[Footnote 27: The Lapping Up of Luxury]
[27] I have to admit that the whole luxury hotel experience puts me in an uncomfortable position.
I genuinely value the superior appointments and dutiful service that comes standard with a five-star property like the St. Regis, the Four Seasons, the Ritz-Carlton, etc. I am the type of person who has no problem spending up to 40 percent of my vacation time simply enjoying the strange and sumptuous accommodations of a nice hotel room simply because it is not-home.
In our normal, day-to-day lives, activities like sleep, showers and meals are just things to do between doing other things. They become projects. Chores. In this context, they have not only lost their joyfulness, they have lost their meaning. Vacation is an opportunity to postpone our day-to-day lives, and in so doing, restore meaning and joy to these interstitial moments. Hotels act as agents of this renewal, allowing us to wake up without making the bed, take an extended bath in an oversized tub, leave the towel on the floor and eat breakfast in your bedroom without worrying about spilling anything on the carpet. And luxury hotels, beyond the typical high standards of cleanliness and tastefulness, are experts at creating these worry-free fantasy environments.
But ironically, the exceptionalism that makes luxury accommodations so appealing is also what makes me uncomfortable. I am often flummoxed by the promiscuous indulgence practiced by the upper class because my modest, self-sufficient, relatively Spartan ethos has calcified. Not only am I largely unfamiliar with, and unaccustomed to, The Finer Things in Life, my big-city life has trained me to be leery and cynical of anyone who treats me too nicely. I'll handle my own bags, thankyou.
And let's face it, if you are a person with any kind of self awareness or sense of sympathy at all, or possessed of any notion of basic human equality, you quickly realize that having your ass kissed is (at best) awkward and (at worst) demeaning to both parties, and after a while it becomes difficult to take seriously, much less sincerely. I understand that these employees are meticulously screened, rigorously trained and strictly required to fulfill their each guest's wildest expectations, and because of this they are perhaps sufficiently compensated for their servility even beyond the algorithmic gratuity system currently in place [See Footnote No. 13]. But this realization only intensifies my suspicion that their outward demonstration of thoughtfulness is little more than the fulfillment of a contractual obligation - or worse, a discrete financial transaction - and while they may purport to fetch me a cocktail with great pleasure, they are in fact cursing my lazy ass while counting dollar bills in their heads.
Of course, these hotels actively market their properties as extremely exclusive - practically prohibitive - through both their pricing structure (i.e., expensive room rates and inflated menu prices) and their house rules (i.e., mandatory dress codes and strict procedures). This is initially rather gratifying, not only knowing that you have been accepted as part of a rarified social class but also knowing that the poor, huddled, yearning masses - the ones who wear fanny packs, fart in the hot tub and complain impertinently about their infected lymph nodes - are staying somewhere else. But then you realize that, despite your newfound nobility, you are still part of a sub-caste that exists below the cream of the V.I.P. crop, the princes and the CEOs and the movie stars, who have their own private cabanas, butlers and Swedish masseuses. And then you realize that not even St. Regis-level countermeasures can keep out some substantial contingent of the poor, huddled, yearning masses, who are probably there because they robbed a bank or collected enough Camel Cash or something. And then, finally, you realize that there isn't really anything separating you from the poor, huddled, yearning masses, and the four or five genuinely wealthy and powerful people staying at the hotel are probably looking at you, with your doughy-white body in your cheap-ass Wal-Mart swimming trunks, and wondering how you got past security. So the whole thing turns out to be pretty much the same as being in reality, except everything costs three times as much, and now you're even more self-conscious because you feel trapped between being a clueless rube and a smug jackass.
If you allow yourself to think that way, it almost doesn't seem worth it, until and except for the quiet moments - on the private beach, or between the 700-thread-count sheets, or soaking in the oversized bathtub - when you look around and realize that those quiet moments are the best life has to offer, and they just don't happen at the Red Roof Inn. It's better this way, even if not by much.
I genuinely value the superior appointments and dutiful service that comes standard with a five-star property like the St. Regis, the Four Seasons, the Ritz-Carlton, etc. I am the type of person who has no problem spending up to 40 percent of my vacation time simply enjoying the strange and sumptuous accommodations of a nice hotel room simply because it is not-home.
In our normal, day-to-day lives, activities like sleep, showers and meals are just things to do between doing other things. They become projects. Chores. In this context, they have not only lost their joyfulness, they have lost their meaning. Vacation is an opportunity to postpone our day-to-day lives, and in so doing, restore meaning and joy to these interstitial moments. Hotels act as agents of this renewal, allowing us to wake up without making the bed, take an extended bath in an oversized tub, leave the towel on the floor and eat breakfast in your bedroom without worrying about spilling anything on the carpet. And luxury hotels, beyond the typical high standards of cleanliness and tastefulness, are experts at creating these worry-free fantasy environments.
But ironically, the exceptionalism that makes luxury accommodations so appealing is also what makes me uncomfortable. I am often flummoxed by the promiscuous indulgence practiced by the upper class because my modest, self-sufficient, relatively Spartan ethos has calcified. Not only am I largely unfamiliar with, and unaccustomed to, The Finer Things in Life, my big-city life has trained me to be leery and cynical of anyone who treats me too nicely. I'll handle my own bags, thankyou.
And let's face it, if you are a person with any kind of self awareness or sense of sympathy at all, or possessed of any notion of basic human equality, you quickly realize that having your ass kissed is (at best) awkward and (at worst) demeaning to both parties, and after a while it becomes difficult to take seriously, much less sincerely. I understand that these employees are meticulously screened, rigorously trained and strictly required to fulfill their each guest's wildest expectations, and because of this they are perhaps sufficiently compensated for their servility even beyond the algorithmic gratuity system currently in place [See Footnote No. 13]. But this realization only intensifies my suspicion that their outward demonstration of thoughtfulness is little more than the fulfillment of a contractual obligation - or worse, a discrete financial transaction - and while they may purport to fetch me a cocktail with great pleasure, they are in fact cursing my lazy ass while counting dollar bills in their heads.
Of course, these hotels actively market their properties as extremely exclusive - practically prohibitive - through both their pricing structure (i.e., expensive room rates and inflated menu prices) and their house rules (i.e., mandatory dress codes and strict procedures). This is initially rather gratifying, not only knowing that you have been accepted as part of a rarified social class but also knowing that the poor, huddled, yearning masses - the ones who wear fanny packs, fart in the hot tub and complain impertinently about their infected lymph nodes - are staying somewhere else. But then you realize that, despite your newfound nobility, you are still part of a sub-caste that exists below the cream of the V.I.P. crop, the princes and the CEOs and the movie stars, who have their own private cabanas, butlers and Swedish masseuses. And then you realize that not even St. Regis-level countermeasures can keep out some substantial contingent of the poor, huddled, yearning masses, who are probably there because they robbed a bank or collected enough Camel Cash or something. And then, finally, you realize that there isn't really anything separating you from the poor, huddled, yearning masses, and the four or five genuinely wealthy and powerful people staying at the hotel are probably looking at you, with your doughy-white body in your cheap-ass Wal-Mart swimming trunks, and wondering how you got past security. So the whole thing turns out to be pretty much the same as being in reality, except everything costs three times as much, and now you're even more self-conscious because you feel trapped between being a clueless rube and a smug jackass.
If you allow yourself to think that way, it almost doesn't seem worth it, until and except for the quiet moments - on the private beach, or between the 700-thread-count sheets, or soaking in the oversized bathtub - when you look around and realize that those quiet moments are the best life has to offer, and they just don't happen at the Red Roof Inn. It's better this way, even if not by much.