Tales From The College Program: Smush and The Pretty One

I received a special request to write out this story, so here it is.

I was in my apartment at Vista Way when Dan called me "Some random girls just called my apartment and asked if I wanted to go to Tampa."  At Vista Way calling an apartment was simple, you added a one to the first number of the apartment (1205 = ext 2205)

Dan started telling me about these girls he was talking to and their plan to go to Tampa.  In the middle of our conversation I heard the click of another call coming in, I told Dan to hold on and switched over.    On he line was a very Puerto Rican sounding girl "Hey, so jew wanna go to Tampa with sum sexy girls?"  I told her to hold on and switched back over to Dan "Now they are calling me!" I told him.  I switched back over to mystery girl and told her that one of her friends was on the phone with my friend, she told me that we should all meet up at their apartment.  I walked over to Dan's and the three of us (Me, Dan, and his roommate, Rickli) headed over to meet these girls.

At this point, I cannot over stress that these girls spoke very highly of their physical beauty which probably should have been our first indication that we were in for an awful night.  Let's be honest, pretty girls don't need to dial random numbers looking for dudes to go out with.  When they opened the door it became apparent that they may have exaggerated just a little about how attractive they were.  This is not to say that the three of us were some sort of catch.  It felt like we had gone too far to turn back now, so we headed in.  The Puerto Rican girl I had spoken to on the phone was the leader, I don't think we never actually heard her name, so we started referring to her as "Smush" whenever we told the story.

A plan was made, the girls would spend the night in Tampa while Dan, Rickli, and I would drive back that night.  Smush and 2 of the girls rode in her car while Dan jumped into the car of the one we had named "the pretty one."  Rickli and I rode together in his car.  Now would be a good time to mention that it was 9:00 pm, foggy, cold, and mid November.  And we're off!

The drive from Orlando to Tampa is about 2 hours, while Rickli and I discussed pop culture topics, quoted episodes of Seinfeld, and sang the Perfect Strangers theme; Dan got to hear all about the pretty one's boyfriend that she had back home.  A few hours later we were in Tampa.  We pulled into a parking lot and I walked over to the beach.  It was so foggy and dark that you couldn't even see the water.

The girls decided they were hungry and we all headed over to some hole in the wall restaurant.  Smush did most if not all of the talking, while Dan, Rickli, and I sat there wishing we were back in Orlando.  It was dark, cold, late, and we were realizing that we had nothing in common with these girls.  After dinner the girls decided they wanted to check into a hotel.  A friendly homeless looking guy over heard and told everyone to follow him around the corner.  He took us to the shadiest looking motel I have ever seen.  If memory serves correctly, it was called the Diamond Motel.

It was around midnight and the motel manager who already gone to sleep, but our hobo guide knew she lived next door and he banged on her door until she answered.  The woman did not seem to happy to be woken up, but she gave the girls a key and walked us all to their room.  The motel was set up like a labyrinth, it was all outdoors with walkways that wrapped around buildings, and no exterior lighting.  The inside of the room was terrifying.  It looked like she had stumbled across an abandoned haunted summer camp and started charing people to sleep there.  The one light bulb in the room hung from the ceiling without a shade and emitted so little light that a man with an axe could have been standing in the corner and none of us would have noticed.

After the owner left, Dan, Rickli, and I looked at each other, looked at the girls and simultaneously said "OK, see ya."  The girls all screamed "No, stay!"  and this was in no way a seductive "no...stayyyy"  it was a "we don't want to die in this place!"  We all stood in that creepy room trying to decide the best way to wake up the owner and tell her that the girls wanted their money back.  We walked back to the restaurant, found the hobo, and Rickli explained our predicament to him.  He woke up the owner, who was more unhappy than the last time and we got the girls money back.  Now to find a suitable hotel.

Dan had joined Rickli and I in the guy car, and left the pretty one to talk to herself about her boyfriend.  The girls pulled into a nice hotel while we sat in the car and waited.  When we knew they had a room, we were going to floor it back to Vista Way.  They came out with no room.  Turns out all of the girls were under 21, and the manager would not give them  a room.  There was only one member of our little group that was 21, and it was me.

We drove down to the next hotel which was a Red Roof Inn.  We told the girls to wait in the car, the plan was for me to rent the room with the girls money, give them the key and leave.  Once inside, we let Rickli do the talking again.  He told the manager about the awful hotel we had escaped from and how we had very little money but needed a room just for the night.  He made no mention of the girls, just told the story as if it had just been the 3 of us.  The manager sympathized with our tale and even offered to give us a managers discount on the room.  The night was beginning to look up, then it happened.

In his joy of almost being rid of these girls, Rickli slipped.  He said something to me and Dan along the lines of "I feel much better now that the girls will at least have a safe place to stay."  After hearing this, the managers mood took a drastic turn.  "I dont run that kind of hotel!" he screamed.  We all jumped in "No, no, no, no, you don't understand, its not like that."  I tried to calm him down by explaining "No, you haven't even seen these girls, they aren't even hot."  He had already made up his mind, apparently Dan, Rickli, and I looked like some sort of casanovas brining a bunch of girls back to our hotel room.  We tried to explain how they were not 21 and I was just getting the room when the manager picked up the phone and started to dial "I'm calling the police, this is not that kind of hotel."  That was all we needed to hear, we ran back to the car and took off.

We started driving back towards Orlando with the girls following behind us.  They pulled into a small hotel along the freeway.  We sat in the car while they went in to talk to the desk clerk.  They came back with a room key a few minutes later.  The girls headed towards their room and we drove off in Rickli's car.

A few weeks later I received another call from Smush, she invited us over to their apartment for Thanksgiving dinner, we respectfully declined, I had to work on Thanksgiving.  We never heard from the girls after that.  I'd occasionally see Smush working at Pinocchio's at the Magic Kingdom, but she never saw me.

I found out later that it was my roommate, Dan's (a different Dan) fault that Smush called our apartment in the first place.  For Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party Dan had dressed up like a character he called "Dr. Love" and handed out business cards with his Vista Way extension on it.  He gave one of those cards to Smush.  I owe that whole night to him.  Thanks a lot Dr. Love.