The Hunt for LBGM

Hotel Hell: The Doomed, The Damned, and the Deranged

Elizabeth Walker

CW: Light reference to suicide.

Serving out my sentence working in hotels, I have not yet met a guest without an air of lunacy. Onceordinary people are undone by tight-lipped smiles and eyes like a caged animal.

A sense of unease sweeps the mind while lying in a bed made by a stranger. Someone unknown smoothed their hands over your sheets, folded your still warm pyjamas, saw the outline of your naked body in the indent you left behind. The waitress you see for dinner will serve you again for breakfast the following day. When she remembers how you like your eggs and coffee on the third day, it’s intimate. She has your room number on file. For a contractual period, she knows exactly where, when, and how you will sleep. You are anonymous, and you are being watched. This constant surveillance encourages a particular strain of peculiarity. The longer you stay, it blooms. It ferments.

My most recent stint at [REDACTED], a chain with low nightly rates and seven floors of rooms, has confirmed suspicions that there’s no normal way to behave in a hotel room. It’s the wild west out there. Trash the room, complain to the staff, drain the minibar? You’re out of control, a total Karen. Stare straight ahead, make your own bed, and keep totally silent? You’re hiding something. Pervert. Scream for hours on end, smear the walls with your own shit, proclaim to be God? That’s a classic, the Russian Sleep Experiment routine. You’re probably a platinum card carrier.

For a snooping Gemini who loves other people’s business, running room service is like Christmas. Each door is a world of potential—gleeful squalor and disrepute.

From one door, a tattooed gut crosses the threshold before a greeting gets the chance. The towel loosely wrapped beneath it is another piece of the puzzle. You knew I was coming, you sultry, sultry little minx.

From another, a breastfeeding mother gives me a wave of recognition.

A woman I recognised from the bar peeks out from a room I could have sworn wasn’t hers. Her hair is askew. She gets a trayful of Sauvignon blanc and sticky date pudding, and in return, I receive a toothsome slice of her life.

Escape to The Country blaring on the TV; eye fillet, well done. Bottled Coke No Sugar. I see the guts of your suitcase strewn across the floor. These morsels of information coat the back of my mouth with fat. I may not know your name, but I certainly know which toothpaste you buy.

As much as each guest clutches a veil of normalcy over their mouldering, corrupted, hideous insides, working at [REDACTED] night after night tempts me into a similar delirium. I have no idea what the fish of the day is, apart from frozen. Frankly, I don’t know what day of the week it is. After going without a full meal in the last 48 hours, even a rotting dayold parmigiana left in the hallway looks tempting. I don’t even eat meat. On the way to my shift, I cried to a P!nk song in the car. I fold napkins and vaguely consider sticking my head in the industrial oven.

We’re both here, trapped like orcas in an undersized pool. We pretend to feel right at home in strange rooms, bare our teeth in rictus grins, mow crop circles into carpeted hallways. My back seizes up standing at the till, while I charge you for a fifth glass of Pinot Gris. You should have just bought the bottle. Why do so many people insist on using the spa in the rain?

Lowered popcorn ceilings make fools of us all.