Bloody Towels
A Tale of Gratitude
I’ve never come close to committing coldblooded murder.
Still, there are times when I am certainly closer to homicidal tendencies than others. Once after seeing a David Lynch movie, I finished off a Slurpee and threw it into the bathroom trashcan before stepping up to a urinal. Another guy sidled up to the urinal beside me (there were other urinal opportunities, and he could have left a gap, but clearly he was a factory of poor decisions) and he said, “In one hole and out the other, eh?” Urinal small talk is definitely cause for violence.
I’ve also spent my fair share of time on the 405, and I’m heartened by the fact that there are so few incidents of murder and mayhem on Southern California freeways. The number of violent fantasies I’ve had driving into Los Angeles could fill any number of true crime omnibuses. Hyperbole aside, the levels of restraint I’ve demonstrated are nothing short of super heroic. Thousands of BMW owners still waste oxygen as a result of my virtue.
And if you really want to fire up my bloodlust, be one of those people in a meeting who has no respect for rhythm, for give and take, for back and forth—ya know, those people who treat conversations the way Kenny G treats an E-flat. They use 5,319 words of verbal masturbation to put a bandage on their bruised egos, and all I can think of are seven words: “Hold still, I’m going to choke you.”
Which is why I’m grateful for gratitude.
Gratitude has saved me from depressions. It’s rescued me from any number of would-be faux pas. It’s the engine that drives my creativity. I write a lot of dark stuff—dark comedy and horror, thrillers and fairy tales, film noir and fantasy. Spending so much time one the dark side of my imagination has made me realize an important truth: things can always get worse.
A lot worse.
So it’s helpful to express gratitude. One of my more profound lessons in gratitude came by way of a family vacation. And I use that term loosely. The word vacation may conjure images of Maui or Niagara Falls or a Jackson Hole ski trip capped off each night with hot cocoa while nursing sore glutes in a jacuzzi on the deck of a custom-built chalet. This was not that.
Money was tight when I was a kid, so we called vacations what most people call a shitty camping trip. And indeed we stretched the boundaries of the very concept of shittiness. We did a week in Lake Havasu. Note: I used the verb “did” in that last sentence since it possesses the connotation of doing a 5-to-10 stretch in San Quentin.
Some of you might roll your eyes and point out that MTV hosted spring break in Lake Havasu. You might even add that it’s often referred to as Arizona’s Playground. Fair enough. It does boast some world class water skiing, the London Bridge, and breathtaking desert landscapes. But again, we were camping.
In August.
In the 1980s.
When camping technology was closer to covered wagons than the Navy Seal-like innovations we enjoy today.
We had a tent, but it was essentially a nylon oven. Pigs have slow-roasted on a spit at lower temperatures than the inside of that godforsaken devil’s wet dream of a tent. And this was soul-crushing since we had to clear a quarter ton of granite rocks to pitch the tent only to learn that we had erected a sauna.
We spent the days, which hovered around 115°F, trying not to die of heat stroke while dodging dragonflies the size of station wagons. We spent the nights, which hovered around 95°F, moaning. The moaning served two purposes: to mark the agony, sure, but also to expel energy in hopes that sleep—or death—would come for us.
My mom attempted to soothe us by soaking beach towels in the ice chest and draping them over our backs to cool us off. It worked. It was just enough to make sleep possible until the sun fired back up the next morning. In a Lake Havasu August, the sun comes at you with all the energy of James Brown after snorting multiple rails of cocaine. And on one morning, that energy was compounded by mom’s bloodcurdling—quite literally bloodcurdling—screams.
To explain: we had two ice chests—one for sodas and beers; another for ground beef, chicken, and steaks. The meat locker, as it has come to be known, had been mishandled and the meat was no longer properly contained, so the ice chest was more accurately a bloodbath, which my mom—certainly reeling from the agony of triple-digit-degree camping—mistook for the ice chest of soda and beers. And that morning she woke up to the horrific image of me looking like Sissy Spacek’s stunt double in Carrie, only the blood had dried and caked in the creases of my neck, face, and belly button. Hence her bloodcurdling screams.
After realizing what had happened, I remember thinking that it could be worse, that I could be dismembered and stowed in a styrofoam ice chest, my chilled blood used to soothe the sunburns of a family on a River Styx vacation. It can always be worse.
So I was grateful.
Fast forward thirty-ish years. I was married, and my wife and I were determined to provide our son and daughter a dream vacation, something that would indelibly impact their memories and strengthen our family bond. We took them to Hawaii. More specifically, we took them to Aulani, Disney’s resort on Oahu. It was a dream vacation from the jump. We got off the plane and got in the taxi line, and our taxi, for reasons still mysterious to me, was a limousine. Our kids laughed their balls off at the random good fortune of starting this vacation in a stretch limo fully stocked with juice boxes and Ritz crackers.
A half hour later we pulled up to the resort where we were greeted with leis, cocktails, and mocktails for the kids. I half expected Ricardo Montalbán to carry our bags to our room. After this, it only got better. If you’re unfamiliar with the Aulani, here’s the lowdown:
A private beach, calm with little threat of undertow, as well as forty-foot nets that keep sharks from feasting on the spleens of toddlers, the thighs of fourth-graders.
A manmade saltwater reef so that kids can swim among fish every color of the neon rainbow, without fear of being whisked away by strong currents, rogue waves, or Somali pirates.
A volcano-themed set of waterslides that pour elegantly into a lazy river that shoots streams of warm water at the kids and ice-cold streams of Prosecco into the face holes of the adults.
Soda fountains every fifty yards to jack the kids back up when the buzz of high-fructose corn syrup begins to wane.
Day camps run by Disney characters trained to wear your kids out and ensure early bed times.
A library of every Disney movie ever produced, even the ones the haven’t aged all that well.
And too much more for me to list since Disney isn’t sponsoring this story.
I should also add that we upgraded our room to a suite, and it had a jacuzzi tub, one that actually fit me, with room to spare. Again, a dream vacation, not so much as a whiff of a Lake Havasu bloody towels experience.
But then it ended. The flight home from a great trip is always a long one, and this one was no different. In fact, it was even longer because we had to check into a hotel that night. We were driving up north for a wedding, and it didn’t make sense to drive back home only to double back the next day.
Before I reveal what transpired, I want you to know that I take great pride in my children’s manners. At restaurants they look servers in the eye. They say please and thank you. They write thank you notes. I remind them constantly that entitlement is fictional. That’s the problem with a Disney vacation. It blurs the line of what’s fictional and what ain’t.
The hotel we checked into was a Double Tree, a perfectly respectable accommodation. My kids stepped into the room and had a look around—two double beds, nightstands, a desk, a shower, a toilet, hotel art. . .
My six-year-old son spoke first: “This place doesn’t even have a jacuzzi tub.”
His eight-year-old sister followed: “What a dump.”
And then they threw their shit on the floor and turned on the TV. My wife looked at me and knew exactly what I was feeling. I say feeling because there weren’t really any cogent thoughts occurring in my brain. It was just base emotion. Anger. Regret. Self-loathing. Resentment.
My wife tried to calm me by reminding me that they were just children and children exhausted from a long day of traveling at that. When I finally could put a thought together, the only words that came out of my mouth were “Bloody Towels!”
In fact, “Bloody Towels” has become a refrain in our home, a reminder to practice gratitude, a prompt to count our blessings, a warning that things can always get worse.
In the spirit of gratitude, thanks for reading. You can practice some gratitude of your own by sharing this post (assuming you enjoyed it).
And/Or you can practice gratitude in the comments. I’d love to hear the specific things, people, places, and blood-lustful experiences, that make you grateful.
My husband is trying to go to sleep but the bloody towels made me laugh too much so it’s your fault he can’t get some peace.
You're far more generous of spirit than I.