Young Writers Society

I never understood the disdain some people had for staying in a hotel as an option for a vacation. Not as simply a place to stay at while they do other things, but an entire event in of itself. They seem so eager to leave, with their specially purchased vacation leather sandals or the squeakiness of the polish on their moderately expensive business shoes tapping and flapping across the tiled lobby floor, straight for the shining glass doors. It's almost like they intentionally ignore the details about their hotel, despite paying an exuberant amount of money to stay there. I guess they were only thinking about what to do outside of their rented rooms, in the bustle of family-oriented activities, tourist attractions, and meetings.

I wasn't ever all that eager to leave. After frequent trips to various hotels, something about them became fascinating, and the child version of me grew to love and appreciate how at home I felt in them. I would walk barefoot down the long ornate hallways, enjoying the satisfying feel of my heels hitting the carpet and feeling the hardness of the concrete ground beneath bounce up through my knees. When I ran, I felt each slap of my feet in my jaw, yet every sound I made was muted and quiet as if I was wrapped up in their thick quilted comforters that had the texture of a cloud. Sometimes I could hear conversations through the walls, whole lives playing out in real time, and my curious ears were there in that moment to briefly spy in on them. I would try to picture what they looked like and then soon dart away from outside their doors in giddy fear of getting caught.

I was almost always the first to wake in the morning, and then I would impatiently nudge my brother until he slapped my arm, an indication and ritual that confirmed that he was indeed awake. We would sneak down to the lobby, still barefooted and visibly in the clothes that we had slept in that previous night, and he would load up pastries and yogurt containers while I was in charge of making the waffles to perfection. The morning news droned on in the background and much older hotel guests meandered around the bagels. Our first few hours would then be spent sitting cross-legged at the foot of our mother's bed, who was greeted by our bounty of breakfast foods spread on top of her covers, while we watched reruns of our favorite cartoons.

The rest of the day was dedicated to spending time in the hotel pool. Here, every sound and breath echoed and a shout sounded like the cry of some mystical beast. The gentle lapping of the water against the concrete sides of the pool was like the gentle slap of fins on a polished surface. I imagined a giant underwater creature lived in it, invisible to my inferior human eyes, whose underwater wings gently cut through the surface and created the miniature waves that continuously bounced off of each other, playfully and nonsensically. The air was perferated with the pungent smell of chlorine. By the end of the night, my skin would have the everpresent sticky texture of chemicals, the hotel soap unable to completely remove the odd sensation, and my fingers would be shriveled like prunes. I would lay in my half of the bed and dream in blissful childhood ignorance and wait for the next morning to begin.

Staying in hotels was a vacation for me all in of itself. I didn't need anything outside of the comfort of the decorated wallpaper that touched on every wall, nothing outside of the crisp white sheets tightly tucked into the thick mattresses by the mysterious hands of an unseen housekeeper, or anything that I couldn't get from a vending machine stocked with my favorite junk food that was kept down a floor. I did not sense that there was nothing more than just pure enjoyment of each other's company that kept our family of three on the road, somehow not concerned with the whereabouts of the fourth member of our family. My younger self could not comprehend the abnormality of our situation. My younger self only recognized it as a time of happiness which I knew then that it stood out compared to times when we were not "on vacation". So, I grew up with an internalized fondness for staying in hotels.

Maybe I am the only one who has thought like this. Maybe I am being melodramatic, too methodical, and romanticizing something that is nothing more than a building where people sleep and where people charge those who sleep a little too much money. Maybe my appreciation for hotels is the result of something a therapist will tell me an unpronounceable name for and slip a marmalade bottle into my empty hand. Maybe I just really like hotels.