Whoooooooo Hooooooo!
Yeah!
Aaaaaahhhhhhhhhh!
Whoooooooooo!!!
Screams reverberated around us. The sounds bounced from one cliff to the next like a psychotic Ping-Pong ball until it felt like the screams were coming from above, behind, between and in front of us. It wasn’t a pleasant sensation at all and I jumped. It was the last thing I’d expected to hear and it shattered, I mean obliterated, destroyed and vaporised, our happy bubble.
What the fuuuuucckkkkk?
You’ve got to be kidding, right? This had to be some kind of big, fat cruel prank. This wasn’t happening, surely this wasn’t happening? Our lips had been mere millimetres away, and now, in less that a few seconds, his lips were standing at least five feet from me. Damien stared towards the tunnel; the screams grew louder and the roaring engines were coming closer.
I’d suspected it a few times in the last few days, and now I was certain of it; recently it had started to feel like something was controlling my life, turning it into a farce, a comedy of the absurd for someone else’s amusement. Maybe that bitch Karma was yanking my strings like a floppy, wooden puppet and making me dance to her twisted little tune. Or maybe I was stuck inside a movie and the writer and director were having a big fat chuckle as they manipulated me like a pawn around the board, or maybe none of this was real and I was actually passed out somewhere thanks to my brother's little white pills. Or what if I was really a character in a book and some evil wench writer (this could only be the handiwork of a deranged woman) was typing away on her Mac, smirking to herself as she toyed with me. I hated her!
The boat finally burst into sight, sending white rippling waves out in every direction as it sped towards us. I could see four people on board, and judging by all the ‘whooping’ and ‘woohooing’, they were all in party spirits. And then... hang on... suddenly Damien jumped and sprinted across the beach.
Why? Why was he waving and shouting? Why? Why?
And then I looked closer and my heart not only dropped, but it climbed out of my body, jumped into the lake, and sank to the bottom to sleep with the fish. Jumping -- no, springing gracefully like a baby Gazelle in a tiny bikini -- was hipster chick. I pressed pause in my head and she stayed suspended in mid-air. I looked closely at her. She was smiling, she was springing with open arms, she was excited and she was about three sizes smaller than me. I mentally pressed play again and she went pirouetting onto the beach and into Damien’s arms, the arms that I’d just been in! My arms! Not hers.
They hugged. It was gut wrenching.
He spun her around in the air. It was heat breaking.
They tripped and collapsed onto the sand. It was nauseating.
Suddenly I really hoped there would be human sacrifice tonight.
I was glaring at them so intently that I hadn’t even noticed the guy who’d gotten off the boat and started walking towards me.
When my mother gets sent a play, before even reading it, she goes through the character descriptions. These are short, concise tit-bits that give you an exact image and understanding of the character. And if the guy walking towards me was a character in one of my mother’s plays, this is what it would say….
Name: Jeremy “Jerry” Matthews
Age: 29
Height: Six foot two inches
Weight: 90 kg of pure hard rippling muscle.
Hair: Blonde and shiny
Eyes: Crystal blue and dreamy
Characteristics: Jeremy is a jock; he was the most popular guy at school. He is a successful architect who runs his own company. They have just won a contract to build an enormous shopping centre. He is wealthy and likes the finer things in life. Staying healthy and working out are his passions, he recently came third in the Mr South Africa Fitness Competition. When he’s not working out, he loves cooking, spending time with orphans, rescuing stray kittens, helping the elderly, reading to the blind and feeding the homeless. He’s also incredibly well endowed, and is a very giving lover.
Flash back to three days ago: if I’d seen this guy walk through the door, I would have melted. Dissolved into a puddle and looked up at him with puppy-dog eyes, but now, I wouldn’t have noticed him if he took all his clothes off and did flick flacks in front of me so that his willy flapped in my face- no matter how big it was.
There was only one person in the world I wanted, and he was frolicking on the beach with Hipster Barbie.
"Hey, I’m Jerry.” Suddenly he was in front of me.
“Huh? Oh…yeah, yeah…Lilly, whatever.” I sounded like a real bitch, but I didn’t care.
When Damien and slutty-slut-slut finally emerged from their dry humping session, Damien dragged her across to me and I had a sneaking suspicion I was not going to cope with the encounter very well.
“Hey!” She was running towards me, “You must be Lilly.”
I was thrown.
She hugged me.
Why?
“Uh…how do you know?”
“Damien hasn’t stopped telling me about you. I basically get a Whatsapp message every five minutes.”
“Really?” I perked up a bit and looked to Damien, he was blushing and moving his toes around in the sand.
“Yip. He’s been going on like a stuck record, besides, you’re also pretty famous.”
“Famous?”
Suddenly Damien elbowed her in the ribs and 'ssshhhh'd' her.
“What’s going on?” I asked suspiciously.
“You haven’t seen the picture?” Strange slutty girl asked with genuine surprise.
“Jess,” Damien hissed under his breath at her.
“What picture?” I demanded.
“Sorry, I didn’t know you hadn’t seen it…” the Jess character said to me.
Now I was worried, something was definitely going on and I didn’t like the sound of it.
“Damien, what’s going on?”
Damien reached for his phone, pressed a few buttons then held it up to me.
Boiling rage rose up instantly, “You took a photo of me on the plane in my pyjamas, with my hair and that, that…when I was looking so terrible and you sent it to her?”
Damien jumped in quickly to correct me, “No! I would never. But someone did, and it’s kind of gone viral.”
My eyes widened in shock, “What do you mean, viral?”
Damien and Jess exchanged another look, it was one of those loaded looks that not only contained subtext, but a whole thousand page novel and then some.
“Guys…” I just knew something bad was going on.
“Well, you know how there was that picture of Angelina Jolie’s leg and everyone was downloading it and sharing it and then photoshopping it and putting it on statues like the Venus de Milo and stuff?”
“Yes…” I said tentatively.
“Well it’s kind of like that,” Damien said as gently as possible.
“I don’t understand. My leg is on the Venus de Milo?"
"No, not your leg." A quick look passed between Jess and Damien.
"You’re making no sense!” I grabbed his phone angrily and started flipping through the pictures.
And there I was. In my “Spooning leads to Forking” pjs with my massive bird's nest of a hair-do, my black stained mascara cheeks and lipstick smudged face standing next to Shrek, and there I was with my face on the body of a clown, on various Renaissance statues and a few famous paintings, on the body of the Joker and pasted onto Miley Cyrus’ Twerking half-naked body.
I gasped.
I was an Internet meme. I was everywhere. I was viral, like that kid that bit the other kids finger and the angry hamster, and I know I should have been totally mortified, but I was still too focused on Damien’s plus one.
I shrugged.
“Oh well. What can you do?”
“That’s the spirit!” Little Miss so-and-so smiled and hugged me again.
Who was this chick and why was she hugging me?
“Lilly, this is my best friend Jess.” Damien finally said.
“So nice to finally meet you.” She was smiling at me again, “Oh, and this is my girlfriend, Sharon,” she said pulling another hot hipster chick towards her.
Now, it took my brain a while to compute the information; Sharon was Jess’ girlfriend, they were a couple, so that meant that SHE WAS A LESBIAN. I’d never been so happy to meet someone in my entire life, I threw my arms around her and hugged her way too hard before moving to Sharon with the same enthusiasm and then declared that I was "delighted, simply delighted, ecstatic, in fact, to meet them".
This seemed to make Damien happy and he beamed at us.
“Oh…” Jess piped up again, “And this is Sharon’s brother Jerry and his friend Chris.”
The introductions were finally over, but I still hadn’t gotten my kiss. There was a lot of chatter, some laughter, some general catching up and some more hugging while Damien helped the lesbians! yay! get their bags out of the boat.
I watched Damien intently, like a lioness might watch her prey before pouncing and biting off it’s head, but out of the corner of my eye I could see Jerry inching closer. And then he started trying to make conversation with me. So in between my adoring Damien stares, I grunted a few words here and there; "Uh-huh, Mmmm, Interesting, Great, I see." There was nothing wrong with him. In fact, he seemed polite, and nice and interesting. Well, at least that’s what I would have thought a few days ago, but not now.
"Hahahaha, that's so true Lilly!" Jerry suddenly burst out laughing and playfully hit me on the arm. Huh? I must have said something funny to him, but what?
The laughter obviously caught Damien's attention, because he turned around and glared at us with a rather strange look. In one swift movement he was off the boat and making a speedy approach. And then seconds later he was at my side, arm around my shoulders, pulling me closer and eyeing Jerry. And then it became awkward. Jerry took a man-sized step back.
“Oh, sorry dude. I didn’t know you guys were together.”
Automatically, without even thinking about it, I quickly replied, “Oh, no were not..."
But Damien cut me off, “Not together…Yet!” He pulled me even closer, and those were the best words I’d ever heard spoken.
Jerry looked genuinely confused, “Geez, sorry, I just assumed, cos you guys look so different, and… that was stupid of me…sorry!"
Damien smiled and held out his hand in truce, “No worries at all.”
But Jerry was right about one thing; Damien and I did look different. We came from conflicting sides of the spectrum; I was candy-floss, he was liquorice, I was shiny and he was matte, I was romantic movies and he was horrors, I was Rihanna and he was Depress Mode, I was the latest fashions, he was second-hand grunge, I was clean cut and he was very, very jagged.
But despite that, he pulled me closer and put his mouth to my ear.
“I want to kiss you so badly.”
I melted.
“So kiss me.” I’d never been so brazen before.
“If I kiss you, I’m not going to be able to stop there, and I don’t think we want an audience, do we?”
I liquefied. My body turned to unstable, watery jelly and my legs shook. I could feel his lips touching my ear.
“You’re so fucking beautiful, Lilly.”
I hadn’t thought beyond kissing Damien; but now I was. Suddenly I started having these thoughts... about sex. Hot, naked, sweaty, porn-star sex.
What would it be like to sleep with him? To lose my virginity to him?
Would it be fast and furious and -- like those guys in the club said -- kinky, dirty and full of spanking? Or would it be gentle? I’d saved myself for so long, for marriage and Michael, was I prepared to just give it away to some guy I’d only known for a few days?
I looked at Damien.
And the answer was a loud, resounding YES! (Capital letters)
I wanted to have sex with him, fuck him, make love to him, in whatever way, shape and form I could. (OMG, I couldn't believe I was even thinking these thoughts. What had happened to me?)
I was desperate to.
I needed to.
And it felt right.
It also didn’t feel like it was coming from an impulsive, mad place that was reeling in shock and in rebound mode, desperately seeking out a male to fill the hole. And I mean that in the purely figurative sense.
I was floating on cloud nine, nothing could touch me. I was in a Damien daze and it was so intense I barely noticed that I’d climbed a rickety string ladder up a cliff face, or had waded through waist-high water and hiked through a dense -- spidery -- jungle. All I was aware of was Damien, and the intense looks that were flying between us. Every now and then he would come up behind me and wrap an arm around my waist. He would hold my hand, he would stroke my back and at one stage he came up behind me and whispered, “Jesus, you are so fucking sexy it’s killing me.”
And then finally Jess announced that we’d arrived at the last hurdle. We were standing in the middle a clearing in the jungle, and in front of us was a small crystal-clear lake. Like the others we’d seen, it was completely surrounded by high cliffs, but looking around, I saw no string ladders or steps anywhere. Jess bent down and began feeling the ground around her, until she found a rope and pulled it. A trap door of sorts opened up and I burst out laughing.
Everyone turned and looked at me.
“Seriously, are we in ‘Lost’? Is the island going to start spinning and going back in time and am I going to see black smoke coming out of the jungle?” This whole thing was ridiculous, ‘mysterious party’ was an understatement. Everyone laughed with me and agreed that it was all indeed a little “Lost”, but hopefully without the unwatchable final season.
“Okay, so the map says we can leave all our bags and electronics here and just take our essentials."
“Leave our phones here. Why are we doing this?”
“Well…" Jess said, looking at her phone again, “It says; 'Swim across the lake to the white cliff directly in front of you. Look for an arrow carved into the rock, take a deep breath and you’ll find a tunnel under the rock. Make sure it’s a deep breath because it’s quite a long tunnel. There’s an air pocket half way where you can take another breath, and then swim the rest of the way. See you guys soon.'”
“Um…” I hated the idea of swimming under a giant rock, what if I ran out of air and started to panic?
“Don’t worry. It’s gonna be fine, hun.” Jess put her arm around me and gave it a squeeze, “Besides…” she was smiling now, “You have big strong Damien to rescue you if anything goes wrong." She followed this sentence with a playful “Oooohhh”, which made me blush like an idiot. “Think about it, if you started to drown he could give you mouth-to-mouth, maybe even slip you some tongue.” Jess then looked at us, flicking her eyes between Damien and me, “Aaah, that would make such a cute story to tell your kids one day, I met mommy when I saved her from drowning."
Damien lunged towards Jess, "Jess, you're such a shit stirrer."
"I know. That's why you love me!" And then she winked at us and jumped into the water with a loud splash. I avoided all eye contact with Damien now; I was worried that if I looked at him, he’d notice that I’d been reduced to a dithering puddle of hormones. So I jumped in and followed.
We found the arrow easily and then all counted, one, two, three, took a deep breath and submerged. The tunnel was dead ahead and not as long as I’d imagined, I soon saw the sun rippling on the surface of the water and knew that the air pocket was close. We emerged into a small space that was just big enough for the six of us. Everyone started taking their next big breaths and disappeared. I was about to do the same when I felt Damien pull me back.
“Finally, I have you alone,” he said in a gravelly voice that did nothing to hide his feelings and thoughts. He pulled me closer. We were both treading water and as we got closer, our legs bumped into each other. Damien pulled me closer still and tried to kiss me, but we soon succumbed as the effort of trying to kiss and keep our heads above water with vigorous treading became too much. We sank under together, our knees knocking and feet tangling, and attempted another kiss. It was clumsy and pointless and our mouths filled with water. We both burst out laughing, which caused our faces to disappear behind a shroud of bubbles. This was the worst failed kiss in history and we both emerged laughing and spluttering.
“Okay, so maybe that wasn’t the best idea I’ve ever had,” he said between fits of laughter. “ I don’t want to be the guy who lands up drowning you in the throws of passion, then there'll be no story to tell the kids.”
Kids dot, dot, dot. And even though I knew it was just a clever reincorporation of the joke that was being thrown around, my mind couldn't help going there for a second.
Damien was still laughing, clearly oblivious to the fact that we now had three daughters, with blue eyes and black hair and their names all stared with a D.
"So how about we just forget that even happened and we'll try again later?" He said, his laughter finally tapering off.
“Sure," I said, and then I almost fainted when I heard the words come out of my mouth, “But, you have to promise to make our first kiss the best one of our lives…”
Damien came closer to me and I felt his hand on my stomach. I flinched - but in a good way. His hand moved down and he hooked his finger into the top of my bikini bottoms and pulled me closer.
His pupils dilated and he gently parted his lips, “I promise.”
I believed him.
When we finally resurfaced on the other side we entered into a world that was amazing and bizarre and beautiful. We were in yet another small crystal lake, which was also enclosed with rocky cliff faces and had the same huge wrap-around beaches. Beyond the beaches were giant palms filled with hammocks and strings of coloured lights. Multi-coloured tents were erected all over the beach, which also had big comfy looking cushions and giant beach balls scattered on it. An enormous bar dominated the centre of the beach and people were milling about; some were floating in the water on bright lilos, others where sleeping in hammocks, some where playing volleyball, and a few were already dancing on the beach to music being played by a DJ.
I looked around, amazed.
“Welcome to Burning Moon, Lilly,” Damien turned to me, “I’m going to make this the best night of your life.”
I shivered at the infinite possibilities that sentence held.