Getting Stoned With Savages - J. Maarten Troost [71]
“You want a blow job, honey?” asked the biggest, a tall, heavily made-up Fijian man in hot pants and heeled sandals, wearing a sleeveless Lycra shirt that emphasized his heaving pecs.
“No. Thanks so much for asking, though.”
He approached and locked his arm in mine, guiding me into the trees as his companions followed. “Just give me some.”
“No, really, I’ll just be on my way.”
He was pulling me with greater insistence into the bush. “You want to fuck?” he leered. The others were circling me.
This is not good, I thought. Undoubtedly, I was about to be robbed. Much more troubling—and I mean incomparably more troubling—was the prospect of being sordidly abused by four hulking Fijian cross-dressers. Not my thing at all.
“Get the fuck away from me!” I hissed, yanking my arm away.
He continued to paw at me. “Come on, honey. Give me some.” The other three were crowding around.
If they had just asked nicely for my wallet, I might have paused for a moment, considered the odds, and handed it over with barely a whimper, perhaps offering a gentle reminder not to spend it all in one place. They were all well above six feet tall. But there was something about the prospect of being sodomized—I had just arrived, after all—that encouraged me to flee. I dashed for the road and kept running until I reached the relative safety of a streetlamp. I turned to see if they were giving chase, prepared to keep running until my last breath if I had to. I could see them strutting and yelling, swinging their purses. Well, I thought, they’re going to have to take their heels off. Unwilling to part with their shoes, they turned and disappeared into the night.
What a lively way to begin a stay in Fiji, I thought as I began to wander back in the direction of the motel, periodically checking behind me, wondering what else might possibly be lurking in the shadows. There was no one else walking alongside the road, and it occurred to me that that ought to tell me something. I flagged a taxi.
“You want a girl?” asked the driver, a thin, unshaven Indo-Fijian man with a cigarette dangling from his lips. On the radio, Bollywood wailed.
For a moment, I thought he might be inquiring about my desired preference in progeny, and I nearly answered that I had no preference, either a boy or a girl would be great, just as long as it’s healthy.
“Only Fijian girls here,” said the taxi driver as we passed a building that announced it was a Korean restaurant and club. “Fijian girls no good.”
“Ah…,” I said, realizing that he wasn’t talking about sons and daughters. Or at least not mine, in any case. “Thanks, no. I’m fine.”
“You like Indian girls? Indian girls are very good. I take you to Dreamland Nightclub. There you meet Indian girls and you choose the one you want.”
I was not in the mood for the squalid, and my evening was beginning to take on decidedly squalid overtones. What I really wanted was a beer. “No, thanks. Could you just drop me off in the center of Nadi Town?” I figured I’d walk around a bit and, with any luck, find a quiet bar where I could have a couple of pints of Fiji Bitter and read my book.
“You buy a souvenir here,” said the taxi driver, stopping in front of Jack’s Handicrafts, “and give them my card. They give you special price.”
This was more like the Nadi I remembered, a little outpost of the subcontinent, a place where everything is haggled down from “special price” to “final best price.” Curious, I paid the driver and entered Jack’s Handicrafts, a well-lit souvenir emporium with twelve sales assistants for every customer. I know because I was the only customer and I counted twelve sales assistants. I picked up a four-pronged “cannibal fork,” lingered over the “cannibal clubs” for a moment, and nearly bought an apron that said ISLAND COOKING above a cartoon of a Fijian man in a chef’s hat stirring a large pot with two human legs poking out. This would make an excellent Christmas present for several people I knew.
“For you, I’ll give a special price,” said an Indian sales assistant. The