Island Boyfriends

Although I’m sure you’ll all find this extraordinarily difficult to believe, but what with a manhunt for a terrorist going on in my backyard, actually having homework (yay!) to get done by the weekend, and working (yes, I said working) every day this past week, I was sort of hard up to find enough time for this whole blogging thing. But, fear not, fair readers! Although abbreviated, I’d hate to leave y’all blogless yet again, so here goes:

This past winter I spent three weeks in Turks & Caicos. I know, I know, my life is just so difficult. I landed right after New Year’s, spent the first ten days with my family, and then the remaining eleven gloriously solo, save for a couple days when I had a friend visit (another story entirely). When I arrived, all my island friends who had come back home for the holidays were there, but most left just a few days later. My friend Lilly, who is one of my few female friends on the island, was jaunting back to Europe practically the moment I stepped onto the tarmac, and soon enough left me high and dry with our group of friends, a collection of entirely of male individuals.

Now, as has been previously established, if you’re ever looking for an ego boost, T&C is the place to go. I don’t know if it’s because there is such a small pool of eligible females, or there’s something in the water, or everyone is just consistently a tiny bit tipsy, but the attention I (or any female who is capable of doing so much as breathing, for that matter) receive is just unrealistically excessive. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t absolutely love it.

So I spent the entirety of my three weeks there frolicking around the island in the company of a solid dozen boys at any given time, showered with attention. This is, as I’ve also previously stated, entirely the opposite of real life when my friends, my friend’s boyfriends and girlfriends, my own parents, and especially complete strangers, continually act like I am a non-entity entirely. Oh, sure, why don’t you two make out on my lap! Please, dance on top of the bar with my friend while I hold your shoes! Of course I’d like to be your chaperone on a date with some creep we just met on the side of the road! My life is a joke at every turn. But during that vacation, wherever I went, I was surrounded by the harem of men, which made for some really interesting interactions to say the least, but none quite so strange as a certain refraining question I had never before encountered.

The first night I went out, some dude whom I’d never met asked me, “Do you have an island boyfriend?” Now, I have a lot of questions about this query: Do you not care if I have a “real life” boyfriend? What exactly constitutes an “Island Boyfriend” anyway? Does he have to live there, or does it just mean some random guy I picked up at a bar for the night? And were I to have either of these types of boyfriends, would that deter or attract you? It was wholly inconclusive, but of course I took just a few seconds too long to mull over the answer before saying, “No.” I thought that’d be the end of it, but somehow, throughout my stay, I was continually approached and asked whether or not I had an Island Boyfriend.

Of course I made a big deal out of this bizarre question and spent much of my time making fun of it--how dumb to have an Island Boyfriend, I said over and over. But, nonetheless, I suppose I didn’t help my case when on a Sunday morning, my weekend friend (a boy) left, another male friend arrived with his family to take the original friend’s place on the beach with me, and the following morning, a third male friend came and spent the day lolling next to me in the sun. My revolving door of men was, I assume, mighty curious to any on-looker. Ah, if only it was like that in Real Life (which, I heartily assure you, it is not).

I know this strange event in my life doesn’t have much to do with the “theme” of this blog, but one thing stands true throughout: this whole “Island Boyfriend” idea and continual collection of men surrounding me is something that is not only extremely out of the ordinary for me, it is also something so extraordinarily bizarre-o that it could only ever happen to my Single Self. Even more insane was that although I was basking in the glory of all the attention, it was nothing special, because any girl receives the very same treatment! Although I usually find myself in situations that are mostly highly displeasing, this Island Boyfriend thing, well, if i'm honest, was sort of the opposite.

The funniest thing about it all, after I spent the whole time laughing at myself, and how ridiculous everything had become, were these very serious messages I got on Facebook the morning I left from the guy who had initially posed the Island Boyfriend question. I had settled on the whole thing really just being some big, stupid joke, but then, there was this:

“i never get a chance to seduce u with all the guys u have crowding u at the bar

u had all u could handle i guess

wen u come back i will b waiting i just hope u come to c me and not show up with an entourage”

All I could handle, indeed. Maybe next time! I’ll pencil you in.

Only 1/4 of my contingency.