Living Life....Regally.

I'm going to tell you fine folks a quick story about the worst hotel I ever stayed in.

We were driving to Myrtle Beach at a time when a hurricane was due to hit the coast, thanks to excellent planning by my parents. My family is bad at timing things, as evidenced by this story, as well as my history with women.

Every hotel for about 50 miles was booked tight, and we wanted to get off the road, since that's what you do when there are supposedly 90 mph winds coming to murder you. Then, in the town of Rockingham, NC, the pagan gods presented us with an oasis amidst the black clouds of the fast-approaching storm: the Regal Inn.

The sign outside said that a room cost $25 or some such amount, for the night. If there's a better deal out there, show it to me, and I'll tell you to run like hell, because of what transpired that night.

We got into our room, and I can only describe the smell as "fungus pickles". I later worked with a very unclean man who had the same smell, though I never asked him how he achieved it. I think fungus pickles is a smell you can only achieve by asking how, at which point a genie comes out of the toilet and bestows the smell upon you.

My Mom used to always warn against sleeping under just the sheets, due to....love juices or some such discharge. In this case, my mom skipped the warning phase and said "Do NOT sleep under those sheets!".

Pictured: sperm

I slept on the floor, which I remember as being very damp and moldy, but in my 13 year-old naïveté, I imagined that it was clean. People didn't POSSIBLY copulate on the floor, right?

In the room was a mini-fridge. Have you ever seen Se7en? We didn't want to know what was in THAT box, that night in North Carolina.

I just love this gif.

I don't remember much. Part of me wants to say there was a hooker outside our room, but I can't confirm. I feel like after "fungus pickles," any more terrible hotel stereotypes would just be overkill.

After we all finally laid down to sleep, the room was silent. Very silent. Nobody said anything, though there was an air of tension, as everyone knew but did not say that we were all going to come down with some horrible disease.

As if on cue, a train passed us, obviously on the other side of the wall, and we all burst out laughing at the absurdity of the situation. The silence had been all we really wanted, but it had been taken from us and replaced by a coal-fired engine and the knowledge that we were laying atop billions of discarded little swimmers.

In the morning, the manager ended up charging us 3 times the advertised rate. The story has been rehashed countless times, so really, it was worth it.

I must also mention, because I'm me, that this was the same vacation in which I refused to enter the ocean due to sharks, and was repeatedly told there were no sharks. On our last day, there were sharks, and my fears were vindicated. Deal with it, Mumsy.