On so many HGTV house-hunting shows, the newlywed couples yearn for a home that looks like “a boutique hotel.” This usually means dark wood floors, vaguely mid-century modern furniture, framed black and white photos of the Chrysler Building, and maybe a mint on each bedroom pillow.
I at least partially understand this dream, because I love staying in hotels. I just got back from a business trip to LA, where I stayed at a very nice place. I love hotels because they’re luxurious, impersonal and vaguely erotic, like upscale crime scenes. Staying in a nice hotel can feel like a time-out from the rest of your life, or as if you’re on the run from impressively ominous forces. Hotels don’t promise re-invention; they promise anonymous escape. The sheets are luxurious, the towels are replaced every day, and there’s a choice of hangers, from quilted satin to hardwood. In LA, my room overlooked the huge, glossy signage for Barneys and Louis Vuitton; I was clearly a high-end embezzler or an international jewel thief.
At hotels, someone else is responsible for everything, and the smiling staff behind the front desk are obviously CIA trainees. At my hotel, one evening the lobby was packed with gaudy young women in spike heels and the skimpiest sequinned mini-dresses; at first I wondered if they were all hookers, but then I realized that they were fifteen-year-olds attending a Beverly Hills prom. Remember that scene in Pretty Woman, where the clerks at an exclusive Rodeo Drive shop sneer at the streetwalking Julia Roberts? This scene never made much sense, because on the real Rodeo Drive, everyone would assume that Julia was a Russian oil heiress.
December 13, 2013
