The white robe; the white, terrycloth slippers; the little bottles of shampoo: all signs that yes, you’re in a hotel room. Then there’s the sign in the bathroom asking you to please be green and reuse your towels. It’s interesting how I usually notice that sign as I’m dropping my wet towel on the floor. But, give me some help, hotel planners—where are the extra hooks in the bathroom? I’m lucky if I can find two. Ray’s hook works for him, a low-maintenance male, but my hook has to put in a lot of overtime as it supports a wet towel, a bathrobe, and, at times, a wet shower cap. That little, paper, guilt-inducing sign was never around when I was in my younger years. Does it actually help cut down on energy and water use? A Google search just told me that seventeen out of 100 people reuse their towels during hotel stays. 

Now that that’s out of the way, it’s my past two hotel stays that have made me really scratch my head (and not because of dirty towels). What the fuck is with this trend of not fully enclosing the bathroom? I know we share hotel rooms with spouses, relatives and close friends. They are the people we get naked in front of, cry in front of and burp in front of. But, do we really need to hear them take a shit and then smell it? For god’s sake, let there be a door that closes fully and a shared wall that is solid. These groovy designs of missing doors; partial walls that don’t meet the ceiling; walls with a macrame rope section (my last hotel) or a glass insert in the middle of sheetrock do not work for me. I need my bathroom to be like a vault, where, if a nuclear war hit mid-shit, I’d be safe. 

Back to the glass panes now—my one thought is “Why?” I’m a woman. I represent all women in the fact that we pee at least once, mostly twice, in the middle of the night. With a full bladder in the dark, I have two choices in these groovy-designed hotel rooms: to take a Helen Keller-like journey and feel my way around the bathroom, hoping to fit my ass securely on the seat or to turn on the bathroom light, which will wake up Ray, since the entire room will be aglow at two am. Both scenarios suck. I usually end up using my phone’s light, which is only one step away from a blindfolded Sandra Bullock in Bird Box. 

The real impetus for my profound confusion with this groovy, boutiquey nonsense was the placement of these panes of glass inside the showers. One hotel had a glass pane in the wall between the shower and the bed itself. And—I swear this is true—the pane was directly in the spot where you stood under the shower head. I tried to angle that fucker as far back as possible, so that maybe just my breasts were visible. But, nope, no such luck, it was a full-body shot. Of course, the friend I was rooming with, weighs about 80 pounds and has a body profile that mimics a sheet of paper, not to mention firm tits. I wanted to break that pane of glass, take a shard and murder the asshole in charge of deciding where the glass would be placed. My last hotel was only a little better in that the shower wall was frosted glass and not completely see-through. However, my fully-lit, naked silhouette still wasn’t working for me.  

You better believe when I stepped out of these showers, cringing and wet, I wanted a fresh, clean towel. Fuck the environmental footprint, and fuck these groovy designers. I reuse my towels at home, where I have a solid wooden door with a proper knob and a lock. I even have six hooks. Please know that I will never leave a hotel room without leaving cash on the counter for the cleaning women. And, I never steal the robes. 

I dedicate this blog to Ray for giving me the privacy I need in hotel rooms with no proper barriers. 

*All names have been changed.

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