Sex for Science! Chapter 0
Sex for Science! Chapter 1
Sex for Science! Interlude
Sex for Science! Chapter 2
Sex for Science! Chapter 3
Sex for Science! Chapter 4

The morning after our experimentation, the sun rose bright and early in a Seattle sky.

I, however, did not. I slept like a brick until just before checkout. I was so determined to sleep, in fact, that I’m told I totally slept right through random kinky sex happening in the bed not three feet from mine. I’ve always been a bit rubbish in the morning.

Once we had packed everything in the car and checked out, it was off to Portland again…at least, that was the plan. Life sometimes has a way of interfering with one’s plans, though. As it turned out, Life, that tempting and mysterious mistress of temptation, tempted us with a couple of interesting and mysterious tidbits along the way, and so it turned out to take rather longer to get back home than we’d expected.

Many of the Portland test subjects who’d participated in the experiment headed back on their own. We, by which I mean zaiah, the pair of Australians, and I, packed ourselves into the car and headed south along the interstate, unaware of the distractions awaiting us on the drive.

The first distraction was a strange series of steel structures flanking Interstate 5, a bit less than halfway home.

It was entirely too strange to pass up, so we exited the interstate and drove around on some a series of narrow, twisty roads, all alike, until we’d wormed our way back to the place we’d seen.

Apparently, there’s some sort of land-use thing going on there right now.

Curiosity piqued, we (by which I mean half of the pair of Australians and I) figured there was nothing for it but to hop the fence and investigate.

Apparently, according to a quick cell phone Google search, the thing is Gospodor’s Monument, built by oil millionaire Dominic Gospodor, who died in 2010. The monument is supposed to honor Mother Theresa, Native Americans, and Holocaust victims, with minor bits paying respects to Jonas Salk and Susan B. Anthony.

That bit of trespass done, we piled back into the car and headed south once more. Just past the town of Castle Rock, which as near as I can tell has neither a castle nor a rock, we saw a decrepit, falling-down house on the side of the road, right up against the interstate. And once again, there was nothing for it but to pull off the freeway and investigate.

Horror movies start this way, I’m told.

We stayed here for quite a while taking pictures. Well, I stayed here for quite a while taking pictures, while zaiah and our Australian pair mostly humored me.

The house was built on top of a large, low ziggurat of bricks. at some point in the past, somebody really loved this place. The quality and detail of the woodwork were once very high; I love the overlapping patterns of wood trim along the tops of each floor.

Through the front door, someone had spray-painted “Fuck Horrors Here” on the old fireplace. I’m not sure exactly what that means, but it seems to me someone didn’t have a particularly good weekend…

The graffiti elsewhere in the house is equally perplexing. In one small side room, someone appears to have used the walls as a canvas upon which to scrawl some kind of mathematical proof of God or something, I don’t know.

The interior was beautiful. Just absolutely beautiful. I so want to come back here and do a bondage photo shoot at some point.

The bricks upon which the house is built were made by the Hidden Brick Company, which apparently still exists. I kind of like the notion that this place has “Hidden” written all over it.

Just before we departed, I snapped a quick shot of one of our extremely patient Australian friends-slash-experimental-subjects:

At this point, it was becoming late enough in the afternoon that we resolved to resist further temptations on our journey home. No bizarre structures nor rural ruins nor trio of Brazilian supermodel bank robbers fleeing from the FBI would delay us again, we said, and in fact we made it home without further incident.

I do plan to go back to that house again, though. Oh, yes, I do.