#date trip

I  get us an Uber, pretty much the only thing Mr. Ex would let me pay for during the entire trip, and we head off to the French Quarter for Café Dumond’s famous chickory coffee and beignets, but we get there and see a huge line in the dripping rain and we set off for Café Royal Beignet instead.  This part of the city is packed with tourists, even in the rain, and we go walking through the streets and squares, dipping under the galleries (which are balconies that extend over the entire sidewalk, so... you know... building umbrellas) and the balconies when we could, getting lost in details of buildings and wrought iron work.We find the Café, which is bright and cheerful even in the gray weather, with buttery yellow walls painted with kitschy café scenes.  There is a line here too, but much more manageable, and when we get up and order breakfast and coffee and beignet’s they give us a number to put on our table so our food can find us.  We notice the seats are mostly taken, but there’s a table of 6 with 2 disjointed groups on it, and we join them.  They leave soon after, but we are joined by 2 women who are traveling from Canada, and then a British girl who is a performer (singer, dancer, actor) on a cruise ship.  I know because we spend 2 hours talking with all 3 of them, hearing about strange other places they’ve traveled to, and adventures we’ve been on as well.  

Maybe it’s projection but when Mr. Ex reveals he lives in Denver, and I live in New York, I sense an unspoken curiosity in the females.  What’s your deal? asks their expressions, but they keep their mouths shut and that’s the important part.We also take some selfies, and Alex looks at one he takes of the two of us for a long moment and then looks at me and smiles in the sweetest way.

We leave the café and wander around to find tours. I’m all agog over wanting to take a haunted history tour, and we stop by somewhere to get big plastic ponchos so we can deal with the rain a little better.  We get giant hurricane cups and walk around, Mr. Ex takes some sips but can’t stop talking about how disgusting it tastes,  (it does, it tastes just like Hawaiian punch with alcohol in it).  We wander and find a place that does the haunted history tours, we sign up for an evening tour and walk around a bunch more going into bars with live musicians and trying not to drink too much because it’s still pretty early.  

At one point we realize we have 3+ hours to kill before our tour, and though we’re putting on good faces, I’m starting to feel miserable and wet from being rained on so constantly.“Hey, wanna go home and chill a little before our tour?” I ask, and he nods eagerly, which is when I realize he must be miserable too.“Let’s go back and watch a movie!” he says, and I giggle because I can’t believe we came to New Orleans to Netflix and chill, but also because it sounds so good right then.

We catch a cab and head back to our Airbnb, and I immediately get out of our wet clothes, put them in the dryer with Mr. Ex’s, and get into my pajamas (a long gray shirt) and snuggle up next to him while he picks out a movie.  He picks Angel Heart, which is so spooky and about New Orleans voodoo and awesome.  We get through most of it, spooning on the couch, and he’s getting more and more antsy, and halfway through the movie I get a call from my parents that I take and he says he needs to go to the convenience store and he’ll be right back, so we pause the movie.

When he gets back I’m half-asleep on the couch,

“Look what I got.” He says tossing the bag next to me, I open it up to see water bottles, kind bars, and condoms. 

“Oooh, water bottles, great idea!” I say looking slyly up at him while taking out the box of condoms.  He starts laughing and then we’re finally having sex.  It’s all rough and tumble and quick, afterwards he holds me for a moment and I’m saying “we should get going” so we quickly get ready and get an uber to go back into the French quarter.

Once we’re back, we stand on a long line for the Haunted History tour.  The line gets broken up into 3 groups, and I see a tour guide who looks like a gothic Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean, and I grab Mr. Ex and whisper that I NEED THAT MAN TO BE OUR TOUR GUIDE.  So we spend the next 20 minutes maneuvering around the line until we’re sure we’ll get him as our guide.  We walk through the city and this is when I start to get used to it: The pervasive sureness that Mr. Ex is by my side.  Any time I get scared, worried, want someone to talk to or exchange meaningful looks with, I just turn to my right or to my left, and no matter how much I’m charging off to see everything, I can sense each time that Mr. Ex will be back by my side.  It’s heady, it’s unlike anything I’ve ever felt before.  And I do go charging off with the group, without the group, and each time I sense him hurrying to keep up, or just keeping an eye on me to see where I end up so that he can position himself in that usually empty spot beside me.

After the tour, we get dinner and this is our first meal since we had beignets and croissants in the morning.  We sit and order a ton of food and booze, and then we go back to our home for the weekend.  Once home, we make out and snuggle on the couch, he tries to get us to spoon again, I insist my butt is too big again, and we finish the movie.  It’s really freaky, you guys, like the worst thing to watch after a haunted history tour in a city bright with light and teeming with shadows.  Once it ends, we go to bed and have sex again, a little slower, a little more time spent marveling at each other.  And then we smoke and go to sleep. (oh yeah, he smuggled weed from Denver, FOR ME).

In the middle of the night, I wake up in Mr. Ex’s arms, facing him, and it seems to me that he is just staring at me and I gasp and scream a little.  The movie was unsettling, and I’m half in and out of dreams.  I shout his name, half asking for him, half warning him away, then turn away from him, and feel him rubbing my back and belly, pulling me closer, mumbling words in his half-asleep state, comforting me.

Sacramento resident Sam Wineman, 28, wanted to take a road trip this summer, but he didn't have the cash to bankroll his asphalt-paved dreams.