Sex Education at the R&R
Missy Nieveen Phegley
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We moved to the R&R Motel a few weeks before the July 4th bicentennial. My parents were excited to start this new adventure because the R&R was the perfect blend of owning and running their own business while offering some semblance of stay-at-home parenting.
The motel was supposedly named for Reed and Reva, the couple who built it, but my parents claimed the name was actually short for Rest and Relaxation—as in “stay for a little R&R at the R&R.” My brothers and I secretly decided that the name was short for Rat & Roach, a joke we shared under our breath and out the side of our mouths during appropriate moments of motel drama. I must be clear that, of the three motels in the small town of Clarinda, Iowa, population 5200, the R&R most certainly did not have rats, nor did it have roaches. The other two motels? Well, I only saw rats sneaking across the parking lot at the motel on the south end of town just a few times.
The R&R was a red brick L-shaped building, and we were at the forefront of small-town motel design because we had a snazzy interior hallway. Opening off the hallway were 36 rooms, 11 doubles, 24 singles, and one large meeting room on the outer corner of the L. There were three entrances connected by the red-carpet hallway. In contrast, all of the motel rooms were carpeted with that ugly green ‘70s shag—the same green shag that was in the first house I bought and the same green shag that is STILL in the third floor of my office building.
Behind the motel office was our home: three bedrooms, one bathroom, a large living room, and a large kitchen, all with that horrific green shag carpet. Opening off the kitchen, the laundry room contained miles of sheets and towels, pyramids of toilet paper, two maid’s carts, cases of glass soda bottles, an industrial-sized dryer which was a perfect hiding place until my dad turned the joke on us, throwing in wet towels and starting the machine, tumble-drying us until we screamed to be let out. The door on the far side of the laundry room opened to the center hallway which stretched for what felt like miles while I cartwheeled or somersaulted down the expanse on Sundays when business was slow and no one was there to get in my way.
I turned 7 shortly after we moved to the R&R and I lived there until I left for college. For anyone, these years contain significant events and rites of passage, but those momentous occasions were sharpened at the R&R. The day after we moved in, I learned to ride my bike without training wheels on the large concrete parking lot, an accomplishment that had been eluding me for the past year, but this victory brought me neighborhood independence. Two years later, I started my first job as a maid, child labor laws be damned, independence be exalted.
Because summers were our busy time, we were frequently fully booked throughout the week. We employed two maids, and 12 rooms apiece was usually the maximum my mom could assign them to clean. After exhausting herself trying to clean what was left while also running the daily operations of the motel, my mom finally gave in to my begging and agreed to hire me. Now, the perfectly logical
question is why would any 9-year-old kid want to clean motel rooms? The perfectly logical answer is money. I was paid $1 for a single and $1.25 for a double. My mom and I were both satisfied. Her expenses stayed low because I was such a bargain. Even if I kept to the standard cleaning time of 30 minutes a room (which seldom happened—there were televisions in each room and watching tv was off limits in our HOUSE until 3:30 when we were allowed to watch afternoon cartoons), she still wasn’t paying me minimum wage. Despite these wholly unjust wage practices, my income allowed me to contribute to my growing collection of stuffed animals, and I could occasionally buy an outfit or shoes that my mom decided were too expensive or, as I grew older, I was able to secretly buy music deemed inappropriate by my church.
For me, this job meant I was growing up, this level of responsibility meant I was that much closer to becoming an adult, and all of this meant I would take this job seriously. Of course, taking the job seriously didn’t necessarily mean I worked quickly. It just meant I was thorough in my cleaning.
I was required to report at 8am on my first day. I woke up early for fear I might be late, even though my mom would have made sure I was there “on time.” I dressed carefully, choosing my Dr. Scholl’s wooden platform sandals, cotton shorts, and a white blouse with a multi-colored heart print and ruched three-quarter length sleeves. I completed the outfit with a layer of strawberry-flavored Bonne Bell Lipsmackers and thoroughly brushed hair. Not exactly the perfect outfit for cleaning motel rooms, but I was confident I looked grown up and pretty, particularly since Rose and Shirley’s typical cleaning uniform was a white button down and polyester stretchy pants. I walked into the laundry room and was hit with a wave of self-consciousness as Rose and Shirley eyed me suspiciously. I shriveled in the corner and waited quietly for them to finish chatting and push their carts out into the hallway.
Taking it easy on me the first day, my mom assigned 211, 212, and 214–three rooms closest to the laundry room (yes, the numbering system started in the 200s even though there was only one floor, and no, we did not have a room 213). My mom sent me off with an old vacuum and a basket containing various spray bottles, rags, and containers of soap and shampoo. We only had two carts so I had to run back to the laundry room for sheets and towels as needed. Nothing memorable stands out about that first day, other than the realization that I wore the entirely wrong outfit. Cleaning up after other people’s bodily functions and the hot Iowa summer weather did not mix well with uncomfortable shoes and a fancy rayon blouse.
In summers, I worked on an as-needed basis and I cleaned around my extracurricular schedule of softball practice, swimming lessons, and tennis lessons. When school was in session, I cleaned rooms on the weekends or, if we were especially busy, I would clean one or two rooms when I got home from school.
Once I started cleaning a room, it didn’t take long to settle into a mindless routine. Clear the sheets from the bed if the room was vacant. If it was occupied, change the sheets every other day. Make the bed. Sheets should hang evenly on each side of the bed. The green blanket should hang a couple inches above the sheet on either side. Tight military corners. Pull the blue and green bedspread over top, making sure it hangs evenly. Fluff the pillows. Tuck the bedspread around the pillows without smashing them back down. Dust the furniture, including the two black vinyl chairs. Empty the trash. Move to the bathroom. Clean the sink and vanity. Restock towels, soap, and shampoo. Clean the tub, making sure to remove any soap rings and all hairs. Spray and wipe down the shower walls, wipe down the shower doors, and dry up any water in the shower door tracks. Then the toilet. Swirl the toilet cleaner in the bowl and scrub when necessary. Spray the entire toilet. Wipe down the outside of the bowl, wipe down the tank, wipe down the seat, making sure there are no urine spots, specks of feces, or pubic hair. Place a paper ring around the lid and seat to show the toilet had been cleaned. On hands and knees, spray and wipe the linoleum floor. Once the bathroom is done, vacuum the entire room. Extra points for making designs in that sweet green shag carpet.
All of this should have taken approximately 30 minutes, but there were game shows and soap operas to be watched and, later, with my contraband music, solo dance parties to be held, so depending on how urgent it was to finish the cleaning, I might take anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours per room. Despite my slow pace, I completed the work, and I took pride in doing as good, if not better, job than my adult “co-workers.”
In the routine of cleaning, I discovered much about people’s habits, and I came to understand that how a person leaves someone else’s property says a tremendous amount about that person’s character. Our customer base ranged from random travelers to businessmen to hunters–pheasant and quail hunting was big business in Southwest Iowa. And for a while, baseball teams. The farm league team in Clarinda, where Ozzie Smith first got his start, kept us busy for several summers, until we quit renting to them. When a team held batting practice in the motel rooms using glass soda bottles for balls, my parents had had enough.
Some of my favorite rooms to clean were the Japanese engineers who would stay for weeks or months at a time while they worked at the Japanese-owned ball bearing plant in town. They kept their rooms neat and they frequently left tips or gifts for us on the weekends. And this was my first introduction to the smell of sake.
The other type of room I liked to clean was the hookup, although I didn’t quite understand what had actually happened in that type of room for a very long time. These rooms just required clean sheets and a quick wipe down of the sink and vanity and maybe a wipe down of the toilet, finished off with a quick vacuum. I was in high school before I realized why so much of the room had been untouched. This was made clear to me after a high school principal from my mom’s hometown—100 miles away—rented a room in the afternoon. He was with a woman who most certainly was not his wife. He only stayed an hour and the bed was the only thing that had been disturbed in the room. I had received a raise by that time so I made $1.50 that afternoon, and my mom was able to rent the room again that night, most certainly a win for both of us.
Despite our exposure to all sides of human nature, my brothers and I remained quite sheltered. We went to church three times a week, and my parents didn’t swear, smoke, or drink. Dirty jokes were not shared in my home. My knowledge of sex was limited to the grainy black and white puberty film we were shown in 4th grade and the Christian puberty how-to-talk-about-sex books my mom had given me to read when I was in sixth grade.
In the spring of my 7th grade year, I was cleaning room 217 on a Saturday. The guy was staying through the weekend so I didn’t have to put clean sheets on the bed—I just had to pull up the sheets and bedspread and make it neat. I picked up a pillow to fluff it and felt something wet. I turned it over and saw an odd, yellowish stain in the middle. I held the pillow up to my nose and smelled. It didn’t smell like urine, but it clearly wasn’t saliva. I removed the pillowcase and discovered that the pillow itself was also damp. With no other explanation than someone peeing in the bed, I took the pillow to the laundry room and grabbed a clean one. It seemed so odd to me that someone could accidentally pee the bed…especially at the top of the bed in a small spot in the middle of the pillow. When I finished cleaning for the day, I told my mom the guy in 217 had peed the bed and the pillow was wet. She was visibly irritated.
I had to clean his room again on Sunday and the same thing happened. Odd yellowish non-urine-smelling stain on the pillowcase and a wet pillow. Again, I replaced the pillow with a clean one, again I told my mom about it, and again she was visibly irritated.
The following morning, I was sitting at the kitchen table eating breakfast with my brothers, while my mom agitatedly paced. She kept looking out the window above the sink, which opened to the parking space between the office and the first door to the motel rooms. Morning conversation with my brothers was interrupted by, “THAT JERK IN 217 NEEDS TO QUIT JACKING OFF INTO THE PILLOWS!”
After a stunned moment, questions bubbled out of our mouths. We knew my mom could silence any kid in a mile radius with her death glare, but we had never heard her talk like this. She explained that Mr. 217 had ruined four pillows already and she intended to put a stop to it (which she did as his pillows were unstained for the remainder of his stay). Then, I asked the question that catapulted me out of childhood.
“What is jacking off?”
She sighed. Then, throwing a daggered glare out the window as if to pierce Mr. 217 for bringing this filth into the lives of her innocent children, she slowly enunciated, “Mas-tur-ba-tion.”
And that was the end of the conversation with her. Unfortunately, for me, the Christian puberty books had given me enough information to terrify and shame me as I came to understand that I had unknowingly touched a man’s semen.
My desire for independence and adulthood immediately evaporated. I no longer wanted to be grown up.
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Missy Nieveen Phegley is an English professor and writing program administrator at Southeast Missouri State University. When she is not teaching, mentoring, and doing assessment work, she enjoys hanging out with her kids, riding bikes, practicing yoga, watching reality shows on Bravo, and eating good food.
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