“I'm nobody! Who are you?"
- Emily Dickenson
I was talking with a friend recently about the experience that is the bed-and-breakfast. I told him that Kendra and I had only stayed in one once but that was enough for us. That's not a judgement on anyone who fancies them, it's just a personal preference.
It was years ago that we booked our one and only in the western part of Washington state. The proprietors were a nice couple, wonderfully accommodating and all that. But, right away it felt odd, like we'd come to spend the night with someone we'd only just met. We were shown to our room which was fine and clean but felt a little like the chamber in which dear Aunt Faye had spent her last moments, clutching to life before crossing over to glory land…probably in that bed.
We settled in and heard other guests doing the same in their rooms. Then, in the night it was necessary to creep as quietly as possible down the creaking, popping hallway, past the doors of snoring strangers to the communal bathroom. There in that echo chamber, all sounds were magnified ten-fold and broadcast through the house.
After a night of confused sleep it was time for breakfast! We joined three other smiling couples that hailed from near and far. It was chitchat galore over pancakes and sausage, “Where are you from?” “We've never been to Fargo” “Our dogs go with us everywhere” “That's not our RV. We borrowed it from the neighbors" “Orange juice for you?”
We're not the least bit anti-social, but still, it was unsettling. We'd much prefer a good old middle of the road Hampton Inn — You know, a pretty comfortable bed, nondescript art, tiny fridge that freezes things or keeps them lukewarm and a breakfast of leathery pre-made omelettes, underdone waffles and zero forced small talk with Bill and Susan Flanagan from Topeka.
Which brings me to a poem by the once Poet Laureate of Missouri, David Clewell. He was a beloved professor of literature at Webster University in St. Louis before his death in 2020.
America's Bed-and-Breakfasts
By David Clewell
i.
Even though I'm only staying the night, I have a sinking feeling
there's going to be trouble. The real guests are talking it up in the living room
as if this is truly the life: what more could people want, this far from home,
than to have every bit of their weariness and hunger taken so personally? Why
would anyone settle for less? When they checked in and filled out the card
with way too much space for Tell Us All About Yourself, I bet they were more
than happy to oblige. I can hear them even now, while I'm writing down
the only thing I'm sure of, after my name and actual address:
I can already tell there's no way I deserve this kind of attention.
I travel for the thrill of asserting what I can't be expected to know.
Because I enjoy the molecular rearrangement that being a stranger occasions,
I don't necessarily want to feel as if I'm somehow fitting into
the familiar chambers of my life one more time. It's as if my Aunt Ida suddenly
was named the nation's hotelier, and from now on there'll be no such thing as
too much potpourri, too many of those giant ceramic pitchers on hallway tables,
dried flowers sprouting from the mouths of all the usual antiques in the land.
Aunt Ida in St. Louis, Salt Lake City, Sausalito, New Orleans. Aunt Ida
beckoning from every porch swing throughout charm-smitten New England.
ii.
It's not enough that this place has taken its name from some official roster
of the Atmospherically Correct. Each room has its own ambience spelled out:
The Salt Air. The Espresso. The Battle-of-Gettysburg Room. And there's no
Major Hoople from my Sunday funnies childhood showing me the way, guiding star
of Our Boarding House in his resplendent fez, kaff-kaffing through adventure
after unlikely adventure. No. My hosts are gentle Dick and Jane, grown serious
and pale after too many years rehabbing their straight-and-narrow world.
Ten minutes of this and my own color's fading. I'm already losing sleep
I haven't even thought of yet. I'm actually on my knees, despairing in front of
the shelf or two of books they insist on calling The Library: soil conservation,
too-local histories, the requisite wisdom of Edgar Guest. I grab the Boy Scouts
Survival Handbook because now the other guests are chummied up around the piano
lost in a spirited medley of show tunes, and I'm afraid it can only get worse:
some trigger-happy soul's bound to pull out a guitar, squeeze off a few rounds
of Michael Row Your Boat Ashore. And then it's Kumbaya before you know it.
iii.
Now I'm turning my polite version of a pillow over and over, looking for
the cool side. I'm really expected to sleep through this night, to wake up
for breakfast: fresh-squeezed juice and something like scones, a china cup
of exotic decaffeinated coffee while all these slap-happy pilgrims talk about
what's next. The Eichorns will be, as always, irrepressible. They're excited
about meandering through another Farmer's Market. Nancy and Donna can't wait
to be in a boat on the lake. And Dick and Jane might smile and wonder out loud
what could possibly be in store for Mr. Misanthrope. As if I didn't have
enough to answer for already.
I can dream, can't I? There's a sleepy
1950s aqua-trimmed motel, its VACANCY still radiant in neon.
The guy at the night desk doesn't want to talk about politics or love, much less
about his hula girl tattoo. He doesn't give a damn if I'm in town
on legitimate business, on the lam, on account of any sunburned Donna.
And the unassuming key he hands over lets me into The Cradle-of-Civilization-
As-I've-Come-to-Know-It Room, where I kick off my shoes with impunity
and warm up the TV, caressing its lovely rabbit ears. It's my kind of night
already. Later I'm walking the grounds with that plastic bucket in my hands,
drawn to the all-night humming of the ice machine, its cold beauty
the surest sustenance around. In moments I'll have something to carry with me
for as long as it lasts. Something finally to give away when people come asking.
And I can get more if I have to. I can give them all they want.
iv.
Because sometimes it's hard to remember exactly
who you are, what you're doing anywhere. That's when I least believe in
talking it out or sleeping it off or passing it around a table like bread again
until everyone's had his fill. And even if we're supposed to feel like part of
the same ridiculous family, no matter how big, how impossibly happy, I can't imagine
for the life of me why people would choose to make themselves so much at home
that they're perfectly willing to sing along through endless verses full of
those same monotonous verses: that no one's a stranger
in suffering, but neither will we be strangers forever to the blessings
that seem a little far away right now: OK, so maybe
just one more time: River Jordan is chilly and wide…
Bed-and-Breakfast on the other side.