I often think of each hotel I stay at as just another bedroom in my own vast collection of private residences spread around the world. What woman doesn't believe that her life isn't always on its way to a scenario of extravagance made of sugar and spice, and all that's nice? Of course, the reality is that I work in the marketing department for a dull multinational corporation and the travel manager books me at the cheapest hotel she can find. She tries to put me at three and four star hotels but often a two and a halfer is the best she can do with "the state of the economy the way it is," as she puts it.
This year, I hit my own personal record, logging over 100,000 miles in 30 cities, but have still managed to get my pay cut by 10 percent. "We're all making painful cuts," the CEO tells us. Not that I absolutely need the money, at least not to survive from day to day. It's more a matter that I have no choice but to keep marching forward to pay for all the choices I have already made. There is the mortgage payment, the car payment, the insurance payments, the credit cards and a hundred other bills that just seem to go up and up and up. What kind of life would it be if I had to work a dull job with long hours
and
be the bargain shopper with a used car and a cheap apartment in the suburbs? Working a dreary corporate job should at least come with a little bit of wealth, no?
Anyway, life on the road brings its own routines. Return to hotel in rental car. Shower with complimentary fancy soap. Order room service. Eat in front of TV. Do a few more hours of work on laptop. Fall asleep in still freshly made bed. Repeat. I really did believe that there would be something more, some kind of wild series of adventures that would happen on the side but never did. I knew deep down that I had been pushed to the brink from the endless repetition of struggling to just make it through each day of a mediocre existence. But I never seemed to do anything about that.
I've never liked eating alone at the hotel restaurant or sitting by myself at the bar nursing my lonely drink. If I have to choose between sitting in bed watching news from some war on the other side of the world and perched at a bar talking to a chatty bartender, I'll chose the war.
"I know it's natural to feel trapped," I told my shrink on the phone. I had not only resorted to seeing a psychiatrist to sort out my issues of feeling stuck in a lifeless routine I seemed to like being stuck in, I had resorted to doing our sessions by phone from whatever city I happened to be working in. It somehow only managed to magnify the sense of isolation from the real human drama that, in my mind, I was missing on a daily basis.
I was sitting in my work suit on the edge of the hotel bed as she talked to me, watching the images on the muted TV move from one to the next. She was advising me to consider taking up a new hobby or personal pursuit to give my life a new sense of adventure. Her words made sense in theory but in reality I couldn't imagine that taking up karate or starting a book club would really satisfy what I was seeking deep down. She kept talking as I stared at the new image being shown on the TV.
It was apparently a news story about a group of young Chinese women who had been discovered in a shipping container as they were trying to be smuggled into the country. The footage showed the women as each was escorted out of the container. While some had blankets wrapped around them, others were wearing nothing but evening dresses. I thought how incredibly odd that the women had somehow expected to simply climb out of the container and immediately be dressed and ready to begin working as escorts. I sat there and tried to imagine how I'd feel enclosed in a dark metal shipping container for a week or more while it crossed thousands of miles of ocean. How extraordinarily different each of our lives are, I wondered to myself.
"Anna? Anna, are you listening to me?"
"Yes, yes. I'm here. Sorry, I was just distracted for a second."
"Distracted by what?" she asked me.
"Oh, nothing, nothing," I told her absentmindedly. "Listen, Dr. Holstein, would you mind if we cut this session short?"
"Is everything all right, Anna?"
"Yes, it's fine. I'm just feeling tired tonight and don't feel like we're going to get much more accomplished from this session."
"Ok. Are you sure there's nothing you want to talk about?"
"Yes, I'm sure. Let's continue this next week."
"Very well. Feel free to call me back if your mood changes."
"Yes, Dr. Holstein."
I hit the "end call" button and held the phone for a second. Everything was not fine but I certainly didn't want to talk about it anymore. I wanted to do something, to actually do something that was not talked about or planned in advance at all.
I don't know what triggered the switch inside of me. Maybe it was something about all those women on TV who lived their lives on the very edge of survival and never had to even think about being stuck in a dull corporate world. Their existence was painful and real. I didn't want to be in such a horrible place but I wanted that same sense of being in a place where I had to make such extreme choices. I didn't know what exactly that meant but it definitely didn't mean sitting in this hotel room in Chicago another night.
I shut my laptop and decided I'd head down to the hotel bar for a drink. But what was I going to wear? I had packed little else except for business attire and clothes to sleep in. It was only eight o'clock. There had to be a store nearby still open. I grabbed my hotel key card and flew down the hall to the elevator.
I stopped at the concierge to ask if there was a store nearby still open where I could buy evening attire. He asked me what kind of clothes or store did I have in mind exactly? I thought to myself. The image of one of the women on TV climbing out of the container came into my mind. She was wearing a short black evening dress. It looked very cheap and tawdry- something like I would never wear. The concierge suggested a few stores on Michigan Avenue that I knew.
"No, no. Nothing like that," I told him. "I just need a cheap evening dress. Something really slutty."
He looked at me in astonishment when I said that. It surprised me as well to hear those words come out of my mouth.
"Well, there's a Forever 21 store down the way. They should have something," he told me.
"Oh, that's perfect," I told him. They'll definitely have something and what better place to buy that sort of dress than at a company constantly being accused of running sweat shops. I could probably find some cheap thing that was even made by a poor, desperate girl longing to sell her body to make it to a better life.
I jumped in a taxi and headed to the store. When I got there and started browsing through the racks, I couldn't help but smile. It must have been years since I shopped for anything like this. Imagine what one of my friends would say if they discovered me in a place like this, shopping for slinky little dresses. None of the dresses, though, was just quite right. I headed back to the sale rack, hoping to find one of those really tacky pieces of clothing that was just way too over the top for most people to even consider buying. One of those dresses that you hold up to show your friends just for a good "can you imagine me in this" sort of laugh. And I found it.
The little black dress was made to be short and tight, with fake diamonds running down both sides of its low-cut v-neck. And it was on sale for $9.99. Perfect. I grabbed it off the rack and headed back to the dressing room. I couldn't get my business suit off fast enough to try it on. I pulled it down over my body and looked at myself in the mirror. I must be out of my mind, I thought. I looked like a different woman, like I was playing dress up to be the slutty ghetto girl at Halloween. It looked ideal except that I wanted to wear it right away and the kind of bra and panties I had on just could not be worn with it. I pulled off the dress, took off my bra and panties, and then put it back on. I eyed myself in the mirror once again. Could I really go out like this?
I ripped off the price tag, folded my suit under my arm and went to the cash register to pay. I stopped to quickly try on a couple of pairs of shoes and settled on a trashy pair of platform high heels. The cashier tried to pretend it wasn't strange to be wanting to wear a dress like that right out of the store. I just paid for the dress and headed out. At the exit to the store, I tossed my business suit and undergarments into the trash. Whatever had gotten into me, I knew I had snapped.
When I strutted back into the hotel, the concierge didn't know how to react. He simply nodded in affirmation that I had found what I was looking for, afraid to inquire into what sort of woman I really was. I headed up to my room to primp my face properly. I still was astonished to see my image in the mirror for a second time. I accentuated my eyes with a thick coating of black mascara and eyeliner, and then rolled on a bright layer of red lipstick. I was in such an intoxicated, frantic state of mind that I didn't want to stop to look at myself too long for fear of changing my mind.
I headed down to the bar, clacking my way past a collection of businessmen spread around the place, and settled into a corner lounge seat. I had to lift up and pull the dress down so I could cross my legs without revealing half my ass and my lack of panties.
I looked around and took a deep breath. I wondered if maybe I should call my shrink back and tell her what I was doing. Maybe I had really lost it. Maybe my personality had suddenly split. I had just read an article about personality disorders. But I remember reading that women with split personalities were really good in bed. So maybe what I was doing was fine? Maybe I should stop thinking and do whatever I wanted to do tonight, I argued with myself.
The server came over to me immediately after he saw how I looked when I came into the bar.
"Good evening miss. Something to drink?"
"Yes, a Manhattan."
"Of course. Preference of whiskey?"
I could tell he was trying to draw out the order.
"What do you recommend?" I asked him flirtatiously.
"Well there is an excellent new micro-distillery here in Illinois called North Shore that makes a fine rye whiskey. I highly recommend it."
He was trying way too hard and was too young and eager to suit me tonight.
"That will be fine," I told him. "And something from the appetizer menu. Oysters if you have them."
"We do have them."
"Then a half dozen of those."
