Princes Charming

At least fifty percent of my time in Turks & Caicos I spend asking myself, “Is this real life?” Things can get pretty weird on the island, where gossip runs more rampant than in the halls of a middle school, bottles of Corona replace bottles of water, and, as you’ve read, your close friend might very well be a closeted pimp. Most importantly though, any and all relationships bring on nothing but hilarity.

T&C is full of characters. Everyone is charmingly screwy, and I guess you sort of have to be to give up your “real life” to move to an island in the middle of nowhere and spend the rest of eternity in board shorts and sunblock (something I would do in about .02 seconds). A perfect specimen of island strangeness is a set of cousins who go by the noms de plume of Sunny and Money (no joke). For all the Louboutins in the world, I can’t tell them apart, because not only do they somehow look perfectly identical, they both wear strictly all-white ensembles, including white cowboy hats that were definitely won at a Bar Mitzvah circa 1996, and both carry bedazzled pimp chalices with them wherever they go. Occasionally they accessories with a cane smothered in glitter, too, but that’s strictly for special occasions. 

One year I was in T&C for St. Patrick’s Day. There was some sort of island pub crawl that afternoon, in which participants traveled between locations via a dilapidated, filthy school bus, but my friends and I decided we’d go straight to the bar. There are only a few bars on Provo actually, and of course the one everyone was going to on St. Patrick’s Day was an “Irish” pub called Danny Buoy’s. (Clever, huh?) DB’s had recently become semi-passé due to the influx of hookers who teetered around its periphery on lucite heels and in leopard print body gloves, but regardless, everyone was still going there to whoop it up.

Had the island a fire marshall, they most certainly would’ve shut the place down for severe overcrowding and the noxious, mammoth-size, hovering cloud of cigarette smog. After far too many green beverages, I found myself decked out in festive Mardi Gras beads commandeered from behind the bar and somehow stuck in the passageway to the bathroom with my friend Caleb. Hugging our drinks to our chests, people wedged by us, everyone moist with sweat and beer. Almost immediately, the legendary Sunny sidled past, but before fully clearing the passageway, he stopped, quite obviously looked me up and down not once, but twice, locked eyes with Caleb and, pointing at me as if I were salmon filet in a shopping cart, asked, “Is this yours?” 

Caleb and I looked at each other, both very confused. Then very definitively Caleb said, “Why yes. This is indeed mine,” and swung his arm around my neck. I half smiled and shrugged my shoulders. “Sorry?” I said.

I’d never been more grateful to have a guy pretend to be my boyfriend before. Sunny patted Caleb on the back and without a second look swaggered away. Of course we burst out laughing as soon as he was out of earshot, knowing that I would heretofore be referred to as “This” whenever appropriate (which, as you might imagine, was quite often).

The rest of the night involved spasmodic and deranged dancing and conversations no one could remember. What was fun about the evening, and, in fact is fun about the nightlife on T&C in general, is that no one cares about age, and the older people hang out with the younger people as if it just don’t mean a thang. Caleb’s dad Bob was out with us that night, along with his tubby banker buddies, and was probably more drunk and silly than even we were. Bob is a hoot, habitually sauced and overly hypochondriacal: One day when I met him and Caleb at the bar by my condo, he was absolutely certain he was in the throes of a very serious stroke, his eyesight increasingly blurring, but, as it turned out, only a microscopic mote of island dust had found a cozy resting place on his eyeball.

When we’d all decided we’d had enough, Bob offered to give me a lift home. On our way back to his car we passed a pickup truck with a gigantic Florida Gators sticker on the back. I’d seen this car before and knew it belonged to this dreadful middle aged man who one night when I’d been out with Caleb had refused to leave me alone, and when I had finally made it indisputably clear that our discussion was kaput, he had called me juvenile names and been far more uncivil than necessary. “That’s the Gator Jerk’s car!” I shrieked as we walked by. Caleb and I told Bob about what had happened, and for the second time that night, my dignity and honor was valiantly defended. With a quick look to the left and then to the right, Bob crouched on the ground and released the air from both left hand tires. We stood on the sidewalk watching the truck slowly slink and hiss lopsidedly to the sidewalk like a deflating mattress. The final particles of air wheezed their way to freedom and there sat the pickup, with two tires that were nothing more than flaccid pieces of rubber. I’m pretty sure I have never laughed so hard in my whole life. Giggling the entire way home in the car, we imagined what would happen when the Gator Jerk returned to his car, black-out drunk for certain, to find it half in the gutter. Not only would no tow trucks be available so late at night, none of us were sure if the island even had towing services. Cue more delirious laughter. 

Once home, I popped out of the car, thanking Caleb and Bob for their shared displays of gallantry. Bob cheered through the open window, “Don’t ever tell me chivalry is dead!” a line he’d repeat often when retelling the story, which he did at least once a day for the next month or so. And while it might be practically impossible to obtain a reliable internet connection or non-bug infested box of pasta in T&C, it is not, I assure you, hard to find a decent man. You just might have to feed him a few dozen beers first.

Sadly, a picture of the deflated pickup doesn’t exist, but here’s a picture I took at another bar in Provo around the same time, of a random, shirtless local just enjoying another Tuesday night.