Room Service
Authors: Frank Moorhouse
A hilarious spoof of travel books.
Frank Moorhouse and his alter ego, Francoise Blase, are at their mordant best. Their wit, satire and keen eye for detail are finely honed as they travel at home and abroad, savouring the persecution inflicted by bell captains, barmen and tour guides - together with the endless buffeting of cultural differences.
Moorhouse and Francois Blase like to travel light. Carrying a typewriter, a six-pack and a healthy amount of hedonistic humor, the Australian pair tour the globe's underbelly in these brilliant pieces, exchanging barbs, witticisms and stinging insights on the ways of people. The tales dissect the anti-art of traveling and provide incisive narratives that alternately wink at their subjects and then "whonk" them on the back Aussie style.
Moorhouse also makes a solitary journey back to the 1950s, to recapture the rhythms and idiom of school and family life in a poignant account.
A hilarious spoof of travel books
Room Service
is a collection of stories, or rather dispatches, from a feckless Australian travel writer to his long-suffering editor.
To Susie Carleton
friend, patron of the arts
Deposition One
In New York City, at the old Times Square Hotel, I place my six bottles of Heineken beer along the windowsill to chill in snow, to save the 50-cent ice charge, to avoid filling the hand-basin with ice and beer, and to spare myself the sight of the bell captain's outstretched palm. I then leave my room to push my way along the Manhattan streets through the muggers, but change my mind at the hotel door and the snow and return, instead, to drink my Heineken. Reaching the room I find the beer gone from the sill. Instantly, without a flicker of hesitation, I know that the bell captain has swiftly checked my room to find out if I am using the windowsill to chill my beer instead of paying him 50 cents plus tip to bring up a plastic bag full of melting ice. Quick work on his part. I open out the window to look for clues and as I do the six bottles of Heineken are swept off the sill down fifteen stories into Fifty-Fourth Street â and the bad end of Fifty-Fourth. I am too apathetic to bother looking down. Already New York is dehumanising me. And I've lost my beer. At first I think it is all my mistake â that when I first looked for the beer I looked at the wrong window. That I then opened the right window in the
wrong way and pushed them off. (Maybe a lot of the so-called muggings in New York are really head injuries from falling bottles from hotel windowsills because hungry-handed bell captains charge too much for ice). But as I sit there bereft and brooding I arrive at a more convincing conclusion about the beer, the sill, the window. What the bell captain has done is to come into my room, find the bottles, steal one or two, or even three, and then switch them to where I will sweep the remaining bottles off. This way I will never know if he has been into my room to steal my beer. I will therefore be unable to bring substantiated allegations against him. Alright. This round to the bell captain.
Deposition Two
I have proved that the bell captain provides ice which is at melting point. I suspected this from the start. The first time I ordered ice I paid him 50 cents, tipped him, checked my wallet, latched and locked the door and propped a chair against it, and when I turned around all I had was a plastic bag of ice-water. So I did this. I bought a bag of ice from the drugstore next door to the hotel and sat there in my room and timed its melting against another bag of the bell captain's ice. The results were inconclusive but down in the bell captain's den, I am convinced that they leave the ice out of the freezer to bring it just to melting point and they give this ice to non-tippers or a person who doesn't tip âenough' for bell captains. I have a frustrated urge to hand them my wallet, to put my wallet in the hand of the bell captain
and ask him to take what he thinks is âfair'. I was told of a man who had no hands and who kept his money in that unused outside breast pocket of his suit (which schoolboys, railway clerks, electricity-meter readers, and eccentrics use sensibly for pens and pencils) so that taxi drivers and so on could help themselves to the money. Poor bastard. Perhaps I should pull my hands into my sleeves and let New York help itself.
Deposition Three
Anyhow, what can they do to you if you don't tip? What they do in New York is they turn off the heat to your room. Can they do that? Is that mechanically possible â can they isolate one room out of six hundred and turn off its heat? Well they did it to my room. They must have a control panel down in the bell captain's den.
Deposition Four
Every afternoon I have a conversation through the keyhole with the maid who wants me to leave the room so that she can âchange the linen'. When am I going out, she inquires. For âchange the linen' read: Allow the bell captain to come in and prowl about my room and steal my Heineken beer. We come to an arrangement. I take my Heineken in my briefcase and sit in the lobby while she âchanges the linen'.
Deposition Five
Oh, they know that Francois Blase is just a
nom de voyage.
I know I have not fooled them. The word has
gone around too that we are exchange-rate millionaires. Bell captains study the exchange rate. In a ploy to extract larger tips the bell captain has told the doorman to stop opening the door for me, despite a tip of 75 cents the previous evening for bringing up half a dozen Heineken and a packet of crackerjack. When I didn't order ice they knew I was using the windowsill.
When I suspect the doorman is not opening the door for me as a reprimand for using the windowsill and not buying melted ice from them, I sit in the lobby and count the comings and goings and the times the doorman opens the door. To confirm my suspicions. He opens the door every time. I then rise from my chair in the lobby and go to the door, even saying something genial about the Miami Dolphins and the League to show my immersion in the life of the United States and to show that I bear no ideological or other objections and so on. The bell captain pretends not to hear and the doorman pretends to answer the telephone. I have to open the door myself. The first of twelve comings and goings that the doorman had not opened the door. I âturn on my heel' and return to my room, deeply miffed.
Deposition Six
I eat, imprudently, in the lobby restaurant as I do not feel like going out that much â things to do in my room and so on. Obviously the waiter ignores me on the whisper from the bell captain, despite my dollar tip to him for sending a cable home for more money so that I could continue to tip the hotel staff. I eventually
have to lean from my chair and grab the waiter's sleeve and jacket with both my hands, pulling him to an unsteady halt and me nearly out of my chair. With many smiles, bowing and scrapings, I say that I am going to the theatre and am therefore in a rush. He says what, at 5.45? But anyhow I get some service. Except that what I ask for is off, he says, although I think I see others being served it, and I think he brings me something other than what I ordered, but it takes so long I can't really remember what I ordered. At least I get my Heineken. Of course, I am being penalised for some breach of the hotel customs. I leave a 27-per-cent tip as a gesture of my willingness to âget along'.
Deposition Seven
I eat in the lobby restaurant again, not feeling like going out because I see a blizzard hiding behind the clouds waiting to lash out at me. This time the restaurant pulls a switch in behaviour to throw me into anguish and confusion. On a signal from the bell captain which I did not see, the waiter serves me, this time,
too quickly
. A masquerade â uncivilised haste masquerading as promptness. They want to get me out of the restaurant, get me to rush my food. They don't like me because I dawdle over my food with a book. Hah! They don't like people who read books at dinner. They think, maybe, I am âparading' my bookishness. So, it's the book-reading that sticks in their gut.
Despite the rushed service, I tip heavily again. I do this for three reasons: to preserve the good name of
dinner-table book-readers; to show that I am above pettiness; and to make them think that maybe we are the world's fastest eaters as well as being best at everything else. In short to repay confusion with confusion.
I stand in the lobby picking my teeth, here it is only 6.15 and I've eaten a three-course dinner. I toy with the idea of going out and sparring with the people of New York, turning the table on a few muggers, but decide to go back to my room and have a quiet Heinie and watch colour TV. The bell captain and doorman smile, tip their caps, bow and so on â all unfelt gestures, a debasement of the body-language of service. I know they don't care. The doorman even goes through the motions of opening the lift door, which is automatic. I tip him without looking to see if he smiles or says thankyou, and without consulting my Chamber of Commerce Guide to tipping in automatic lifts.
Deposition Eight
A stranger in the lobby asks me for change for the âvalet' slot machine. I at first pretend not to hear, a New York reflex, knowing that as soon as I reach for my money I will betray the amount that I carry, as soon as I speak he will know where I come from and am therefore rich and generous and foolish, and that Francois Blase is a cover, and that whatever I do will reveal me as naive and paranoiac. There is something else, I fear, which I call New York Sleight of Hand, which will make whatever I have disappear. He persists in what appears to be a civilised, middle-class way, so I give him a handful of
change. He offers me a note. I wave it away. He thanks me wonderously and goes to the valet machine, looking back at me and back to his handful of money. At first I feel pleased with myself â it is this sort of gesture that gets us a good name. But when I glance over to the bell captain he appears to be scowling and refuses to meet my eyes. I enter the lift, troubled. In the lift it dawns on me. It is his job to give change and, anyhow, the valet machine is an automation of hotel employment and is probably declared black by the hotel staff. How stupid of me. I have robbed the bell captain of a quarter tip; diminished his role; and threatened his employment. I feel chilly. For these things I will have to pay.
Deposition Nine
When I get to my room the heat is off. Apart from the obvious offences like giving change in the lobby, using the windowsill to chill beer, I must have done other offensive things. I rove over my dealings with the hotel staff and my mind recalls to me the automatic lift. One lift is automatic and the other is run by a one-armed black man. I have a preference for the automatic lift and this must count against me. Maybe I should use the one-armed black lift driver to keep him in employment, as an endorsement of the human element in mechanised society, and as a gesture against discrimination. Maybe I should tip the black lift driver too, although my information from the Chamber of Commerce is that lift drivers are not tipped. Next time, I go by the one-armed black man's lift and I see that
he is selling the Sunday
New York Times
and I buy a copy from him, although I worry about the newspaper seller in the lobby who is blind and what he will think. The one-armed lift driver charges me 75 cents for the 50-cent paper. With some sort of neurotic reversed-response (like those who smile involuntarily when informed of tragedy), I apologise and thank the one-armed black lift driver. What about the blind paper seller?
Deposition Ten
I am, I tell myself, too passive before the minor oppressions. I am always virtuously assertive about the major oppressions of our times. Apartheid, you name it. But I remain timid before the accumulated indignities which sour the quality of life. I adopt a pretentious inner attitude of âPooh, I have not the mental time to worry about the miscellaneous petty injustices of the day-to-day world. My life is dedicated to a larger mission'. So I let waiters off.
I resolve to change this. I go down and confront the manager when my heat is off on the third afternoon. I begin by saying that I know all about Traveller Paranoia and that I have tested myself. I am not suffering from Traveller Paranoia. I want, I tell him, no accusations of that sort.
The depositions of my journal, which I produce as Exhibit A, and the whole heat business, clearly make a case against the bell captain and I call for his dismissal.
I refer the manager to the case of
Jackson v. Horizon Holidays Ltd.
A person who books a holiday at a hotel which falls short of the brochure description can claim damages for vexation and disappointment.
People throughout the world, I thunder, have for too long taken advantage of our open, relaxed, simplified, small-country responses to life. For too long now we have been known as âeasy going'. Because we inhabit a rich, technologically advanced, uncrowded, clean country we are resented and penalised.
I close my case.
âAbout the economics and geography of your country I know nothing, Mr Blase, but as for the heat â this is a fuel-saving measure introduced because of the world fuel situation. Between eleven and three, we turn off the heat. It is the warmest part of the day. Also, most people are usually out of their rooms at around these times.'
I stare at him.
I marvel at the ingenuity of his defence.
Alright, I say, this time I'll accept what you say and, âturning on my heel', I go back to my room.
I need time to pick apart this carefully prepared explanation.
Summing Up
Later, brooding in my cold room, the point of his last remark comes to me, âmost people are usually out of their rooms at around these times'.
What business is it of anyone that I have not left the hotel precincts for five days or so? Do I go out
and be mugged on the streets of Manhattan so that the bell captain can have a free hand with the thieving of my Heineken? So they can pick over my luggage. I rent the room. I don't have to go out to see landmarks every day of my life. Anyhow, everything that happens on a journey is âexperience'. It doesn't have to be all landmarks and monuments. Maybe, for all they know, I am exploring the inner spaces of my mind, the subterranean caves of my personality, gazing with new understanding at the ruins and monuments of my own archaeology. The seven wonders of the heart. What would the staff of the old Times Square Hotel know about that? Nothing. Nothing at all.