Hotel Perhaps: Excellent Ambiance, No Answers

There is a particular stage of dating in which a woman can spend three days wondering what a man meant by “we’ll see,” yet asking him what he meant feels somehow wildly confrontational.

So she does not ask.

Instead, she checks the evidence, rereads the messages, consults a friend, considers his childhood, remembers something he said six weeks ago near a restaurant bathroom, and eventually develops a theory so elaborate it ought to come with architectural drawings.

Welcome to Hotel Perhaps.

It is a beautiful establishment. Very atmospheric. Nobody knows exactly what is happening, but the lighting is flattering and hope is complimentary.

The rooms have names such as He’s Just Busy, He’s Afraid of His Feelings, and the exceptionally popular penthouse, He’ll Probably Be Ready Soon. Checkout is available at any time, although many guests remain for several years because nobody has yet located the front desk.

The strange thing about questions in love is that the question itself is rarely frightening.

“What are you looking for?”

“Are we actually seeing each other exclusively?”

“Do you still want this?”

“Do you see marriage in your future?”

Perfectly ordinary sentences. Nobody has summoned a tribunal. There are no helicopters circling overhead.

What makes them terrifying is that an answer could cause reality to arrive.

And reality, unlike ambiguity, has very little interest in decorating itself for company.

A woman may already notice that a man who once crossed three counties to see her is now apparently unable to cross his living room. Before sex, his calendar had the flexibility of a retired millionaire. Afterwards, he becomes a man whose schedule is so demanding that heads of state would express concern.

She notices.

Of course she notices.

But asking, “Has something changed?” introduces the possibility that he might say yes.

Until then, Hotel Perhaps remains open.

Perhaps he is stressed. Perhaps he is overwhelmed. Perhaps work is terrible. Perhaps intimacy frightened him. Hotel Perhaps can produce another explanation by breakfast.

Ambiguity can be surprisingly comfortable when the alternative is disappointment.

The same thing happens with the permanently busy man. He likes you enormously, apparently, but his life has become an international emergency in which dinner cannot be arranged before the next fiscal quarter. Somehow there is time for work, friends, exercise, hobbies, family obligations and an oddly impressive amount of online activity, but seeing you requires coordination normally associated with a lunar landing.

Again, the facts are not exactly hiding behind shrubbery.

Still, asking the obvious question feels dangerous because the obvious answer may be standing directly behind it.

Then there is the future.

The future is magnificent.

The future contains commitment, clarity, holidays together, perhaps marriage, perhaps a little house somewhere with hydrangeas and two extremely well-adjusted dogs.

The future has everything.

The present, meanwhile, contains a man saying, “Maybe someday.”

Hotel Perhaps maintains an entire wing for this arrangement.

Women have been known to live there beautifully. They decorate. They develop excellent reasons. They explain that he has had a difficult year, although eventually several difficult years begin traveling in formation.

The future keeps moving politely forward.

Nobody ever quite catches it.

What is fascinating is that fear of asking is often described as fear of appearing needy, demanding or overly interested, when frequently it is something much more intimate: a woman does not want to disturb the version of the relationship currently living in her head.

Because a question can do that.

One answer can turn “complicated” into “casual.”

One answer can turn “taking things slowly” into “I don’t want a relationship.”

One answer can turn “someday” into “not with me.”

That is a rather brutal amount of work for eleven words.

And so the question sits quietly in the room while everyone pretends not to see it.

Sometimes it does not even need to be asked because he has already answered it in installments.

He disappears regularly.

He never makes plans.

He keeps the relationship in a permanent twilight where everything is affectionate and nothing has a name.

He says he is not ready.

He says he does not know what he wants.

Then a woman, being intelligent and unfortunately imaginative, begins examining whether not ready perhaps means not ready because his feelings are unusually profound.

This is one of romance’s finer magic tricks: taking a sentence and patiently removing its original meaning.

There is something almost touching about how much optimism can be squeezed into ambiguity.

A clear answer may hurt, but uncertainty has its own peculiar talent for stretching discomfort over an impressively long period. One unpleasant conversation may last twenty minutes; wondering what he means can become a seasonal activity.

And perhaps that is why certain questions become so enormous—not because they are difficult to pronounce or because a woman lacks courage, but because sometimes she already suspects that the question mark is the only thing keeping the picture she loves intact.

Hotel Perhaps is lovely that way.

There are flowers in the lobby. The beds are comfortable. Nobody ever delivers bad news because nobody asks what room they are actually in.

Eventually, though, something curious tends to happen.

The fantasy does not collapse because somebody asked a question.

It collapses because reality has been standing there all along, tapping one beautifully manicured finger against the glass.

The question merely opens the curtain.