The Hotel Part 2

It’s over. You’ve officially read through thirty-nine pages of material written in Times New Roman font, size 12, in Microsoft Word. This may be the longest blog or story you’ve ever read. If you enjoyed reading, I’d highly recommend anything by Steven King, Kurt Vonnegut, or Charles Dickens. Actually, please don’t read Kurt Vonnegut. Don’t read Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby,” either. I shamelessly ripped both of them off during this blog.

When the wedding ended and everyone realized the bus had abandoned a group of people who spent the entire evening having fun in the woods of Rock Island, Illinois there were only two possible outcomes: the whole evening would become a b-movie horror classic or everyone would eventually get home, it would just take a while. I can’t speak for everyone, but luckily Kelsey and I had a sober friend who took us to the hotel. In the car were three other women, Kelsey, and myself. I felt this was the perfect time to sing the following song:

“I’m going to the hotel to, uh, consummate my marriage.” Sung to the tune of, “I’m Going to the Chapel.” None of the three women in the car planned to consummate anything that night, so I don’t think they appreciated the detail I put into the song.

Kelsey and I walked in to The Hotel, planning to stay the night in their fancy honeymoon suite. While checking in, we looked at each other and realized neither one of us wanted to stay in a hotel that night. We wanted our normal bed. We hadn’t shared the same bed for about a month (I cut Kelsey off from the hippity-hop a month prior to the wedding; not that we ever had sex before marriage) and wanted to wake-up in familiar territory the next day. We left the check-in counter and walked into the bar.

Reminiscent of the final episode of Quantum Leap, we walked around the bar and said something to everyone that came to the wedding. We thanked them for coming. We laughed some more. Theo’s cousin put on my fedora. We ate pizza. We stopped being the center of attention and enjoyed watching the random combinations of friends and family talk. As the bar closed, we said our good-byes and drove home.

In the car, we held hands and let a wave of exhaustion crash over us. We debated picking up the dog from Grandma’s house. We decided not to. We talked about the gift-opening brunch at our Aunt Deana’s in six hours. We skirted around the issue and both admitted to the other we were way too tired for sex. We arrived at home and walked into our house like it was any other day. We got ready for bed. I helped Kelsey remove the bobby pins from her hair and untie her dress. We laid in bed, heads adjoined but legs kicked out to opposite sides, forming an upside-down v. We talked. We laughed. We decided we weren’t too tired. We slept.