(All Inclusive Part 3 is here)
At the time I thought it couldn’t be him. Why would he be here, of all places? I figured it was the accumulative effects of the sun and drinking the night before, perhaps combined with the subconscious metaphoric dead skin cells of my current twisted experiment, dried up on my stiff burned forehead. I looked away from his face, him sitting on a stool at a nearby bar. I was convinced that it wasn’t him, that I didn’t, couldn’t and wouldn’t see him here anymore, and that I clearly needed more drinks. Perhaps water as well.
I sat at the large open amphitheatre, as other people began filling up the wooden platform seats, facing the karaoke stage. I chose a spot in the back row, figuring I was better off being away from the action, where I would be less tempted to get up and show those people how it’s done. People were coming in from supper and the resort staff members were testing the equipment. The girls showed up. The models. All five of them.
Absolutely stunning girls of all shapes and sizes of skinny, with beautiful faces, striking smiles and laughs. Choosing the prettiest was impossible. I saw their happiness and began wondering why I never came to these places with a group of friends. They were so happy, being together, sharing drunk nights and sun-filled days. They each sang a song, together they all performed one and the shorter brunette sang two alone. She was drinking like I was the night before. I could see her drinks pile up and go down the hatch.
Her friends didn’t seem to flinch or be too concerned.
I passed out on in the back row, and nobody woke me up and asked me to leave. I figured that karaoke nights were probably the craziest nights at the resort and I wasn’t the only person who crashed there. Day four had begun, it was Wednesday and my burn was starting to fade into a more tolerable fan. A morning walk on the beach allowed me to see the resort’s glass bottom boat anchored about 100 meters off shore, people walking towards it through the shallow ocean water. Suckers!
After a bland lunch of chickpeas, salad and cold cuts, I decided to stop by my room, to simply take a peak. It looked as though nobody had entered it since my arrival, what with my “please don’t disturb sign” hung on the doorknob. Everything was still on my bed, where I left them, and I resisted the urge to go in and change clothes and grab my toothbrush. I had been rinsing and gargling consistently the whole four days and flossing with the strings of tea-bags and scraping food and plaque with toothpicks located at the buffets.
The room was likely an icebox by then and I proceeded to one of the sunny pools that had the bar built in. It was the cloudiest day so far, but still warm. The perfect day to sit by the pool, drink my ass off and not worry too much about burning or getting
dehydrated.
I floated around in the shallow end in my underwear, abiding my set shallow end rule. I did a few laps and then positioned myself with my arms over the side of the pool, head resting comfortably on them. It’s my favourite position and I took great comfort in staying there and peeing when nobody was around.
The brunette girl suddenly walked by mid-pee, sitting herself down at the edge of the pool and putting her legs in the water. Part of me wanted to laugh, part of me felt horrible. Her eyes were green, eyelashes thick and dark. She had new formed freckles on her nose, a sweet face and I would say that looking at her up close she was easily the most stunning of her more anorexic friends.
She would sit there and ignore me like everyone else that week, and as a girl like her would in the real world. I’ve been with girls as beautiful (kidding – I’m so full of shit!), but not twenty-four or twenty-five years of age with me at my current age of 32. Just a few feet away from me, I squinted my eyes so that I could watch her undetected, like the creeper I apparently was.
Can I help you? She asked me. I opened my eyes. Just like that, my experiment was over, my cover blown, epic fail! We started to have a conversation.
I surprisingly wasn’t even thinking about or dwelling on the sudden end to my four-day study. I confessed that I peed in the water and she laughed. She told me that she was hung-over from last night’s karaoke night, I told her I saw her drinking her friends share and that I preferred her second song. Her name was Jordann, which was such a bonus because girls with guy’s names are automatically hotter.
Beyond her good looks and urine soaked legs was a twenty-six year old who just graduated from a Masters in a social work program from Montreal. Her four friends (actually all models) left her at the resort alone, to go on a two-day catamaran excursion.
She was happy to have some time to herself and I was suddenly beyond happy to have her of all people bask in my homemade lemonade, abruptly end my fun pointless experiment in death and hotel staff efficiency and tell me that she too was alone (until tomorrow night).
We made plans to meet up for dinner at the Mexican themed buffet, but she didn’t show. All-inclusive heartbreak was the worst, so I ate alone and found myself sitting back at the same pool hoping that she’d return there. Sadly, she did not.
The experiment was the only thing that brought me any comfort, so I figured that since a fellow guest acknowledged me and not the resort itself, all signs pointed for me to continue where I left off. The hotel still didn’t know where I was or where I’ve spent the last three nights. So onward and upwards I went, crashed for the night – poolside (hoping she’d still return) and woke up the following morning to a kid’s water gun ammo hitting me in the face.
Screw all gorgeous social worker girls, I thought. And screw kids with their stupid water guns too. I had three more days and three more nights of playing dead, and I intended to enjoy myself…
…to be continued