It was my husband Fred who wanted me to have the boob job. At 40 I wasn’t as perky as I had been at 23 when we got married, and although I was fine with the slight sag that comes with age, he wasn’t. Plus we shared an office as insurance sales reps, and he showed me studies that showed how clients were more likely to sign with attractive sales agents. I remember him saying “It’ll pay for itself, babe.”
It paid for itself; but he didn’t get to benefit. Three months after my surgery, I found a photo from one of his clients on his phone. Yeah… a Selfie. She didn’t need a boob job.
So while the scars were still angry red under my new assets, I filed for divorce. He was right about how bigger boobs would lead to bigger commission checks, and I was raking in the sales while I raked him over the coals. He got the cute client and the guilt. I got the money and the boobs and the moral high ground. It wasn’t a bad deal.
But after the divorce was finalized I became bored. My social life was awkward; the thrill of partying with my new group of recently separated girlfriends had lost its excitement, and it felt awkward to hang out with any of our old couple friends. They were all friendly, and ever so careful to not take sides, but inevitably the subject of my ex- would come up.
“Hey Honey. Remember that time we went to Trudy’s and Zoe drank too many Mexican Martinis and Fred and I had to carry her home?” Then there’d be an awkward silence as we’d all remember that we’d gone to Trudy’s to celebrate Fred signing a new client…. the cute client with the boobs. And then there’d be the awkward throat clearing and the obvious subject change.
I just didn’t want to be reminded anymore. I wanted a break, a new life, something completely different.
I thought back to the time before I got married, when I was in college. The last time I’d been single, and free, and just having fun. I’d signed up for a trip: two weeks in Mexico studying Spanish and visiting the Mayan ruins of the Yucatan. We’d traveled as a group of twenty students with three professors, and it had been awesome. I remembered hiking up pyramids, swimming in a crystal blue lagoon, and nights drinking at the beach bar under palm trees. One night I’d met a guy who was sailing around the world, we chatted until late, and he invited me out on his yacht the next day. But when I told the professors I was going, they told me that it was too dangerous, that it would be crazy to get on a boat with a man I barely knew. I listened, and I’ve always regretted it.
Twenty-five years later, and I’d never had another chance to go sailing out on the ocean. In my imagination I sunbathed on the deck as he sailed, the dolphins leaping in the waves beneath us. The sun sparkled on the aquamarine water, and I could hear only the creak of the mast, the splash of the water, and the soft squeaks of the dolphins at play. I was convinced I’d passed up one of the the biggest opportunities of my life. Now, at forty three, living in the suburbs of a midwest city miles from any ocean, it looked like I’d never live that dream.
I sighed, poured another cup of coffee, and left for work.
As I methodically recited the benefits of life-insurance to another cookie-cutter prospect, my mind started to wonder. Why was I still working here, selling insurance to middle-class, middle-aged, middle-income, mid-south, mediocre clients, day after day after day? Was I going to do this until I was sixty, then sit home and play solitaire and watch soap operas? My main excitement in life was coffee with my girlfriends after my weekly Pilates class, and Friday drinks with my co-workers. I had to admit it was pretty boring.
Why was I living here? Why couldn’t I move somewhere warmer, somewhere near the ocean? Why couldn’t I move to Mexico? Once the idea crossed my mind it wouldn’t let go.
“But it’s DANGEROUS!” my friends and family warned me. I joined an online forum for Americans and Canadians who’d retired to Mexico. They didn’t seem to think it was dangerous. They talked about happy-hours and day trips and living a millionaire life-style on non-millionaire income. I discovered I could rent an apartment for less than I was paying for my monthly downtown parking space here in the city. I discovered that there were Americans down there who’d be happy to buy their insurance from an English-speaking, American insurance agent. I realized that my crazy, wild-hare idea could, just maybe, become reality.
I put my house up for sale. My friends thought I was committing some kind of weird form of long-winded suicide:
“But what about the cartels!” “I’m going to Playa del Carmen. It’s one of the biggest vacation destinations in the world. Thousands of foreigners visit and live there with no problems. The violence isn’t on the Caribbean coast.”
“But you don’t speak Spanish!” “I’ve already picked up a few basics, and the Americans who live there say most people speak English because of all the tourists.”
“But you can’t just quit your job, sell your house, and LEAVE!” “Why not? Watch me.”
I booked my flight the day I finalized the sale of the house. I gave myself a month to clear out the last few items. I was amazed at the amount of stuff I had owned that I barely used. I’d dropped off two huge carloads of junk at the thrift store: cocktail dresses worn once, matching wine glass sets that were gathering dust in the cabinet, a food dehydrator I’d bought years ago from an infomercial. Goodbye Ron Popeil! Goodbye America!
It was so liberating to be free. No mortgage, no bills, no obligations to anyone but me…
That last night I went out with my co-workers and friends for a final round of drinks. “You’ll be back!” they assured me as the men slapped me on the back and the women hugged me. “We’ll see you soon.” I wasn’t so sure, but I wasn’t burning my bridges either. I made my farewells: “Keep in touch. I’ll think of you tomorrow night when I’m drinking a cold coconut underneath a beach umbrella and you’re still here fighting the traffic!”
The taxi ride from the airport was easy, the manager met me at the door to my new home and handed over the key just as promised. My apartment was in a really nice condo building on a small marina, with a shared pool and courtyard gardens. I had rented it fully furnished, and it immediately felt like home. As the sun went down that evening I sat on my balcony and watched the yachts coming in, toasting my friends with a cold coke from the convenience store on the corner. It wasn’t quite the coconut on the beach I’d promised, but it was just perfect for me.
Four months passed in a blur of lazy days sunbathing by the pool interspersed with drinks at the local bar. It turned out there were lots and lots of people just like me — all of us refugees from boring, stagnant lives that had escaped to live a life our friends back home envied. I quickly became a part of the community, and picked up a few clients; not enough to make me rich, but enough to live on. In general it was idyllic, although simple things such as buying the right wattage lightbulb could become inexplicably complicated. It seems in Mexico they have speciality stores for everything; once I went to a hardware store looking for a specific kind of screw, and was directed to the screw store. True story.
Then I met Rick, and idyllic turned to fairytale.
In a romantic cliche, we met at the bar one night. He was eating a late dinner at an open-air restaurant on the water when I walked past, and my ‘Cute single guy eating alone!’ alert sounded loud and strong. So a little later on, when he wondered into the bar where the ex-pats congregated at night, I immediately went into preen mode. I gave a casual hair toss and glanced his way as I chatted to my friend, shoulders back and boobs out, all antenna pointed in his direction. If you’re a blonde, buxom babe it’s not hard to attract a man.
After he finished his first drink he wondered over, and asked if we were locals. He knew we were; it hadn’t escaped my attention that he’d been listening in to our conversation as he drank alone. He was on his way sailing from Florida to Panama, and would be staying in the marina here for a few days. “I’d like to head up and down the coast a bit, check out the best beaches and snorkeling sites. Can you recommend any?”
My sailor had arrived! and he wasn’t getting away this time. Soon it was just the two of us, heads together, laughing over shared stories and drinks. I went out on his yacht the next day, and the next, and the next. His few days turned into a week, and the week into two. I had never been so happy. My days were full of sun, swimming, and sex. Lots of sex. We had sex on the boat, sex on the beach, and sex in the ocean. I knew that this was so much better than if I’d gone on that yacht back when I was in college. Age brings a lot of things, and for me it gave me the confidence to go for it and demand what I wanted — in bed and out.
Three weeks after we met I was packing up to move onto his yacht and sail on down the coast to Panama with him.
In a crazy repeat of my move to Mexico, my friends here thought I was taking way too much of a risk. “You don’t really know him, honey.” said Rita, her blue eyes crinkling in concern. “You’ll be out there on the ocean, alone with a man you just met. What if things go wrong? You won’t have anyone there to help you.”
I laughed and reassured her: “I missed out on an opportunity once when I was younger, and I’ve always regretted it. I’m not letting this one pass me by. From great risk comes great reward, right?”
Rick had made a bunch of money working as a contractor in Afghanistan — I never asked what exactly he did, and he never explained — and his yacht was a 52ft catamaran outfitted with everything a luxury yacht could have. We sailed slowly along deserted coastlines, passing the occasional small town or big resort where the tourists basked on the beach like sea-lions; at night we moored in sheltered coves and ate freshly caught fish under the stars before we celebrated with a passionate ending to the day. My dreams were coming true — plus some.
But into every tropical paradise, a hurricane will eventually blow. Although my hurricane arrived so unexpectedly that it was really more of a tornado — appearing out of nowhere and ripping my idyll apart.
One minute I was sitting on the deck, legs dangling over the edge, lazily gazing down into the white curls of wave drifting back from the bow as the boat moved slowly through the aquamarine water, the next Rick was upon me, yelling and screaming and throwing my stuff. I didn’t know what to think or what to do. He ran at me in a crazed rage and I stood up and backed against the rail.
“Honey, baby, what’s wrong? What did I do?”
“You need to get off this boat now! I can’t live with this, this…”
He hurled a pair of my heels and a discarded bikini I’d left in the shower into the ocean, and I watched in disbelief.
“Honey, no big deal. I’ll tidy up, I promise. I’m sorry, I had no idea.”
Then he hit me. I reeled backwards from the force and almost toppled into the water. He grabbed me, and pulled me close.
“Listen bitch. We’re going to shore now, and you’re going to get off this boat.”
I could see his eyes, normally so full of warmth and caring, were hard as flint. He flung me backwards and I landed hard on the deck. By the time I stood up he was at the wheel, back turned to me as he consulted the GPS and changed our course. I stumbled downstairs, sore and bleeding, emotionally and physically shocked. I grabbed at stuff in a daze — passport, money, clothes — shoving them into my bags as my mind went in circles: “Why? Rick, why? What did I do?”
I was still sitting sobbing quietly on the bunk when I heard the sound of water hitting a dock and a rope being thrown to shore. I stumbled on deck, clutching my bags.
“Rick, can we talk about this?”
He remained turned away, silent. I moved closer, reached out and touched his arm.
The sound of his hand hitting my face reverberated out across the water, and sent seagulls screaming into the air. I knew then he was right: it was time to leave.
It’s hard to hold your dignity as you throw bags across the divide between a boat and the dock, even harder as you accept the hand of a stranger to step in your bikini, face red and stinging, eyes puffy, off a million dollar yacht. But I think I did a credible job.
He sailed away then, without another word or even a glance in my direction. I’ll never know what happened. PTSD? Schizophrenia? Maybe it had been brewing for days and in my blissed out dream state I hadn’t noticed. Whatever the cause, all that mattered to me at that moment was the effect. I realized I wasn’t even quite sure which country I was in, let alone how I could get home. Home. Suddenly my little condo on the marina in Mexico was the only place I wanted to be. I started to sob again.
The dockhand who’d helped me off the boat was still standing, awkwardly, a few feet away.
“You be well rid of a bloke like him. You need a ride into town?”
I nodded gratefully and he helped me to my feet and carried my bags to where a few battered taxis were waiting on the dusty narrow street where the dock met the land. I fumbled in my purse for some change.
“No matter, lady. You just be safe now.”
He waved me farewell, and I collapsed in the back seat of the cab, too emotionally exhausted to cry any more.
Through the kindness of strangers, for a Southern girl always relies on the kindness of strangers, I made it back to my tropical little haven on the water in Mexico. It turned out I hadn’t been that far away after all; just a twelve hour bus ride back along the coast it had taken us a month to sail down. I was overwhelmed by the welcome I received. Rita, Carl, Edgar, Ricardo, all my friends shouted out ‘Hello!’ and ‘Great to see you back!’ as they saw me walking around the next day. I didn’t say a word, and although they could surely see through my make-up to the bruises on my face, they didn’t ask.
Life settled back into a nice routine, and as my wounds had healed I thought about what had happened. I realized that despite the ending, I actually was thankful to Rick for everything he had given me. I got to live my dream; and I should have known that dreams sometimes come to a sudden end.
I was a different person now to the girl who lived in the big city, and even from the adventurer who left home to seek her dreams.
I look at risk and I know that I can overcome great odds. I know that stranded alone, in a strange country, I can make my way home. I know that with great risk comes great reward, and I believe I have my reward.
As I sit on my balcony in the evening and watch the sail boats come and go, I smile to myself. Because I’m happy to stay where I am.
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