Last summer after my family had finally flown back home, I was free to do as I pleased. My friend was bartending at the extra-posh hotel next door, so occasionally I’d stroll over there, sit and chat, and be fed free drinks until closing. One night towards the end of my stay, I was going to hit up the bar for a bit before heading to the island-wide “White Party”: everyone was required to wear white (duh) and the event was being held at the island’s Wine Bar, a fully dreadful fusion of ideas. While I sucked down my drink, two boys my age wandered over to the bar and sat down next to me, all smiles and reeking of Jack Daniels. “Oh, boy,” I thought. “Here we go.”
Although their communication with one another consisted exclusively of inside jokes and ending all adjectives with -EST (ie: the weirdest, the worstest, the amazingest), they seemed liked fun, especially after a twenty minute long lesson during which I was properly instructed on precisely how to Dougie, so I offered to bring them along with me to the White Party. If vacation isn’t for picking up random boys at bars, then what’s the point? I was mostly certain they weren’t going to bring me to the other side of the island, steal my favorite headband, and leave me there gagged and bound to swept away by the tide, so we grabbed a taxi and drove along the half-paved roads on one of the hottest nights I can remember.
The party was great and, in fact, a night that my friends on the island are still talking about. Everyone had large, birthmark shaped stains swelling and dribbling down the fronts on their shirts like overgrown, alcoholic babies and matching sets of discolored, meth addict teeth. Not to mention, we were all profusely sweating like Pee-wee Herman in a preschool. I introduced my new friends, Adam and Jon, to all the people I knew, and then we wriggled our way to the dance floor. Jon promptly dropped a beer bottle on my foot, but he was cute, so I let it slide. Who cares about few bloody toes anyway?
Despite Jon’s attractiveness and overall appeal, which were becoming more and more pronounced as the night wore on and my bar tab grew, I was my usual embarrassed self and was thoroughly incapable of letting him know that maybe that trip to the other side of the island with him really wouldn’t be that bad of an idea. But he was drunk, and it was late, and he and Adam had an early flight in the morning, so being the gracious island hostess that I am, I offered to help them get home.
T&C does have taxis, except they’re not exactly yellow cabs, but white, windowless Rape Mobiles and you certainly can’t hail one. You’re lucky if you can find one to give you a ride after 8:00pm, as most of the drivers have already ensconced themselves in the ripped seats of some hole in the wall bar by that time, a damp joint dangling from their lips. Jon and Adam didn’t seem to believe me that we’d have to find an alternate way back, but before I could protest, both boys had staggered, or rather fallen, into the itchy backseat of strange local’s SUV. I knew if I let them go neither I nor anyone else would ever see them again--not to mention my short-lived fantasies about Jon would be totally down the tubes--so I hurried after the car and hopped in with them. “You guys are morons,” I hissed as my life flashed before my eyes. The driver could barely speak English, was wearing a ripped tank top covered with dirty splatters of an undetermined origin, had a wonky eye, and stunk unmistakably of chives. In the console sat a lumpy pouch from which protruded the corner of an overstuffed Ziplock baggie. We were totally about to die.
Adam had already fearlessly instructed our delightful driver as to our destination, but I lived somewhere different than where the guys were staying, and wasn't about to walk home on the empty beach at three in the morning all by my lonesome. “Um, excuse me?” I piped up in my most pleasant voice. “Could we maybe make another stop?”
As soon as the words fell out of my mouth the driver swung the wheel hard and came to a squealing stop on the side of the road, dust pluming around the SUV like a mushroom cloud. “No. Get out,” he growled. “Yeah, but--” Adam tried to object, but the driver was having none of it. “Out,” he barked, then put his hand on Adam’s chest, shoving him toward the door. We scrambled out of the car as fast as we could, all legs and arms, like snow crabs in a crab pot. “Thanks!” Adam called as the SUV rumbled away into the sticky night and we were left standing on the side of the road, in the middle of absolutely no where, several miles from just about everything. A pack of wild island dogs howled in the open field behind us. Awesome. Thanks, new friends.
Luckily, my buddies in T&C are fairly reliable, and a few minutes later my friend Steve rolled up in his Jeep to rescue us, scowling. “I can’t believe you did that,” he said, eyeballing the boys who were now squashed in his own backseat. “Uh, me neither.” I said, humiliated. But Jon was so cute! How could I have let him (and Adam) get in that car unchaperoned, only to be turned into the next day’s conch fritters?
We delivered them both back to their hotel and Steve proceeded to give me a long lecture about how stupid I was, how I can never do anything like that again, and how of course he had already told everyone about what happened. “Ugh,” I moaned, totally mortified. “I’m sorry.” All forgotten and forgiven in an instant, Steve said, “It’s OK. Want to go get a drink?” So at 3:30 in the morning, that’s precisely what I did. Just another Saturday night where I almost got myself killed because of a boy; I guess even my own relationships, or lack thereof, get me in trouble.
As you can see, I was pretty much the sweatiest I've ever been in a public forum that night.
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