Heads in Beds: A Reckless Memoir of Hotels, Hustles, and So-Called Hospitality

New Orleans, the storm, Perry, the river: they all reminded me not to take anything for granted. It all washes away, and we are all washed away with it. So when then ground is steady and the sky is clear, we should breathe deep until our lungs inflate against our ribs and hold in that one breath until we are lightheaded with the privilege of being human. The absolute privilege of being human.

My degree was garbage stuffed inside a trash can of student loans.

I began to consider, upon the thought of "permanently" relocating, everything New York had made me. When I arrived, I was like a half-carved sculpture, my personality still and undefined image. But the city wears you down, chisels away at everything you don't need, streamlines your emotions and character until you are hard cut, fully defined, and perfect like a Rodin sculpture. That is something truly wonderful, the kind of self-crystallyzation not available in any other city. But then, if you stay too long, it keeps on wearing you down, chipping away at traits you cherish, character that you've earned. Stay forever, and it will grind you down to nothing.

Those who do not have will always serve those who do.

Hotels are methadone clinics for the travel-addicted. Maybe the only way I can even keep a home is to hold down a job surrounded by constant change. If I’m addicted to relocating, then how about I rest a minute, in a lobby echoing with eternal hellos and goodbyes, and let the world move around me?

So when the ground is steady and the sky is clear, we should breathe deep until our lungs inflate against our ribs and hold in that one breath until we are light-headed with the privilege of being alive. The absolute privilege of being human.

So briefly outline your problem, offer a solution if you have one, and then ask whom you should speak with to have the problem solved. “Should I speak to a manager about this?

There are now three entities in the room: the housekeeper, the man, and the man's penis. Tow of these entities are rather pleased with the current situation.

We are in no position to dispute the claim that when you wash your hair, you prefer to dump fifteen bottles of lavender and poppy seed shampoo all over your scalp like some gooey shower freak.

When I arrived, I was like a half-carved sculpture, my personality still an undefined image. But the city wears you down, chisels away at everything you don’t need, streamlines your emotions and character until you are hard cut, fully defined, and perfect like a Rodin sculpture. That is something truly wonderful, the kind of self-crystallization not available in any other city.

Service is not about being up-front and honest. Service is about minimizing negatives and creating the illusion of perfection.

The first big hotels failed monetarily or burned to the ground or both. It wasn’t until railroad lines were getting stitched across America’s expanding fabric that hotels, big and small, began to prosper and offer people like me jobs.

reading this book will give you the knowledge you need to get the very best service from any hotel or property, from any business that makes its money from putting “heads in beds.

Hotels are methadone clinics for the travel addicted. Maybe the only way I can even keep a home is to hold down a job surrounded by constant change.

when the ground is steady and the sky is clear, we should breathe deep until our lungs inflate against our ribs and hold in that one breath until we are light-headed with the privilege of being alive. The absolute privilege of being human.

Later, I sat down drunk on the corner of Carondelet and Canal Streets, listening for the rumble of the streetcar that would take me back uptown to my apartment, watching the evening sun bleed from the streets, the city shifting into night, when it truly became New Orleans: the music, the constant festival, the smell of late evening dinners pouring out, layering the beer-soaked streets, prostitutes, clubs with DJs, rowdy gay bars, dirty strip clubs, the insane out for a walk, college students vomiting in trash cans, daiquiri bars lit up like supermarkets, washing-machine-sized mixers built into the wall spinning every color of daiquiri, lone trumpet players, grown women crying, clawing at men in suits, portrait painters, spangers (spare change beggars), gutter punks with dogs, kids tap-dancing with spinning bike wheels on their heads, the golden cowboy frozen on a milk crate, his golden gun pointed at a child in the crowd, fortune-tellers, psycho preachers, mumblers, fighters, rock-faced college boys out for a date rape, club chicks wearing silver miniskirts, horse-drawn carriages, plastic cups piling against the high curbs of Bourbon Street, jazz music pressing up against rock-and-roll cover bands, murderers, scam artists, hippies selling anything, magic shows and people on unicycles, flying cockroaches the size of pocket rockets, rats without fear, men in drag, business execs wandering drunk in packs, deciding not to tell their wives, sluts sucking dick on open balconies, cops on horseback looking down blouses, cars wading across the river of drunks on Bourbon Street, the people screaming at them, pouring drinks on the hood, putting their asses to the window, whole bars of people laughing, shot girls with test tubes of neon-colored booze, bouncers dragging skinny white boys out by their necks, college girls rubbing each other’s backs after vomiting tequila, T-shirts, drinks sold in a green two-foot tube with a small souvenir grenade in the bottom, people stumbling, tripping, falling, laughing on the sidewalk in the filth, laughing too hard to stand back up, thin rivers of piss leaking out from corners, brides with dirty dresses, men in G-strings, mangy dogs, balloon animals, camcorders, twenty-four-hour 3-4-1, free admission, amateur night, black-eyed strippers, drunk bicyclers, clouds of termites like brown mist surrounding streetlamps, ventriloquists, bikers, people sitting on mailboxes, coffee with chicory, soul singers, the shoeless, the drunks, the blissful, the ignorant, the beaten, the assholes, the cheaters, the douche bags, the comedians, the holy, the broken, the affluent, the beggars, the forgotten, and the soft spring air pregnant with every scent created by such a town.

And now here I was in a huge apocalyptic city that certainly failed to notice my arrival and promised to be uninformed of my departure, whether it be by bus or death.

People don’t expect crazy quality from front desk agents at 3: 00 a.m. They just expect them not to be totally crazy.

Any given room, behind any given door, someone else’s life was on fire. Not the life lived at home, not the cable-and-bed-by-9: 00-p.m. life, waiting around to die. The hotel life: boundless, foreign, debaucherous, freshly laundered, exploratory, scantily clad, imaginative, frightening, expensive, and brand fucking new. I wandered the hallways every day like a guard keeper in the house of reinvention. Whatever these people were getting into, whatever their lives had become, I made sure that if they vacated the room for an hour’s time, they had clean sheets to do it on, new soap to scrub it off with, fresh towels to wipe it down, a clean robe to cover it up, and a fresh pillow to sleep it off on.

Never, ever will the hotel accuse you of lying. That is the absolute last stance hotel management wants to take.

Want to know what people are really like? What their strange habits are? How they treat people when no one they deem important is watching? Ask their desk agent. Basically, ask their servants: because that is what we are, an army of servants, included with the price of the room.

Need to cancel the day of arrival with no penalty? No problem. Maybe you just want to be treated with care and respect? I understand, dear guest. Come on, now, calm down, you fragile thing … take my hand … good … okay, now put some money in it … very good … thank you. Now, that’s a proper hospitality business transaction.

Tipping change is bad luck, people. If you can't round your generosity up to a whole dollar, then just embrace your cheapness. Don't try to pay off your guilty conscience with quarters.

There is was: Travel . For a man like me, someone who made friends in fifth grade only to lose them in the sixth grade and, in another state, make new ones to lose in the seventh grade, I could no longer deny my addiction to relocation.

She then gave me a chunk of advice. "You'll be a manager soon, Tommy. Everyone likes you and believes in you. But before that happens, take the time to analyze the managers you have now. Pay attention to the way they treat you and the rest of the staff. Are they too friendly? Not friendly enough? Are they enforcers? Company drones? Too lenient or never, ever lenient? Just keep your eye on them, watch how their attitudes either cause or eliminate problems, and then, when you get to be a manager, you can pick and choose the type of manager you want to be, the type of manager your employees will think you are. Start thinking about that now, and you'll be successful.

I only drink champagne and I don't wait for anyone.

You see, the photographer is going to follow us and secretly take pictures when I drop my knee in the dirt. Then, on our wedding day, I’m going to give her the photos she doesn’t even know were taken.

Putting a head in every bed is called a “perfect sell,” and it’s not easy to accomplish.

I wavered behind my terminal, bewildered, bracing myself on the desk at 2:00 a.m., splashing water on my face at 3:00 a.m., eating a chocolate bar and drinking a Red Bull at 4:00 a.m., popping into the back office to slap myself hard in the face at 5:00 a.m., greeting the early-riser guests and beginning to check out rooms at 6:00 a.m., my mouth tasting like the smell coming from the wilting and unchanged flower display at 6:05 a.m., counting the minutes at 6:06 a.m., feeling as if I’ve ruined my whole life at 6:21 a.m., dreaming about dreaming at 6:32 a.m., squinting with hatred at the sun sliding into the lobby at 6:43 a.m., thinking about absolutely nothing, my head sort of rolling around, eyes twitching and staring down the hallway at 6:51 a.m., at the end of which, next to the elevators, is the door that leads to the employee locker rooms, where my relief, hopefully, is on time and changing into uniform, then stumbling downstairs at 7:01