career opportunists

 when it was time to go to his room i decided i wanted to know more about him. i would ask the questions this time. i would interview him. i knocked on the door. he opened it, still in his business suit. "how was your day, what will you tell me?" nothing much to tell, i answered, walked around a bit, took a bath, how was yours? "thats not the deal, i want to shut down, i want to go into another world. in want to invade the planet of your thoughts." he walked over to the water boiling machine, and made me some tea. "did you ever think this would be your career? a storyteller? i told him that once in the eighties i had thought of something like this. it was the time the yuppies emerged from out of nothing more than the dollarbills they  conjured up so effortlessly. back then, i was unemployed, and i thought, as i had enough time to sleep, i could sell my dreams -they were rather exiting and exotic- to tired businessmen who didnt have time for the luxury of sleep. "really, you had no job back then? what did you do all day, tell me that story." and i did.

career opportunists

the other day i when i was rummaging through my paperwork i found the draft of a job application a friend of mine once sent to a local museum.

"dear sirs,

on behalf of my unemployment benefits i herewith send you this letter. if you would be so kind as to send me an answer, stating that you do not have any job for me, it would be most highly appreciated."

mind you, those were the eightees, when being unemployed was considered a fashion statement, and having a job was an equivalent to selling your soul to that old devil called corporate united states of america. "no future" was the soundtrack to our everlasting leisure.

so, we made a career out of being on the dole.

our mornings were spent sleeping, our afternoons with applying make up and at night we would go out. 

guys would buy us drinks, other guys had put us on the guestlist, so life was easy, life was good.

to fulfil our duty towards the social security, we would sit together one afternoon a month and write the perfect job application letters. 

the true perfection lay in the fact these missives were written as if there was serious intent of getting the job. our potential bosses had to be motivated into writing  a refusal.

we needed at least three written rejections every half year, so you can envision the hardship of our labour at my kitchen-table.

we were the stars of the turndown:  the details we added in our letters made sure that we would, in the worst case,  be invited to a job interview.

at a certain point, we started to really dig these interviews more than the writing itself, looking back,  i think we promoted ourselves to a higher level of the cold-shoulder business. there even was a kind of competition between us to see how well each one of us fared in achieving the ultimate goal:  fail to get the position most majestically.  by subtle use of occasional swearwords, meticulously applied dirt under the fingernails, or by cunning display of complete under-qualification for even the easiest job.

ingredients we made sure were used sparingly, but effective nonetheless.

 in case of emergency, when the employers were desperate to take on just about anyone (which was probably the reason we had to show up in the first place), we always used our ultimate secret weapon: in the middle of a sentence, we would lapse in to complete mental withdrawal, and would stare at our interviewer whilst seeming to fade into the realms of consciousness for about just an instance too long, to then continue our story as if nothing had happened. repeated three or four times in ten minutes, this simple action was a guarantee to success: the rejection letter could be expected within less than a week.

childhood hotel

he sighs. "so you like being dead?" "no, i very much like it to be alive, it is that just sometimes i feel this urge to disappear from being me, to evade from myself, my past my future" saying it to him out loud makes me feel stupid. but he smiles. "can i have a cigarette too?" "i thought you are a non smoker" "i am, but maybe this is the small death i indulge in" i give him a cigarette, light it for him. "was my story ok, are you relaxed?" "a little, but it is a bit of a short story. tell me one more." 

Ah, but long before that afternoon in the hague I have visited luxury hotel rooms, and dreamt about them too. Come to think of it, even as a little girl, I must have been 11 I went on a trip past the rhine river in germany. You know, the kind of tour that is normally done by seventy year olds. But my parents wanted to do it anyway. I was bored, but I remember the story of Lorelei, And the Hotel. Not the hotel we stayed in. We stayed in this middle of the road it has clean sheats but you have to share the toilet in the hallway kind of hotel.  But next to ours, there was hotel Belvedere. 

And that was the hotel I wanted to be at. It spelled luxury from the entrance to the restaurant, everywhere. 

From our window I could see the belvedere hotel, and I asked my parents why we weren´t staying there, in that lush red and gold heaven. They just laughed, it was way too expensive and unnecessary. I felt that was untrue. How can something as good as that be unnecesarry? And how can it not be the most important thing in the world at that moment?  I wanted so much to stay at the Belvedere, that the whole evening I spent in front of our hotel window, looking through the curtains, in to the hotel Belvedere. I was imagining the Balls they would have there, and that I would be arriving at the ball too, walking over the red carpet, and know how to waltz and dazzle everyone with my beautiful secquined dress and be bedazzled by the lights of the christal chandeliers and the polished wooden dance floor. I would meet counts and earls and know how to talk in seven different languages with all the ambassodors that were there. In my mind I made my own martini commercial come true. (remember the martini commercials of the seventies, always about superbly dressed men and women driving in rolls royces sipping their martini´s, how dissapointed I was when I found out it is a very cheap drink)  The next morning it wasn´t a very bright day as we left, and our hotel looked even bleaker in the stale grey light of the day. But I had had my night at the belvedere anyway.

i look at him. this is all i can do tonight. i realise that i came very ill prepared for the job. he sighs. "that was a nice story. now i can rest and think of you as a little girl. twelve. you really where twelve then?" "maybe eleven, maybe thirteen. i know i was really ugly." he laughs at that. "yes, i can sleep now. i will be in the expensive hotel and walk through a hallway which has a window overlooking yours, and i will see you sitting there, looking at me. i have meetings all day tomorrow.... let´s meet again the same time." i just say okay and move towards the door. when i go out i mumble a good night and he replies.

i walk through the empty hallways of the hotel. i try to call a friend, but she doesnt pick up. that does not make me feel very safe. what if something had happened? in my room i take a bath. i need to feel clean. i then go to bed. i wonder what kind of story he will want to hear the next day.

i oversleep for breakfast. it is past two when i finally wake up, and i still feel tired. i look out onto the street, it is completely empty. sunlight is gushing over it. i decide i will take a walk in the city, become a tourist for the first time in my life and just enjoy. the walk isnt a pleasant one. there is nothing to do for me here, i have no reason to be here. i drink some coffee at one place, and some more coffee at another. i am being waited by waiters who hardly look me in the eye. never in my life have i been so bored. i decide to go to a movie, but the one cinema i can find only has dubbed films. somehow i am not able to take in my surroundings. the streets become hostile, i dont know them, have no connection to them, it is as if i am a stowaway in this neighbourhood. i feel as if i slightly panic. i dont know if i should cross the next street or not. i decide to cross it, then walk back, there is nothing for me on the other corner. but i feel stupid and observed in my strange behaviour. i hurry back to the hotel and lie down on the bed. zap through the television channels and wait till i can get dinner somewhere. 

hotelroom the hague, summer 2002

the first night.

i sit down on a chair in the room. he is on the bed. he looks at me. "are you relaxed?" i answer that i am far from it. "do you trust me?" i answer that if i would not trust him i would not be there. the question makes me nervous though. even if my friends know exactly where i am, they can do nothing for me now if he turns out to be a complete maniac. i have chosen a chair that is closest to the door. just in case. my phone is on my lap. i take a cigarette out of my bag and light it. "would you like something to drink before you start, or shall we just begin?" i tell him that i could do with some tea. he slowly walks over to the desk, and makes one cup of tea. he brings it over to me and smiles.

"so, have you already thought of a story?" "i have thought of many, what kind of story would you like to hear?" "well, it should be true. and i want it to be about you. maybe about when you were a little girl." he lies down on the bed again, crosses his legs and folds his arms around his chest, as if he is hugging himself. i can hear the sounds of the street outside, cars, people talking. i have seen nothing of the city. i arrived at the airport, was picked up by a carservice and driven directly to the hotel. 

he looks at me, encouragingly. "well, start telling me, please."

so i tell him a story about a hotel

hotelroom 1: bliss.

about seven years ago I had booked a hotelroom for me and my love. I know

where your thoughts are going now, but i must say: No. It is not the

carnal bliss that you now think I mean. The happines I mean is something

very different.

At two o clock in the afternoon I checked in at the Park Hotel in the

Hague. First things seemed to go terribly and utterly wrong: I had

specifically asked for a room with a bath. The staff at the hotel however,

had tried to convince me that a room with a shower would be sufficient. It

was, of course, not.

Bliss came at the moment whereupon I demanded my room with the bath, and

got it.

The bathroom was bigger than the bedroom, about 25 square meters. It was

made of a whitish grey marble, floors as well as walls. The bathroom was

completely empty. The only available light was from a greenish neon tube

above one of the mirrors. The whole athmosphere was very benumbed.

As i let myself sink into the tub, after having it filled with hot water

-that goes without saying- I got the feeling I had ended up in some sort

of morgue. It was all so chilly, so cold, so desolate, impersonal. There

was absolute quiet. The only sound I would occasionally hear was the sound

of the hot water that I let flow into my bath. I felt dead. But not in a

bad way. This was sort of the waitingroom for afterlife to me.

after weeks and months and days of turmoil and hard work this total lack

of stimuli turned out to be the one thing that made me happy.

Just before I had gone to the hotel I had bought a small bag with very

expensive chocolate bonbons in the innercity.

After my two hour bath session I made myself a cup of tea and lay down on

the bed. A typical luxury business hotel kind of bed it was. Clean sheets,

two bedstands with identical lights on each side of the bed, and of course

the obligatory bible. I had closed all the curtains as soon as I had gone

into the room. There was no light in the room anymore, but for the eerie

green light coming from the bathroom, that grey mortuary hall. I lay on

the bed, sometimes forcing myself to make a decision between the various

chocolates to be put into my mouth next.

That was all there was, except the thought that I had never in my life had

done such a remarkably well purchase as the acquistion of four hours of

complete nothingt.

it was then that I decided I would more often spend money on lonely

hotelrooms......