This psychodramatic riddle — home, guilt, first aid, temple — is solved at the reception desk when you check out. The answer is the final and finale-like question that every receptionist asks every guest in every hotel of the world: “Did you have anything from the minibar?” At that moment the guest senses the painful prick of metaphysical guilt. An honesty minibar? In some hotels the maids audit the contents of the minibar every morning, restocking it as they go, making the question superfluous. Nonetheless, all receptionists ask it — and they all ask it with that same snippy interrogative tone. The guest’s rage begins to swell. Not only did you pre-pay for the room, not only did you pay for overpriced coffee in the hotel bar, not only did you pay for this, that, or the other thing, but you then have put up with a lowly receptionist humiliating you with an honesty test. Nothing’s free in life. No argument there. But why oh why is the cost so high?!
The minibar is an expensive escapade, just like a psychoanalytic séance. The minibar perpetuates the same psychoanalytic model. Hence the receptionist’s authoritarian tone, hence the sniffing around your room and inspection (of your minibar!) in your absence, hence your righteous rage at this mind-numbing display of power. In this psychoanalytic séance the receptionist turns into an authoritarian mother or father, into your boss at work, the police, an institution of power with which there can be no negotiation. For God’s sake, you could pinch the towels, the bathrobes, the table lamp, remove the hand basin and shower taps, and make off with the lot scot-free, but the thought doesn’t help. They pin you to the wall over a piddly bottle of bad vermouth and a rancid bag of crisps.
I don’t know whether hotel staff read Internet forums. It’s enough to type in “minibar” and private armies of the aggrieved assemble, many waging personal guerrilla wars. Did you know that there are people who pee into empty beer bottles, jam the lids back on, and put them back in the minibar? Did you know that some people plaster the base of bottles with hairspray, stick them back down in the fridge, and leave the next person to desperately try to pry them loose? Did you know that if you don’t check the minibar as soon as you get into the room, they’re likely to sting you for a half-empty bottle of beer someone snuck into your fridge? Or how’s this: There are even minibars with built-in sensors that clock every movement and change in weight, so that if you don’t put the bottle or the chips back within ten seconds you have to pay for them, no matter what. I mean, who wouldn’t get in a huff? They’re busy trying to pull a quickie on you, while, at the same time, demanding your honesty. They’ve got it in for you in advance — you’re a thief, a grifter, and a boozehound. The minibar is a symbol of the totalitarian world. And by the way — can you be sure that at the pearly gates St. Peter isn’t going to welcome you with the question: “Did you take something from a minibar and not pay for it?” and then, depending on your answer, send you to a heavenly hotel with one, three, or seven stars?
In my native language the word “minibar” contains a number of other words. Two of them are critical here: rab or rob, which means “slave,” and mina, which means “mine”—as in “land mine.” The minibar is a psychoanalytic minefield, for as soon as you cross its path you’ve immediately become a slave. Today, when almost every totalitarian system has exploded (OK, fine, it’s more that they imploded), the minibar is totalitarian shrapnel snugly nestled into a cosy space that’s devoid of all ideology — the hotel room. The minibar is the last bastion of totalitarianism, its invisible nest. Struggle against the minibar is possible, but only as a personal guerrilla action.
So, getting back to the hotel I mentioned at the start, this is my confession: I launched the assault on the minibar in room 513. I wrestled it into the bathroom. I defaced it with the hotel key, scratching Death to the Minibar! into its smooth surface. I threw it in the bath tub, and I turned on the tap. And finally, when the receptionist asked, “Did you have anything from the minibar?” I replied: “I wouldn’t be caught dead!” We need to put our heads together. If hotels know how to put sensors in their minibars, they’ll soon figure out a way of charging us for the mere thought that we might fancy a little something.
And that’s why, next time around, I’m planting a mine under the minibar.
January 2010
3. WITHOUT ANESTHESIA
NO COUNTRY FOR OLD WOMEN
As an emotional phenomenon, patriotism belongs to the psychopathology of human behavior. Its perversity is shared by only one other phenomenon, namely love of God, because paraphilia, among other things, is defined as “love for a non-human object.” In this case the word love implies the impulsive and obsessive sexual excitement that a given non-human object stimulates in the paraphiliac. Many psychiatrists spent years challenging the negative connotations of the word paraphilia, and so it is that nowadays, the general consensus appears to be that paraphilia should not be treated as a mental disorder unless it causes direct harm to the individual or those around them.
Love for one’s homeland is an emotion an individual feels for a “non-human” object. Until recently at least, love for non-human objects was classified as a mental disorder.
This raises a few questions: How is it that no other psychopathological activity has succeeded in establishing itself as socially normal? How is that no other form of mental disorder has been legalized and institutionalized? How is it that no other disorder wields such enormous social power, or can boast such a long and rich history? How did such a turn of events come about? How did the semantic transition occur? How did something that is fundamentally abnormal somehow morph not only into something that is normal, but into something that is actually desirable? It’s simple. We just put a little effort toward humanizing the non-human object and our love becomes normal and understandable. This is why, among other reasons, believers swallow the host, a floury substitute for Jesus’s abstract body, and drink red wine, a liquid stand-in for Jesus’s abstract blood. Given to us to sniff, nibble, and lick, God’s mysterious spirit will come one step closer.
Right there we have the one and only reason the abstract homeland is most often portrayed as a mother in popular iconography. Hence the multitude of paintings in which the homeland-as-mother suckles her many children at her voluptuous bosom. Hence the gigantic sculptures scattered everywhere that represent the homeland-as-Motherland. In every former Soviet capital, there was at least one gigantic mother: Mother Russia, Mother Armenia, Mother Georgia, and so forth. While the homeland is represented by the figure of the collective mother, the state is most frequently represented by the figure of the Father. The whole thing inevitably ends in a symbolic sex scene: in the tangled embrace of Mother and Father.
I underwent a patriotic initiation when I started primary school. The initiation uniform was a short navy-blue skirt, a white blouse, a little navy-blue Tito-style cap with a red star on the front, and a red Pioneer scarf that I wore around my neck. Believing every word, I repeated the sacred text of the Pioneer’s pledge (Today, as I become a Pioneer, I give my Pioneer’s word of honor that I will work and study hard, and be a good comrade; that I will love my homeland the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, that I will guard its achievements, spread brotherhood and unity. .). The Pioneer’s greeting with which the oath concluded—With Tito for the homeland! Onwards! — was the socialist replacement for the sacred Amen! The truth is that children make the greatest patriots, most devout believers, most diligent conservationists, and most loyal consumers. State ideologues, politicians, priests, and the canny manufacturers of children’s products know this only too well. At the occasional school function, I recited a whole repertoire of patriotic verses, although I don’t remember ever writing a single one down. The phrases promising that I will guard the achievements of my homeland and brotherhood and unity like the apple of my eye have remained forever engraved in my memory. The Yugoslav anthem “Hey, Slavs” makes my skin tingle. I learned the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets; I knew Slovenian, Croatian, Bosnian, Serbian, Macedonian, and Montenegrin songs; and I also knew a handful of ethnic jokes about representatives of the Yugoslav nations and nationalities. I learned geography, developed a good ear for all Yugoslav languages and dialects, and made my own the conviction that fascists are bad guys and anti-fascists good guys.