Thoughts While Staying the Night in a Hotel Alone

January 9, 2011

If your little sister bakes you 30 oatmeal cranberry cookies to take with you to England, and you put them in a plastic bag and put that bag in your suitcase, the cookies will all come together in a group hug. And what is better than 30 individual oatmeal cranberry cookies? One giant oatmeal cranberry cookie of love.

Why do all hotel rooms contain Bibles, and how did that tradition start?

Has anyone ever read a hotel room Bible?

Has anyone ever had a “come to Jesus moment" while reading a hotel room Bible?

Are the Bibles there to combat the pay-per-view porn and illicit sex hotel rooms are so commonly known for? How’s that going for them?

There is something so lonely about hotel rooms. Barren closet. Empty drawers. Bed sheets unwrinkled. Nothing that says, “Hey, people live here.” But the biggest thing that gets me, the thing that says, “you don’t belong here,” is the total lack of personal photographs. In fact there are no photographs. Just cheap prints of trees. I don’t know why hotels always hang pictures of trees in their rooms. Maybe tree pictures flood the market and they are the cheapest prints to buy.

I do not own a television. I have no desire to ever own a television. When I was five, my parents disconnected the cable in our house, and nothing but a static channel three has surfaced from TV-land since.
We kept the television to watch movies, but now if I want to watch a movie, then I do so on my computer. I admit, once and a while, I will get into a television show that I’ll stream on my laptop. But for the most part, just looking at a television I feel my life fading into meaninglessness and my mind jumping off a cliff into a garbage heap.
But for whatever reason, whenever I am in a hotel room, I get the overwhelming urge to turn on that black box. And even though I have read again and again that the television remote has the highest bacteria count of every object in a hotel room, I don’t want to press the button on the television. I want to pick up that remote and press that red, bacteria-cultured button and watch that screen turn technicolor.

So as soon as I walk into the hotel room, I see it—big, black, glossy.
I set down my bags.

Nope, not going to do it.

I toss my coat on the chair.

Still not doing it.

I sit on the bed—the place of comfort, privacy, vulnerability. And it watches me, reflecting me and everything in the room, as though saying, “Oh yeah, you think I’m worthless, look at your life.”

I take off my shoes, the screen reflecting every motion, throwing it back at me—that I’m the only one moving. That I’m the only one in the room. That I am alone.

Not only does the screen stare at the bed, but the remote boarders it, set on top of the nightstand, so convenient for the person laying down to just reach over and…

I grab it, pressing the red button, telling myself, “It’s the only way to have another human voice in the room,” and proceed to watch the movie Hitch on some station for the next two hours. Great film btw.

Did you ever see the 1950 Disney animated movie Cinderella? In the film the king sleeps on a bed the size of a ballroom. When I was younger, I wanted that bed. Because if I had that bed, then I could have the biggest sleepovers ever, and no one would have to sleep on the floor, and we could all jump on the bed like it was a massive trampoline and have a huge pillow fight. It would have been awesome.

Well, in this hotel room, the bed is not quite the size of a ballroom, but it is a king size bed. And besides being able to lay on the bed in any direction and not having my feet hang off the edge, it is not at all cool sleeping alone in a bed big enough for four people. It just makes me feel small and lonely.

I officially took the best shower of my life. The towels smelled like just-baked, syrup-drenched waffles. Needless to say, I buried my face into the stack and just stood there breathing for a length of time that I will not mention here. I am really hoping the continental breakfast tomorrow includes waffles, because I am really craving some right now. Note to self: ask the receptionist which laundry detergent the hotel uses and where I can buy some.

Obligatory Bible in the Hotel Room

Obligatory Tree Picture in the Hotel Room