a true story made awkward by my compulsion to hide all details of geographic location.
Late last week I had a ‘play-date’ with a young woman named, Sasha. She is the younger sister of a friend of a very good friend of my mother’s. Twenty-four, she is employed by and active in the US Democratic Party. Her mother is from my island home, but she is American by way of England and Barbados and Ursuline convent schools along the way. She was also just recently evacuated, Reagan invasion of Grenada-style from her Peace Corps gig in Morocco. It seems that as soon as President Bush decided to bomb the crap out of Iraq, the Peace Corps found it necessary to pull their proud volunteers out of random Moroccan villages in the off chance that impoverished citizens decided to make a political statement.
Sasha is the perfect Peace Corps volunteer. Full of gusto for the American Way, only slightly exotic, raised with just enough money so as to have a liberal dose of liberal guilt—beautiful and willowy with perfect golden skin and requisite hairy Peace Corps underarms. She was nice enough, similarly stranded in this tiny third world country in the sense that we were both starved for a conversation that did not included debates over the best place for a manicure or the business dealings and relative importance of our immediate families.
It struck me however, at how quickly and violently my interest in friendship and conversation ended when, at the bar we had gone to for some drinks and our ‘play-date’, she was unaccountably rude to our waiter.
I am often quick to frustration at sloppy customer service, I once told a man named Harry Bork, unfortunate in both name and occupation (he did my taxes) that I was certain he used his ass a primary mode of communication. Despite that, there is a difference between being pissed at bad service and being a demanding bitch from the onset—without some recognition of the general shittiness that service jobs-particularly in the Third World restaurant industry, can be.
So, Sasha, while making a good, or at least interesting initial impression, did not make a good lasting impression. My play date will probably not blossom into a lasting friendship…and I am fine with that.
Just a couple of days after the play date, I left for what was touted as a weekend of sun and decadence at a private island owned by friends of my parents. This was interesting. We took our host’s high powered jet boat several hours inland to the man-made island perched insolently in the middle of the nearly mile-wide river. There were about 20 of us, including the owners of the island. Also present was the middle aged father of a local beauty queen. She was recently arrested here in Canada with nearly 8 kilograms of cocaine in the false bottom of her suitcase. Her father, a drunken pot-head since adolescence--- had a few years ago cautioned my parents against my receiving too much education (lest I become unmarriageable), and so I tried my very best not to be smug in the face of his own eldest daughter’s recent fall from grace. I am not sure I succeeded. I did, however, teach his youngest daughter, just three years old, how to swim. This was done however, not with a feeling of good intention toward the toddler, but rather a none too subtle display of what excessive education, both scholastic and athletic, could produce.
The real fun of the weekend came when I met the British nephew of another couple who was visiting the island. This was to be, according to his hopeful aunt, a love connection of some sort. It was surreal most definitely, but most definitely not a love connection.
His name, for some indiscernible reason, was Friedrich, and at 28 he is a sales representative of some sort in the UK. He was quite attractive, or rather, would have been had he not had the appearance of a man who looked as though he spent every waking minute of his life at the gym. Unfortunately, it appeared he believed himself to be exceptionally beautiful, and somewhat above the rest of us common folk. I must admit I gained the lion’s share of this opinion through mostly observation. He paid me scant attention, often not responding even to direct communication until the final day of our trip when he learned I was ‘pursuing advanced degrees’. I suppose that alone accounts for the lack of a love connection, but the really interesting part of the weekend was really something in which I was only tangentially involved. It seems most of my role in this strange weekend was in my capacity as one who bears witness, an idea that began with my seeing beyond the glow of the wonderfully hairy underarms to the rudeness of Sasha, and continued into the saga of Friedrich…but I suspect I’ll return to that later.
It seems Friedrich is the product of a teenage love affair between his mother and a then 16-year-old local man named Peter. Because of the time, and the youth of all concerned, Friedrich’s young mother was whisked off to England with baby in tow. The young relationship ended, no marriage was forced, there had been, true to the style amongst wealthy families in the mid 1970s—no contact between father and son. His mother subsequently remarried, and Friedrich seemed fairly secure with another male role model in his life.
All this is made more interesting (perhaps only in my view) because Peter, Friedrich’s biological father, is a friend of my parents. He is in his mid-forties now, having married a respectable girl at a respectable age and fathered three daughters—all at least a decade younger than Friedrich. He also happened to be at his weekend house not far up the river from where we were spending our island weekend. In truth, as mentioned I am only peripheral to this story—the sur-reality of this comes in when I admit that I have long been creating seriously lusty fantasies about Peter. Those who know me would laugh. Mid-forties, married, with great integrity (despite a youthful indiscretion), no small amount of arrogance and an almost feline…I wanted to say grace, but that doesn’t work. Really what he has is a fairly predatory awareness of his sexuality. He is not handsome, but rather compelling. Coupled with the fact that he is intelligent, extraordinarily fit by dint of hard work, and seemingly perpetually grumpy, I have in my casual (tangential) association with him, developed quite the lusty, if harmless, crush.
Imagine then, my surprise when I learned through covert whispers (prior to my meeting the ultimately disappointing Friedrich) that he had a son—about my age. I was nearly rabidly excited. Here was the possibility of finding all of the physical attributes, perhaps some portion of the personality, of someone I was mightily attracted to—in an accessible and reasonable and age appropriate package. Plus, an accent!
I was to be foiled. All of my airy fairy hopes were dashed when Friedrich turned out to be pompous instead of arrogant, and strong by virtue of the gym and not labour, apparently either mental or physical. Where Peter was serious, Friedrich was simply unfunny. Compounded with this was the fact that each evening of our stay at the island, Friedrich became quite ridiculously drunk. He drank imported beer by the dozen, vomited loudly in the thin-walled island house, left his aunt to clean the mess, and then denied feeling ill to those who had minutes before heard him implore the lord to stop the room from spinning. He drank more than his share—refused to assist in anything, spat on the floor while indoors and became exceedingly belligerent as the evenings wore on.
So, fespite my having no attraction to Friedrich in the way the many menopausal aunties on the island might have hoped, I became enthralled in the drama of Friedrich and Peter. My tangential relation to the situation, my ability to bear witness to the pair of them as they quite deliberately went through stages of both seeing and being seen, was far more interesting. It was more and somehow less telling.
Friedrich and the alcohol I suppose could be explained by virtue of his having not one but three unexpected meetings with Peter, during our weekend stay. He was in the country only to vacation with his aunt and uncle and did not, I believe, plan to meet him at all. The first meeting occurred after the men of the island set off for land in order to buy more liquor. They stopped, as is neighbourly to do in areas such as this river, at Peter’s weekend home. Both men were by this time, much in the drink, and by all accounts--the women were told in more covert whispers upon the men’s return--Friedrich and Peter spoke at length, had positive body language and seemed to make some tentative steps towards forming if not a father-son bond, then at least a friendship.
Friedrich returned subdued, became incredibly drunk in a short period of time, vomited loudly and went to bed. I managed, at that point to forgive him his drunkenness but not his childishness or other dissimilarities to Peter. I responded, predictably, by drinking too much, dancing lawlessly and by making every attempt to seem to ignore the situation. It had, after all, nothing to do with me.
Early the next morning, the silence was broken by Peter and his speedboat zipping along the river and dropping in, as is the neighbourly thing to do, with a few male compatriots of his own, who were taking a break from the gaggle of women and children at Peter’s weekend home to do some water-skiing. This was not the Peter I knew, I still blushed--or came as close to blushing as I can--when he kissed me hello and held me a second too long and a touch too close, but his eyes were frantic, searching the premises for, I surmised, his long lost son.
The son in question, by virtue of the drinks of the evening before, was still in bed, and remained so as Peter and company joined the rest of the island house for breakfast. The conversation was bawdy and loud, but no reference was made to the remarkable meeting of the evening before. Peter for his part, thought himself to be hidden behind his sunglasses. The tenseness of his body and the translucence of his lenses however, gave way to the fact that he was nervous and constantly scanning for signs of Friedrich.
When at last Friedrich did awake, he descended from his room with an exaggerated spring in his step and unsolicited pronouncements at his lack of hangover. He bade no one good morning, instead took his breakfast to a solitary table and very deliberately did not speak to Peter. In truth, what was he to say? This was a second surprise meeting in less than twelve hours. He allowed the collective weekenders to view him, but quite deliberately did not cast his gaze about the room. Shortly after I myself went to the beach with another woman about my age, he followed--only to be told, rather sharply by the both of us, that he was exceptionally pink and should probably return to the house to avoid a serious burn. He did so, and again sat aloof, even from those men who only the evening before, he drank and was merry with. At length he approached the beach again, my companion and I already in the water and unable to chase him away, and Peter left with his friends, apparently without either a hello or a goodbye between them.
That day marked the last of our weekend getaway and we left. Some were zipped quickly by boat to the nearest dirt road on the mainland; they were to travel the rough path in tough bush vehicles through the rainforest and into town. The rest, Friedrich and I included, jumped on the island’s large and comfortable jetboat and began zipping towards town. Friedrich and I sat opposite one another on the elevated platform at the stern of the boat, taking the last bit of sun while the others were in the covered canopy of the rest of the boat, lolling on comfortable cushions near the bow where the pilot made the boat seem to fly through the rising tide. Friedrich was indeed bright pink. His clothes, too formal and too tight for a weekend on the island, seemed to constrict his movements. He removed his dark sunglasses once or twice and revealed both blood-shot eyes and an extraordinarily white band of skin in the shape of his sunglasses--the paleness of the skin made nearly incandescent by contrast to the sunburned surroundings.
We made our way towards town and passed by Peter’s summerhouse. On the dock we saw no less than 11 young girls, all trussed tightly in lifejackets, sitting on the dock. Peter’s boat, it seemed, had broken down. Light was falling fast and his party too needed to return to town. His male water-skiing compatriots had too left by vehicle before the trouble with the boat was discovered. A quick line was formed, and before we knew it, 11 young girls and their luggage were passed from hand to hand, into the boat and all tucked in safely. Peter’s wife and three other women followed them. Also in their mid-forties; the women combined representing the mothers of all of these young girls. Where before we lolled lazily around on the boat, we were now all forced into a sitting position, each adult keeping and eye on two or three small children and a quantity of boxes and coolers, any of which could at any minute be lost into the river because of wind. Peter came into the boat last; he counted heads like a shepherd and then looked about the boat to find a place to sit. Friedrich had not assisted either with the passing of children or luggage, but rather had seemed a little shell-shocked at meeting Peter for the third unexpected time in one weekend.
At first, the only open seat seemed to be nearly at Friedrich’s feet, a square of the platform not taken by strollers and coolers and spare life jackets and containers of sandwiches, and indeed Peter sat there. For about two minutes of the journey, he looked straight ahead while Friedrich looked deliberately at a point about three feet above my head…or seemed to behind his sunglasses. My mother, towards the bow of the boat, exchanged quick telling glances with both my father and myself. Seated in the padded navigator’s seat next to the captain, my father quickly shifted some boxes at his feet around and made what appeared to be a more comfortable seat, both literally and figuratively for the front facing and uncharacteristically fidgety Peter. He took the offered seat which had him facing the back of the boat, forcing him to look directly to the stern of the boat, at Friedrich and myself. Friedrich, for his part, did not change his view. He had found his own comfortable seat on the platform become decidedly less so when Peter’s wife, in truth his stepmother, was forced to sit next to him in order that she might supervise some of the smaller children.
The young girls were apparently tired and soon the heads of the younger ones began to droop. They leaned against each other and the adults around them and soon the boat was quiet but for the powerful engine. Peter’s wife tried to make some small talk with Friedrich, apparently having met once before some years ago, but it was awkward and jilted. I, being quite literally boxed into my seat could not move and so could offer only light conversation with Peter’s wife, shouted over the roar of the engine to lighten the situation. This proved nearly impossible and so I stopped. I realized at that moment, I was quite literally forced to bear witness to the events unfolding before me. I had only to shift my gaze slightly to watch Peter watching, and watch Friedrich being watched…both actions decidedly impassive.
Peter who is proud and arrogant seemed neither, but rather had the look of someone who is studying desperately for an exam for a course whose classes he had not attended. Friedrich, who is pompous and vain, had the look of forced casualness, of supercilious insolence and, I reasoned with myself, had quite the right to pull that defense given the circumstances.
I cast my own gaze about the boat, and could not help but be struck by the differences that I saw. The eleven girls were all between the ages of about three and eleven. They were, in some respects, true princesses of these tropics. They were, without exaggeration, daughters of the wealthiest and most established families in the country. They were, without fail, extraordinarily beautiful. Girls of that age are, I think, always beautiful; they are active and confident and as yet feel few of the pressures of what it means to be a woman. But, even taking all of that into account, all of their wealth and privilege and traditional beauty, these girls were spectacular. They were brown as berries, with sun streaked and wind blown hair in various stages of escape from hastily drawn ponytails and French braids. More importantly, they seemed incredibly relaxed and calm though in a strange situation; poised even. They were equally vain and proud of startlingly pink backpacks and hard earned scars gained from the scrapes and minor accidents of the weekend. They slept and nodded and stretched their bodies without shame or adult notions propriety, moving into the most comfortable position in their cramped seats. The elder girls taking it upon themselves to amuse those of the younger who remained awake. The toddlers looking wide-eyed around the boat and fixing piercing and curious stares on adults and each other alike, seemingly daring anyone to deny their princess-status.
Dark in the tropics falls suddenly, almost violently, as though to chastise those who are unprepared. For that reason, the jet boat too was proceeding with near violent speed. To be out on the river at dark is dangerous, more so in an overloaded boat filled with drowsy children. We were bounced up and down as a result. I tore my attention from the eleven young princesses, and again found myself bearing witness to Peter and Friedrich again. They did, I began to notice, did bear some resemblance. Both held themselves extremely still and with stiff spines, absorbing painfully the shock of the waves rather than riding them as the rest of us did.
Friedrich maintained his gaze somewhere over my head into the distance, not turning his face towards the front of the boat despite the setting sun continuing to darken the burn on his face. Peter, in the front of the boat, kept his shades on, but because of a trick of the light, I was able to see his eyes behind the lenses. He looked from the girls to Friedrich. From those who were speaking to him to Friedrich, and oddly, from myself to Friedrich. With my own back to the sun, my sunglasses had long been removed in the twilight and yet, I was shocked to find myself, so quietly enjoying the spectacle, in the direct consciousness of one of the participants. I was, forgive the triteness…watching myself being watched. Peter found and held my gaze a long time. Simply locking eyes, we stared intently at each other. It was a gaze far too long to be casual, and far to knowing to be accidental…it was not sexual, exactly, only remarkably open. The girl beside me tugged on my shirt. "This ride takin’ long long."
