I either sleep really well in hotels, or I stay awake all night. There’s no in-between. As someone with auditory sensory issues, and as a relatively light sleeper, the clicks and slams and pounding footsteps of my hotel neighbors will often jostle me awake, keeping me tied to the waking world for hours. On the other side of the sleep spectrum, a hotel room’s industrial air conditioning cranked full-blast paired with the delicious joy of not having to share an inch of a king-sized bed, can lull me to sleep like a baby. When that happens—well, it’s a feeling akin to eroticism.
It’s an effect I achieve in the sumptuous quiet of the Hotel Zone, an alternate dimension of thick, black-out curtains and stocked mini-fridges. In the Hotel Zone, away from the daily chores and deadlines, my jaw unclenches. My shoulders drop. Somehow, my breathing regulates. It’s not unlike the feeling I get after a great yoga session: that loose, slightly untethered sensation of floating between worlds.
Today, I woke up in a cloud of sheets and blankets, fortressed by plush pillows. Alone, so very blissfully alone. My hotel room is quieter than the inside of a cave, and just as dark. There’s no alarm blaring in my ear, no little face peeking through the crack in my door, whisper-shouting, “Is it morning yet?” (No, it’s not morning. It’s never morning. Go back to sleep.) It’s just me and the remains of last night’s takeout sushi extravaganza, which I also did not have to share with a single person, praise be.
These days, I don’t often get to sleep alone. My husband is my usual bedmate, but on the rare nights he’s traveling, my six-year-old finds her way under my sheets, pressing her cold feet against my shins, asking if we can have just a few minutes of “chit-chat.” (She also brings all her stuffies with her, including a life-sized wolf/dog plush I now heartily regret buying from IKEA.) And I love having my people snuggled around me, don’t get me wrong. But—again, as a light sleeper—I never quite settle into a solid rest with another body nearby.
Since becoming a parent, I haven’t had many opportunities to be by myself at night, luxuriating in the sensation of good sleep, which is a close second to good sex. Actually, maybe good sleep is better. My first taste of hotel sleep came when I started traveling to Austin for work when my daughter was a baby. I’d only stay a night or two, but after those nights, I felt revived. I’d pop down to the hotel bar for a drink, go to sleep whenever I wanted, and wake when I wanted, as long as I still had time to Uber over to my office for the first meeting of the day. At the time, as a parent who woke frequently with a restless baby, the idea of uninterrupted rest was revolutionary.