I’ve spent a lot of time in hotels lately. I think about a month out of the last three months has been spent in one of these distant cousins of office cubicles. Some were about as big as my old office cubicle while others were larger than some of the apartments I have had.
Last week, I was staying at the Doubletree in Key West. I couldn’t afford to stay there 11 days on my own. Heaven forbid. I think it’s like $250 a night here. Just like a medium priced call girl, I was doing favors to get the room – singing for my supper, uh, room, if you will, during Pirates in Paradise.
I am always amazed at these little homes away from home. Here at the Doubletree, they even try to make you feel even more at home by offering you fresh baked chocolate chip cookies when you check in.
That doesn’t really make me feel at home. I don’t get fresh baked cookies there. I also don’t have a huge swimming pool out my window or an occasional steel drum band playing next to it. No one at home opens the door for me as I enter and exit either.
As I was talking to my friend Reuben yesterday, he told me story about his fellow performer friend, Steve Goodman. He wrote City of New Orleans. He also wrote This Hotel Room, the opening lyrics being:
Oh this hotel room’s gotta lotta stuff
Laundry bag and a shoe shine cloth
Thirty two hangers and a touch tone phone
Well a light that comes on when I ain’t home
They got an air conditioner for when I’m hot
A radiator for when I’m not
Two big chairs sittin’ side by side
With a holy bible and the TV Guide
I’ve always loved that song.
Of course, there’s no TV Guide in the room anymore. The flatscreen TV does all the guiding I need these days. I do, however, have two queen beds, something I don’t have at home either, well, at least not in the same room.
Whenever I stay in a hotel, I marvel at how our personalities seem to change. Things we would never think about doing at home we decide we can’t do without at a hotel.
Case in point – maid service. When I’m at home, my sheets stay on the bed for about a week, sometimes longer if I don’t get around to doing laundry. It seems like a waste of power and detergent to do it any more frequently. But yet, for some reason when I am in a hotel, it seems perfectly natural for a maid to come in regularly and not only make the bed, but change the sheets.
While she’s there, she will also give me new bath towels and even clean the toilet if I ask. Not once a week, but every day if I’d like. I certainly don’t clean my toilet regularly at home. For the longest time, it had to start growing stuff before I would swing a brush around it. And yet, I’ve heard my hotel roommates freak out if the toilet was anything less than pristine and call down to the front desk to ream someone for it.
I don’t ask for any of these things, of course. I really don’t need my bed made every day or even fresh towels. I really don’t like to be that demanding and quite frankly, it creeps me out that strangers are in my room when I’m gone. It’s not like I would let that happen at home, well, at least without calling the cops.
That said, I do love and could get readily used to the idea of room service. I wish my condo had room service. I particularly enjoyed room service the day after Thanksgiving this year. Through a comedy of errors, I missed out on having the traditional thanksgiving goodies. When I ordered the Club here at the hotel, I didn’t know that I would end with a little room service pay back. Instead of the usual pressed turkey in the Club, the sandwich was overflowing with leftover roast turkey from the day before. Yum!
I could get used to that kind of service. I would love to be in my condo, get a hankering for something to eat and simply call downstairs. A half hour or so later, it would arrive at my door. They don’t need to bring it in. I don’t need all the bells and whistles a hotel has, just a menu in the room with a good selection of things to eat at a moment’s notice.
But all good things must come to an end. First, my dreams of room service in my condo is at the end before it ever began. The condo association here would never go for it. If it’s even vaguely fun, it’s almost surely noted somewhere in the covenants that it’s not allowed.
And of course, I had to leave the sanctity of my small home away from home and return to North Hutchinson Island. Back I went to the dirty sheets, the unmade bed, the less than gleaming toilet and a refrigerator that while filled with nummy things to eat, I must make it myself.
That’s just fine with me. After nearly a month of being incarcerated in hotels of all shapes and sizes, I have to say that I look forward to returning to the life unchecked, where I don’t have to live out of a suitcase or pretend that a good Febrezing will make a workable substitute for doing the laundry.
Back on the Treasure Coast, wondering when my final checkout will be,
– Robb