The services provided by a hotel extend far beyond mere lodging. What one is really paying for is the illusion of perpetual virginity and the semblance of brand new, sealed-for-your-protection, freshness and sterility -- in a place that's typically anything but.
I thought about this as I checked out this morning; we left the floor strewn with beer bottle caps, and the unidentifiable crushed, and a footprint in red paint eerily resembling blood. Yet even in dives like the Imperial Palace, day-after-day one's room is recharged to its banal, mock-chaste condition with efficiency. For this feat, we tip our chambermaid.
(The feminist-in-me would say that this represents an almost mechanistic process of re-virgination, but he's not allowed to say much when the patriarch-in-me is around. And drinking.)
But what this all really made me think about is my unspoken (and well-hidden) fondness for the decidedly non-sterile and imperfect. After a long weekend in Glitter Gulch -- simultaneously the cleanest and filthiest place I've ever been to -- I'm somewhat relieved to be home.
I feel an odd affinity for the the peeling veneer on my desk, and my exploding closet, and even the impenetrable stains in the bathroom sink. The allure of the pure it seems, evades me. (Not that it was ever a reliable promise.)
But I'd like to think this is more than just an affection for grime.
These stains and cracks and flaws, of ephemeral and chaotic Reality, right now seem like daubs of paint on a familiar portrait; but usually, something compels us to repair or restore them, or scrape them off. What a shame.
I'll probably change my mind tomorrow morning, while seated in long-dried urine on a streetcar seat. But tonight: I'm good. Like being fond of a scar on a loved one's skin, and tracing it with grateful fingers.
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