'Hotel rooms constitute a separate moral universe.' -Tom Stoppard A bed, a telephone, the cord to the world beyond the womb . . . Here lovers meet, have met, will meet again behind different faces while the icy picures look on, seeing nothing. Hotel rooms see nothing. Business transacted, prostitutes k**ed, marriages silently shaken; what happens here is off the record; there is no record when the sheets are changed every night for other guests. & you my darling my lover, my reader, ultimately myself, why are you hungering so, why are you opening abysses in yourself before you rush off to the next appointment? Eternity is just a hotel room- deluxe or seedy as the fates allow, lonely as the loneliest one-night stand, & with no telephone. Or is it the body? Is the body the hotel room after all? O let us inhabit it amply, crying & screaming & embracing before we check out.