Lifestyle
L.A. Affairs: We felt new and thrilling together. So why did he keep ghosting me?
At 5:11 p.m. on a Friday, my phone buzzed with a message from Matt. I was deep in work for my graduate program, and his text left me momentarily stunned. The same Matt who had ghosted me despite promising to call was now reaching out again. “Hey! Are you in OC still? I’m visiting Noah for the weekend and if you are, I was curious if you’d be game to meet up and have a long-awaited chit chat!!”
The day he ghosted me, Matt had told me, “I’m free to call you on Thursday. I’ll check my schedule and confirm tomorrow.”
He never did although his profile picture — Modigliani’s portrait of Jean Cocteau — consistently lingered under my Instagram Stories views. This ghosting, though familiar, felt particularly jarring.
We had met on Instagram. We were both alumni of the same college. He had swiped up on one of my Instagram Stories: a snippet from an Andy Warhol interview with Joan Didion. “This is perfect, what is this from?” he asked. We texted back and forth about Didion, Southern California and the drought that had marked our teenage years. We bonded over the irony of leaving our hometowns only to return.
Despite our deep chats and daily texts about Scorsese movies, iconography and William T. Vollmann, our relationship remained undefined. I was still nursing the wounds of a spring breakup, and though Matt never asked me out, our rambling conversations were intoxicating. This was new and thrilling, especially compared to my most recent relationship, which had been stifling and lacked chemistry.
In the whirlwind of Southern California, where relationships in your 20s can feel as fleeting and unpredictable as traffic on the 405, Matt seemed like a refreshing anomaly. He had played college baseball, but insisted that his real passions were more aligned with Terrence Malick, Nietzsche and obscure indie bands.
However, it wasn’t long before Matt started ghosting me — often mid-conversation. After I hadn’t heard from him in three months, despite his consistent viewing of all my Stories, my friends urged me to cut ties. “I’ll buy you a chai if you finally remove his ass,” my friend Allie said jokingly. I did, and we laughed over drinks, celebrating the end of this particular chapter.
Matt requested to follow me again on Instagram many months later. One morning, while I was driving down to Long Beach, his name popped up on my locked screen. I accepted his request and followed him back, assuming that he would address his absence. He did not. I shot him a brief iMessage asking what was new. Our resulting exchange was friendly but shallow, and he vanished again, resurfacing a month later to swipe up on a Story about a band we both liked.
We started texting back and forth every day again, him professing that he had been directing his time and energy toward “love and becoming” and noting that he felt unable to dialogue deeply with others until “the energy paradigm has been met, ideally down to the quantum level.” Eventually, I asked him to call, and he agreed enthusiastically, stating that he admired me and chuckling that this had been “a long time coming.”
And in a story as old as time, he promised me that he would confirm and then he promptly proceeded to ghost me again. It was that weekend when I discovered he’d been dating someone. I felt uncomfortable, as I never would have been able to tell he was in a relationship. He had said nothing about a partner. I sent him a couple of voice messages expressing my discomfort.
He didn’t open my messages, and then, of course, reached out again on another platform, eager to plan dinner with me while he was back in town. I was in a Huntington Beach coffee shop on a Saturday morning, sipping a lavender latte, when he called to finalize plans. We arranged to walk after Mass, but he never responded to my message about timing (“it’s Novus Ordo, so what about 5:30?”).
The following morning, I ended our connection, telling him that he lacked follow-through and that it was astounding that he could wax poetic about so many things and yet treat me more like an abstract concept than a person with feelings — someone who wouldn’t be hurt because she was on the other side of the screen and couldn’t be touched. He didn’t reply. He just stopped following me on Instagram.
If that wasn’t enough, a girlfriend from college informed me that one of her close friends had a similar experience with him several years back.
Unfortunately, the line between “indie f—boy” and “man who shares my passions and interests” has proved to be incredibly thin.
As a graduate student in theology and library science, it can be challenging to find a guy who can sustain a meaningful conversation. But it was through Matt that I realized it can sometimes be worse when the guy is actually able to. Despite his insistence on portraying himself as a “creative” and “artist,” he was more invested in curating a persona than in maintaining a stable connection.
Sure, he called himself a co-founder of a filmmaking studio, but the artsy black-and-white photos of him smoking tobacco and staring off into the distance at the Getty made it clear that he was most interested in playing the role of the brooding and misunderstood artist — someone who enjoyed possessing me when it was comfortable for him, but had no real desire to reciprocate. I wasn’t his friend; I was the scene partner in his A24 movie.
As I told him in my final iMessage, effectively ending our on-and-off connection that had never culminated in a meetup, “I’m a person behind the screen, not a philosophy book, not an intellectual fantasy.” A man acting like the protagonist in a Cigarettes After Sex song, I told myself while deleting his contact information, isn’t going to be the great love of your life.
The author is a writer and graduate student living in the Greater Los Angeles area. She’s on Instagram: @julialouisemorrow
L.A. Affairs chronicles the search for romantic love in all its glorious expressions in the L.A. area, and we want to hear your true story. We pay $400 for a published essay. Email LAAffairs@latimes.com. You can find submission guidelines here. You can find past columns here.
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On-air challenge
Every answer is a familiar three-word phrase, in which the first and last words are the same, and the middle word is “to.”
Ex. Like a lease that has no expiration date –> MONTH TO MONTH
1. Consecutive, as wins
2. Like carpet that fully covers a room
3. Clear across the United States
4. [Fill in the blank:] ___ resuscitation
5. Deeply personal, as a conversation between two people
6. Like heavy traffic
7. How a traveling salesman may go around a neighborhood
8. The time 9:50
9. Like two people directly in front of each other
10. When making a comparison, things you should compare because they’re alike
11. Kind of defense in basketball
12. [Double:] Line from a burial service suggesting the transience of physical life
Last week’s challenge
Last week’s challenge comes from James Ellison, of Jefferson City, Mo. Think of a popular movie of the past decade. Change the last letter in its title. The result will suggest a lawsuit between two politicians of the late 20th century — one Republican and one Democrat. What’s the movie and who are the people?
Answer: “Ford v Ferrari” –> (Gerald) Ford vs. (Geraldine) Ferraro
This week’s challenge
This week’s challenge comes from Gordon Legge, of South Minneapolis, Minn. Name an animal whose first five letters in order spell a religious figure. And if you change the animal’s next-to-last letter, its last five letters in order will spell another religious figure. What animal is this?
If you know the answer to the challenge, submit it here by Thursday, April 30 at 3 p.m. ET. Listeners whose answers are selected win a chance to play the on-air puzzle. Important: include a phone number where we can reach you.
I stir in the dark. So do the others. There are around 30 of us, maybe more — all experiencing the soundscape of the quartz bowls; a tech-free hour designed for us to commune with memory, creativity and emotion. A chime brings the sound bath to its formal end, signaling us to reacquaint ourselves with the physical present, to officially “wake up.” Slipping out of blankets and off of tall, puffy mattresses, we give thanks, take a crystal, a mantra card … and leave the giant mattress warehouse for the bright lights of Glendale Boulevard.
While not affiliated with any specific modality, the sound bath inside the Atwater Village branch of Mattress Central has a cult-like following. The brainchild of practitioner Alice Moon, the event (which often sells out) is one of many nontraditional wellness offerings from her company Moon Soul Sound Baths. At the monthly event, her patrons gather at the store, select a mattress (alone or with a friend), get cozy and swap the static of the world for the soothing harmonics of Moon’s quartz bowls.
As you might imagine, Moon is fairly nontraditional herself. She grew up in New Orleans and after Hurricane Katrina she felt compelled to make a change. She came to L.A. for a long vacation and ended up staying.
“I just wanted to take a month-long trip,” Moon said. “But when I got here I was like, this is the missing puzzle piece that my life needed.”
In Los Angeles, Moon embraced cannabis culture. She became a self-taught cannabis industry PR professional and even created a tech start-up for locating edibles based on dietary needs (a kind of Yelp for cannabis, she explained). But after being diagnosed with cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome, a condition in which long-term cannabis users can suffer from symptoms like severe nausea, she again felt a need for change.
Alice Moon plays an ocean drum while walking around participants; her sessions are 50 minutes long.
(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)
“That kind of flipped my world upside down,” Moon said. “I went on this journey of trying to find things that brought me joy, the same way that cannabis did.”
Sound baths were the answer, helping Moon feel calm, positive and connected to herself. After years of practicing, Moon felt inspired to share her love of sound baths with others. “One day I woke up and I said, you know what? I feel like it is my time to bring that type of peace to other people.”
With her social media savvy and PR sensibilities at play, Moon wanted to create an experience that would be extra comfortable … and, of course, memorable. Inspired by other wellness practitioners, Moon reached out to Mattress Central to create her own version of the trend. A couple million views on Threads and hundreds of fans later, her baths book well in advance and to rave reviews. While Moon’s frequently sold-out mattress store offering has clearly made a splash on the L.A. wellness scene — it’s not the only one.
Heather Fink, left, and Nubia Jimenez, right, recline and wear sleep masks during a relaxing sound bath.
(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)
In West Hollywood, Barry Raccio is also host to a highly coveted mattress store sound bath. With a background in Kundalini yoga, breath work, meditation and sound healing, Raccio is a 20-year veteran of the wellness space. In Hästens mattress showroom on Beverly Boulevard, he hosts a small but sought-after sound bath happening called the “Deep Reset Luxury Sound Bath Experience.”
At the event, Raccio — who’s facilitated baths for companies including Chanel, BMW and the Parker Hotel — pours tea, plays instruments (including the traditional quartz bowls) and holds court among ultra-premium Hästens beds, including the $720,000 Grand Vividus mattress, called “the most expensive mattress in the world.”
On these ultra-luxury mattresses, a small group of 10, maybe 12 people experience the crystal bowls and “heal their nervous systems” much deeper than a normal bath — one profound, restful hour away from the chaos of the modern world. It’s a more intimate, more opulent version of Moon’s baths, but with a similar healing effect (and yes — you can book the Grand Vividus for the occasion).
Alice Moon performs with crystal singing bowls.
(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)
“Rest is a luxury,” Raccio says. “Because [the mattresses] are so comfortable, they conform to bodies without needing anything under your knees or even a pillow. You’re just so supported that the nervous system drops in much quicker and the relaxation process is even more profound. The effects of the sound healing even go deeper.”
In their own ways, Raccio and Moon’s mattress store sound baths are tapping into a collective need for rest, but beyond that — a gentle pause from technology for one’s own well-being. The chakra-balancing work of a sound bath coupled with the uniquely relaxing context of a mattress store gets guests there and beyond (deep sleep and snoring are commonplace at these events).
“At the mattress store, it’s like, you can really, really relax. And I just want people to feel comfortable and safe and, you know, just a moment for them,” Moon said. “That’s what it really is. It’s a moment for everyone to just, like, be there for themselves.”
In 1995, when Madonna held herself a lavish 37th birthday party, she chose a suitably trendy location: the Delano, the Art Deco Miami Beach hotel that the impresario Ian Schrager had transformed into a magnet for the glamorati and guests that aspired to be like them.
With its tastemaker clientele and discreet yet indulgent atmosphere, the hotel felt like a mix of a St. Tropez resort crossed with a fashion week after party.
“There were the cool rock star people, there were the Hollywood billionaire types, the downtown fashion New York people, people swimming naked in the pool at 1 a.m.,” said David Barton, the popular trainer whose gym had a branch in the hotel for several years. “You were just in this other world.”
A couple of decades before celebrities’ every move was documented on social media, the Delano was a safe space for revelry without consequences, perhaps with some selfie-free relaxation thrown in. The ambience stretched throughout the property, which included poolside bungalows and Blue Door restaurant, of which Madonna was an owner.
“It was really the Miami equivalent of Studio 54,” said Paul Wilmot, a former fashion publicist and Delano regular in its mid-90s heyday.
Next month, after closing in 2020, cycling through several ownership changes and undergoing a redesign that cost about $100 million, the hotel, in its latest incarnation, Delano Miami Beach, is scheduled to reopen. The reconstituted version is decidedly different than Schrager’s, focusing on pranayama breathing instead of partying and matcha lattes over martinis, with a bit of the atmosphere you might expect at a Soho House thrown in.
The aim, said Ben Pundole, the chief brand officer for Delano Hotels, is “to capture the current zeitgeist of wellness and experience and community.”
These days, getting the in crowd to South Beach may be a challenge. In the past decade or so, other neighborhoods — the Miami Design District, Downtown Miami, Little River, Coconut Grove and Wynwood — have stolen its alluring thunder.
“It’s been a nonfactor for so many years,” Ingrid Casares, a Miami native and an owner of Liquid, the defunct nightclub that opened in South Beach the same week as Schrager’s iteration of the Delano, said of the neighborhood.
“Back in the 1990s, it was like a small village, like Ibiza almost,” she said. “It was a very quaint town where we all knew each other.”
Pundole added that, with the new Delano, “we really have a responsibility to bring some of that back.”
Today’s Delano includes 171 guest rooms, with rates starting at $395. The décor is still imbued with some of the grandeur that guests of a certain age will remember, like extra-high ceilings and grand columns on the ground floor. The new design is sleeker and less imposing, without most of the quirky details — a giant outdoor chess set, diaphanous curtains wafting inside the lobby — dreamed up by the architect and interior designer Philippe Starck.
Where a giant Starck-designed white chair once sat, there’s now a cafe to grab a decaf oat cappuccino; at the renovated Rose Bar, the menu includes mocktails built on ginger ale or soda water alongside Negronis and old-fashioneds. In the basement spa, guests can order CBD shots or mushroom “coffee” and sit in a 22-seat communal sauna designed for what Pundole called “social wellness.”
Miami Beach itself is aiming to rebrand itself around wellness, too. In February, the city introduced its spring break campaign, this year called “Break a Sweat.” On its website, an image of a yoga class on the beach with participants in the downward dog position is captioned “Bottoms Up.” Under a photo of a muscle-clad man inverted over a workout bar, the caption reads, “This is our kind of hang over.”
“That’s an evolution also of what’s happening in our society,” said Steven Meiner, the mayor of Miami Beach. “Drinking is down, especially in the younger generation, and that is being felt and impacted in Miami Beach, as well.”
Miami Beach — a different city than Miami, strictly speaking — is seemingly trying to shift away from its image as a hotbed of partying, especially during spring break. Beyond late-night cacophony, the revelry on South Beach streets like Ocean Drive had a reputation for being potentially dangerous. Sometimes, it lived up to that image: In March 2023, shootings caused two deaths.
“We saw a level of chaos and, unfortunately, violence in the past that we’ve cleaned up the last couple years,” Meiner said. Through measures like increased police visibility, Miami Beach reduced its crime rate by about 20 percent last year compared with 2024.
“South Beach is maturing,” said Lara Koslow, a Miami-based managing director and senior partner at Boston Consulting Group, a global management firm. “It’s moving from a party-first identity toward a more curated, luxury-lifestyle positioning.”
As for its history of debauchery, she said, “that’s both an opportunity and a challenge.”
Perhaps with that in mind, some hotels close to the Delano that were once its chic competitors — the Raleigh, the Sagamore and the Shore Club — are also being reconceived. Nearby, the Fasano Group and Aman Resorts have properties in the works, too.
The opening of hotels like a Miami Beach Aman “could be just enough to have another resurgence down there,” Schrager said.
As for the new Delano, he said: “I don’t really know much about the reopening. I only really know about what we did and the pivotal impact it had on Miami Beach.”
The Delano’s footprint is poised to go well beyond South Beach. It is now a chain with Delano-branded hotels planned in a handful of cities, including New York, over the next few years. There are already Delanos in Paris and Dubai. A Delano-ifed apartment building intends to break ground in Downtown Miami next year.
With the reinvented Delano now set to open in South Beach next month, the question is: Can it survive as a wellness destination?
“Maybe that time has come and gone,” Barton said. “I don’t know that you can recreate what happened at the Delano.”
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