Let me tell you about this one dickbag I met. OK, honestly that was crass, but so are many things about this story and its title. I swear, I tried to name this something a bit more civilized, but there just is no better descriptive term to describe what happened. “Pardon my gauche interlude about a lusty usurper” just doesn’t have the right ring to it.
I had a pensive moment as a girl was slipping away before my eyes. Her image blurred with the surrounding night until my eyes started to have trouble discerning her unique silhouette, as the distance between us grew.
Here, on the open road, romantic trysts are common. Something about youth plus an indeterminate tomorrow added to being away from one’s gossipy social circle equals an unmatched boldness for pairing up.
I pondered the situation. How I had wished to emulate the famous travelers throughout history, who were always surrounded by female “company”. Leaf through Casanova’s memoirs, peruse Ibn Battuta’s travel diaries, and you get earfuls of their liaisons. To be fair, most of these were with women that were bought as property, but thankfully the world has progressed vastly since then. And here I was at this moment, privy to an agonizing missed connection, a lost chance to follow these men’s footsteps.
Every subsequent generation perennially realizes that love stinks. I’ve lived a solid few decades on this Earth, and when it comes to intergender relations, it’s really not my first rodeo. If there’s one thing I know, love is not a Hollywood movie. The loss of this cinematic illusion that has been broadcast to our eyeballs for the better part of a century can be utterly heartbreaking.
When a young man first realizes that the object of his affection likely won’t be swayed by a bouquet of roses or a sweeping duet on top of a magic carpet, when a young lady comes to terms with the fact that the kissed frog rarely makes a prince, but in fact often metamorphoses into a jobless, obese, womanizing toad, this is the sad, first taste of the quinine-infused tonic water that is romantic love: a drink that begins with a pleasant, novel, lemony sweetness, but suddenly shifts into a bitter mouthful that lingers in an aftertaste which colors the flavor of each subsequent sip.
Just finding someone is hard because we have long since lost the traditional methods of pairing up. Gone are the days when a village matchmaker would opine sagely on which boy and girl make the best couple, gone are the days when you would bring a caramel or piece of fruit to your sweetheart, the time when a love poem or an accepted invitation to dance made them yours just a distant whisper in history.
Out traveling, this can all change. You can leave all your (figurative) baggage behind, and shed your identity as you would in a Venetian costume ball, transforming into a new person behind your mask and conducting yourself as if you won’t ever see these people again. Because you won’t.
Love might not be like a movie, but here I was learning that never stops you from being interrupted by that fuckin’ swashbuckler swinging in on the goddamn chandelier.
Back to the dickbag. To reiterate, a gorgeous woman was leaving my sight, spirited away on a sweaty, corporeal vessel. Some son-of-a-bitch had literally swooped up this goddess and was sprinting with her over his shoulder down the cobble-stoned street, making slow progress as his knees buckled over the uneven pavement.
That morning, I had put into port at the glassy-watered shores of Hvar, an island in the Adriatic Sea. Despite its consonant-packed name, this place was once an Italian outpost, and it shows. Quaint, marble-walled churches and houses covered with glazed, crimson tiles were crammed densely on a hillside, the architecture evoking way more Venice than Croatia. As I walked along the docks, observing rocks and scuttling crabs on the seafloor through water so clear it was like looking at toys at the bottom of my bathtub, I appreciated Hvar’s membership in the ancient Venetian Republic’s “thalassocracy”, or “empire at sea”.
I wasn’t lying, the water is crystal clear!
After climbing a dizzying alleyway up to the top of a hill, I found my hostel. It felt more like a timeshare, in a good way (if that even is a thing). Surely during the winter months, a family lived there like normal, and only when tourist season hit did they cram some extra beds in, leaving the original decor including their family photos as the only evidence that real people called this home.
The walk up the hill.
I had only one roommate, Jason, who I was pleased to learn was from my hometown, Jacksonville. Jason’s curly, bleached blond hair, hanged down to his shoulders, and his eggshell-colored V-neck barely concealed a tanned, cut physique. Dude clearly just walked out of an Abercrombie catalog, a shining Adonis of all-American corn-fed genes. We chatted for a bit, and decided that later we would be going out on the town.
A few hours later, I found myself uncomfortably floating on the periphery of Jason and a local girl having the time of their lives, chatting in broken English. Oh, I’m sorry, did you think this story was about me getting somewhere? Excuse me while I scoff. I’m not that lucky of a guy, and sure as hell not with Jason in the room. Soon, our little trio bled out the door with a few other groups as a significant minority of the bar-goers started to realize exactly how late it was.
The bar had some interesting attractions…..what is this man doing?!
For a few minutes, Jason made awkward conversation. To be honest, his game was weak, and it was only compounded by that bumbling way that Americans attempt to communicate in foreign countries, staggering over words like the drunks surrounding us, who were making valiant efforts at balance. And to be quite honest again, I don’t think she gave a damn about a single word he was saying. Her eyes were full, and that was enough. Right then, with a stunted squeal and a mass of separated hair strands being thrown into the air like someone was doing wushu with an upturned mop, she was gone.
All we could do was watch as she craned her neck up uncomfortably, watching us fade into the distance as her chin bounced on the brute’s back. While this sort of situation would usually cause concern, based on the calmness in her expression as she gazed somewhat serenely back at us, I immediately knew this wasn’t a kidnapping. This was just a fierce cockblock. The most supreme cockblock. There were no snarky insults, no intimidating muscle-flexes, there was just the unexpectedly brazen act of forcibly removing an individual from the general vicinity of another individual.
That guy’s escape path was like this. Imagine this street but way more poorly-lit.
Where had this caveman been all night? I had not noticed him at all to this point. No matter, his tactics were momentarily successful, but too anachronistic to actually work. It’s the fucking 21st Century, for God’s sake! I knew as much, and reassured Jason to keep his cool. “She’ll be back…” I said, fully confident that nonchalance would be Jason’s key to seizing the advantage.
It took about ten seconds, and sure enough, we could just barely see the outline of her sandaled feet hitting the cobblestones again. A minute later she was back in front of us, greeting Jason by throwing her arms around his neck. I looked at him for a moment as he looked back, and told him that I was going to take a walk. I probably wouldn’t be back at our room for a few hours, I said with a wink.
As they set off up the hill, I found a store to buy as many lukewarm tall cans of beer as I could to keep me company. I strolled off through the darkness, down a dock and then following the street rimming the island, gleefully glorying in the final scene of the movie, where the sidekick had cut through the rope holding the chandelier, saving the protagonist as the villain plummeted to his demise.
Lesson learned: If someone’s being a douche, play it cool and try to look like the bigger man. Good things come to those who wait.
–Sam (26, Jacksonville, FL), watching a douche get pwned by my hostel roommate in Hvar, Croatia