The Glory of a Mid-Level Hotel Room
It's a different kind of "I'm alone" than living alone.
Hello from my parent’s house.
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That’s Jessica Day, from New Girl, reveling in a hotel room all on her own. After accidentally moving in with her boyfriend and living with him and his dirty feet for three days, she needed a break. While I am absolutely more of a Nick Miller (the aforementioned boyfriend) sort of whiskey-gal, Jess really hit the nail on the head with this one; there is nothing like a hotel room all to your onesome.
We’ve hit the point in my family where we (Mom, Dad, Bro, Me) are spread across three hotel rooms. I live 2500 miles away from my family so it’s not like we end up in hotel rooms together often but when we do Bro and I are a little too old to be sharing a hotel room if we can help it. And he’s about to get married too so he has to share a hotel room, regardless. (Sucker.) The advantage to being perpetually single is that I get all the amenities to myself.
Yes, okay, I do live alone. I already have a whole space to myself. But in my own space there are responsibilities that never seem to stop. Both laundry and dishes never seem to be done. Just when you wash all your clothes, you remember you are wearing clothes and just when you wash all your dishes, you find an abandoned cup next to your bed. I have to keep track of whether or not I have enough toilet paper. My apartment is only clean if I clean it, which seems like a scam. When I moved into a place by myself, I was excited not to deal with anyone else’s shit. But, you know, I didn’t realize that I had actually signed a contract to deal with all my own shit all the time instead.
Enter the illustrious hotel room. Everything I have complaints about for my own apartment (laundry, dishes, toilet paper, A/C bill) is taken care of. The pandemic changed the way hotels (everything) operates so beds aren’t necessarily made every single day but it is the only place I feel okay leaving the bed perpetually unmade. In my real life, I can’t get my brain to start the day if my bed is not made. She simply will not continue on. She will ground me until I take the two minutes to just make your bed, Samantha.
Most everything about a chain hotel is generic. You might be in any state when you walk through the lobby. You could be riding an elevator today, twenty years ago, or ten years in the future. All the art is the same, some sort of modern abstract shape thing or a pastoral countryside somewhere. There is very little thought required beyond which of two beds to take to be moderately comfortable in a mid-level hotel room.
And that’s exactly what I was when I found myself in a hotel room in Missoula, Montana a week ago—moderately comfortable. I won’t describe this specific hotel room because it looks like all of them (see above). My greatest concern was whether or not I would be able to see the TV from the bed. I shouldn’t have been concerned. The TV turned and rotated. The hotel gods giveth.
My hotel was lucky to have a bunch of friends around. It was in a parking lot with literally four other hotels. I’m not sure why they all congregated in the same place, maybe a convention? Either way, if my hotel was not generic enough for me, I could have walked 50ft and found another one. There was also a Diary Queen not so far away. And basically any fast or fast-casual food places you could think of.
I feel like the beige walls and the beige quartz bathroom countertops are built to absorb anything you are experiencing. The colors, the layout, the black-out curtains, none of it is there to combat whatever emotions are pouring out of you. If you need to lock those emotions up, though, there is probably a safe in the bottom of the wardrobe. Sometimes, all you need is to stare into the neutral void for a day or two and then get on with it.
So, when I electronically opened the door to my room after a funeral last week, I felt a certain amount of comfort in not having to settle my eyes on anything with loud colors or busy shapes. I felt a certain amount of comfort in getting a few moments to myself. All I wanted was to lay down for a bit of a nap with the sounds of Guy Fieri’s Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives floating in the background.
I pulled and rotated the TV, turned on the TV guide, and snuggled into the bed’s twisted sheets with a sigh of relief as Guy Fieri’s red corvette cruised down the highway to some greasy spoon in the middle of nowhere.
This week, paying subscribers once again entered the haiku salon, where the topic of the day was my childhood fear of the Legends of the Temple guards. If that sounds intriguing to you, consider becoming a paid subscriber.