The Best Travel Writing 2011 - James O'Reilly [91]
As he ran his fingers over the seashell-gray-toned photographs, describing the feel of the sand as he shaped these voluptuous bodies, his voice soft and faraway, I found him, his lifestyle, his family, all excruciatingly captivating.
A spell had been cast and I completely forgot about my friends back on the rocks.
In the late afternoon sun, after more explorations and a nap in their kasbah, Marie-Claire and I wound around the stones littering the hollow quarry pit they called home. There in the amber afternoon light, Patrice was squatting in front of a carving on the limestone face. It was a man and a woman embracing under water as they swam together. Botticelli delightful, da Vinci beautiful. Classic perfection.
As his golden arms and long-fingered hands chiseled these people into the rock, Patrice told me he was involved with the couple I saw him dancing with at the bullring. The sculpture depicted them. “It is complicated,” he said. I don’t know why he shared this with me but it made me feel very two-dimensional, simple, and boring. And American.
Suddenly, he looked at me mischievously out of the corner of his twinkling eyes and asked, “Would you like to spend the night? My daughter needs feminine company.”
Maybe I wasn’t so boring after all….
“What about my friends?” I asked in an embarrassing squeak. My vocal chords weren’t cooperating. I was scared and looking for the exit. The intensity of the connection wiped me clean of sensibility and instead of feeling a resounding thunderclap Yes!, I practically tripped over him as I ran away. I didn’t even say goodbye to Marie-Claire.
As I speed-walked past my astonished friends, who were halfway up the trail, one-way conversations bounced around inside my skull. You would abandon your young son for a life with a bisexual, polyamorous man in cold, gray Belgium? My mind spun out dramas as fast as it could to distract me from my attraction to this gorgeous man who had just invited me to spend the night with him. I mean, his daughter.
After I plowed over my friends to get in the car, they asked, “He invited you to spend the night? What are you doing here?”
I muttered something about them worrying about me if I didn’t come back with them.
In unison, they all chanted, “Stupid! Isn’t that what you wanted?”
On my last night in Ibiza, Sana choreographed yet another party. This one took place in an abandoned military fort. She turned each cold cement room into a vibrant temple celebrating various goddesses from Isis to Aphrodite.
Looking up from the flames licking the sky around the perennial bonfire ring, I saw his eyes across the fire’s golden flicker. Panther eyes.
The Chilean and I skirted each other through the evening’s mayhem of rituals and exhaustive dance-a-thons. I ended up collapsed in a sweaty pile next to him on one of Sana’s makeshift temple floors. He draped a pashmina shawl over me as I pretended to sleep. No kisses. No hugs. No sex. No goodbye.
I arose at dawn and Oscar drove me to the airport for my long journey back to California.
I can still see the jaggy edge trim of his thick pitch-black hair framing his face. I can still feel the tidal pull of ultimate attraction. I’m still in love with that artist. Or at least the concept and packaging.
What if I had spent the night in that stone pink-tented wonderland he created? I muse about this every few years. What if I let the artist from my favorite remote island in the world woo me?
At first, I always repeat the same old litany, “No, no! I had to go home to work and take care of my son.” But the blanket of reason that vigilantly guards the door to my heart falls off, and the truth speaks in a timid yet convincing voice, “I don’t want to be swept away by the murderous riptides of love. No heart landmines for me (even if they are just in my imagination)…”