Five shirtless men surround a tiny, no-hipped woman, her breasts barely contained in her red string bikini. The men banter with her, dance with her, turning her around and around as though she’s their personal spinning top. If this were today’s world you would have the urge to run over, swath her in a beach towel, and spirit her away before the scenario devolves into something she will sublimate for years to come.
But it’s not today, it’s Club Med in the boys-will-be boys 1980s.
A mass of humanity, like a gleeful pack of poodles, crowds around the bar. The atmosphere is festive, people in various stages of inebriation and familiarity; a man sloshes beer from his plastic cup and tries to lay his head on your shoulder but you shrug out from under it, grossed out until his head pops up and you see that he resembles Rob Lowe.
“Sorry,” he says. When he grins, Rob Lowe disappears, but you watch him wander off and speculate that this is going to be a fun trip.
The young, spinning woman is giggling, basking in the attention, while other women, including you and Abby, watch in amusement and maybe a little envy; the five men are all tall and fit and muscular (except for one whose belly droops over his Hawaiian-print swim trunks). You think that fifteen or twenty years ago these guys were probably fraternity brothers organizing all the campus parties.
It’s your first day at Club Med and you and Abby are getting the lay of the land, sipping your fruity drinks, quietly commenting on the crowd, determining who’s attractive, who’s full of himself, who you might have a fling with. The thought is thrilling.
The next day is warm and cloudless, as if chosen from a Caribbean weather menu, and you put on your new hot-pink bikini and a floral-patterned visor. You spent countless hours searching for that suit in jarringly lit dressing rooms that cast unflattering shadows. You chose this one for its breast-enhancing ruffle and the extra tummy control.
Breakfast in the dining room has the ambience of a junior-high cafeteria; exuberant voices competing for attention, long tables with silver warming trays keeping food tepid over weak Sterno flames. You and Abby have coffee and fruit and then grab blue beach towels, thin as tissue, from the bin and head down to the white sand. There, already lounging on chaises configured like a wagon train settled for the night, are the five guys and their mascot, her shiny hair up in a high ponytail. Today’s string bikini is neon-yellow. It’s early yet to begin drinking (though it won’t be long before it’s not too early, somewhere) and so they’re reasonably subdued. She’s in the middle of the circle and hands her dark tanning oil (because it’s the ’80s and SPF isn’t a thing yet) to the man closest to her and turns over so he can spread it on her firm brown skin with his strong hands.
As you pass, one of the guys (the fat one), today in leopard-print swim trunks, says good morning. Abby stops to chat because she would be voted Miss Congeniality in a beauty pageant. You’re not keen on groups of strangers so you continue through the sand to two lounge chairs nearby and spread your towel on one, listening as Abby makes easy small talk and giggles like a fifteen-year- old.
Soon, she waves you over and introduces you; Sonny, the chubby one; Tony, Richard and Brad, who are all affable and good-looking, and then there’s Jay, to whom you’re immediately attracted, who’s charmingly scruffy, and who looks like Eric Clapton with an edge. You sense he’s the bad boy of the lot and, god help you, that’s always been your type.
They call the small woman Lotus Blossom, though her name is Malia. She’s from Hawaii and is thirty years old and is there by herself, and you think how fearless that is. You’re ten years older than that and you could never fathom coming to a place like this alone.
Sonny says this is their annual guys’ trip, that every year they go to a different Club Med.
Which do you like best? you ask.
They’re pretty much interchangeable, he says. The location’s the least important thing about these vacations.
What’s important?
Jay chuckles and says that there’s sun and surf and alcohol, and . . . he nods toward Malia here . . . women in string bikinis.
She laughs, a pleased-with-herself, melodious sound.
By cocktail hour that night Sonny has attached himself to you. He has a wide, friendly face and an engaging, down-to-earth manner. He’s not exactly fat, and the belly that slumps over his waistband during the day, is covered now by a Hawaiian shirt. After dinner the two of you walk along the pier and chat. Soon he pulls you to him and kisses you. You’re not attracted to him in that way and he’s a sloppy kisser (he’s quite drunk by this time) but whatever, he’s sweet. When he gets more ardent, though, and says, let’s go somewhere quiet, you say no thanks. He grabs your hand and pulls it to his crotch and you feel his hardness and he says, well, what are we going to do with this? and you say, you’re going to have to take care of that by yourself. He laughs good-naturedly.
The next day you and Abby and a Frenchman she met yesterday—she’s a sucker for foreign accents—and the gang of five and Malia meet at the beach and go snorkeling as a group, and later eat dinner together at a large round table with a blue-and-white striped tablecloth. Somehow, you’ve ended up sitting between Sonny and Jay. Jay is unnervingly attentive, making sweat trickle between your breasts. When dinner is over, he asks if you want to take a walk on the beach and your heart thumps against your rib cage as though it’s trying to escape.
The warm night air is so heavy it feels like flannel draped on your shoulders. Stars dot the sky, hundreds of thousands more than you ever see in Chicago. The sand is cool and damp, and the surf splashes your legs, salting them with the fine grains, your sandals dangle off your fingers. You’re a good distance away, but you can still hear the revelry from the drunken throngs hanging out under the pavilion where bartenders pour tumblers full of less-than-premium liquor.
Jay tells you about his life in Philadelphia where he’s a salesman and you’re delighted at the coincidence because you’re also in sales. He tells you he’s a health freak. Me too! you say (neither of you ate that crap off the buffet, sticking instead to brown rice and steamed vegetables). He says he works out every day, and you tell him you’ve finished six marathons. You have a runner’s body, he says, and you flush at the appreciation on his face.
He tells you he has a girlfriend. This newsflash is disconcerting. He says they’ve lived together for eight years and you are nonplussed. He doesn’t seem like someone in a relationship, but you play it cool and admire his honesty because really, he didn’t have to say anything about her; how would you know?
How does she feel about these vacations? you ask. Does she take her own trips with her girlfriends and meet men?
He says no, she never takes a vacation without me. She doesn’t care that I do, though. We have an understanding.
That’s the first lie he’s told you, you think.
You must meet a lot of women, you say, and he tells you he does. Lots. He says that sometimes he asks if he can take naked pictures of them and mostly they say yes. Pretty graphic ones on occasion, he says.
You’re appalled. Why would they do that? you ask.
That’s the question, he says, and smiles at you in a conspiratorial way and says the first rule of sales is if you don’t ask for the order you won’t get the sale.
Later, when you think about this red flag he brandished in front of you, a flag the size of Texas, it is unimaginable that you didn’t run as fast and as far as you could from this man who cheats on his girlfriend and demeans women by taking pornographic pictures of them.
But now he takes your hand as the waves lap at your ankles. You walk for a mile or more, his warm fingers gently cradling yours. He tells you you look beautiful with the moonlight on your face and you think, of course, this is great lighting for someone my age, but you feel a golden glow wafting around you. He drapes an arm across your sun-scorched shoulder and pulls you into him and holds you for a long moment and kisses the top of your head. You’ve never really understood the definition of swooning. Now you do.
On the way back, when you’re close to the resort he indicates a stone bench and says, let’s sit for a while, and you do, and he puts a cool hand on your warm cheek and strokes it in a breathtakingly gentle way, and kisses your lips. He kisses your throat and the spot under your ear where your pulse beats; he kisses you tenderly on your eyes, and then he returns to your lips and after a while he asks if the two of you should go back to your room and you say that’s probably not a good idea, even though you think it’s a splendid one, but you don’t want to appear easy. He says he’ll walk you back to your room, and of course when you get there you continue kissing at the door. You drop your sandals and wrap your arms around his neck and his lips are satiny and his tongue is exploring your mouth in a way that makes your leg muscles feel frail. You run your fingers through his hair and suck at his lower lip, hoping he’ll dream about this until tomorrow. But then he takes your key out of your hand and opens your door, saying he wants to see what your room is like.
It is empty. Abby must still be with her Frenchman. The beds have been turned down for the night and a single white lily adorns each pillowcase. A small night-light casts a feeble glow from the desk.
Jay sits on one of the beds and pats the space beside him and when you sit he tells you he won’t do anything you don’t want him to do and you think, how many times have I heard that?
You kiss some more but now his passion seems restrained. You’re grudgingly grateful that he’s being considerate of you, maybe waiting for you to make the first real move, but you won’t because it has begun to feel as though he’s no longer into you, which is disappointing. You want to resurrect the feeling you had on the beach when he took your hand, when he gently put his arm around you. You want more of those kisses on your neck and eyes. And maybe on your breasts.
Are you impressed with my self-control? he asks, and you admit you find it a little unsettling. How’s that? he says and you tell him maybe you misjudged his interest. What you don’t say is that you’re someone who needs to be wooed; you’re old-fashioned that way.
His finger grazes your arm, up and down, delicately, almost tickling but not quite and it triggers sensation in other, lower regions of your body.
Ah, he says, so it’s a double-edged sword, is it? He laughs and says, no pun intended, and you assume his penis is the sword in this metaphor, though you’re pretty sure his is lying flaccid and dormant. When you don’t respond he tells you not to mistake his self-control for disinterest, that he is most definitely interested. He uses that phrase, most definitely, and you feel sparks of your crush drizzling down on you.
He looks into your eyes as though searching for something deep within them, and you wonder if now’s the time to gauge his interest and your hand falls over his crotch and you see that he is, indeed, most definitely interested, and you think, well, what the fuck, I’m on holiday.
Soon he has pulled your strappy lemon-yellow sundress over your head and you are nearly naked because you aren’t wearing a bra and you bask in his admiration and then he takes a nipple in his mouth. Nice, he murmurs. He pulls off his Rolling Stones T-shirt and pushes you gently back onto the faded floral-print, polyester-blend bedspread and lays on top of you, his solid, hairless chest on yours. There’s a thin layer of sweat between you now and your bodies make sucking sounds as you move, and moans come from your throat and he’s got his tongue in your ear and then he’s whispering how good you feel and how beautiful your body is and his dick is hard now, against your thigh and you’re about ready to fling him off, rip off your lavender lace thong and clamber on top of him when you hear a clicking sound at the door and it opens and you hear Abby saying, oh my! I guess I should have recognized the shoes as the international signal.
And from then on that’s what the shoes become, the three dimensional Do Not Disturb sign. Once in a while it’s Abby’s sandals outside the door but mostly it’s yours. And Jay’s. You and Jay, amazingly, are a thing.
The next day Abby asks, is there a future here? When you tell her about the girlfriend, a look of disapproval darts across her face. Look around, she says, this place is swarming with cute guys, maybe some who are looking for a relationship. Why waste your time on someone unavailable?
You wave that away. It’s vacation, you say.
Jay and his buddies are leaving in four days, but when you’re with him you feel that it can’t possibly end. The part of your brain that functions in the real world tells you to take it easy here, don’t be stupid. But he is so laser focused on you that you cannot believe he’s not feeling the same. You cannot believe that he has chosen you, out of the hundreds of women here at Club Med, even over Abby, who often sucks up all the available attention.
Women continually flirt with Jay, trying to seize his attention away from you but he is oblivious, and they regard you with wistful admiration. It feels as though something delicate has bloomed. Now you’re the one the gang of five surrounds and fawns over, Lotus Blossom having moved on, but you feel that Sonny and Tony and Richard and Brad are more respectful to you than they ever were with her, reverential almost, and you know it’s because they see you as something serious, not just someone who’s come to Club Med to find some action. You’re Jay’s girl.
While Abby is off falling in love with her snorkeling instructor or a personal trainer from New Jersey, you fantasize that Jay has fallen in love with you and that he will leave his girlfriend of eight years and, okay, you love Chicago and can’t imagine leaving your condo by the lake and your friends and your fabulous job but you’ve heard Philadelphia is a nice place to live. You don’t tell Abby any of this, but your fantasy includes an historic apartment building-turned-condos in the heart of the city close to the Liberty Bell, with crown molding and original hardwood floors where you and Jay live happily ever after.
Each morning Jay knocks on your door and you grab your floppy hat and your beach bag because you’re always ready to go, your body having been on high alert all night. You have breakfast together each morning. With tacit agreement you snub the cheesy eggs and French toast and plump sausages and crispy bacon, and instead choose fruit and yogurt and raw almonds, and then you go down to the sugary-sand beach where you spread the large, thick, sherbet-colored towels he has somehow scored. He coats your skin with slippery lotion, his hands feeling charged, and sometimes then, you both lie on your towel and he tents his own towel over the two of you and, with people all around giggling and shouting at each other, playing volleyball and building elaborate sand castles, he slides his dick into the slickness of you and moves slowly, so slowly that no one would ever notice, though that is not the time you would care because you’re not thinking about anyone or anything else at that moment, you’re thinking about how hard his dick is and how you’re going to come, right here on the sand, under the glaring sun with the briny smell of the ocean in the air.
Afterwards, he pulls up your suit bottom and throws off the towel, voila! and pulls you up and runs with you to the frothy water, hand in hand, and as the waves spill over you, urging you toward shore, he looks at you with longing, even though he’s just made love to you, and you feel currents of emotion radiating off of him like vapor.
All these years later you think how lovely the memory would be if the story ended there, or maybe in just a few more days when you and Jay say goodbye and his eyes fill with regret at having to leave you, and you smile and say, it’s been fun. All these years later you would savor the memory of his dark, depthless eyes and his electric fingers and making love on the sand.
But you can’t stop thinking about him after you’ve gotten home and you’ve resumed your slightly lonely life, because your last boyfriend doesn’t call anymore and your coworker’s son isn’t your type. You’re wistful to feel the way you felt with Jay and you wonder if he’s your soul mate and so you find a company in your industry that you can call on in the Philadelphia area. You reach out to Sonny because you and he had exchanged US mail addresses (because it’s before cell phones and email and the Internet, facts that now you are supremely grateful for). You write a letter to Jay and seal it in an envelope and put that envelope inside another envelope and address that one to Sonny to give to Jay, because of course you can’t send it directly. There’s that girlfriend.
It takes a bit over a week to finalize the details, but Jay will meet you at your hotel at five on the Wednesday of your trip. You are barely able to contain your anticipation.
When Abby finds out you’re going to Philadelphia, she blinks and says isn’t that where Jay was from? Oh! you say, I guess it is, as though it hadn’t occurred to you.
I hope you’re not going to see him, she says.
It’s a business trip, you say.
You wear a taupe-colored suit with shoulder pads and a skirt that’s several inches above your knees, with a cream-colored lace camisole and no bra, and when Jay comes up to your room he’s as handsome as you remember and you feel a radiant heat rising from the pit of your stomach. He’s no longer tan but his beard is a little longer, and he’s wearing a suit and a loosened tie. He puts his briefcase on the floor and pulls you into his arms, and you feel a sense of destiny and belonging.
He kisses you, not on your lips, but on your neck and your chest above your camisole, and he starts sliding your jacket down your shoulders but you say, oh, I thought we’d have dinner together. He hesitates for the briefest moment. I’ve got dinner plans later, he says, but I’ll have a drink while you eat. Your mood stumbles a little. You thought he would be eager to spend time with you, to catch up. You thought he would want to take you to one of Philly’s trendy new bistros. Instead he takes you to the hotel restaurant, dark wood, green leather upholstery, like a million other hotel restaurants, empty except for a businessman at the bar in a pin-striped suit, sipping a martini. The hostess seats you in a booth near the kitchen and you’re not hungry now but you order anyway, parmesan-crusted white fish which comes with French fries which you push aside, and you both have a glass of Chardonnay. When you’ve eaten about half the fish and Jay has astonishingly consumed most of the greasy fries, the bill comes and he says, you can expense that, right?
Up in your room he tells you to take off your clothes. Let me see that beautiful body, he says, and you unbutton your jacket and drop it on the sofa. You know your nipples are visible in the lace camisole. While you pull it over your head, he reaches into his briefcase and takes out a Polaroid camera.
Okay? he says, and smiles in that tender way you remember from Club Med.
You feel something close to panic. You want to say no, the one syllable that would change everything, but you don’t want to alter the impression he has of you as the open-minded, carefree girl from Club Med. He admired that girl. Besides, you are the one who went to such pains to initiate this. You put the whole scenario into play.
He is the Fellini of pornography, directing you how to pose: cup your breasts, he’s says, lick your lips, spread your legs. And you do. You remember walking on the beach when he told you about those other women who said yes to this. You disdained those women. Why would anyone do that? you asked then.
As the years pass, you try your best to obliterate this from your memory. At some point you will stop obsessing about who you were then, and how you could have let this happen. You will sublimate this incident for years to come, only to think about it on the rare occasion, and it will never fail to summon the intolerable shame. You never speak of the Club Med trip again, not even with Abby, who remains your close friend. She will never know the rest of this story.
While the Polaroids are developing into their full glory on the dresser, Jay sits on the bed and opens his pants and pulls out his dick and asks you to suck him, and so you kneel and take him in your mouth. You didn’t even know he liked this, it’s not something you did together at Club Med. It’s not your thing but you do it anyway because the momentum is unstoppable, and his hand is on the back of your head, pulling it toward him and he says, oh yeah, and moans a little and then, more quickly than you could possibly imagine, he comes in your mouth and it’s slippery and disgusting and you wish you could spit it out but you can’t because it’s in the back of your throat and you think you’re going to gag but you force yourself to swallow. All you want now is for him to get the fuck out of your hotel room so you can gargle with the mouthwash in the miniature bottle in the bathroom, next to the tiny shampoo and conditioner. Or even better, make yourself throw up, and then scrub yourself in the shower.
You don’t even have to ask him to go; he is already zipping his trousers and putting on his jacket.
He leaves two of the photos on the desk for you, now in full-color clarity, and puts the others in his briefcase with the camera.
Nice to see you, he says.
Samantha Hoffman is a writer, editor, personal assistant, private chef, runner (8-time marathoner), film and theatre buff, traveler . . . V.P. of the Chicago Writers Association, Executive Director of Let’s Just Write! An Uncommon Writers Conference. She is the author of What More Could You Wish For (St. Martin’s Press). Her stories have appeared in Chicken Soup for the Dieter’s Soul, The Corner Magazine in London, and numerous other print and online publications.