by Randy Ross
I scramble back onto the board, stand, and grab the uphaul rope. A second Tadpole guy joins the first to watch.
I lift the sail a foot out of the water and rest for a second. A disc twinges in my back. My arms are getting tired. One of the Tadpole guys wades into the water toward the powerboat.
I yank the sail out of the water and pull it forward. The wind catches and I start moving. I give a thumbs-up. The Viva crowd disperses.
The next gust of wind blows me back in the drink. Submerged, shivering, and sneezing salt water out of my nose, I paddle my rig back to the beach.
“So much fun?” the Tadpole guys asks.
“Not so much.”
A gust sends sand ricocheting off my sunglasses.
During the ensuing week, the punishment continues.
Day Eins
I am the only American at Monsoon. It’s like being in a foreign film with bad subtitles.
Act 1, Breakfast
Me: I read that you rent mountain bikes for five euros a day.
Charlotte: Bike insurance?
Me: For what?
Charlotte: If someone take bike or bike break.
Me: Is there a lot of crime on the island?
Charlotte: Additional five euro for week.
Me: Can I take that as a “yes”?
Charlotte: With bike lock, seven euro more, plus deposit. More juice?
Day Zwei
Awake with vague feelings of isolation.
Act 1, Take 2: Breakfast
Though I sit in the same seat every meal, my table is always set for two. Today, Charlotte grumbles as she removes the extra setting. I am an inconvenience, an untouchable, because I have no dining partner and everyone else does.
Act 2: Lunch
Karl and his coppery girlfriend are now wearing matching Lynyrd Skynyrd T-shirts. She feeds him cold cuts while he massages her thigh. I try not to think of oxytocin, the feel-good hormone that is released when we’re fed or touched. Oxytocin—no relation to OxyContin—is what bonds mothers to babies, lovers to each other, and humans to all things warm and fuzzy. Oxytocin is the “ox” when someone signs a letter “oxoxox.” I am suffering from a severe ox deficiency.
Act 3: Rest of the Day
Wind hits Beaufort 6, about thirty miles per hour. Following a powerboat rescue, I’m given a 2.5-meter sail, a little larger than a baby blanket, and still spend the rest of the day submerged. At dinner, Karl offers to teach me to water start. He is wearing white Capri pants and clogs. I decline his generous offer.
Day Drei
Windsurf alone, eat alone, sleep alone.
Experience loneliness that would have broken Papillon.
Day Vier
Weather sunny, mood overcast. Mojito and Cyclonos: resort islands, off-season, no available women. I’ve bet my severance on a guidebook riddled with factual errors. I look for a mangy dog to feed, but don’t find one.
Day Fünf
More of the same. Starting to feel as if I’m shrinking, fading, becoming lighter, hollow. I need to connect to someone, find an anchor or I’m just going to drift away like a broken kite or a lost balloon.
Consult the guidebook’s “Things to Do on Cyclonos,” which recommends Viva’s Weekly Dance Party.
Call Viva to ask if I can attend.
“Nein.”
Go anyway.
German crowd, American hip-hop. Ouzo and lager. Guys without body hair, dancing girls on the bar. Ouzo and pilsner. Three casts, no bites, a too-friendly guy in a proboscis-style Speedo. Ouzo and ouzo. Fifty euros later, hate party, hate life, hate ouzo.
Day Sechs
No gym on island. Create a calendar. Hang on bathroom door. Cross off today. Only two days more to go on Cyclonos. Otherwise, ditto.
E-mail Pittman with a list of inaccuracies in his book. Receive an immediate response:
Dear Mr. Randolf,
Thank you for submitting “Fifteen Factual Errors in Your Piece-of-Shit Guidebook.” We appreciate the opportunity to consider your work for publication.
Next Year in Saigon!
—W. Pittman
That night Charlotte says, “In Greece, it is not proper to eat dinner alone.” She seats me with the two older women from breakfast.
The women are Swiss and probably in their sixties. We eat mezethes, Greek appetizers: sardines, squid, and octopus. We drink ouzo. We eat more unappetizing appetizers: frog legs and snails. One of the women excuses herself.
The remaining woman, the one who was probably a beauty in her day, moves her seat closer. She tells me I’m fit. She tells me about her three divorces and says I’m smart for not getting married. She says the magic words: “Don’t settle.” I move my seat closer.
She feeds me lamb sweetbreads, something I swore I’d never eat. Her elbow glances my chest. Is she hitting on me? I give her the once-over: Distressed skin stretched over a skull face. Bummer.
More ouzo, more weird food.
She says the Swiss are a very sexual people and don’t enter menopause until their late sixties. Once again, I give her the once-over: withering legs streaked spidery blue. Why couldn’t she be young, like Nadine?
She tells me she can yodel and is leaving the next morning. She invites me back to her room.
I awake the next morning with a mezethes hangover. I recall the older woman’s room, the couch, the knuckles of her neck, reaching under her blouse, a sick octopus in each hand, a hairy herring, me saying: “I really have to go, seafood allergies.” Her saying, “No worries.” Cool lady.
At breakfast, Charlotte seems unhappy with me. I’m unhappy with me: I just blew a chance to get laid. But Nadine was young and beautiful and made the first move. I’ve still got it. I’m not ready to settle.
Blog Entry, September 19
Somewhere on Cyclonos
Here in Greece, the partying never stops. Met a Russian blonde on the ferry. Dancing. Champagne. Making wishes and tossing pennies into the Mediterranean. Too bad she got off on Santorini or I might be married now.
Learned to water start like a pro.
Should have come for a month instead of a week.
Auf Wiedersehen,
—Burns
Today is Yom Kippur, a day for reflection. I reflect on the cruelty of the fates and my stunted spiritual development.
When I was eight, I developed a ritual designed to assure my future status as a Hall-of-Fame athlete:
1) Got into bed and swallowed three times to open private line to God.
2) Repeated the following prayer three times:
“Please make me the greatest baseball player who ever lived with the most RBIs, home runs, and highest batting average. Also the greatest football player who ever lived. I want to be a running back or a wide receiver, either way, most yards would be great, and if we can avoid any knee surgeries that would be good too. And the greatest basketball player who ever lived, overall points would be fine. You can give the most rebounds to someone else; I don’t want to be a chazzer. While you’re at it, can you please make sure my parents buy me that chameleon I want, you know the one that looks like a little monkey and has a tongue that can shoot out of its mouth to snag a cricket a foot away?”
3) Disconnected by swallowing three times.
My parents bought me the chameleon. But after three months, it went the way of all flesh. I then decided waiting twenty years to be inducted into the Hall of Fame was too daunting and abandoned the ritual to focus on other childhood projects, such as learning to smoke a cigar.
At thirty-five, I attempted to reconnect with my spirituality by donating time and money to a local temple. I volunteered ten hours a month and donated 5 percent of my salary, excluding stock market gains, real estate appreciation, 401k matching, and employee stock options. Three years of volunteering didn’t produce a single date. Faith has its limits.
Since then, there’s been little volunteering, praying, or temple-going, but I have developed an appreciation for the universe and the unseen myst
eries of life: Wi-Fi and compound interest, intuition and compulsion, the calming effects of a sleep blindfold, a Karen Carpenter song on a rainy Monday, the smell of greasy french fries coming from the Monsoon taverna.
Charlotte greets me with a worried look as I enter the dining room, perhaps because I skipped breakfast and lunch. I don’t mention Yom Kippur or that I’m supposed to be fasting. She puts her hand on my shoulder and guides me to my seat. My shoulder tingles from her touch. At this point, I’ll take my oxytocin any place I can get it.
The table has only one setting. I assume it’s because she’s being thoughtful and not because she thinks I’m hopeless.
I notice Karl and his girlfriend sitting in silence, hands in their respective laps. No massaging of thighs or kissy-face over the sauerbraten. She’s wearing glasses, no makeup, and a ripped T-shirt for the heavy-metal band Rammstein, Germany’s answer to Black Sabbath. He’s wearing a linen suit. Something must be up.
As I’m finishing my linzertorte, Karl comes over.
“Are you feeling much well?” he asks.
“Yes, danke.”
“Join us for a wine?”
I don’t like this guy. Every morning at the buffet, he asks what size sail I’ll be using. Then he spends the rest of the meal massaging his girlfriend’s snatch under my nose. Does he get off on humiliating me?
As I’m wishing I could say in German, “Hey malaka, leave me the fuck alone,” Charlotte carries a chair and a wine glass to the couple’s table. She removes their untouched meals. I am seated opposite the girlfriend, Sabine, who fills my wine glass.
“In Greece, it is not normal to eat alone,” Sabine says.
So I’ve heard.
Sabine’s English is accented but pretty good. It’s disconcerting that my lack of company has attracted so much attention.
“Actually I’m a travel writer on assignment.” I show her Pittman’s book. “The job involves a lot of solo travel, but I’ve gotten used to it. I’m heading to South Africa next and then Southeast Asia.”
Sabine smiles in approval and leans in closer to me: “Charlotte says you are from Boston. You like Aerosmith?”
We exchange the names of our favorite songs.
Sabine removes her glasses and strokes her ponytail. Karl picks at the wine label.
It turns out that Sabine once worked for Siemens in Boston. We talk about the Cars, the J. Geils Band, and other Boston groups.
She takes out a cigarette and offers me one. As we smoke, Karl waves at the smoke wafting in his face and mocks a cough. She smiles and fingers her ponytail.
“How is your windsurfing?” she asks.
“Ever heard of the song, ‘The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald’?” I ask.
“No.”
“How about the movie, The Perfect Storm?”
It takes a second to register, and then she laughs. Even without makeup, her skin is smooth, not a line on her face.
She touches my wrist and I feel a jolt of oxytocin. “I hate windsurfing,” Sabine says. She is stroking her ponytail again. I find myself stroking the back of my head and trying not to look at her perfect, caramel-colored thighs.
She’s flirting with me and Karl is glaring at both of us. Is he pissed off with me? Or her? Whose idea was this little party? Was this another of Charlotte’s attempts to improve my social life? Maybe Karl wants to break the tension between them by introducing Sabine to the one person at this resort who’s worse off than she is. Or there’s the long-shot option: Sabine agreed to go windsurfing if Karl would watch her bang another guy. I’m not in Boston anymore and all things are possible.
Karl pulls out a new iPhone. He swipes the screen a few times, and tilts the screen in my direction. “Tomorrow, the Beaufort 7.”
Sabine taps my arm again. “You like James Taylor?” she asks.
OK, I get it. They’re both using me. I’m nothing more than a prop in their little drama.
I turn to Karl. “I was thinking of getting an iPhone. How do you like it?” I worked for a computer magazine. I know how to bond with guys over gadgets.
He shows me the onscreen keyboard, the GPS, and the camera. Out of the corner of my eye, Sabine is picking at the wine label.
“How about if I take a picture of you two?” I ask. She’s not happy but obliges.
Then she excuses herself.
Karl and I agree to meet on the beach tomorrow. Us middle-aged malakas got to stick together.
At breakfast the next morning, the extra table setting is back. Wood slats in the taverna roof rustle ominously. I glance at Sabine and Karl: She’s massaging his thigh. They don’t acknowledge me.
A teenager comes over, removes my extra table setting with a flourish, and offers me juice.
“Where’s Charlotte?” I ask.
“She is feeling not so much well.”
The teenager closes the window near me. “Beaufort 7,” he says. “A great day, no?”
“A great day for a small-craft warning.”
I look out at the boulders, cliffs, and scree. No wonder this place is so desolate: Anything green was probably blown into the sea centuries ago.
I wander into the lobby to check my e-mail.
One from my mother:
Hi Sweetheart,
Your father and I are so glad you’re having a nice time. We just knew you would. Nothing new here. Don’t hurry home. Same old. Same old.
Love,
—Mom & Dad
One from Uncle Heshie:
Randall,
Love your crib.
One question: When does the maid come?
—HM
I don’t have a maid. Distressful imaginings: Uncle Heshie hosting wild parties. Merlot on the throw pillows, pesto on the tufted rugs, footprints on the ceiling.
One from Rachel:
Dearest All,
Arturo and I are having an open house . . . at our gorgeous, new apartment. That’s right we’re moving in together! Our new 50-inch flat panel will be hooked up so we can all watch the last game of the season and celebrate the Sox clinching the division.
Please RSVP so we know how much deep-fried cheesecake to order.
—A&R
I consider a snarky RSVP, but then think better of it.
And finally, one from Ricki:
Hey Burns,
Another bullshit blog from the world’s biggest sissy. Glad you had fun with the Russian blonde. Clearly, you’re still obsessed with other people’s hair because you don’t have any.
But instead of writing all that baloney, you might want to read up on the country you’re visiting. Some recent State Department headlines for Greece: “Avian flu outbreak,” “Strikes, Riots, and Grenade-Firing Terrorists,” “Arsonists Set 100 Fires in One Day.”
Didn’t your little travel bible mention any of this?
Also, wanted to share a funny story. I started talking to a BRUNETTE named Nickie at a party. She was describing the cheapest guy she ever dated. The guy put heel taps on all his shoes, even his flip-flops. He drove a ’91 Honda Civic with a tiny engine that sounded like an electric pencil sharpener. I said: Was his name Burns? We couldn’t stop laughing. Did you really keep a spreadsheet of all your girlfriends? Good luck finding someone to put up with all your crap.
Also, just saw your itinerary—next stop is South Africa, the world’s biggest shit show. You’re fucked my friend.
Best,
—RRRRRR
I stare at the screen until a bouncing bratwurst appears. Outside the window, windsurfers are being blown off their boards and others are quitting for the day. The sky is overcast. I feel a Beaufort 9 headache coming on.
Venezuela sucked. Greece sucks. And South Africa will probably suck more. Pittman is full of shit and I’m out $12K. Heshie is trashing my apartment. Ricki’s still Ricki, only nastier. Rachel’s paired off, no one else is writing me, and once Lenny hooks up, I’ll be the only member of the Chronic Single’s Club.
The Dark Place is beckoning.
/>
I swallow three times, put my hands on the keyboard, and pray for guidance. The bratwurst disappears, the computer screen illuminates, and I’m bathed in a white glow. A blank Word document appears before me. I stare at the perfect emptiness.
A college writing instructor once advised me: “Write the book you’d want to buy.”
I begin to type: Finding Someone to put up with Your Crap
I read it back. Then I delete it and type: The Loneliest Planet.
Not quite. I type: The Chronic Single’s Handbook
I roll the title around in my mouth: a little bitter, but it works.
The Chronic Single’s Handbook
Chapter One
Finding Your Match: The Five Romantic Personalities
1) Martyrs
•Feel everything intensely, especially love, rejection, and Red Sox playoff losses.
•Claim to know exactly what they want in a mate; say smug things like “I will never settle.”
•Spend most Saturday nights alone.
•Cry at crapola love stories like The Bridges of Madison County.
•Capable of great happiness when involved and great bitterness when single.
•Examples: Jackson Browne, Vincent van Gogh, Billie Joe McAllister.
•Favorite quote: “My heart is your piñata.”
2) Settlers
•Martyrs who marry suddenly because of an external event like a scary health problem, a milestone birthday, or an aging parent who wants to see them hooked up.
•Husbands who settle are often happy with this arrangement.
•Their wives often seek divorce after children leave for college.
•Examples: Too many to list.
•Favorite quote: “I’ll have the baked chicken, no skin, butter, salt, oil, or bread crumbs. And a glass of water with no ice.”
3) Mercenaries
•Approach love as if it were just another transaction, to-do item, or mission.
•Emotionally detached with flat, even moods.
•Tend to be content instead of happy.
•Examples: Ted Bundy, Dirty Harry, Angelina Jolie.
•Favorite quote: “Kill them all and let God sort them out.”