I’m not much of a drinker. I like the idea of drinking more than the actual drinking. And way more than the aftermath.
I’ll pause here while my friends from high school with whom I traveled through Europe and my friend A. in Missoula laugh their collective asses off all the while going, “Yeah, no shit,” and recalling all the times I wussed out after half a beer. Go ahead…drunkards.
Tonight was our last night at Staniel Cay. I’m assuming you’ve all booked your trips by now. If you haven’t, you should. On second thought. Don’t. Unless you’re an exceptionally cool person and won’t junk it up. What am I saying, of course you’re an exceptionally cool person or else you wouldn’t be reading this. Just don’t tell any of your weird friends, deal?
We’re leaving tomorrow, so tonight (and also possibly last night and the night before and maybe also the night before that, but that was just practice), we spent some time at the bar.
Carl, one of the bartenders, makes a kick ass pina colada. So does the other bartender, David, but he wasn’t working tonight, so tonight Carl gets the props.
The assumption is that you’re going to go wandering all over hell and gone with your drink so you get it in a plastic cup. And by “hell and gone” I mean back to your yacht if you have one or out on the dock to look at people’s yachts if you don’t or just around on the rocky pier or on the deck or just I don’t know somewhere plus who the hell wants to wash all those dishes?
This is what happens when I drink:
At this stage, I’m just all excited because I’m going to get my happy pina colada and it’s going to be all cold and full of rum and coconut stuff and whatever else goes into one of these. Frankly, I think it’s just sweetened coconut stuff, rum, ice, and more rum. And a straw. And maybe a little more rum. Carl is good to me.
Right here, when a normal person has already finished two beers, I’m starting to do that thing when you turn your whole head to look at something off to the side instead of just your eyes, a clear sign that I’m a getting a little buzz on. I’m also suddenly fascinated by the fact that every single woman in the joint, including the geriatrics who came in on the Carpe Diem out of Coral Gables, seem to be trying to touch Carl at every opportunity. There are a number of people who have second homes on the island who eat their meals pretty regularly at the yacht club and use the bar pretty often as well. It appears to be lady’s night tonight and the women are totally Carled Up. Every so often Carl looks over at us with a look in his eyes that either says, “What can I say, the ladies, they love me!” or “Holy Jesus, Help ME!” I can’t tell.
Next we have the stage I like to call: Exposing my lady bits to the guy next to me, because that’s what I’m pretty sure I did. I slurped down the next quarter of the pina colada and decided I needed to hoist my leg onto the bar to show my husband JUST HOW SEVERE my sun poisoning had become – and if you see me over the next few days and wonder why I’m bumpy, that’s why, try not to stare, I’m Irish and fair skinned and this island I’m on is heaven on earth but also about four and half inches to the left of the SUN. In doing so I’m about 90% sure I gave the dude next to us a fairly clear view up my dress. Fortunately, at this point in the evening, I no longer give a hoot and instead think this is just about the funniest thing ever, at least since yesterday when I read about Chelsea Handler thinking she’d accidentally given birth when actually she’d just gone home and had sex with a midget.
And when my husband hears the slurping sound of me chasing the dregs of coconut and rum flavored ice around the bottom of the plastic cup with my straw, he knows that things could get messy very fast. He managed to hustle his giggling and stumbling wife out of there before she told Carl her theory about how every woman in the place wanted a piece of him – which I totally was about to do – and before she could hop up on the bar and shake it to Red, Red Wine thereby giving everybody else in the place a nice upskirt view. Dignity intact…mostly.
Now if I could get this room to stop spinning, I’d start to pack for the return trip home.
