LINK: welcome to the hotel california
What’s the best restaurant you’ve been to recently? What did you order?
Prompt created by yours truly.
Feel free to use any prompts for July that I post and/or tag me.
I’d love to read your responses
Sally texted me a few weeks ago asking me if I wanted to meet up since it’s been a couple months since we last hung out. She was staying at the Hyatt in Huntington Beach for a little vacation and invited me to dinner at Watertable, the restaurant inside the hotel, her treat.
The hotel’s rated four stars but it costs like a five star hotel (over $1,500 a night), mostly because of its prime location across the beach in Orange County.
That night, I rolled up to the parking area in my modest little Prius, the valet guy asked if I was the Doordash driver for a guest.
“Umm, no? I’m here to eat dinner with a friend,” I said. He gave me a sheepish half-smile and replied, “Oh… right. Great, well, welcome to the Hyatt.”
We sat there at the restaurant drinking, eating, and catching up.
Sangria – peju cabernet sauvignon, citrus, simple syrup, and angostura bitters
Creamer potato cakes – truffle dip, chives, and cracked pepper
prime hanger steak – carrot cardamom purée, chimichurri vinaigrette, aji amarillo, pickled vegetables, crispy brussels sprouts, heirloom potato
Hummingbird cheesecake – pecan graham crust, pineapple cheesecake, vanilla bean whip, pineapple lime sauce, candied pecans, brûléed banana
Sally and I tend to see each other every couple of months, so when she casually dropped that she hadn’t had sex with her husband since the pandemic, I was a bit confused and surprised.
Like… what? We’re in 2026 and COVID hit the states in 2020. So we’re talking six years?!?
She mentioned that they were basically living like roommates at this point. This is the couple that (from the outside, specially on socials) looked like they had it all. Great careers, beautiful looking couple (they are like life-sized versions of Ken and Barbie— blonde hair and blue eyes with perfect bodies), with a young daughter and dog.
It made me think about what long-term marriage actually becomes for some people. Are they living parallel lives under the same roof, with no intimacy?!? She says she’s made peace with it and that they both stopped initiating sex. They no longer sleep in the same bedroom. Neither of them are seeing other people because that takes too much energy and they don’t have the bandwidth to handle that right now. She does have significant stressors: work, parents health, unemployed brother, daughter who is on the spectrum, trying to physically look her best, and chronic ailments that she acquired when she contracted COVID (Long-COVID aka PASC—brain fog, headaches, dizziness, and mild fatigue) several. years ago. Life is too exhausting as it already is so instead they coexist. She pours her energy into her job, daughter, parents and brother.
Initially, I felt bad for her but oddly enough, she seemed content for now.
I know for myself, I’d wanna have sex until I’m a geriatric on the verge of breaking a hip, but that’s just me…
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