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Notes -
I’m convinced my brother’s sketchy (I would use the word ratchet, but I feel like that has connotations of being black, and she was definitely white) college hookup stole a very nice vintage cartier watch my grandmother gifted to me. It wasn’t worth a lot of money (I assume she took it because of the brand) but it was very valuable to me. I had left it in my parents kitchen because I wanted my dad to take it to be repaired.
It’s part of the reason I could never have a one night stand. The idea of letting a complete stranger into your house surrounded by all your valuables, private documents (even stuff like bills lying around, wallets full of cash and credit cards, medical data) and then going to sleep such that they could literally get up and help themselves to whatever they want and you wouldn’t even know if they’d taken something you don’t use often or if they’d just photographed private information or something seems so irresponsible. I’m probably just neurotic but my trust in the kindness of strangers isn’t that high.
And as you say, once it’s gone, what can you do? “Oh, I happen to have recently lost a necklace, can you look for it?”. It’s not as if you have enough to go to the police, and it might take weeks or months to realize it’s gone.
Love hotels ftw.
To lengthen this post past frivolousness, there's still the danger of having one's wallet lifted, or watch stolen, etc. But you can't get out of a love hotel unless you've paid, at least in the modern iteration. That means both parties are shut-ins until the bill has been settled at the little machine on the wall.
Of course the criminal-minded can be creative so this is no guarantee of safety from theft, or, you know having your head cut off, which is considerably more of an inconvenience.
Doesn't that run into issues with the trilemma of a) not have an emergency exit, and get arrested for manslaughter when there's a fire vs. b) have an emergency exit that can be opened all the time, and now you can get out without paying vs. c) have an emergency exit that only opens if there's a fire, and incentivise arson?
I can't speak for all love hotels, obviously. Emergency exits I believe are always available on each floor, but rooms themselves are locked. I presume in a fire the rooms would auto unlock and the exits are right there. Love hotels typically have no windows or very small ones and so there are no fire escapes of that sort.
Theft and arson here do occur, but crime in general isn't as common as the US at least. Arsons are particularly egregious because it is impossible to contain fire in densely populated areas. When they are perpetrated here the arsonists are usually found to be mentally ill.
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I have always sort of assumed this was part of the hotel/motel trope. Obviously with extramarital affairs on both sides you'd need some other place to go, but with one night stands it further cements the ephemeral nature of the interaction: neither of you even knows where the other lives.
It's interesting, the people I know who have had one night stands and have talked about it did in fact have them at either their or their partner's residence.
I think a major factor is that most of them were having these one night stands while young and/or broke, so getting a hotel for the night would not be a negligible expense.
I think another factor is that you maintain the thinnest veneer of plausible deniability that you're just going to hang out when inviting someone back to your place, whereas there's no reason to go to a hotel/motel with someone you met at a bar except to fuck.
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I mean, I don't really blame her, if I lost my watch on her nightstand, it was because I was hungover and leaving at 5 am to catch some sleep before I had a shift that morning. I'm more upset by the multiple massive hickeys she left me, in highly visible places. Had to collar up for a while. Had a lovely old lady and her husband giggling like teenswhen I spent a good while both reviewing her for her diabetes and discussing the career of her son, an Indian doctor who had done his psych degree in the UK and fucked off to Singapore, married a Chinese GP, and is living happily ever after. It turned out that I had unbuttoned my collar late at night in the heat, and forgotten about it. Cue a very good poker face while I took her history and pretended to have no clue what they were chuckling about. Coincidentally, that was the night I found out that I did match into psych, I swung by to say hi in the morning and had to profusely apologize for not bring her sweets as is tradition (not the best idea for an uncontrolled diabetic). A coincidence, but a nice one. The watch and hickeys were a small price to pay.
To be fair to the med student, I might have left it at a hotel after a night out with another doctor, I only wear watches on special occasions. She just happened to have a spare apartment lying around, whereas mine is used as a storehouse for several tons of physical copies of medical records. An abominable place, hers, with three live cockroaches feasting off the corpses of their countless deceased brethren, awaiting Springtime when she comes back from her modestly distant med school on weekends to catch up with friends and fuck the odd dude or two, with the leftover takeout and open alcohol bottles sufficient sustenance to last them till next time. Eh, she was very hot, and my stint in a government hospital has made me rather tolerant of roaches.
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