Paying for a room to sleep in! It’s always felt so extravagant to me. Even a $40 Motel 6 room. All to yourself. It’s not the wrapped soap or made beds. It’s that it’s a temporary home, at your absolute convenience, anywhere, off any highway, at any hour. Ring the bell, swipe your card, get your key and voila, instant intimacy, instant home, anytime, anywhere. And it is strangely intimate, as in homey, for me. I don’t need much to be at home: walls, a power outlet, running water. Bed, shower and ashtray are nice but can be improvised. My house has little a hotel room doesn’t, and nothing I couldn’t happily do without.
I love the modern portable American life: that with a car, a credit card, a laptop and a phone, you can live anywhere. I love the fact that you can live happily and indefinitely out of a shoulder bag. If they ever built a full-size keyboard into my phone, I wouldn’t need the bag. A second pair of pants is for people who play golf. If it can’t fit in a bag, you don’t need it. If it can’t fit in the trunk of a car, you definitely don’t need it.
Home is where the job is.
I wanted to be a writer when I was ten because I thought that, if you could make it as a writer — sending stuff off and getting paid for it — you could live anywhere.
