Good Girl Traveling

(No freestyle swimming in the dry fountains, please.)

It’s not that I am ungrateful; one of the perks of my job has been the traveling. But the hotel rooms are always a challenge.

In London’s Paddington I stayed a night where I had to crawl into bed from the foot of it, because the whole of it was securely wedged in the corner of a tiny L-shaped room. In Tetova, Macedonia the bathroom was a concrete box with cold water.

In Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan I had to pay from my room with whispers and cash. Although the bathroom, the size of Calcutta, was an enormous comfort after a bloated day of avoiding the hole-in-the-floor toilets (or worse, the porcelain-bowl-on-the-floor toilets that splashed as though they’d been insulted), the room itself with its ten-foot ceiling and spitting air conditioner, was frighteningly unadorned. Not a picture frame, not a poster. I actually put my hand on the wall to make sure it wasn’t padded. Checked my shoes to make sure no one had taken my laces.

So, I knew I was out of my league in Barcelona. A hotel for the beautiful people: the glass doors whooshed open to reveal a long, bare red-lacquered counter. A black tile floor. A wall of a fish tank filled with wall-eyed fish.

I checked my shoelaces.

Then the guy at the counter gave me my key, along with that smile good-looking guys in their twenties give to women my age: gracious, pitying.

On to the elevator, with mirrors everywhere but the floor. Fluorescent lighting. Not a box a woman my age wants to find herself in at nine in the evening pulling 30 lbs of luggage and with the pitying, Ben-Braddock-smile burned into her slightly sagging heart.

The only people sly enough to think to put Fluorescent lighting in a mirrored elevator are pitiless twenty-something men.

Fifth floor and I rattle out of the elevator, certain now I’m lost. I am facing a long corridor of wood paneling. No doors. But on closer inspection, I think there are cupboards here, sliding doors, maybe. Laundry rooms, broom closets. There are tiny tabs on the doors. Big enough for thumb and forefinger to pull.

And on even closer inspection there are tiny, tiny number plates: two centimeters by five centimeters. I feel like Alice in Wonderland. And once I open the door, I am lost again. I am staring straight into a wall with coat hooks. To my left, frosted glass doors. To my right, a curving wall.

It’s like a surprise party, following the white curving hall until: TA DA!

A bed.

A table. A flat-screen TV. And a desk with a glass vase with four red sticks in it.

Four red sticks. Now why didn’t they think of that in Bishkek?

The most interesting thing in the room is the padded leather rectangle draped across the foot of the bed. There are brass rods on the ends. First, I wonder if the bed is actually a Murphy bed and that the thing is keeping the bed from flying up. Then, I wonder if it is some kinky thing I’ve never read about. (Honestly? I wondered about that first, but I don’t want people to think I am into kinky.)

It isn’t a Murphy bed so I knock the thing onto the floor with one of my cowboy boots and flip on BBC. I check my email with that cute little keyboard I found near the red sticks. No death threats today, so I push all the silver buttons at random on the night board. There are twelve of them, so it takes a while.

Lights out. Or it seems like it until the blue strobe digs its way through my eyelids. It’s coming from under the television. It’s reflected in the mirror behind the television. I push every button on the television. I try pulling the wires out of the bottom of the television. I try ringing to the desk for help.

But the telephone is sleek and silver and it would be a sin to muck it up with excess information like what number to push for the front desk.

I could push them all, but having had time to think about it, I am sure Ben down there isn’t used to being disturbed. And then, there is that pile of leather on the floor with my cowboy boot tossed on top. And I am still recovering from his tempered display of pity.

First, I start thinking that I must be in the blue-light district of Barcelona and wonder if I’ve hidden my passport. If I have a passport. I have to get up and look for my passport.

Then I start thinking that I’m in a porn film. Expected to be in a porn film and that Ben is on his way up right now. I’m not sure how I feel about that.

I sleep pretty well.

In the morning I crawl through the snail shell to find the bathroom. It’s round. It takes me a full twelve minutes of standing in the crescent shower searching the smooth walls frantically before I see the shower head on the ceiling.

That’s not the only thing that disturbs me in the bathroom, though. It’s the bidet. I’ve seen them before. I see them often. And every time I see one I just can’t figure out how they work. And this time, I figure it’s a clean hotel, I can try.

But then I think of the flashing blue light, the leather thing on the floor, and Sunday School and the guilt I felt buying a hand-held shower.

(Do you know some bidets come with jets of warm air?)

Guess my passport and my cowboy boots aren’t the only old baggage I carry around.


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Good Girl Traveling

http://sidesteppingreal.blogspot.com/2007/11/good-girl-traveling.html