I have used Couchsurfing for years. Since college. Time and time again, I have found it to be an effective way to travel. It’s allowed me to develop some sweet connect with people, learn local secrets, and fill otherwise quiet evenings. Every time I set out to find a place to stay using the website, I ask several questions:

• Does this host have good reviews?
• Does this host have plenty of pictures?
• Is this host’s profile complete?
• Does this host include a decent description of the home/couch/etc?

The website, couchsurfing.com, has their own verification process that can “increase” the security of various stays. I don’t pay much attention to that since I’ve spent so much time figuring out my own way to read people. But this time…I could have done better.

Everything was great! It really and truly was a good experience – a blueberry farmer let me hijack his kitchen to make three blueberry pies and a pile of blueberries & cream hand pies for the crew of pickers he hired for harvest season. I met some folks from Arkansas, Tennessee and even Missouri (the town where I went to college!). Great people. Interesting conversations. I took off during the day to hike and spent the afternoon baking/reading.

With a plan to get up at 5 am to shower and head back down to Portland, I said “Good night” and “Thanks” and crashed pretty early. In my space downstairs.

My host was still awake…not quite ready to head to the loft upstairs. (aka – His Bed)

About fifteen minutes later, I think I hear him talking to one of the pickers…”You’re more than welcome to come upstairs…Mary Elizabeth.”

He wasn’t talking to a picker.

He was inviting me – a relative stranger who gave NO indication that such an invitation would be welcomed – to his bedroom.

It would be easy to skim past this interaction…completely ignore it and just tell you all about that time I made a bunch of blueberry pies and watched the sun set over a blueberry farm.

But this isn’t that simple. Or sweet.

It’s a narrative on the state of the world where I rack my brain trying to figure out what I did wrong…how I led him on…what I should have done differently…and then I tell myself that I’m overreacting to a simple invitation.

But I don’t think I overreacted. I’m still a little salty. Baking for people…traveling solo…having strangely deep conversations with relative strangers. Those are a normal part of my life.

Being invited into bed with a stranger.

That’s the thing that doesn’t belong.