Dreamboat or Shipwreck ?
Some of you ladies might harbour a fantasy of a lost friend or sweetheart from years ago that you may one day meet up with and sail off into the sunset to a blissful land of love. It’s an unfair fact of life that reality hardly ever lives up to the fantasy and if it tries to, disaster often occurs!
Those of you who are my friends on TBW will know that I’ve spent the past few winters travelling around the Caribbean searching for ‘my island’. As a writer, as long as I have a laptop I can go pretty much where I want, and this brings me to my story. I’ve been single since my Italian and wasn’t really looking for a man, and then an old friend and I got to chatting on Facebook. He had been the brother of a friend at school, I remember him being the spotty elder brother when I was 14, and then we had shared a flat together in Chelsea and always got on really well. As far as I was concerned he was my big ‘bro, I had never fancied him.
He now owned a yacht which he kept on a small island and as I was going to Barbados for New Year we thought it would be fun for me to go and sail with him for a while. He is married, although sort of separated, he had a girlfriend, and I made sure he wasn’t expecting any ‘fringe benefits’, so far so good.
Fast forward a few weeks and there I am on the choppy seas anchored off some deserted islands with a full moon glaring down on the boat and a high tide. Sleep is difficult and when I do sleep I have nightmares. The sea is so rough it feels like it is trying to throw you out of the bunk, I sleep, I dream I am being pulled out of bed by an invisible ghost and then I scream. My friend comes pounding down the boat from where he sleeps at the other end to comfort me, I’m sleepy and confused, the comforting goes a bit far but luckily there is no weight in his anchor and so nothing actually occurs. (Well think Bill Clinton and Monica Levinsky here.)
The next morning I am furious and rant and rave, how dare he take advantage of me etc etc, I want to get off the boat, (impossible Victoria you are in the middle of the ocean remember?). I remind him he is already in two ‘relationships’ what the hell does he think he’s doing? I also tell him I never get involved with married men because it’s all very well him wanting to have an affair now but when his wife dumps him he will be a mess. I’ve seen it happen before. Then it comes out, he’s always loved me, wanted to be with me………Oh help I am in deep s**T now.
I manage with extreme tactfulness to mend the situation for the duration of the trip although a part of me is flattered. I do obviously care about him and he is offering a boat a life and half the year in the exact part of the world I want to live in. The day I leave I say I hope we can still be friends and think I’ve sorted it.
Dream on GIRL……..
One week later he rings me to tell me that he has dumped the girlfriend, told the wife he wants a divorce and is coming to live with me happy ever after………Yikes…….a ring a wedding and the next 30 years together are bandied about . OK let’s see if he can go through with this one, I HAVE MY DOUBTS.
Last week he arrived, gaunt dehydrated, jet lagged and more than slightly manic on my doorstep…..and managed to blow everything in two days of storming around my little house and little very happy life demanding attention. NOTHING WORKED!
From my point of view he wasn’t fun any more, no lead in the pencil, no sparkling Caribbean sea and endless sunset sailing, he was a boring old sea dog and not my ex Italian, the pretty metro sexual male I am usually used to. From his side, I wasn’t going to do his washing, cooking or pander to his every whim, I’d done that before, I have a 15 year old son. Nor did I have a plasma TV or slippers. I’m a poet for Chrissakes……… Most importantly for me, no love of the tender passionate romantic kind that I need in my life with a man.
On the morning his wife sent him an email saying she was happy to divorce him ………..he left. He went running back to his cosy house with her, but it was too late. She had already invited her lover to stay, his girlfriend didn’t want him back and nor did I.
By trying to hang onto everything he had lost it all. As for me……….I need a proper book deal for my new novel so that I can buy my own boat in the Caribbean if I want to, and a beautiful toy boy to take with me. Older men are only older, they certainly aren’t any wiser and they lack the romance fire and passion that this woman wants. So get winking boys I’m back!
Victoria Mosley is a poet, novelist and spoken word artist and broadcaster. She has two published collections of poetry available ‘’The Dry Season’’ 1998 & ‘Crazy Love’ 2002. Her new collection ‘Out of Context’ is with publishers at present. She has a CD downloadable from www.garageband.com she is working on a series of novels,
‘The Angel Sequence’. The first two in the series are completed. Info @ `www.zenoliteraryagency.com
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