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Now available for preorder:
The San Francisco Panorama.
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- - - - CLUB EXISTENTIAL DREAD
The following is my diary from a week I spent at a Club Med resort located in Turks and Caicos, a small chain of magnificent islands in the British West Indies. I originally wrote this diary for Details magazine, but they chose not to publish it. I'm not sure why they didn't go for it, but I think I didn't file the kind of report they were looking for. Day 2, July 3
On a quiet, beautiful beach, under an umbrella. One beach is noisy; this one is quiet. About ten yards away is an attractive topless woman. I am ashamed, but when she walks by I ask her if she could put sunblock on the middle of my back. She's Jewish. A fellow Jew. I notice the "chai" on her necklace. I think of saying, "Chai," instead of "Hi," which would be a good opening line with a Jewish girl. From yesterday, I have a burn spot in the middle of my back the size of a serving tray. I can reach the tops of my shoulders and my lower back, but not my middle. She rubbed the lotion on; it was rather sensual, but then she said, dismissively, reading the label, "Fifty?" "I'm very fair," I said like a milquetoast, which I literally am: a white piece of toast. I figure I need fifty. In one minute I would fry, so fifty gives me fifty minutes without frying. I wish there was an invention that would enable shy people to put sunblock on their backs by themselves. A spatula would work, and the association with frying is apt. This place should be called Club High School. The cool people, with their beautiful bodies and tans and large capacities for liquor, hang out at the noisy beach and the pool. I'm some kind of artist-snob. I'm ugly and poor but snobby. Everyone here seems so bourgeois. They're burghers. I wonder if that word is related to bourgeois. Or rather they're like burgers—human burgers frying themselves in the sun. If a bunch of dermatologists came here they'd be hysterical. Bourgeois. Burghers. Burgers. Last night I was woken up at 4:50 a.m. by shouts of "One more!" and "Take it off!" My room was next to the after-hours bar, Sharkies. I went to see what was happening. Five girls were lying on the bar, all in a row, like slaughtered fish. They all looked like Monica Lewinsky—chubby but with nice faces. The bartender was pouring vodka down their throats from a bottle with a spigot. I was worried the girls would die from alcohol poisoning. Guys with cancerous tans and dyed blonde hair were urging the girls to take off their tops. Several of the girls did expose their bras. But none of them flashed any boobs. I staggered back to my room. This morning I asked to be shifted to the other side of the compound. 11:30 p.m. I have a doppelgänger here. There's a weird lonely guy whose nose is attached in a strange way to his lip, like a bird. He wears a baseball hat, is bald underneath, and is completely white. He wears sneakers and socks on the beach. He hovers around the edges of things and talks to no one. I should talk to him. Be friendly. I should talk to all the lonely ones. But I can't.
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