We eventually get our ass moving to go to a spot Davette recommends next to a beach bar called JuJu a bit north of us. The buses are bright yellow and really tiny. You flag them down, try to find a seat, and eventually the man on the bus will come by and take your money. The aisle is so narrow you can barely walk without turning sideways to squeeze through. All of them blast soca music and nobody looks like they give a damn. They also don't seem to give a damn about the couple of tourists sitting right next to them.
The beach is small, and well-serviced by this restaurant and the beach chair guy. We pay about $20 for us to have a couple of padded beach loungers and an umbrella. One guy comes by to peddle jewelry. I say no, and he coyly replies, "you know, there's another word you could have said instead!" And when we say no again, he politely tells us to have a nice day and moves on. There's not a lot of high-pressure touristy sales shit here, and it's delightfully refreshing.
The beach is filled with Brits. Lobster-colored, blonde Brits. I talk to everyone, and they are all pretty goddamn uptight. Two young men, probably about 18-20, dressed in what looked like very expensive beachwear, walk by us, each struggling to carry about 4 beers apiece. I say, "want me to take one of those off your hands?" Deadpan, one of them says "uh, no" and looks at me like I was out of my mind.
I mean, shit, he probably thought I was Mrs. Robinson.
The water is impeccably clean and fresh.
There's one of those huge round rafts that get dragged by a speedboat. Joanna really wants to go on one. I don't really care. I decide for $20 it's worth it, but $30 it's not. And we didn't have a a ton of cash on us. At some point, the guys come towards shore, and I send Joanna over to talk to them. She has the tits in our relationship; I figure it's gotta work for something. She screams back at me $25, and she successfully negotiates them down to $20.
Tits. Works every time.
His name is Derrick, and we tell him to come find us after we've eaten. He makes us promise we're not going anywhere.
We sit down at jujus and she tells us to order at the bar; make sure there's something we'd want to eat. I said "why wouldn't we want to eat something here?" And she gave me a strange look. We ordered some fish (they call it dolphin but it's not) and fries at the bar, and the woman who took our order really seemed none too pleased with us, or none too pleased with working. She even demanded we pay first, because lots of people run off without paying.
It was like that Denny's scandal, with the races revered. It didn't bother us... They must have had some bad experiences with people not paying. And the fish was delicious, so in the end that was all that mattered.
Derrick come back and sits on our chair and talks to us. He is so lovely. It starts to rain and he tells us we should wait it out, so we hang out with him for a while and he takes us out. We ask what the deal is with the British people. Evidently they are really uptight until they get drunk. And the family of the boy I fucked with is super rich... Mom is wearing a diamond tennis bracelet on the beach.
If you ever have an opportunity to ride on one of these things... It is way more fun than it has any right to be. You're attached by a string to a speed boat, you're grabbing on to the handles for dear life, while they drag you behind them and across the wake of the boat. When it's over, we're hysterical, and I say to Derrick and his partner Jamal, "man, you really know how to make a girl scream!"
They liked that. Maybe a little too much. Bajans men, we've found, are very complimentary and friendly, but when they find out you're not available, they immediately back off. "Does your man know how lucky he is?" Is a very nice thing to hear, even if I already known the answer is "yes." If you ever want a boost of confidence, Barbados is the place to go.
We go back home, and Davette has her friend Malcolm cook us some dinner. They keep asking us when we're going to go out, into town, but when you've got someone cooking for you, and the rum punch is flowing, and the company is so good, what's the point?
Trouble is, Davette is the best part of this trip. We don't want to leave her!
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