Oops, I did it again

M.SBH

SBH Member
DISCLAIMER: This thing is long. Like Wilshire Boulevard with a side of root canal treatment long. Viewer discretion is advised.


Sunday morning. As I tried my best to keep my eyes open and not sleep again, what would make me lose my flight, the one I was already kind of fashionable late for, I began recollecting when was the exact time things started to get silly…

Standing in front of the mirror, while admiring the effects of lazy spread sun block lotion all over my face and shoulders, and still deciding if I was experiencing a major hangover from the evening before, or actually being just still plain drunk, I remembered.

Paris. We´ll always have Paris.

There I was, spending some quiet time and trying to forget the boredom of a long year doing inconsequential desk job, relieved from active duty since my supervisor decided I might have disclosed too much sensitive information about my line of work on a certain forum. Bureaucrats.

Perhaps feeling a tad guilty over the amount of foie gras stuffed quail I was having day and night, I decided to check my phone for emails. And that was the moment that little NSA app called Facebook greeted me with some PMs.

Long story short, one of them was a birthday message from a very good friend of mine. We´ve known each other since college, when we used to fight for the attention of the same lady. She is currently in her second marriage, doesn´t speak to me anymore, but is still a very close friend of him. I might have already mentioned I dodge bullets for a living.

Oh, and since you asked, I was the one who got the girl back then, as things had a funny and unique way to sway in my direction at that time. In quantum physics, it´s called the twenties.

Anyway, he was sending me his best wishes and asking where in the world was I, while also saying he was island hopping on the French Caribbean. Uh oh.

Since I was kind of island hopping as well, between that foggy piece of rock called England, Ile de France and Manhattan, I replied, asking him, quite stupidly, I admit, if by any chance he had St. Barts on his itinerary.

‘Of course. For a week. Are you close by?´

Of course I was. I mean, why fly straight to Brazil from New York when you can have your flight butchered and sowed back together by a good soul in Mumbai? I take this moment to also kindly advise you to buy a local chip whenever you decide to go full retard on your mobile phone while in France. I mean it.

So this was it. The moment when everything went downhill. Downhill to the point I was going to be able to be in St. Barts for just a little less than 48 hours.

´Who does stuff like that, anyway?´, I wondered. At least I was totally awake by now, but I better pack up quickly or I´m really losing my flight. As I pile wrinkled clothes over clothes inside my bag, a small box of matches over the bed catches my eye. I don´t even smoke. It reads ´Bonito´. It takes me back…


Friday


The day started with me charming a beautiful pair of green eyes on the arrival platform of Jamaica Station, where I traded one of my small carry-ons for her large bag and did the gentleman routine on the long flight of stairs up to the Air Train level.

Then, a slightly confused lady at Delta checked me in. Poor girl, I believe she still quite don´t get what the hell her screen was showing her, in regards to my immediate foreseeable flying future. Since I was in good spirits, I considered it a crescendo, day wise.

Mimosas and a pretty decent omelet kept me going, while wonderful Eliane Elias sung on my Ipod. I knew the weather was not ideal all over the Caribbean and the forecasts where competing amongst them for the trophy of direst.

But I wasn´t afraid. Oh no, not me. With so little time to spend in St. Barts, it would be a shame if the sun didn´t shine properly. But as the smooth flight approached Juliana, I remembered just how scandalous God can get when it comes to me.

After a quick transfer, St. Barth Commuter was able to put me in an earlier flight. I never thought just one single, modest hour could mean so much.

Finally, I was in St. Barts again. Un freaking believable.

This time around, I stayed at Tom Beach. So it goes without saying that as soon my passport got stamped, I seized the opportunity to take my first stroll on paradise, enjoying the sights as I calmly walked to the hotel, as if by doing it I could make time go by more slowly.

A sweet girl checked me in, while a gentleman from Brussels led me to my room. Not more than twenty minutes later, I was swimming in St. Jean. And those said minutes included a quick run to Marche U for a water ration buy up.

Beach wise talking, it was clear the weather had been not good recently, which was confirmed to me by the gentleman tending the beach chaises and how up the water mark edge was on the sand. But the sun was bravely fighting its way through the clouds, the temperature was high and I just knew it in my heart I was going to have a perfect weekend, to the point I was encouraging the staff about how the weather was going to be, come Saturday.

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The water was already turning to the correct shade of blue and it was deliciously warm. I swam, and swam, and swam. As the night began falling, I had a little dinner of Carib and a prosciutto and goat cheese Panini, while seeing what is the mathematical sum of isolated reckless behavior, knee jerk but understandable bureaucracy ruling and considerable disregard for statistics.

Come on, ich bin ein St. Barther. Mr. Magras, tear down this wall.

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After a long shower, all I had energy left for was to sleep. So that I did.


Saturday


With so few hours available to me, I couldn´t afford to lose any time at all. So I woke pretty early and went to La Plage to eat my breakfast, always a good opportunity to make people shy away from studying anthropology as I am the true missing link.

The sky was totally taken by scattered formations, but it was hot and windy, always a good sign. And first things first, I had some fruit, an obscene amount of croissants with butter and raspberry jelly, another little pot of apricots and lavender jelly immersed in yogurt, a gallon of coffee and scrambled eggs with bacon cooked to order. Of course, this is just what I remember. Things might have been a little different in reality.

Anyway, as I left the table to get back to my room and get my beach gear, the weather was still uninspiring. But what can I say. Scandalous He is and as soon as I emerged back from my room, the beach was already like this.

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My good friend was set to arrive from Guadeloupe in the beginning of the afternoon, so I took the time to swim and lounge a little, while letting the sun take away the office whiteness surplus of my face and body.

After much swimming and enjoying the sun, I went to the airport to meet my friend. His flight had arrived already and he was getting his rental when I got to Gustav III. I obviously went full sbhonline on him and asked, quite smugly if I might say so, if it was an all wheel ride. Let´s ignore the fact this was his fourth or fifth time on the island.

We then proceeded to his little hotel near Lorient, where check in was not necessary as the owners or keepers just left his room unlocked and call it a day, leaving premises for probably a more interesting activity. I mean, how cool is that? St. Barts, ah St. Barts.

So he just left his luggage over there and back we went to Tom Beach, where we would start, as I only figure it now, a thirteen hour long stretch of drinking. Quantum physics call it jamboree.

The young gentleman running the show at the hotel´s beach quickly set up a bottle of Whispering Angel in a bucket full of ice for us and we just spent the afternoon catching up, laughing at how serious we pretentiously thought our lives were back in college and in the beginning of our professional careers, how blessed our whole old gang is for having been able to grow up in good health, away from accidents or tragic mishaps, leading good and honest existences.

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When our wine was over, we started on the Caribs and we only stopped because suddenly it was already time to get prepared for the evening ahead. After shower time, we were supposed to meet back again at La Plage, for the wine tasting soirée.

Being on the premises, I got to the tasting almost immediately after it started. People were already gathered around a table, glasses in their hands, while a young gentleman was making a presentation, in French. In my dreams, I speak perfect French, as well as many other languages. Trouble is, when awake, it just magically lingers away from me, so I had no idea of what was going on. I recognized one girl from staff and asked if I could join them, to which she replied I certainly could. I also recognized the hotel´s owner, and engaged him in a brief commentary, to which he joyfully dismissed ownership, pointing someone else in a no one else direction as the owner.

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Anyway, to my complete amusement, the evening tasting was centered over Taittinger champagnes. And I did what any Brazilian with any degree of self respect must do, which is to get a glass, pretend you´re invisible and just drink it up, baby. We´re born to sacrifice in the name of greater good.

When I was in my fourth or fifth glass, my friend arrived. I showed him what to do and diligently moved my sights to a recently opened bottle of a superb rosé champagne. All the drinking in the afternoon, now this, and I was soon behaving like I own the place.

Due to geographic tactical reasons, I´ve started a conversation with a gentleman that was near one of the bottles of rosé, as he had already poured me I don´t know how many glasses and I just felt he deserved a little more than my discrete mercis for such kind effort.

Said gentleman was Mr. Laurent Georges from La Cave du Port Franc, and all that perlage made me remember a great little story that happened still in the past millennium, involving a Taittinger family member in Brazil. When I said that, Mr. Georges immediately reached for the young gentleman who was giving the presentation on the wines, and asked him to join our conversation.

The young gentleman was C. Taittinger, and as I was sharing my story involving his family member with him, we realized said family member, P. E. Taittinger, is actually Mr. C´s father. I carried on then telling him about a very fancy wine event produced by, at that time, Brazil´s biggest importer of fine wines.

In a very opulent mansion turned into a party venue, different French producers from different wine regions were lined up to showcase their wines. A very beautifully produced evening. I got my father´s invitation and used it myself, while a friend from college did the same. Another friend from our college worked on the sales team of said importer and joined us.

The Taittinger winery was present amongst the producers at that evening, and while there were wait staff pouring the wines for the guests in every producer corner, the Taittinger place had Mr. P. E. personally serving every single one of the guests. And quite a few of them were not only completely oblivious to the fact that the dapper man serving them champagne was the winery owner himself, but also kind of looking down at him, which of course is already pathetic when its done towards wait staff, but strike two if it´s done to a man that eats grapes in a castle. Nevertheless, Mr. P. E. was olympic and regal about it.

Anyway, we had a good giggle about it and agreed that Brazil is really a place of the best and the worst, to which Mr. C. actually made a point in telling us about how much fun he had while in Brazil for the last World Cup, as Taittinger was a sponsor. And don´t you dare say Germany. That´s not funny. At all. I mean it.

After the tasting, we were trying to decide where to have dinner, and after seeing my life flash before my eyes as we stupidly tried to get down to Gustavia on the wrong way and avoiding three head on collisions and a lot of, I´m afraid, cursing in French, I acquiesced to my friend´s suggestion of us going to Bonito instead of Le Carré.

Bonito, in Portuguese, is the masculine form of pretty. Like, if you want to say a restaurant is gorgeous or beautiful, you say it is bonito. And Bonito is indeed bonito.

I scored a table on the edge, with a view of the quay, but that probably had to do with the place not being full, and not the staff thinking I´m bonito. And even with only other few tables occupied, the atmosphere was lively. We had a bottle of white and I had a lobster risotto, ridiculously good. I have absolutely no recollection of what my friend had.

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After dinner, my friend went for a smoke at that counter like communal table more to the center of the restaurant. I grabbed the wine and went along. A few meters from us, a group of girls was having dinner and some of them also decided to have a smoke.

One of the girls was a beautiful Eden Rock girl. I don´t smoke, apart from an occasional cigar in leap years, but few men can match me in a match for scratching a match for a lady. Or something like this. And that´s how I got that Bonito box of matches.

The wine was long finished and again we found ourselves dropping the hammer with Caribs, while still being charmed by the lovely P. from Eden Rock. She was undecided about going to Le Ti or Bagatelle, with the odds in favor of Bagatelle, as she apparently didn´t care much for Le Ti.

After some time, the girls got back to their table to have their check and as they were later leaving, I asked P. ´where are you going?´. ´Bagatelle´, she said, asking back ´and you?´.

´Bagatelle´, I said. St. Barts, ah St. Barts.

So we later got on my friend´s little jeepy thingy and went down to the street until we found a parking space near Bagatelle, already turned into party mode. Last party mode by the way, so you get the drill.

Packed place, in a good way. Great music and ambiance. With all the stacking up of drinks during the day and evening, I was certainly feeling a little funny, and I believed that was the correct mood for the occasion.

To be totally honest, I was trying to find gorgeous miss P., but ended up at the other side of the place, with not one, but three small bottles of Heineken, necks stuck between my fingers. I have no idea how that happened. Honestly.

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I remember making eye contact with another beautiful girl, for more time than her father felt comfortable with. And I don´t know if he was joking or really pissed when he began to try to fry me up with some French phrases, but we soon started talking and by the end of the night, we were childhood friends.

At some point in the night, my friend got us some more drinks and suddenly I realized the presence, by our side, of one of the most stunning girls I have ever laid my eyes on. I remember saying to my friend that if I had just another drink I would probably pull out something silly like getting on my knees and asking her to marry me.

I don´t really know how, but just a couple of minutes later I was actually talking to the girl, mesmerized by her beauty. She´s an artist, sold some business and was thinking of buying property in Buzios, a beautiful and quaint but by no means St. Barts place near Rio de Janeiro, to which I promptly and gallantly schooled her not to do.

What else can I say, a goddess, no less, she is. Miss A., such a beautiful name as well. Eight years older than me, while looking eight years younger. St. Barts, ah St. Barts.

Time flew by and all I remember is being awaken from this dream, with my friend leaving me at the entrance of Tom Beach.


Sunday

Sunday morning. I´m all packed up now. I must have slept for only one hour or two, but I don´t even have time for a last breakfast. So late for the flight. It must mean I did it right, to the fullest.

The sweet girl at front desk offers me a ride, promptly refused by me. She cutely states it´s included. I can only reply that I just have to take one last walk.

And as I walk beside the airport runway, I stop and turn around. One last look at that sea. Just one last look, I really have to go.

St. Barts, ah St. Barts. When will I see you again?

I will see you again…
 
"I obviously went full sbhonline on him and asked, quite smugly if I might say so, if it was an all wheel ride. Let´s ignore the fact this was his fourth or fifth time on the island. "
Great line, great story......
 
"And I did what any Brazilian with any degree of self respect must do, which is to get a glass, pretend you´re invisible and just drink it up, baby. We´re born to sacrifice in the name of greater good."

I like the way you think, M. A most enjoyable read. I, too, am in line for the sequel.
 
...Long" Not long enough! More, please! What a story and a great piece of writing. "Mr. Magras, tear down this wall..." Thank you for your report.
 
Girls and guys,

Thank you for reading and for your comments. You´re too kind.

From Brazil with love,
M.
 
Looking forward to your next trip and the sequel. Taking a tip from the booksellers, can I pre order your review now?
 
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