Best Holiday Moment

The female half of the scouse couple spread her breasts each day
with sun oil, massaging thoroughly and luxuriously acres of impossibly
brown and shiny skin, made velvet by oil, with a wild orange g-string
marking a line and the curve of her hips. Two friends from Wales,
women. The tall, thin, older woman, wrinkled with tanning, stayed on
her own a lot, sipping cocktails. Her young friend spent time with the
local fishermen and boat-tour crew, who would tenderly remove aneneme
spikes from her heels, cupping her ankles in their hands. On boat tour
outings, she was mysteriously already there, in the cosy hub of cabin
seats with the crew by the time we had all walked from the hotel early
in the morning. She appeared stupid, almost dumb, when any of the
guests at the hotel spoke to her; but then again, they'd already made
up their minds about her. She had more to say in Welsh to the Turks
than she did to us.
Although na?ve to it at the time, I carried an alluring or repellent
pubescent mantel at fourteen, which seemed to produce conflicting and
certainly emotive reactions in some of the other guests. I grew up in
the middle of a big city, so I was at home with vibes too developed by
adults to be clear in my mind, but I could co-exist with them without
being thrown. By this I mean, in masquerading as an older person, as
city kids tend to, you handle situations well without fully
understanding them. Which can make you appear confident and cool.
Unperturbed, ready for it. Up for it. Ready to ignore it and find fun
amongst it on your level. (None of this complex adult shit.) But some
older people forget not to resent younger people and even to remember
that they are young.
One older couple who merrily bridged the age gap were always ready
with the camera during any drinking games. Involving penalty removals
of knickers and pants, winking and chatting they snapped blindly up in
between legs and requested full labia action from the ladies while
we're about it.
They were the ones who Jo's folks befriended, who kept them busy from
our point of view so we could nick off and hang out with the young
newly-weds and the couple crew who seemed like a laugh and were closest
to our age. From the teamwork of the photo couple, (she did the photos,
he bought the rounds) we reckoned they must have been into wife
swapping, or at least getting in extra players.
We weren't used to eliciting the exciting range of passions in our
midst. In our cosy inner-city bubble, people's reactions to us got
absorbed into a million others and disappeared. In this hot
Mediterranean microcosmical equivalent, everything heaved with sexual
promise, and, as it turned out in the case of the jolly doctor, less
glamorous and more base sexual frustration.
This story is about two girls who, instead of unwinding the
complicated threads of desire and resentment wrapping round them, (and
having been pricked with the spears of threatened women and narrow
men), grabbed the ball and hurled it back, ending up empowered,
liberated, grown and strong.
The brief snapshot image of the scenario was; me in the pool, sometime
in the morning while it was still dark, skinny dipping with what was,
last time I looked, a large and enthusiastic group of other drunk
people in the shallows. Enjoying the naked feeling and the no-fear from
the booze, I swam underwater towards the deep end with my eyes open.
When I got there, clinging to the side, I surfaced to find the most
popular, loved, smiley, funny, fond doctor (on his honey moon) there
already.
He looked down at my thick black triangle of hair, illuminated by the
lights under the water. Muttering gutturally, he said, "Look how dark
you are", and jabbed a skinny finger inside it, suddenly. I said
something (may've been "ouch, get off!") and looked up to see his new
wife marching towards us. She had a bizarre concerned look, the kind of
face you pull when you haven't yanked it into a
protect-yourself-and-your-pride dignity face yet, because you're still
trying to realize what you are seeing.
Not hanging around, I ducked into the underwater world I had just left
before being briefly treated like meat or foreplay for a necrophiliac.
I may as well have been a corpse for all the attention he paid to the
fact I am a cognitive being. Swimming hard and fast to the altered
reality of the friendly group, I grabbed my towel and headed for my
room.
I told Jo, and that night we hatched a plan. Figuring that no one
would blame him if we told, picturing ourselves as we had been every
night so far, dancing on bars and in windows in the early hours.
Out-drinking the Sheffield Wednesday lads, one of whom had thrown his
football shirt into the pool to Jo in front of everyone with the
command "Wash it for us then lass!" No, we wouldn't tell. I felt like
it was my fault, and everyday for the rest of our holiday, he would be
there, hated by us, loved by all. His popularity further alienated me
in the land of adolescent confusion and guilt.
By the pool the next day, the heat of the sun dulling and spacing the
sound of voices, wearing brave, casual smiles, we approached the
disgusting man on his lilo. As he lay on his back like a whale,
changing colour under his shades, I first told him how old I was
(fourteen) and how he was on his honeymoon. Then I told him how ugly he
was and what a small prick he had. Finally I told him if we had to see
him every remaining day of our holidays, his wife would be told the
facts to back up her unformed sinister instincts about what had
occurred between her husband and myself in the pool earlier that
morning.
All the while, my friend standing by me as back up, as loyally in the
dark as to the effectiveness of our plan as I was.
Shaky and exhilarated as we walked away from him, it was enough to
feel as we did, that we had stood up in that speech to all the
projected insecurities from the others and him onto our nubile selves.
But gloriously, that evening his new (and soon to be old we hoped) wife
explained that his stomach bug meant he wouldn't be coming out to play
that night. And sure enough neither was seen again for the rest of our
pissed up party every night holiday.
For the first time as a woman, I sensed the power I had in myself to
reclaim a situation and control its outcome. To not take on the illness
of violation, and the vulnerability to it in this life, as my own
disease, but the disease of the silly man on the lilo. Maybe he's
reading this?interesting thought.