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Travel Anxiety Is Back, Baby

And it’s worse than it was before than the pandemic

Eve Peyser
4 min readApr 27, 2022
Photo by Briana Tozour on Unsplash

Earlier this month, I was booking a reporting trip to Palm Springs to cover Coachella. Unsurprisingly, all the hotels were either booked up or literally over $1000 a night, which was way outside of my allotted travel budget. So when I happened upon an upscale-looking establishment that had availability and cost under $300 a night, I felt like the luckiest girl in the world. Sure, the low price was slightly suspect. And come to think of it, its name had the words “Exotic Dreams” in it, which was a little odd. But it had great reviews on Google — “The staff was very courteous and responsive to guests’ needs,” “The rooms are clean and comfortable” — and there was only so much research I could do before booking a room.

Then the confirmation email arrived:

Thank you for booking your upcoming stay at the Exotic Dreams Lifestyle Resort. We are getting ready for your arrival and look forward to seeing you! We are a clothing optional, couples lifestyle resort.

My initial reaction was something along the lines of, Holy shit! This is my worst nightmare. Still, as a professional writer who has been in a monogamous relationship for more than half a decade and couldn’t be less into the idea of being a swinger, accidentally booking a stay at a sex…

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Eve Peyser
Eve Peyser

Written by Eve Peyser

nyc native living in the pnw. read my writing in the new york times, nymag, vice, and more.

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