Extremely Unglamorous Business Travel

And a funny bonus story about my friend Taylor

Last week when I couldn’t fall asleep I blinked into the dark reliving parts of a long trip back to New York from Geneva with an overnight layover through London, about a year ago.

I once wrote about how at the beginning of this very same trip I got on a first class train by accident. You can read about it here. 

I flew to London Heathrow. I once wrote a story about how that night I was stuck in immigration at LHR forever.

The part of the story that I don’t think I ever got to is about my Budweiser. 

To save the company that I was working for money I didn’t stay in a hotel that was right at LHR, like in the terminal. I got a hotel nearby. Nearby. Lol.

This was a huge mistake. I do not know why I was so worried about saving them $200 or so. I must have been out of my fucking mind. Like, who cares?

At any rate, after my long hours in immigration I boarded a crowded bus full of the grimmest motherfuckers you ever saw, including me, that cost like 23£ or maybe more that stopped at all the shitty hotels near the airport. Do you know how many shitty hotels are near Heathrow? A lot. We stopped at every goddam one.

I finally reached my hotel which was dimly lit and ugly. The guy who checked me in did not smile or laugh once which is totally fine but at one point I did try to make him laugh and he just stared at me like go fuck yourself. 

I asked him if there was anything at all to eat or drink and he said no. It was late. I had thought that I was going to arrive at my hotel around 8:30 or 9 p.m., not 11:30 or 12 and so I had planned to eat dinner upon arrival but all this had not worked out.

I was starving and I wanted a drink. There was a bunch of unruly teenagers that had gathered in the lobby and I don’t know exactly what was going on but there was an older guy, an employee, dealing with them, trying to kick them out, and at one point I thought maybe two of them were going to physically attack him. Or that maybe he was going to try to just punch one of them. I don’t really know, I just remember like five kids wearing jeans and sweatshirts or track suits and this guy wearing his hotel uniform and it was tense. They wanted to go upstairs. He wouldn't let them.