the OTHER beach story from yesterday

I wasn't going to mention this incident, but since certain individuals that I work with who read my blog have threatened to leave comments about this "incident". I've decided to tell the story before someone else does.

There's a hot guy at my hotel. I used to call him the spaniard but recent evidence suggests he's actually lebanese. For purposes of the story, he'll be hg. He's been at the hotel since I got here, and he works out in the gym around the same time I do, and I always see him at the beach. This guy is so hot that I noticed him immediately the first day I was at the gym (harbinger of things to come - the first day I saw him he walked by me and I dropped a weight on my toe). Also, I've seen him in a bathing suit so I know there's no "surprises" about him, e.g. the hairiest back ever.

I mentioned him in passing to a guy I work with at the base because aforementioned guy was trying to set me up on a date with someone. I really, really hate people trying to play matchmaker because they always think some idiot cousin of theirs with no hair or muscle tone would be a good match for me because we're both single. I politely declined the offer and said I was interested in hg.

Well, all you have to do is tell one person something on the base and then everyone knows. People in my office starting asking me what was up with hg. The truth is, I just wanted to look at him, and had no desire to talk to him in case he's a moron. But, the longer time has gone on, the more pressure people put on me to talk to him.

So, last week I decided to say hi to him in the gym for the purposes of reporting status back to my office. But, he didn't come to the gym all week. I was sure he was gone from the hotel, breathed a sigh of relief that I managed to avoid yet another attempt at a relationship, and that was that.

But then on Friday, while I was cleaning off my flip flops in this little sunken pool thing because I was done swimming, I spied hg walking by himself on the stone path that goes around the beach. He was about 30 feet in front of me. It's the first time I've ever seen him alone as he's usually with this group of equally good looking guys (but, I like him the best). Since I was leaving the beach I had this big beach bag with me that had two full bottles of water, two rather large books, my swim stuff, and a towel. Visualize a big and bulky bag, tucked under my arm.

I got this surge of adrenaline, and as he got closer I took a quick step towards him to kind of get in front of him on the path before he went by me. Unfortunately, I forgot I was standing in the sunken pool, and tripped, practically face planting right in front of him. Then my beach bag swung around and hit me in the face. I got up as quickly as I could and ran in the other direction before he had time to say anything to me.

I saw him at the gym on Thursday, walking in as I was walking out, but, I was walking out because I had to puke, so I didn't have time to stop and say hi (gym was insanely hot and I drank way too much water before deciding to do some sprints on the treadmill - stupid mistake - that always makes me puke). As I was explaining this to Ireland later in the evening she said that she was going to come to my hotel and track hg down if I didn't do something.

Friday I was at the beach when hg showed up with his friends. They were sitting about 40 feet away from me, next to the beach bar, which is currently being renovated. Hg was standing by himself, again, and I thought maybe he was looking at me. I texted Ireland and she told me to put my phone down and go over to him IMMEDIATELY. Then she said "I want scandal in the office on Sunday! Go get him!"

I made my way carefully towards him, focusing on not tripping, when I was suddenly cut off by this 20 something french girl. She threw her towel down on a beach chair positioned as kind of a dmz between me and hg, and then proceeded to take her top off.

All of hg's friends swarmed her chair and started talking to her. That's when I realized hg speaks french (and I heard him speaking arabic and english in the gym, thus the guess that he is in fact lebanese). I sent Ireland a text explaining what happened, and went for a swim. When I came back someone had yelled at the french tart to put her top back on (total no no to go topless here), and I thought maybe I could get hg's attention. But then this guy showed up with a yellow canoe and hg and his friends started talking to canoe guy. I sent Ireland a message that the situation was hopeless as I'm not as interesting as a topless french girl or a yellow canoe. I gave up talking to him, slumped onto my beach chair, and started reading the new yorker.

Lance showed up, and we were hanging out, and I was telling him about hg. Suddenly, and I am NOT making this up, Lance ran out from under my chair and ran under hg's chair. Then he started crying really loudly. I sent a text to Ireland saying Lance, the little kitty genius, had found a way for me to talk to hg. I started walking over to hg's chair to retrieve Lance, on the same stone path as the previous week's disaster.

Unfortunately, in the time I had spent texting Ireland, a billion little kids from the pool had run over and surrounded hg's chair. I was so focused on Lance, and trying to figure out how to get all those kids out of my way so I could talk to hg, that I failed to notice a foot tall pile of tiles that were being used to renovate the pool bar.

I tripped right over them and once again fell in front of hg. But this time was worse, because the tiles falling over made a lot of noise, and the guys working on the bar saw me and kept going "Oh my god! Are you okay?!?!?" and making a big production. I was like "um, I'm fine" even though the top of my foot was sliced to shreds. I got up and tried to, with some dignity, walk back to my chair but my foot was gushing blood and one of the workers was yelling after me "you should go get a tetanus shot!"

When it seemed matters could not get any worse, they did. A little indian fellow, who cleans up trash on the beach, started following me down the stone path with this huge blue bucket full of water, trying to wipe the blood from my foot up with this little white cloth. Well, he would splash around in the bucket, take a few swipes at my bloody footprints with the cloth flying all around, and then he would pick up the bucket and run as fast as he could, which, frankly, was unnecessary, to wipe the next bloody footprint.

I was totally humiliated, and Lance must have been too, because I didn't see him the rest of the afternoon. As soon as my foot stopped bleeding I decided to leave the beach, making sure to use the flip flop cleaning pool located as far as possible from hg.

When I got into N's car to go to the base this morning, he was like "gross! what happened to your foot?" Why I told him the truth, I will never know. And now everyone knows.

I just got a text message from N about 15 minutes ago that said "fastest thumbs in the west but the slowest toes in the east - pls watch where you step".

Sigh...