‘‘The Nighttime Insect Experience’ is nothing but a rundown motel and it does the bare minimum to convince any would-be visitors otherwise. Advertising exclusively in phonebooks and the thin magnets that clutter the refrigerator doors of elderly relatives, ‘The Nighttime Insect Experience’ is every inch the grainy off-white it appears to be in pictures, flaking like a dry scalp, hunched like a sick dog. The old motel sits on the earth like a happenstance pile of autumn leaves- one careless (and inevitable) kick from crumpled extinction.
‘The Experience’ comes as a sickly surprise to most who, in the Irony Age, assume authenticity and detriment necessarily equate to redemption via gritty eccentricity. In many cases (most cases, even) the decomposition of an enterprise is irredeemably ugly and devoid of meaning. The motel’s name and its suggested purpose is not an attempt to be clever in the traditional sense, but a last-ditch effort to lure in a few more dollars before the looming demise, a plot as ill-conceived as it is ill-meaning.
Like most bad motels, a night in the parking lot would be infinitely more comfortable, save for muggings and foul weather. The place is a minefield of brittle life, the carpets sandy with broken exoskeletons and peppery droppings. There is an implication of mold on every surface and a suspicious movement in every corner that suggests a thousand things hide lazily, as though inconvenienced but ultimately unthreatened by guests.
‘The Nighttime Insect Experience,’ its owners, employees, and unironic guests, are an ugly symptom of a rich nation’s dormant poverty. Like a bedsore, it exists not to pass judgement but to serve as a vulgar warning that something is wrong on a larger scale. Like many bedsores, it goes unnoticed by those that might serve as caretakers.’
– excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside
