Hotel rooms inhabit a separate moral universe.
Tom Stoppard
I have had some of the best sex of my life in a hotel room.
I like hotels. I mean, everyone seems to like a good hotel, but I just like hotels in general. I booked into a budget hotel, once, with my first girlfriend for about £30 just because I could. My second girlfriend and I took an alarming number of mini-breaks throughout our relationship; my third and I once stayed for an entire week in the same hotel room (which we barely left).
With my current girlfriend, hotels have been an important part of our relationship. Early on, before we had announced that we were together (we got together about a month after my previous relationship ended, so the timing wasn’t great), we had nowhere to go and, as a result, I became quite skilled, quite quickly, at finding – at short notice – an affordable hotel.
Once, I booked a room in a hotel within a stone’s throw from our flat, just because I could.
I’ve also stayed in hotels on my own. Sometimes I’m going somewhere; sometimes I’m staying somewhere else. I’ve even stayed in hotels at some points just because I can. And then I’ve been abandoned – twice – in hotels.
Hotels and I have a complicated relationship, but when it comes down to it, I think the basics are: I like being taken care of. That’s what hotels do – even if it’s a cheap room in a hotel around the back of King’s Cross where all they do is give you a key and a room number. Room service and complementary breakfasts are one thing, but the fact that you just get a room – a space where, to all intents and purposes, you are free to just be – for a small fee… is nothing short of genius.
Stoppard’s quote (above) works, in a way, but I think it’s much broader than that. In a lot of ways I don’t mind where the hotel room is. I once went around the country staying in hotel rooms by myself for a while, and – although I could orgasm to interactive hentai on my laptop while watching the commuters going to and from St Pancras one day and fall asleep on my back covered in my own cum in central Birmingham the next – the act of being in a room of one’s own put me into a completely different headspace.
Physically, it’s pleasant – a nice bed, free hot drinks, good breakfast if you’re lucky, excellent sex if you have someone with you – but, mentally, being in a hotel gives me a complete disconnect from everything else.
In a hotel, you are allowed, without judgement, to just be, even if you have had to pay for the privilege.
And that is marvellous.
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