Scribblings › Magic Fingers

I sprawl on top of the burnt orange bedspread, its cheap synthetic weave unpleasantly slick beneath my boxer-clad body. I am in a generic American motor lodge, collapsed from a case of the generic American creeps. The paper Miss America sash on my toilet seat has failed to assure me that I am in a safe and sanitary place. There's a collection of tiny hairs around my shower drain, a nasty domestic dispute in the room behind my headboard. And that skinny, shifty-eyed fellow at the front desk—Wasn't he named Norman?

But when I turn to face the night table, I find an offer of transcendence. Not the ubiquitous Gideon bible, but that icon of unholy rolling—the Magic Fingers coinbox. I slip in off the boxers, slip in some coins and feel the rumble of escape. It's like a full-body York Peppermint Patty, a vigorous, tingling backbeat that suggests a boxspring full of hamsters on pogo sticks. I'm no longer in a $35 dollar motel room, I've escaped into my body—and my head.

Since 1961, Official Magic Fingers corporate literature has praised the company's patented bed-buzzing motors for their ability to "reduce stress," "soothe muscle ache," and "gently massage your entire body." But what they really offer is fingers on the buttons of your fantasies. There's a cheesy horndog aura to playing the full-contact jukebox: It's easy to imagine you're not alone in the heart of American dreck.

Such Sensurround Econo-Inn musings have made Magic Fingers a genuine pop-cultural phenomenon. Frank Zappa recorded an ode to the contraption and San Francisco lounge singer Bud. E. Luv claims that the throbbing beat of a Finger-fueled bed inspired him to invent disco music in 1972. From National Lampoon's Vacation to this fall's Clay Pigeons, featuring a ditzily Magic-digitized Janeane Garofalo, the Fingers have wiggled their way onto the silver screen.

For the moment, however, as my time runs out and my bed stands still, visions of hot sex and Hollywood quickly recede. I am once again alone in a mildew-scented white-trash vortex.

Then I remember; in the hall, next to the free ice, there's a change machine.