TWO STRINGS ATTACHED
A few years ago I went to Florida on vacation. I’d never seen a woman in a thong bikini before. Of course I’d seen pictures of them over the years but seeing them actually move around close enough to, well, study, was different. I’m glad I waited. At that stage, happily married and with an adolescent daughter, it was my natural interest in structural engineering and design that was aroused.
The blonde who would before long occupy my first thong bikini showed up around mid-morning in shorts and a tank top and arranged a chaise lounge poolside right next to me. She was beautifully browned and gorgeous. There were other places she could have stationed herself and so it didn’t seem much of a leap to assume that lying there in my blue polyester swim trunks, only hours before on the shelf at Ames in Rockland, she found me appealing, irresistible even, that the novelty of that much male Maine epidermis nearly dead for lack of vitamin D, of a complexion that would have made the aryan nation proud, in a sea of perfect brown bodies, excited her a little.
She had a little bag and withdrew from it a couple of towels, a little roll of fabric, sunglasses and a paperback copy of Clear and Present Danger (no, I’m afraid it was lost on me). I rolled over onto my back. I didn’t want my varicose veins to frighten her away. An attendant came around immediately and asked her if she’d like anything. I’d already been there fifteen minutes and he hadn’t even spoken to me. She asked for a Bloody Mary and a bottle of Panama Jack.
“Boy,” I thought, “here it is only mid-morning and she’s ordering two drinks.”
Thinking she might be going to offer me one of them, I stretched out to maximize the impact and to minimize my belly which had relaxed comfortably around the top of the trunks. I sucked it in and began to time those moments when its features were allowed to settle comfortably to coincide with those infrequent moments when she was not admiring me.
Suddenly a young brunette came flying around the corner on roller blades and, groping for some purchase on my chaise, lurched to a stop next to ‘us’ (Our relationship had matured in my mind).
“Where’s your suit, Hope?” she asked
Hope held up her little roll of fabric and flicked it open, a little string and some tiny swatches of cloth. It looked like the semaphore flags from Malibu Barbie.
“Right here, Vicki. I’ll go put it on.” said Hope. I gulped audibly and marveled at the foresight of someone twenty five years earlier having naming her Hope.
In a few minutes she returned, and she was wearing that which had been previously residing, albeit not as happily, in her bag and which was now doing its best to meet the challenge of the moment. Her companion emerged from the changing room with a similar outfit and arranged herself on a chaise nearby.
The motel routinely posts SUNBURN WARNING next to the pool. It changed every few hours. Presently it read:
Danger of Sunburn 10 minutes
Danger of severe Sunburn 15 minutes__________
The sense of extreme heat on my skin awoke a distant memory reminding me I should roll over and I did but before long, already having been on my belly for the prescribed ten minutes before the throngs of thongs arrived, I could feel the sun saying “You’re pushing your luck. Why don’t you gather up your things and your vanity, go back into the shade and join the other men who are making believe they’re reading as they admire this duo through their sunglasses.”
I rolled over and sat up allowing my towel to drape itself over my shoulders, so its ends hung down and covered my chest which rode so much lower than it used to, side by side, as it were, with its companion ego. The Bloody Mary had arrived by now and I recognized the Panama Jack for what it was as she liberally smeared it all over herself. It wasn’t a drink for me, and they’d chosen this spot not for my proximity but for the angle of the sun. I gazed at that place in the middle of her back she couldn’t reach and thought about how useful I could be. Then I began to recognize the tingle I felt for what it was, not anticipation but sunburn. My last words to Elaine before she’d left for her walk down the beach rang in my ears.
“Suntan lotion is for sissies.”
I stood up, mustered my composure, and headed back into the shade.
Back in Maine we had some friends over for dinner. We spread pictures of our trip all over the table. Karol zeroed in on a clandestine shot Elaine had taken of me preening myself next to the ladies and observed “Well look. Victoria’s Secret meets Modern Maturity.”