TRAVEL
Benidorm: An Anthropological Study
You might be wondering, what the fuck is Benidorm, and you’re right to do so.
When I discovered I was going on a stag to Benidorm, my first reaction was, “oh no.” I instinctively knew it was not a place for me.
For anyone who doesn’t know what it is, it’s a part of the Spanish coast which has been sort of unofficially colonised by the British tourist.
It’s a place for people who want a hot version of Britain where they can order pig meat in English and never encounter a local who isn’t serving them.
Minds there aren’t closed; they’re in a hermetically sealed time capsule.
It’s the last gasp of a dying age, symbolised by obese ex-pats parallel parking their mobility scooters outside the neon-lit Western Saloon just in time for the happy hour special.
The last days of Rome are playing out in this quasi-colonial outpost.
On the first night out, we went to a bar called The Red Lion for a “sexy” magic show by someone named “Sticky Vicky.”
She’s apparently something of an institution in the place and seemingly performs everywhere on the strip seven days a week.
Toward the show’s climax she pulled a seemingly never-ending string of tiny union jacks from her vagina, the other end held in an audience member’s mouth.
I had two realisations at that moment: This ageing sex worker was a metaphor for a moribund empire. And that I had to write about the bizarre spectacle I was witnessing.
It seemed I’d discovered the epicentre of the lascivious force engulfing this place.
The show was too much for my friend James who took himself outside for a smoke halfway through. When I met him there, he said:
“If I’m going to hell, which is very likely, I’ll land in there, and I won’t be able to go outside.”
It was hard to argue with him; it was like living through a hyper-real nightmare scene in a Terry Gilliam movie.
As a semi-colonial outpost, Benidorm offers its clientele an opportunity to indulge and wallow in depravity not available in the metropole.
Now let’s talk a little more about that clientele.
Britons seem to matriculate here once they reach a certain shape.
I will assert without evidence that Benidorm has more turgid beer guts per capita than anywhere else on the planet.
It’s a world leader in this indicator, or at least in the running.
The most striking example was one of the promoters outside The Red Lion.
He looked normally proportioned from behind, but as he turned around, an enormous swollen beer belly emerged in phases like the moon.
It almost didn’t seem physically possible. I hope he donates his body to science so it can one day be studied.
Every place has a bunch of guys outside who try to hustle you in and, if that fails, inevitably try to sell you cocaine. I’m not joking; literally every single one of them.
Once inside, you hear a deafening selection of the same ten or so dance songs; you know the type. So if you stay at any one place too long, you’ll start to hear repeats.
I have long and luscious hair, so needless to say, I was accosted on multiple occasions by men who felt compelled to police the bounds of imagination beyond the short-back-and-sides.
One bloke I bumped into the mens’ loudly announced I was in the wrong bathroom, while another — so overcome with horror — couldn’t muster any words and let out a sort of disappointed sigh.
All you can do is smile out of concern for your personal safety.
As we were there during the enforced mourning period following Queen Elizabeth II’s death, I expected a lot of patriotic fervour.
And as it happened, a big electronic billboard loomed over the strip with a tribute to the late monarch.
Perched, somewhat ironically, on the roof of a hotel called ‘El Presidente’.
On the last night, I was cornered while waiting for the toilet by an English guy who asked me where I was from and how I felt about the Queen.
I equivocated diplomatically, attempting to extract myself from this impromptu interrogation. But then he said something that surprised me.
“It’s all a bit fucking weird, innit?” He said.
At that point, his friend, who I later learned was from Finland, came over to tell me it was anathema to his democratic sensibilities.
I was completely taken aback; this was not what I had expected from that line of questioning.
Swept away by the moment, I overzealously told him I was writing about my trip, and let slip that my working title was ‘Mecca for Room Temperature IQs’.
He looked confused for a moment as he processed it and then said, “I think you’ve overcooked that a bit.”
And maybe he was right. It was a knee-jerk reaction to the horrendously degrading “sticky show” I’d witnessed the night before.
After all, we did unironically have a lot of fun. The place is almost tailor-made for that kind of holiday.
Maybe this serves as a reminder that you can sometimes find interesting people in unexpected places.
And then unintentionally insult their intelligence.
Drop a penny in my bucket to hear tails of future galavants.
