I am generally a positive person and I hesitate to complain about things, especially when I’m on vacation in tropical paradise. When you put good vibes out, good things happen. However, I do realize that without bad, good wouldn’t exist. Is anything awesome if everything’s awesome? Would we enjoy the sunny days so much if we never had to endure the cold, rainy ones? Wow, this has become a really long setup to a complaint, huh? Well, I promised myself I’d blog about the entire trip, and this is a part of it too. This is a story about the ‘cold, rainy day’ that I endure in order to enjoy the rest of the trip even more.
The one blight on this trip (aside from my horrific sunburn which has entered the stage of blistering and peeling that leaves me reminiscent of a leper) has been Mark, a guy staying here in the same resort as my friends and me. Mark’s age is hard to determine because of his extreme tan, but I’d say he’s around 50. He is here vacationing with his son, who is Swedish, and Mark is purportedly from California, and spends half of every year in Sweden. Mark has a deep, deep tan, and a swarthy body similar to Arnold Schwarzenegger. Unfortunately, I’m talking Arnold now, not in his Pumping Iron heyday. And, also unfortunately, Mark wears a Speedo like Arnold does. Mark has white-blonde hair that curls around his ears. But enough about his appearance, that’s hardly what makes him detestable.
Mark tells tall tales, incessantly, and pretty much every one of them involves him having sex with someone or more than one someone. He’s extremely inappropriate, slow-talking, often drunk, and clearly a pathological liar (today he told me he has only been photographed 3 times in his entire life). And he’s unavoidable. Our resort is small, with the cafe and pool in the courtyard area, and my door opens straight up to the area where the tables are. So if he’s out there, I cannot leave my room without being spotted and spoken to. I also cannot enjoy being out by the pool or eating at the cafe without worrying about his imminent appearance. And Boracay is a very small world, so I can’t even avoid him on the beach.
Today at sunset, I was lying on the beach reading and had my headphones on - two big indicators that I want to be left alone, right? He came and sat down next to me (gigantic ugh moment), wanting to take pictures of the sunset. By this point, any time I see him I speak in terse, non-leading sentences and look for the quickest escape route. He asked what The Unbearable Lightness of Being is about (I have come to realize I hate this question, because I am almost always reading something that is too complex to explain briefly, and usually it means I’ve been interrupted in my reading), and I said it was a love story. What’s funny is, with almost anyone else, I would never describe anything I’m reading as simply “a love story” for fear of being pegged as a shallow, Danielle Steel fan. I want people to know that I read ‘smart-people books’. I wear my badge of intelligence (a little too) proudly. And the book could hardly be described as merely “a love story” but of course I was trying to get rid of him. His response? “I don’t believe in love. Do you believe in love?”
Geez. How can you answer that succinctly? But I tried. I answered “I don’t know, I guess I’m too young to have it figured out yet.” And then he asked if I was interested in older men. How do you say to someone older than your dad, ‘yes, I am interested in older men, but not necessarily men who have children older than I am’? So I just said ‘no’. I wasn’t about to go down that road with him. He then said it was because I wasn’t Russian, because Russian girls know that older men can teach them things, but Texas girls only want dumb, young guys who can’t teach them anything. At this point I was picking up my things to go, and I just said, “Yeah, I guess so. I’m going to dinner now.” And walked away to him remarking something along the lines of “Go to dinner with your young, stupid guys.”
Wow. The nerve. I’m not even mad, just amazed that this person has managed to A) live this long behaving in this manner and B) be financially successful enough to be on vacation here. Obviously he’s been on vacation for quite some time, and I have to believe the Sweden story because he told that one in front of his son to me and my other Swedish friends, who then spoke in Swedish with the son, so I consider that a confirmation of at least that one point. But who would hire this guy? Better yet, who would procreate with this guy? At least one stupid chick in Sweden I guess. Ugh.
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