Cheap Sleeps

Many years ago (long before my brother starting appearing the in Pirate movies) I had a dream that Johnny Depp and I were business partners in Cheap Sleeps.

I happen to dream in feature length movies often with landscapes influenced from reading William Gibson novels in the 80s and hanging with the likes of the Survival Research Laboratories guys.

Cheap Sleeps was a series of sleeping chambers that could be rented by the night for 10.00. It was my creation: 6 steel silo-like buildings with an elevator in the middle that made various stops at sleeping pods. The pods were smaller silos and were stored vertically against the building when vacant. When in use (accessed with a purchased card) they turned horizontal for a 10 hour stay.

Our clientele was mostly transients. Do you recall those old linen towel dispensers in bathrooms? Your pulling on the towel would also cause another roller to pull in what was soiled. This is how the bedding was changed in Cheap Sleeps. Whenever someone carded out the door the roller would change the linen!

It was a thriving business and Johnny was an investor but a mega slacker. Some of the silos were beginning to show rust and Depp was refusing to make with the elbow grease.

We had a small office below the flickering red neon CHEAP SLEEPS sign and one night, while listening to rain spatter on the tin roof I scolded Johnny for being greedy and unconcerned about a gleaming surface. His apathy was infuriating and his proclivity for flicking ashes on the floor while dabbing orange Kool Aide behind his ears was getting on my last nerve. Worse, he dressed like one of our clients but with an expensive deliberation that I found to be mocking.

He scoffed at my proposition for a free sleep-in once a month.
He was all bottom line, leather soles, and smoky whiskey. His hair had been dyed a rich shade of red oxide and his jeans had been professionally ripped.

He snottily informed me that rusted steel was the preferred finish of choice for many surfaces in his home. It was maddening.

The End.