Desert Girl

Just got back from another inveeeegorating weekend at the Parker Palm Springs. I heart that hotel. Mostly because of the grounds (so many fountains and fire-pits!) and the decor (Jonathan Adler – my friend Simon Doonan’s husband). Yes I like to drop names. Ker-chunk! But the service could stand to be a little more, um, serviceable. Like, this is the first time we’ve stayed at the Parker where our keys did NOT die. Usually what happens is, you go to the pool, you come back sopping wet to your room. You try your key. It does not work!! So you have to walk aaaallllllll the way back to the front building to get a new one. And by now you are very grumpy because this is, like, the FOURTH time this has happened in two days.

And I don’t know if I’m just imagining it, but the staff has a wee bit of attitude. Maybe because they were all on TV or something? I missed that show. So I have no idea if the valet is giving me the stink-eye because for one brief season he was a reality TV star, but I don’t really care. Because I want my car NOW mofo, because the baby is wailing and it’s fracking one hundred degrees outside.

That being said, I love that it gets really hot in the desert. We have been to Palm Springs almost every month now and I have NEVER even been to the beach! What does that say about me? I don’t need an ocean to zen out. In fact, I’ve always preferred a pool. Although I grew up in Manila and every summer we would abscond to the beaches and spend weeks just laying out in the sand, in our own private beach, and it was us and all my parents’ college friends and their kids and we just had the run of the place. And I have never seen a beach as beautiful as our beach—white sand, lush jungle just steps away, waterfalls, rafting, my parents smoking and drinking and wearing their cool sunglasses. One year one of the kids fell off the raft and almost drowned and I remember my dad putting out his cigarette and jumping in and saving him and then going back to sunning on the raft with a cocktail as if nothing had happened.

Maybe I can’t go to any other beach because it’s not private and not ours and since I grew up on a private beach all the ones I’ve ever been to (even the Princeville in Kauai which was like, just us and like, two German couples) just seems TOO CROWDED.

At the Parker there are always these beautiful gay men in their cool swim trunks. Why is it only gay men can get away with swim trunks? I think because they have the best bodies for it. Whereas straight guys have to wear the surfer jams. I think you have to be TONED to wear trunks. Even Mike, who’s like as skinny as he was back when we met twelve(!) years ago, has to wear jams to look cool at the pool. Trunks just would not work.

In more name-droppy news, my dear friends Liz and Sarah’s new book FOOTFREE AND FANCYLOOSE is out, the sequel to BASS-ACKWARDS AND BELLY-UP. Another hilarious, sad and very wise story about four girls trying to make their dreams come true. Go out and get it!! I know you will love the story as much as I did.

xoxo
Mel