Getting Cheated On

and the weirdness of a hotel robe

First, a one-question poll:

It was the hotel robe of my dreams and I wonder if I really did dream it. I can’t find evidence of it online. I stayed in the hotel in 2019. A few months later, when my friends texted me pictures from the hotel pool, I saw that their robes were calf-length, terry cloth, standard. But the robe I remember was hooded, made of the softest, most broken-in sweatshirt material, falling all the way to my ankles. At Reception, I asked if I could buy it and was told that it wasn’t for sale. I’ll admit I considered thievery. Had I stuffed it into my bag, at least now I could prove it existed. The hotel is in central Mexico and people say it’s a Cartel money-laundering front. I guess it’s best that I didn’t steal anything.

In Maui in 2022, the hotel robes were so thick, I felt like a woman in a horror movie luxuriating in a bubble bath. She would hear a noise and rise splashily, stepping from the tub, putting on the robe. She would be home alone, of course. It would be nighttime, of course. In the kitchen, she would grab a knife. Hair damp at the edges, she would look so beautiful on her way to get murdered.

Things didn’t end well for me, either. The next summer, while the man I went to Maui with was showing me something on his phone, a dating app notification appeared: Congratulations! You have a match!