Vacancy

By: Felicity Dowker
September 10, 2008

Being in a hotel room alone always feels weird.

It feels stranger than that - more desolate - but that’s the closest word available to describe it: weird. Perhaps I should say that it feels wyrd. That seems closer to the truth, somehow.

The moment I walk in the door (after punching my card in the magical slot that opens it, hey presto), I’m hit by the stillness. It’s like a snapshot; a moment in time. Nothing moves except me. The unnatural perfection of the room unnerves me. I look around, taking it in, getting my bearings. Everywhere are crisp corners, neutral tones, and clean surfaces.

The first thing I do is find the damned (ha ha) Bible.

It is most often in the bedside table drawer, but sometimes they put it on the coffee table. I ferret that sucker out, where ever it is crouching, and I throw it straight in the rubbish bin. It’s a futile, empty protest; when housekeeping comes, they will remove it from the bin, and store it somewhere until I vacate the room. Then they will put it back where I found it, ready for the next guest.

But it is my protest, and I always make it. Sometimes I even rip the pages out – try putting that one back.

Bible trashed, I look for the movie guide. If there isn’t one, I turn the TV on and just flick through channels. It’s a technological way of filling that motionless void. Surrounded by familiar babble, I feel a little safer. It’s hard to imagine anything terrible happening when Dr Phil is preaching in the background.

And even if it does, at least I won’t be alone.

Then I use the toilet. A base animal, laying down my scent, marking my territory. I’d piss on the furniture, but I don’t think the management would like it.

I peruse the room service menu, and decide what I’ll order when dinnertime rolls around. I take a long time to decide. As long as possible.

I find the kettle (usually stashed under the sink, or in the cupboard under the TV), and I make a cup of awful coffee from the free sachets the hotel provides. They always put those stupid little triangles filled with half a squirt of milk in the ‘fridge; I use all six of them, and my coffee is still far too dark and hot.

Then I can’t delay it any longer; there is nothing else to do.

I sit and look at the room. I just be.

That’s when I feel the room look back at me, and it’s busting to tell me what it sees. It never sees anything nice. It doesn’t want to talk to me about my dazzling wit, what a good (ok, passable) cook I am, or ask me if I’ve lost a little weight lately.

It wants to talk about things much more wyrd than all that.

Like, what I think about when I masturbate. Like, the habit I have of picking at scabs and eating them. Like, the times I wished my mother would just die (and then she did, and how do I feel about that?). Like, the person I am deep down, the one nobody sees, the one I don’t want them to see.

The creep, the jerk, the lonely one, the cruel one, the selfish one, the vulnerable one, the evil one, the sad one, the pathetic one, the stupid one, the sick one, the one who is nothing much at all and just doesn’t matter in any way, the weird

(wyrd)

one.

You know that guy. Don’t you? I hope you do. I hope he doesn’t just live in me.

The hotel room tells me he does, but I think maybe it lies.

Huge chunks of time can pass while I just sit there, feeling consumed by the nothingness. Often I’m not thinking anything, I’m just feeling. And the room loves it. It’s so solid, unmoving, implacable. There’s so much space for my junk to flow into in there. I don’t think it could ever be sated; ever be filled up.

There are the noises, of course. They’re so blatant it’s almost embarrassing. They come at night, in the dark, as such things do. The creak that comes from just next to your bed. The rustling in the corner. The banging on the wall that isn’t from the next room but in the wall, and it isn’t the pipes. The sound of the shower running in your little ensuite bathroom, even though you’re the only one in the room and you’re lying mystified in bed.

That’s a token effort from the room, and it’s effective, but it works its real magic during the light of day.

You can see the abyss in the light, and that’s far worse than the blissful ignorance the dark provides.

When the room service guy knocks and enters, bearing my food, I want to cling to him. Beg him to stay, block his exit, keep his energy and warm, breathing presence in that space with me.

The room can’t speak to me unless I’m alone. It can’t look at me, see me, unless I’m alone.

He leaves with a curt nod. I don’t tip; I think it’s an American custom – the room points out my stinginess with immediate glee.

Housekeeping taps on the door, and I tell them I don’t need anything; I’ll use the same towels tomorrow. They move on.

I don’t know why I didn’t let them in; suck up their company for a while.

Well, I do know. The room told me not to.

I can hear a clock ticking, which is interesting, since the only clock in the room is the digital alarm clock on the bedside table.

Looking out the window brings no relief; the room overlooks a rooftop car park, which is enclosed on all sides by the towering brick walls of other buildings. The grey, boxy, hemmed in vista points out to me that I am teetering on the edge of this room,

(alone!)

overlooking nothing. I back away from the window and sit on the bed, my knees tucked up to my chest, the TV turned all the way up.

Let the people in surrounding rooms complain about the noise; at least someone would have to come and talk to me about it.

I lie down, and as my attention drifts away from the TV, images bombard my mind. I close my eyes, and memories caper in the dark behind my lids.

Nothing special; I’ve no extraordinary evils to obsess over. Just run of the mill disappointments, cruelties and traumas. And that makes them all the more horrific.

A newborn kitten, cold and rigid in my hands. Dead. I had picked it up from the warm nest of blankets its mother (our fat, loved cat, Candy) was asleep in. The kitten’s siblings slept or squirmed their blind way to their mother’s teats. I had only wanted to give the kitten a cuddle, drink in its sweetness, share some time with it. I picked it up a bit too hard, and it died – maybe of fright, maybe from being squashed by my eager toddler’s hands. I held it, staring down at it, not sure what had happened, but all too aware that something was Not Right. Something

(wyrd)

bad had happened, and I was involved.

A woman, sobbing before my eyes, shaking with grief. Her hands were tangled in her blonde hair and she yanked out huge, bloody clumps of it with the passion of her misery. She rocked back and forth on the floor before me as I stood watching, impassive. I told her to stop being so goddamn melodramatic, and I turned and walked out the door. Into the waiting car, driven by the woman I was leaving her for. We laughed together as we drove off.

A test, cheated on.

A banquet set out before me on the table. I had ordered too much, and I threw most of it out. There were children starving in Africa.

A rumour, spread around the office, my lips among the willing participants. A colleague fired when the (untrue) rumour reached the boss.

A wallet, found on the street, with $500 in it. I kept the cash and threw the wallet in the lake in the local park.

A joke made about disabled people.

A neighbour’s newspaper stolen.

A child’s arm squeezed a little too hard, on purpose.

“Stop it!” I scream at the room, at myself, at everything. I run to the tiny bathroom and turn the cold water on, splashing my face and staring at my bloodshot eyes and pale skin in the mirror over the sink.

You’re not special, but you’re horrible, and you’re alone, the room whispers. I bring my head forward, hard and sharp, and smash my forehead against the mirror.

Blackness…blissful peace.

#

I wake lying in a spiky shower of shattered shards. Tacky blood clings to my fingertips as I poke my forehead. I’m cut, but not badly; the blood is not fresh and the wound is already closing.

You’re pathetic; you can’t even hurt yourself properly, the room informs me.

“I wasn’t trying to,” I answer. “I just wanted you to shut up for a while.”

Coward, the room croons. I swat at the air around me, trying to clear a space around me. Which is funny, since I feel surrounded by nothing but space in this place.

I sit up, and see the Bible on the floor next to me.

“Oh, nice one,” I say, kicking it under the sink. “You want me to pray? How about I pray for that shitty book to stay in the bin this time, eh?”

The room just laughs.

#

I don’t know how long I’ve been here. I checked in for two nights, but that’s irrelevant. That measure of time ceased to exist as soon as I entered this room and shut the door behind me. It’s light; I think it was dark some time ago. My head hurts a little where it’s cut.

I think of Zen riddles, and fiddle with my own versions. What’s the sound of one man in a hotel room alone? If a man is in a hotel room alone, does he exist? Where is the hotel room while he is in it alone with the door closed?

The room doesn’t even talk to me now. I can’t feel it looking at me. It’s like it turned its back on me in disgust.

And that’s really bad, because now I’m so alone that I’m alone.

That doesn’t make much sense, but if you’ve come this far with me, I know you’ll understand what I mean.

The TV won’t work. It cut out a while ago – quite a while ago, I think. I pick up the telephone and hear nothing but silence. No dial tone. No hotel staff on the other end.

I don’t go and open the door to see what’s out there – or what might not be out there.

Would you?

I picked up the broken pieces of bathroom mirror some time ago, and I put them in a glass on the bedside table. To keep them neat. I’m looking at them right now. Some of them are tinged with brown smears; blood. My blood.

So I do exist, I think.

The door to the little bar fridge swings open. I am not the one swinging it. I can see the row of tiny bottles, holding brown and white spirits.

“A drink would be nice,” I tell nobody.

I select a fine looking bottle of Smirnoff Vodka, and sit down on the bed. I unscrew it, letting the lid slip out of my fingers and tumble to the floor, out of sight. I tilt the bottle and watch the clear liquid trickle into the glass full of broken glass.

“A glass of glass,” I say. “A hotel room of hotel room. Alone of alone.”

It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t matter.

The vodka has a reddish tint to it as it coats the shards of glass.

“Bloody Mary,” I say, and giggle.

The pain in my throat is instant and brilliant as I pour the hotel room cocktail down my gullet. Sharp – so sharp! Swallowing makes it worse. I cough, spitting out blood-streaked spittle. My eyes water and I fall back on the bed, clutching at my throat, feeling it tear, sunder, shred, scream.

It is something, and I am not alone as the agony squeezes me. It is my companion; it is vivid and present. It is loud, and it yells over everything else.

When death comes, I will never be alone again; I will stay in its company for ever. I want my mother, I think. I hope she will be there, too, in the place that is death. The kitten, my mother, and me. Together. No hotel rooms. No abyss.

I hope there is Dr Phil, though.