When one needs escape, one goes on holiday…
I did it before if you recall. My “Playa Bastian” reflective blues on what lies ahead. Well what lies ahead is creeping up very fast. I’m thirty-five very soon. Thirty-five! But that’s one for another fireside. So far I’ve still got time. Just.
Anyway recently I shipped out again. To be fair it wasn’t exactly a lastminute.com stage left exit from my recent shenanigans with that former “older” client – who really did, it appears, want perhaps a little more than I was offering, even though I had at least played the honesty card right from the off. Still I shouldn’t have done it (or rather her) in the first place; I mean this is was what ditching the butterfly and weighing up a loo test or two is all about. She’s not best pleased with me you see so whatever’s coming my way in terms of eventual professional revenge will doubtless be deserved; which is kind of ironic because for pretty much five years I’ve successfully managed to avoid incurring that proverbial “hell hath no fury…” through some paradoxical irresponsible responsibility but here, distinctly “bovvered” about where my actions are taking me, I seem to have slipped up fairly big time.
Like I said though, this holiday had been booked long before that. Still fortune it appears occasionally favours the foolhardy as well as the brave so a brief sojourn into five star pool paradise might be just enough to let the dust settle and bed springs realign. We’ll see.
It was Sammie who booked it. You remember Sammie Price, my real life girlie mate and true confidante who’s a little bit younger and more like a sister (even though I actually have a younger sister, and brother for that matter) than a yearning; although truth be told I did have a thing for her once upon a very long time ago when just about every bloke at Archer Publishing did too (including my erstwhile foil Stuart Jones). Still, friendship is what Sammie and I have always done best (I guess she gives me a perspective I don’t get from Joe) and over the years it’s increasingly become a trade-off of dilemmas; she doesn’t know of BD as such, but she clocked the change from my original “Before”, saw me through post Jane and indeed was the catalyst for my first semi-adulterous fling aged thirty. In turn Sammie herself has gone from lusted over ladette caught in her own circle of capricious affections for older, cocky city types to spurned scarlet woman of a cowardly married who ditched her just when she’d truly decided to take the monogamous gamble; meaning she’s kind’ve reverted to what she knows best. Although lately with a difference, in that suddenly cocky younger types helplessly drawn to her “youthful” maturity are starting to turn her head too – I’ve always said the term “older woman” is purely relative to the younger man in question’s age (although I’m not telling you if she’s here or not).
So yes, Sammie booked it. She needed some sun this year, she told me. And on a whim suggested I come along instead of one of her girlie pals because she wanted to get that sun without any hassle for a change (i.e. men). It wasn’t that we would actually pretend to be a couple (we booked separate rooms). It’s just that everyone would predictably infer that we two, sat by the pool, on the beach, in the restaurant, in the bar, obviously were. Obviously. Not that I minded. After all when I agreed to it after Christmas I was already up for turning over a new leaf myself too, as you know, so this kind of worked for me too.
Still if we did give the impression we were a couple, it wasn’t a particularly tactile or affectionate one folk were casually observing as we lounged in a veritable Mediterranean Nirvana, and I know that always makes people wonder too. Sammie however was more concerned with her tan, and I was more concerned with a hefty poolside tome, although I couldn’t help but “observe” myself. I mean you know me, that’s what I do (when not getting into awkward situations… and I’m coming to that).
Ah what views! And I’m not talking the balcony panoramic either. Sunshine overseas always brings out bikini clad apparitions to die for; I’m a guy first and foremost after all, why deny it. Of particular interest of course was the scattering of those women, some accompanied, some not, some British, most not, who had long since ditched the obsessive “I need that perfect swimsuit figure” b******s” and looked way, way sexier than their stock Miss Med twentysomething counterparts for it. I mean there’s nothing like chic shades on a sexy older woman to make you forget the parade.
And speaking of sunglasses I was also watching (as I bet was Sammie) the cooler, younger guys (yep your “average” sculptured hotties) swimming in them, keeping their slick hairstyles dry. You see I never did that. I love a dip but the whole me in trunks thing, a bit like when I’m on the booze, destroys BD in a flash (literally). I’m not sexy in trunks. To be honest I’m not sexy naked (no irritating TV presenters called Gok to the rescue though pur-lease). What’s worked for me over the years instead is the whole chemistry thing long before we get to that part, so by then all is usually well. Put me up as a purely physical specimen against these guys though? No chance! Okay so I still take the stairs and one woman did have a thing about my “lovely arse” but truthfully I’d probably struggle to even come last in any Mr. Pool contest. I guess BD hasn’t entirely killed off self-doubt on that front, hell that’s why I created him online in the first place, as you well know, eventually learning that you can find confidence by simply working with what you’ve got, letting it shine more with maybe just a mere manufactured tweak. But still I’d be lying if a part of me didn’t envy them just a little; those guys swimming in sunglasses because… well because they can.
The awkward moment I referred to came one night at the hotel’s terrace restaurant. She was dining alone and in my, rather, than Sammie’s eyeline; refined, blonde, perfect make-up, a maturing tan and maturing features that only enhanced rather than detracted. Naturally I wondered, and naturally I probably stared too long. I hadn’t seen her before, had no idea whom she might be with, and there was no ring (because we chaps look there too, and you know we do). However it was all merely flights of whimsical fancy until, later, as I went to shovel more rice onto my plate, there she was beside me, her perfume just right (naturally) for the evening’s ambience. I looked, she looked, and then she looked over at Sammie, and then back at me with a mix of the quizzical, the disapproving, and maybe… well maybe nothing. Here was my window to speak though, to reassure, to get her room number. But, considering why I’d just left good old blighty, I guess I felt it best to simply smile a little sheepishly, take my rice, take my seat again and forget all about it – although Sammie pestered me for the rest of the evening about the strange lost look on my face (I declined to divulge).
Mind you the next day I did indeed swim in my sunglasses. I figured I should afford myself at least that…
By Bastian Dash. Read more of his exploits on your home page…
