it out on another who then gets angry allowing the chain reaction to continue much like nuclear fission but I wasn't about to lose it with Joy for not it was not worth the trouble. She had the power to kick me out of this place and probably would, it's not a conventional place at all and I doubt a conventional response would have been issued. Neither was one issued in this case for she went on to tell me that no one else had keys, the one guy who did she didn't have any contact details for and that there was no point in ringing anyone else for they were all out of town.
"So, I'm sorry, but I guess you'll have to go around as a one eyed man for the day". Normally I would give a slight laugh to leave the conversation on good terms but on this occasion I was mute, said goodbye and hung up. I was livid.
What if this was a defibrilator I needed or what if I left my phone in the room and urgently needed it to contact my parents over a sick relative or friend? What if the case had been worse than it was? I suppose she just would have said, "Well you'll just have to be the short-of-breath-man for the rest of the day so".

I went back to the couch, got up from the couch and tried the office door again before walking into the kitchen, possibly looking possessed to the other people in here and took a knife from the drawer. Maybe I could prise open the lock, the house has never ever been refitted so everything is pretty old and worn but this didn't work either.

And so I lay on the couch, closed my eyes, had some music on and drifted off into a state of semi-consciousness before Donal woke me having brought with him Oreos and suggested I write something on the blog. So here it is, as fresh as it can be. As fresh as anger from a riled up Nevin and by God is Nevin riled up right now.