Chapter Two: The Bad…
This Room… Is Not So Sweet
By Molly Holly
I was the Women’s Champion in the early days of the brand extension when the champions would work on both shows. I wasn’t always sure if I’d work on Smackdown! though. They only had a couple of girls on that show, so I wasn’t going to defend my title every week. If there were plans for me to be on, they usually told me a couple days beforehand so I could make arrangements. I always like to have all my reservations made before every trip. It’s how I spend my off day — planning the next trip.
One night at the end of a Raw taping in Philadelphia, an agent came over to me and said that plans had changed for Tuesday’s show; they needed me to be in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, for Smackdown!
I called the airline right away to change my departure airport to something closer to Wilkes-Barre and postpone my flight home by a day. Then I was going to call a hotel in Wilkes-Barre to book a room for the night but decided I’d wait until I got there to do it in person. I needed a room for one night in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania; I didn’t think it would be big deal.
I drove around to the usual hotels after Tuesday’s show — Hampton Inn, Marriott — and they were both sold out. I figured no big deal, that happens sometimes. I’ll just check out a few more. Holiday Inn, booked. Days Inn, booked. Red Roof Inn, booked. They’re all sold out.
How could this be possible? I thought someone was playing a joke on me. In the fifth hotel I went to, I asked the clerk what could possibly be going on in Wilkes-Barre on a Tuesday night to cause this backup.
“Nothing special. Just the usual I guess.” The usual? This is the usual amount of people Wilkes-Barre brings in on a nightly basis? I severely underestimated the drawing power of Wilkes-Barre, I guess.
What actually bothered me more than these five places being sold out was that at each and every one of them the front-desk clerks all said, “You should have made a reservation” before I walked out. They were kind of rubbing it in my face that I didn’t expect them to be so busy. That wasn’t the support I needed.
At around 1 A.M. I still hadn’t found a hotel and started to get desperate. It was too cold to sleep in the car, and I wasn’t about to drive too far out of the city because my flight was at six the next morning. I didn’t want to have to get back up at 3 A.M. to get to the airport on time.
My window of opportunity to get any meaningful sleep was slowly closing. I decided to drive toward the airport, thinking the closer I was to it, the longer I could sleep in.
I went into the first motel I saw. They said they had one room left — the honeymoon suite. They have a honeymoon suite at an airport motel in Wilkes-Barre? As disturbed as I was by the existence of this room, I took it.
Inside the room was a huge hot tub, about two feet away from the bed, and there were mirrors all over the ceiling. I was pretty grossed out.
I took one of my T-shirts out of my luggage and used it for a pillowcase. I slept in full clothes and was still too bothered to sleep. The whole night I laid there trying to figure out what kind of people spend their honeymoon at an airport motel in Wilkes-Barre and was horrified to think about the types of things that went on in there.
The whole decoration of the room was seedy: It was all real dark — the walls, the carpet, everything was a dark color. It was all very sketchy.
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