The Click

The click of the hotel room door. Gets me every time. It’s a whoosh-click-click as the self closing mechanism drags the door back over the carpet, wheezes some air out of the room, and engages itself back into a locked position.

And there I stand. Suit bag and laptop tote over my shoulders, suitcase propped up on its wheels. This is it. “Home” for the night. This is what business travel is really about. Yes, there’s excitement of the planes and the airports and the adrenaline of rushing between terminals, and the drudge of waiting in airport lounges. The act of getting from A to B has purpose. Hearing that click of the hotel room door puts a full stop on that purpose, and replaces it with the empty loneliness of yet another hotel room in Somewhere.

The knowledge that the only stimulation in this “home” is either the TV or the laptop-that-contains-work is truly deflating. The urge to go out for a walk and remove myself from the room is always strong. But I’ve been travelling for just shy of 24 hours. I’m just too stuffed. And so, this time, at the Hilton in Houston, I submit to the room.

Unpack. It’s a settling experience. Put the toiletry bag in the bathroom. Take the suits and shirts out of the suit bag, hang them up. Scope out the room. Mini-bar in the corner. TV with cable. Nice view. Kick shoes off. Crack open a coke from that mini bar in the corner. Glance casually through the concierge book. Same-old-same-old. Find the room service menu. There’s the club sandwich. (I’ve yet to find a hotel that doesn’t do a club sandwich on the room service menu, hence my World Tour of Club Sandwiches. The best so far – the InterContinental in Manila).

And once that’s all done, I realize that I’m trying to fend off the loneliness and the vacuum of relationship by filling the time with activity.

Call home.

Calling home is this lovely paradox. Of course I want to call home, to connect, to talk to see how my Love is doing, to see what they’re thinking and feeling, sense of what has happened in their world in the last 24 hours.

But at the same time, and here's the paradox, calling home is hard because I know of the magnified emptiness that is delivered when I hang up. In a way, it's like a drug with lousy after-effects. I guess, in that rather weird analogy, I'm an addict, then. The high of the drug is more desirable than what comes after, so by definition, a unrestrained addict.

I don't know if every travelling businessman (person, if we're going to be PC) misses his (or her) family as much as I do. Sometimes I feel like a wuss for missing the Girls as much as I do. But here's the thing, I don't do so good when I'm apart from them. I'm distracted. I'm flighty. I replace time and space with Stuff. I turn into a workaholic - it's a coping mechanism. There are many things to do and see on my travels, but they feel hollow and selfish. I want to share these experiences with the Girls. I want Love to see the things I see. And so, I tend to not do stuff. I do get very up-to-date with my e-mail though...

You see Love and me have been together a long time. Over half my life. Love knows me better than anyone. She makes me frown, and smile. Sometimes both in the blink of an eye. She makes me laugh. I love making her laugh. She makes me think. Deep, searching, meaningful, real thinks. Without her it would be just cars and stuff that I think about. No deeper. I miss Love so bad it actually physically hurts. And I love missing her, because in my slightly skew take on the world, the amount I miss her is a measure for how much I love her.

I miss my espresso machine too. Doesn't hurt though. Just miss the coffee.