Honey Daiquiri
I’ve either gained 20lbs or I’m allergic to my body #TOMproblems #girllife #sounfair
by Miniq Brown
Honey Hoaxed
So I’m dreaming right? Any moment now someone is going to jump out from behind a palm tree and shout punked! I could seriously do with seeing Ashton right now because the sight of Daiquiri and she-who-shall-not-be-named-aka-Jezebel chumming together on the sun lounger is so foreign to me I half expect my mouth to suddenly fill with cornflakes and my teeth to fall out- there is a psychological reason that these two staples form ninety percent of my dreams, but I’m not getting into that now.
Bugsy splashes me and I flick freshwater pool off of my sunglasses. ‘Seriously, you can stop staring now,’ he says as he slips through the water like an eel. Bug’s skin reacts to pretty much everything- he is literally allergic to the sun and sunscreen, dwell on that a moment- so he is covered in a layer of protective epiderm which gives him the same impact as a merman, shimmering and sparkling like he’s about to sprout scales on a six-six tail.
‘Can you blame me?’ I respond, ‘I’m basically witnessing a sign of the apocalypse.’
‘Maybe Daks forgave her. Is that really so hard to believe?’
‘Daks… showing forgiveness…yes,’ I respond, and give him a look that says have you met her?
‘This is supposed to be a holiday, Honey,’ Whit pleads, linking his arm around me in the clear blue water and fully appreciating my choice of bikini- a black and white 50's style thing with buttons. ‘Try to have fun?’
‘You’re right,’ I answer. ‘You’re totally right. I’m in Mexico. Necessito encontrar algo divertirse.’
‘Yeah. Totally.’ Whit raises his eyebrow and makes a face at Bugsy who smiles and high fives him while the two share a secret laugh. Boys.
‘Alright Bestman,’ Whit addresses his Turk. I roll my eyes that Whit still calls him that. ‘I think it’s time to make a tower. You on my shoulders or me on yours?’
‘Depends, do you want to die?’ Bug answers, pulling himself up to his full height and eclipsing Whitaker’s six-one.
‘Dude, get out of my sun! I need every UV I can catch so I can finally get a tan.’
‘You know it’s never gonna happen right?’ Bugsy laughs.
‘It almost happened in Sri Lanka.’
‘You got sunburn!’ Bugsy shouts a laugh, ‘in the rain!’
I turn my back on their conversation. Jezebel hands Daiquiri a cocktail and perches beside her, the two laugh like a scene out of The Real Wives of Beverly Hills. Daiquiri turns and looks at me pointedly. Oh hell no. She smiles contently. I swear, if she takes a sip of that cocktail- Daiquiri slowly raises the glass to her lips, looking at me the entire time. That’s it.
I scramble to climb out of the pool when suddenly a gigantic tidal wave knocks me back into the water.
‘Omigod did you see that!’ Whit exclaims and scoops me out of the water, my hair now wet. Awesome. The sound of Daiquiri giggling jars my ears as I straighten up. Jezebel cackles along with her and Daks waves her away to get another cocktail. I bite my tongue. I am way to old for this, but nether the less… This Means War.
*
‘I’m getting tan, Honey. I feel it,’ Whit insists as he checks himself out in the mirror post-shower back in the hotel room. I make no comment. Every vacation Whit tries a new scheme to finally get tan and each time it ends the same way; him going home a glowing white and red beacon with third degree burns and an air of disappointment.
Whit comes to me as I moisturise as part of my post-sun skin treatment and watch Spanish adverts- Sapolio! That frog is gangster. He slips his hand under my towel and I bat his hand away. He buries his face in my shoulder instead.
‘You know, your grumpiness is really killing my plans.’ He kisses my ear and I sigh. He’s right, but I’ll die before I tell him that. I shake my head. Usually what people think of me doesn’t matter. I brush it off, whatever, they don’t know my anyway… But Daks does know me, or at least I thought she did, and for her to think of me as a controlling, domineering, hover-sibling taking WMDs to her life… Maybe I am too much. Maybe I am making Daiquiri’s wars my own. If she wants to be the bigger person and make friends with Jezebel, she can. Of course, I can’t shake the feeling that the only way Jezebel can change her stripes is if she takes a dip in a tar river and melts her skin off, so inevitably Daiquiri will get hurt again, but not soon enough to stop her changing her whole personality again to match that of the vapid sea-witch. But maybe that’s just me being dramatic.
Enough is enough. I can’t spend my life worrying about other people’s! It’s high time I made myself a priority. Whit’s ear kiss turns into a neck kiss.
‘Oi,’ I bat him off.
‘Come on,’ he whines. Sexy.
‘No. You shouldn’t have waited until after I got out of the shower. I’m all clean.’
‘Honey!’ Whit snaps back. ‘How are we going to make a baby if I can only touch you when you’re not clean? When are you not clean!’ He has a point.
‘When did you hear me agreeing to trying for a baby?’
‘You did, you just haven’t realised it yet.’
‘I realise our-’
‘Bills, yes, I haven’t forgotten.’ Whit’s big blue eyes sparkle in the white Mexico sunlight streaming in through the lace curtains. I can’t shake the feeling that he’s not kidding.
‘Wait…’ I hesitate. ‘Did I miss something?’
‘What?’
‘Are you actually serious? You want to start trying for a baby?’
‘I’ve only said as much three times.’
‘But I thought you were…’ I search his straight face looking for a crease of laughter, anything. My mouth hangs open.
‘I know you think I’m the most irresponsible person in the world.’
‘Yes.’
‘But, I think we’re ready. I know things are a bit mental with freelancing, but you just got a job-’
‘So naturally, perfect time to get pregnant.’
‘Someone once told me that if you wait for a good time to have children, you’ll never have children.’
‘Who told you that? Were they an idiot?’
‘No, it was your father.’
‘You damn schemers, you’re in this together!’
‘No one is plotting against your uterus Honey.’ Whit grabs me by both shoulders and I tug my towel under my armpit to keep it from falling down. This is a particularly vulnerable conversation to have naked.
‘We are gonna work this out. You finish uni in a few months. I’m doing well freelancing, and if you need me to to feel secure I will get an office job. I will do it. Because I want this. It’s time.’
What do you say to that? I close my teeth around my bottom lip. Maybe it’s feeling bad about Daiquiri, maybe it’s that every single female I know is procreating, maybe I am just so damn sick of remembering my contraception cycle that I actually agree with Whit.
‘Okay,’ I say. Let’s do it!’ And, taking me literally, Whit threw me down on the hotel bed.
*
So I don’t like to blow my own horn, but I feel pretty hot right now! Mexico does amazing things to my hair, it’s all natural semi-afro curls, and skin is glowing, and my body in this bikini! Yup, I’m the fourth of Destiny’s Children, the one Beyonce didn’t step on, and as I walk past Daiquiri and Jezebel at the poolside I’m sure they know it. Daks is wearing some over-sized checkered shirt and mom is in a cute pregnancy onsie- all matchstick legs and bump. Both Whit and Bugsy watch me as I walk past and it’s all I can do not to lower my aviator glasses and give them a Hollywood Hot Girl wink. Right now I feel like Queen Bee.
And then Daiquiri decides that actually it’s hot in Mexico and peels off her checkered shirt to reveal her tiny red bikini and flat, toned abs a la Nelly Furtado Promiscuous video. She stands from the poolside and walks over to the showers, turning them on and letting the clear water cascade across her body. She flicks her head side to side and gasps in a way that only makes her boobs bigger at the cool temperature of the water. Rows of men immediately disregard their wedding vows to sit forward and openly gape at her slamming body. Somewhere Pamela Anderson was just dethroned.
Suddenly I’m a heffalump. I make a bee-line for the bathrooms. I feel like an idiot, but I shouldn’t. I look great! I’ve been working out non-stop in between uni and work specifically to wear this bikini on holiday. I have been working it the past three days, and nothing has changed except me coming of microgynon, and that’s not going to have a significant impact on me because… oh… no…
Because what happens when you come off microgynon, Honey?
‘You bleed, you idiot,’ I answer myself out loud in the poolside toilets, my bikini bottoms around my ankles. So not only will there be no baby making this vacation, there is no way out of this bathroom without causing the kind of irreversible damage to my psyche that results from total humiliation.
What’s that you ask? That’s the sound of this holiday going down in flames.
And now for words I thought I’d never say; I can’t wait to get back to England. Cheerful, uneventful, England.
*
Oh good, nobody did all my essays for me in my absence, I think as I take my seat in my workshop at Goldsmiths my first day back. I’m two shades darker, not that anyone will notice #blackisblack, and I feel refocussed. My new objective in life is to get through this hell hole of a university as quickly and efficiently as humanly possible, I only need a first on my last three projects to get a first overall. The thing to remember is that none of these people matter because I am about to become a mom. That’s right, I will be pregnant in the next few months, and then all of these self-important prats can suck it. Absolutely nothing can spoil my mood.
My creative shorts tutor Dina drops my portfolio on the desk with a big red grade on the front of it. Fifty-four percent, it reads. 2.2.
*
