Tipping the Chambermaid

Wow, look at this suite! Dirty glasses and plates all over. Tortilla chip crumbs and egg salad stains on the carpet. The bed--a mess, but I won't point fingers. No wonder the maid is reprimanding us and reaching for her feather duster. Yes, it's time to let the chambermaids take over for this last installment of our hot-el sex party in celebration of Do Not Disturb: Hotel Sex Stories, edited by Rachel Kramer Bussel.

The first chambermaid story I highly recommend is Andrew Wilson's "The Afternoon of a Venetian Chambermaid" in Maxim Jakubowski's Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica, volume 2. I believe I first read this story in Libido or it may have been Scarlet Letters, back when I was a barely published writer, but it's really stayed with me. In spare, but evocative prose, Wilson helps us don a maid's uniform for an intimate tour of Hotel Giorgione as we handle the semen-scented sheets and wiggle our way to a pick-me-up orgasm over a bidet. It's voyeurism at its best and took me right back to the strange and gorgeous decay of modern Venice.

For a more modern taste of the chambermaid with other things on her mind, check out Alison Tyler's "Tightly Tucked," a funny and very sexy story in Do Not Disturb--definitely one of my favorites! Will you recognize yourself in Elian, the hedonist who "uses" hotels in every way he can think of? Or Sophie, who is too busy tsking at the poor maid service to do the naughty things the characters are doing in all the other stories in the anthology? Or maybe you relate to the fair Bella, a chambermaid who shares my bad habit of falling into sailors' dialect a little too easily?

I'll admit I see a little of all three in myself. In the spirit of Elian, I lift all the replaceable hotel swag and gobble up any complimentary fruit baskets or mints on the pillow and love throwing towels on the floor. Like Bella, I swear like a Navy Seal and have freckles. And I also clean up after myself, not as much as Sophie, but I sometimes wonder if the maids tsk at my light footprint, my presence nothing more than a slightly rumpled bed and a dirty novel on the nightstand. Having worked as a "maid" in high school, I don't want someone else to have such an intimate look into my life as I did into theirs--and yes, it's been material for stories. I also do it because some of those maids will re-arrange my stuff, and that creeps me out, too, having someone organize my toiletries in some apparently more proper way.

Bella in Alison Tyler's story would never fuck with my stuff--but that's only one of the reasons I like her. In fact, this party was named in her honor ;-).

Tomorrow--final credits and a big thank you to all who shared wonderful stories and left brilliant comments here at the party in Suite 69. Oh, and help yourself to the pens and notepads. They're on the house!