I am currently engaged in the violent smoothing of a silk-blend duvet cover that has not felt the weight of a human body in 42 weeks. My hands, calloused slightly from a weekend spent reorganizing my home office, trace the edge of the fabric with a precision that would suggest I am preparing for the arrival of a high-ranking head of state. But there is no dignitary coming. There is no weary traveler currently taxiing on a runway with my address programmed into their GPS. There is only the 2-inch gap between the bed frame and the wall, a space I vacuum with a religious fervor every 12 days, despite the fact that the only thing ever found there is the occasional, wandering dust mote.

I am an ergonomics consultant by trade. My name is Thomas R.-M., and my life is dedicated to the study of how humans interact with their environment to maximize comfort and minimize strain. I can tell you the exact 22-degree angle your elbow should maintain while typing. I can explain why your 32-ounce water bottle is actually a structural hazard to your wrist. Yet, here I am, standing in a room that is an ergonomic masterpiece and a functional graveyard. I have spent $522 on a mattress that features 102 individual pocket coils, designed to cradle the lumbar spine of a person who does not exist.

The Performance of Hospitality

Earlier today, I was at a coffee shop and a colleague told a joke about a ‘bi-pedal desk chair with abandonment issues.’ I didn’t understand it. Not even a little. But I laughed. I tilted my head back, let out a sharp, rhythmic sound, and watched his face for the cue to stop. It was a performance of social cohesion, a way to signal that I belong in the world of the living and the understood. This guest room is that laugh. It is a 122-square-foot performance of hospitality. It is a room that says, ‘I am a person who has friends, and those friends might, at any moment, require a place to rest their heads.’ The truth is that my friends, the few who live more than 12 miles away, are committed hotel enthusiasts. They want the lobby bar; they want the anonymous breakfast buffet; they want the 24-hour gym. They do not want my extra-firm pillows and the sound of my refrigerator humming in the 2 o’clock silence.

We preserve these spaces for imagined future needs that never materialize. We treat our homes like museums of the people we wish we were-the gracious hosts, the spontaneous entertainers, the open-hearted relatives. Instead, we are just the curators of expensive, empty air. I have 12 sets of towels in the linen closet, stacked by color. They are so fluffy they look like masonry. If a guest actually used one, it would ruin the geometry of the stack. I would have to spend 22 minutes re-folding it to achieve the exact symmetry required for the performance to continue.

I often find myself browsing the curated selections of nora fleming plates when I am looking for something to justify the existence of this room, as if a new ceramic dish or a seasonal ornament could finally beckon a human being across the threshold. There is something about the way those objects are presented-so intentional, so ready for a gathering-that makes me believe, for at least 12 seconds, that the gathering is actually going to happen. I look at a serving platter and imagine it covered in artisanal cheeses, surrounded by 22 laughing people, all of whom have miraculously decided to sleep in my guest room instead of the Hyatt. It is a beautiful lie.

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The silence of a guest room is a specific frequency of failure.

Intruding on the Void

I once tried to use the room myself. I thought, ‘Why should the ghosts have all the luxury?’ I took my book-a 482-page biography of a bridge engineer-and lay down on the 102-coil mattress. It was uncomfortable. Not because of the ergonomics, which were perfect, but because of the atmosphere. The room felt like it was holding its breath. It was waiting for someone else. I felt like an intruder in my own mortgage. I lasted 12 minutes before I retreated to my own bed, which has a slight dent on the left side and a pillow that smells faintly of the 2 different shampoos I alternate between.

My mother used to do the same thing. She had a ‘good’ living room that we were only allowed to enter on 2 days of the year: Christmas and her birthday. The rest of the time, the plastic-covered sofa sat there like a translucent sarcophagus. I am doing the same thing, just without the plastic. I have replaced the physical barrier with a psychological one. I have $122 worth of candles in this room that have never been lit. Their wicks are white and pristine, like the unburned hopes of a social life that exists primarily in my imagination.

I think about the 52 hours of my life I have spent cleaning this room over the last year. That is more than two full days of existence given over to the maintenance of a void. If I were to charge for my time at my usual consulting rate of $212 an hour, this room would be the most expensive piece of real estate in the county. And for what? So that when I walk past the door, I can feel a momentary sense of preparedness? Preparedness for a 2 a.m. arrival that has not happened since 2012?

The Fading Era of the Spare Room

There is a specific kind of grief in a perfectly made bed. It represents a stasis, a refusal to accept the reality of our current social geometry. We are living in an era of 12-minute Uber rides and instant-booking apps. The era of the ‘spare room’ as a necessity is fading, yet we cling to it as if it were a life raft. I have 32 different hangers in the guest closet. They are all the velvet-lined kind that prevent clothes from slipping. They have never held anything heavier than a stray thought.

I wonder if I should just turn it into a gym. But then I would have to buy 22-pound dumbbells and a treadmill that would eventually become a $1,212 clothes rack. Or perhaps a craft room? I don’t craft. I consult on ergonomics. I could fill the room with 12 different types of ergonomic chairs and invite people to come and test their spinal alignment. That would at least be honest. But it wouldn’t be ‘hospitable’ in the traditional sense. It wouldn’t allow me to maintain the fiction that I am a person who could, at any moment, host a weary traveler.

The Disappointment of Miniature Chocolates

Last week, I actually had a potential guest. My cousin was coming to town for a 2-day conference. I spent 82 minutes prepping the room. I bought fresh flowers. I put out a little basket with 12 miniature chocolates and a bottle of high-alkaline water. I even checked the 22-page Wi-Fi manual I wrote to make sure the guest password was still ‘Hospitality12’. Two hours before he was supposed to arrive, he texted me: ‘Hey, the company put me up at the Hilton. It’s right next to the venue. So much easier! Let’s grab a drink though.’

I stared at the miniature chocolates for 12 seconds. Then I ate 2 of them. They tasted like salt and disappointment. I didn’t even go to the conference. I just sat in the guest room and looked at the flowers, which were already starting to droop by 2 millimeters. The room had won again. It had remained pure, untouched by the messiness of actual human occupation.

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We are the architects of our own exclusions.

The Expensive Sculpture of Unused Space

This is the contradiction of modern living. We work 52 hours a week to pay for square footage we don’t use, to impress people who don’t visit, while pretending to understand jokes we don’t find funny. We are performing for an audience of zero. As an ergonomics consultant, I know that a chair is only ‘good’ if it is being sat in. A bed is only ‘good’ if it is being slept in. Anything else is just an expensive sculpture.

I think I will stop. I think I will leave the bed unmade tomorrow. I will let the dust settle on the 12-inch baseboards. I will stop fluffing the 22 pillows. Maybe if I stop pretending the room is a hotel, it will finally start feeling like a part of my home. Or maybe I’ll just sell the mattress and buy a very large, 12-person dining table. At least then, when no one shows up for dinner, I’ll have a place to spread out my 42 different ergonomic diagrams.

There is a certain liberation in admitting that your guest room is a lie. It’s the same liberation I felt when I finally stopped laughing at that joke and admitted I didn’t get it. The silence that followed was awkward for about 12 seconds, but then we actually started talking about something real. Maybe that’s what I need to do with this room. Stop the performance. Start the living. I’ll keep the 12-gauge guest towels, though. They’re much better than the ones I use.

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Does a space exist if it isn’t being perceived by used by those it was intended for, or is it just a very expensive way to store a dream?