The Upgrade: A Cautionary Tale of a Life Without Reservations Read Online Free PDF Page B

to another place down the street where her friends were celebrating—what?—something.
    There was a bottle of champagne. But after that—nothing. I can’t remember how I got back to the Pod. And I have absolutely no idea what possible set of circumstances led to my being slumped on the floor, head leaning against the closed door of my room. I shook my head again and slowly I started to focus on how long my hotel room was. And narrow. Weird. And that’s when I realized the first of my two problems. I was slumped against my hotel room—I had that right—but, rather than being inside the room, I was outside, in the corridor. The second of my problems—and certainly the most pressing—was that I was stark fucking naked.

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    Think, think, think … how the hell had I got there? Were my clothes inside my room? And, if so, had I made it into the room, undressed, and for some reason walked outside again? And if not—oh God—had I walked naked through the hotel?
    My brain simply wasn’t capable of processing all of these questions. All I knew is that I had to get back into my room before anyone saw me. I tried the door. Locked, obviously. I gave it a half-hearted shove with my shoulder and immediately fell back down to the floor, still drunk. “Hmm,” I thought, “maybe that explains the slumping.”
    I had no other option: I’d have to go down to the lobby and ask someone to let me in. I looked up and down the corridor. When this happens in movies, there’s always some appropriately-comedic piece of bric-a-brac that can be pressed into service as a covering: a moose’s head, a vase, something like that. Not in real life.
    The corridors in the Pod don’t have windows; there weren’t even any curtains. No windows also meant I had no way of figuring out what time it was. What if I’d been slumped there for hours? What if it was 10 a.m. and a nice family with young children was checking in and the first thing they saw was a naked Brit emerging drunkenly from the elevator into the lobby, not-so-proudly cupping his genitals in his hands? That’s no way to start a holiday. It is, however, a great way to start a lawsuit.
    My only lucky break was that I’d been given a room right opposite the elevators. I pressed the call button and the door opened straight away, which was good—it meant less time in the corridor—but also potentially bad as it meant someone had arrived at my floor not long before. I prayed that person had been me. As the car made its way downwards I caught a glimpse of my pathetic reflection in the elevator’s mirrored walls. “Dear God, Paul, you’re a mess” I thought out loud.

    Finally, the doors opened and I peered out into the lobby, trying my best to keep the rest of my body out of sight. All was calm and still, thank God; the clock behind the reception desk said 4:25 a.m. The only witness to my humiliation would be a solitary night porter sitting behind the reception desk, reading a magazine.
    “¡ Ay Dios m’ıo !” And a tiny Hispanic cleaner, mopping the floor right next to the elevator. I hadn’t noticed her.
    “ Lo siento ,” I said. My two words of Spanish.
    “Don’t worry, Maria, I’ll go.” said the night porter, looking up boredly from his magazine. It was an interesting choice of words, “I’ll go,” as if this kind of thing—naked men walking out of the elevators at four in the morning—happened at the Pod every night.
    He picked up a master key from behind the desk and ambled towards the elevator. Even though I was still shit-faced drunk, the next thirty seconds—which took the form of about three and a half years—were the most embarrassing of my life. I stood at one side of the elevator, still naked, ass pressed against the wall, genitals still cupped in my hands, while the tall night porter—I think he was Russian—stood as far on the other side as possible.
    “Sorry about this,” I said.
    He didn’t say a word.

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    A few hours later—11 a.m.—I