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It’s 6pm, and the only reprieve from the oppressive Florida heat is the moist breeze that’s dragging itself laboriously through the Key West International airport.
In and amongst the typical hustle and bustle, one man stands rigid in front of the Arrivals/Departures board. He’s staring crossly up at it with a froggy purse to his mouth like the boards just told him a rather tasteless joke, and he’s decided to keep his opinions to himself, rather than start a row.
His clothes are rumpled from his last long-haul flight, and his mop of curly brown hair seemed to be at war with itself, with one side deciding to embrace the humid air and form tight, springy curls that bounced about at the slightest move, while the other side hung limp and frizzy, like it honestly can’t be bothered with all the extra fuss. Overall, it gives the man a rather bedraggled, and slightly lopsided look. And if you were to ask him, the man would probably agree that, yes, actually, he does feel rather bedraggled and lopsided– crossing four countries in 48-hours tends to do that to a bloke.
The froggy frown furrows further into his features as he watches flight 376CF from Key West to LAX click over from Delayed to Cancelled .
James casts one final scowl up at the board before reshouldering his rucksack and trudging off in the direction of the Delta Airlines concierge desk. His joints groan in protest, aching at all the sudden movement after spending nearly two days sandwiched into a small economy seat as he hopped from Gaborone, to Joburg, to Kotoka, until finally being deposited in Florida in what was only meant to be a thirty-minute layover before he’d finally, finally , be in LA, and sleeping on a proper bed for the first time in over a month.
All things considered, it was a rather lousy start to his birthday– or, would be– or, had already been, depending on what time zone you are going off of. When you’re James, and hop time zones the way most people hop buses, birthdays become these sort of nebulous things; more abstract in concept and practice than most.
After passing multiple brightly coloured murals of cartoon fish, and one Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville restaurant, he’s able to locate the concierge desk with relative ease and drags himself up to the counter. There’s only one woman sitting behind the desk, looking bored as she slowly clicks away at whatever is on her screen, so James plops himself in front of her, panting slightly from the hike across the airport.
“Hi,” he wheezes. “My, erm– my flight got cancelled and I’m looking to reschedule.” But it comes out sounding more like a question as the woman– James notes her name tag says Mona– has still yet to look up from her screen.
“Mmhmm.”
Click... Click… Click…
“Erm. So. Could you help me with that?” James asks somewhat testily.
Mona finally drags her eyes away from her screen to look at him and blinks tired eyes at him through her thick coke-bottle glasses.
“Name?”
“James Maguire.”
She taps away at her keyboard for a moment. “Key West to LAX?”
He nods.
More tapping. She clicks her tongue a couple times as she reads something off her computer screen.
“Looks like we have a flight leaving in… ten minutes ago.”
“In ten minutes ago?”
“Yeah. Tough luck. Next one isn’t until 6am tomorrow morning.”
James checks his watch to find it is only half past and frowns again. Why did the world seem bent on keeping him from his bed?
“Anyone ever tell you you kinda look like Kermit the Frog?”
James looks up. “Excuse me?”
“You know,” Mona gestures to her face. “You just kinda… look like him.”
He frowns at her.
“Yeah, like that.”
He frowns harder. “No, no one has ever said that I look like a puppet frog,” he replies tartly. “Can you please rebook my flight?”
“You want the 6am one?”
“Well it’s not like there’s another option,” he snaps back.
Mona doesn’t seem impressed with his attitude and simply rolls her eyes, and plunks a few more keys before something below her desk starts making a metallic crunching noise. She reaches down, producing a fresh plane ticket.
“There you go, Key West to LAX.”
“Thanks,” James grumbles, and snatches up the ticket, before scurrying away from Mona.
Keeping his eyes fixed to his trainers as he trudges off, James doesn’t notice the passing tourist he’s already knocked into him. James can feel a liquid, hot and wet, soak into the front of his shirt, scalding his skin.
“Jesus— fuck!” James yelps, jumping back “watch where you’re go–” but the rest of his sentence gets cut off as he comes face to face– or, more accurately, face to chest– with a burly man, built like a refrigerator with arms the size of rubbish bins, towering over him.
If this were a movie, this would probably be the point where the record would scratch, the frame would freeze, and in a cheeky voiceover, James would say something along the lines of: “Yup. That’s me. Bet you’re wondering how I got myself into this mess.”
“I mean– I’m sorry!” James says quickly, backing away.
The refrigerator-man gives him a quizzical look. “What are you apologising for? I spilled my coffee on you , son.”
“Right, yeah– well, you didn’t mean to…” James stumbles over his words awkwardly, still gazing up at the imposing figure before him.
The man shoots him a funny look. “You don’t have to look at me like I’m going to eat you, Jesus,” he shakes his head. “Listen, I need to catch my flight– here’s a twenty, go and get yourself a new shirt on me,” and he jerks his thumb over to one of those classic kitschy tourist shops that you seem to find everywhere. “They’ve got some stellar shirts over there.”
“Oh– erm. Okay.” James says. From his vantage, he can see one shirt that says “It’s 5 o’clock somewhere!” written underneath a cartoon drawing of a tiki bar.
The man shoves the twenty into his free hand and pats him on the head with one beefy paw before striding off, disappearing into the crowd of people. For a moment, James stands there rather dumbly, with rapidly cooling coffee all down his front, before finally getting a shift on and heading towards the tourist trap.
The shop is a shrine to Americana, with a cardboard cutout of Elvis Presley propped up in the window acting as its patron saint. James can spot all the usual bric-a-brac that typically litters a store like this: Key West engraved shot glasses, magnets, bottle openers, bucket hats; you name it, you can probably find it with the words Key West, Florida written along the side of it in a retro-looking font.
He peruses the shirts with ever dwindling hope that he won’t be walking out of here in a shirt that doesn’t say “FBI: Female Body Inspector '' or something akin to it stamped on his chest. The icing on the cake is when he stumbles up on a shirt that says “Gills Gone Wild! Raw! Real! Uncut!” around a picture of three trout in denim miniskirts with their tops lifted up like they were supposed to be flashing the audience, except that there is a pixelated bar across all their chests, censoring their fish tits. In a way, it makes the garish Tommy Bahama shirt he finds next a no-brainer. The thing is a dusty red colour with yellow flowers splashed across it, but it’s better than fish tits or any of the other slightly misogynistic shirts that filled the store.
Grabbing the shirt and a pair of sunglasses, he takes them up to the counter and pays far more than $20 for the measly two items. It should be expected, buying from a tourist trap like this, but James still feels his insides whither a little as he forks over almost all the American currency he has in his wallet. He’ll need to exchange more money at the currency exchange counter before they close– Christ, he still needs to figure out what he is going to do, for that matter. He doesn’t really want to get a hotel room if he is going to have to be back here in a few hours, but also, squatting in the airport for twelve hours sounds like just about the worst birthday ever.
Maybe he’ll just get a drink. Post up in a bar for as long as they’ll let him with something fun and fruity and pretend he isn’t spending his birthday alone in a Florida airport.
Stepping out of the kitschy little tourist trap, James spots an airport bar across the way promoting their $10 margaritas.
Okay. For the sake of his wallet, he’d find a bar not in the airport to post up in.
🕶️ ☀️ 🏖️ 🍹 🌊
James feels only slightly ridiculous in his new getup of Tommy Bahama shirt, denim cutoffs, and sandals. In the mirror above the airport bathroom sinks, his reflection stares back at him, looking like a caricature of a stereotypical tourist with his sunglasses pushed up into his curls; all he is missing is the glob of sun lotion on his nose, and maybe a fanny pack (of which, he does own one (they’re just so useful!) but hasn’t seen since he checked his bag in Gaborone).
Well, when in Rome, he thinks to himself, before wandering off to the nearest payphone to book himself a taxi.
After one needlessly complicated phone call, James makes his way towards the Arrival’s pick up area to wait for his taxi. However, as he walks he realises that someone, somewhere, is blasting Sandstorm by Darude.
The blaring beat of a subwoofer makes the air around him seem to vibrate, only growing louder and more prominent as he walks. He follows the sound of blaring EDM music outside into the muggy evening air, where the setting sun casts a burnished, golden hue over an otherwise unremarkable-looking mezzanine overlooking the Arrivals area and… a mosh pit?
James does a double take at the strobing lights, foam pit, and mass of bodies dancing below. Over the entire scene, a giant balloon arch sways slightly in the humid breeze, sporting a sign that reads “Airport-palooza 2003”. He looks around to make sure everyone else can see the mosh pit too, and it isn’t some kind of weird fever dream that he alone seems to be experiencing. But, if others can see the mosh pit, they seem entirely unphased by its existence.
Lost in thought, James completely misses the beach ball that comes sailing his direction from the centre of the mosh pit until it bounces, comically, off the top of his head. James lets out a surprised yelp at the contact as the ball dribbles away from him slightly.
“Hey, bro! Can you toss the ball back?” Says a voice from below the mezzanine.
“Huh?”
A hand appears over the railing, quickly followed by an arm, and then a head.
James stares, slack jawed, at the adonis hoisting himself over the railing. He’s clad in a snapback and boardshorts and not much else.
“Bro?”
James jumps, realising he’s staring. “Sorry?”
“The ball?”
James picks up the beach ball, tossing it to the bloke. The frat guy catches it and shakabras. “Thanks bro, love you!”
“What?”
“I said: I love you!” He says, enunciating his words more clearly for James.
“Oh,” he doesn’t really know what to say. “I… love you too? Bro?”
“Tight.” And then he back gainers off the mezzanine, into the writhing mass of dancing bodies below with a whoop.
For one hairbrained moment, James wonders if he’s meant to follow his newfound love over the edge and into the foamy pit below, but ultimately decides against it because:
- He doesn’t know how to do a back gainer.
- His taxi has just arrived.
“James Maguire?” The cabby gets out, and James immediately realises that they’re wearing the same shirt. The cabby notices it at the same time as him, and makes one of those ‘hey, look at us wearing the same outfit!’ type of gestures, and James wonders if he should run back and get the fish tits shirt instead. “Where’re you looking to go?”
“Just… a local pub, I guess?” James shrugs, slinging his rucksack into the boot of the cab. The endless party atmosphere that permeated every corner of Florida seemed a novelty to indulge in, and though James might have been dumped in the state rather unceremoniously, he'd decided that he was going to make the best of it.
“I can do that! There’s a good beach shack bar on the next island over. Been there for years– but you’re not gonna find it on any maps! Oh no, this one is a secret local favourite– if I take you there, you have to swear to never mention it to anyone outside Florida.”
James chuckles, assuming the man must be joking. “Sure. Okay.” He says, deciding to play along with the overserious cabby.
The cabby looks him dead in the eye. “Swear it.”
He almost does another double-take at the man’s sudden change in demeanour. “I– erm– I swear?”
He brightens again. “Great! Let’s go.”
James wonders if he’s about to get serial-killed.
As soon as he closes the door, the cabby launches into a monologue about the area; filling James’s ears with all kinds of facts and opinions on how things have changed since he was young, about the price of gas, about tourism, about politics, and so on. James, for his part, tries his best to keep up by making vague British noises from the backseat whenever the cabby pauses for breath, like: “Ohh…” and “Really? How interesting…” and “Well, you know what they say…”
Once they exit the concrete jungle that is the Key West International Airport, James is immediately greeted by the sight of the lush and expansive ocean, tinged a tropical turquoise unlike anything James has experienced. It blends seamlessly into the sky, creating one endless horizon, as if the world just seemed to end right at the rocky edge of highway A1A.
They pass by luxurious beach front homes, several expensive-looking waterfront restaurants, yacht-filled marinas, and it isn’t until they’ve passed a number of less-expensive-looking RV parks that James begins to wonder if maybe he should have asked more questions of the cabby, like: Where are you taking me? might have been a good one. When he makes a turn off near a sign that reads Key West Tropical Forest & Botanical Garden , James begins to revisit the theory that he’s about to be serial-killed.
He thinks of voicing this concern now, but his British sensibilities tell him to not cause a fuss, and he doesn’t want to offend the man by accusing him of being a serial killer. What if he wasn’t a serial killer, but then James accuses him of being one, and he gets so upset the cabby decides to serial kill him just for suggesting it?
James decides he can’t risk it, and sits quietly in the back of the cab, awaiting his potential doom.
The cab trundles on, wending along a sandy road lined with lush vegetation on each side. It hides each bend in the road until it's upon them, but his cabby drives it all with ease, zigging and zagging down the path with confidence, taking them seemingly deeper and deeper into the forest.
When the taxi finally rolls to a stop, James is deposited in front of a dilapidated looking shack nestled in a grove of palm trees with buoys hanging from its rafters like windchimes. The building seems less a building in the traditional sense, and more like someone had been once told what buildings were supposed to look like once, maybe while drunk, and then said “yeah, yeah, I got this. Hold my beer” before making this shack.
The shack is made out of patchwork of ocean-bleached shiplap and driftwood, and seemingly tied together with string lights. Its roof was made of (from what James could tell) rusty tin that slouched dangerously low on one side, which made the shack look like it was wearing a red hat at a jaunty angle. In front, a skeleton in a dirty lawn chair sits wearing the same faded red Tommy Bahama shirt as him (is this the only shirt in Florida?) , clutching an empty Natural Ice beer can. James makes one of those ‘hey, look at us wearing the same outfit!’ type of gestures at the skeleton, and the skeleton looks like it's wondering if it should run back and get the fish tits shirt instead.
If the place has a proper name, James doesn’t know. There is just one big glowing sign that says OPEN in red letters, accompanied by a collection of smaller glowing signs that say stuff like WE ACCEPT EBT (whatever that is), and that they sell Coors Light beer and offer pull-tabs.
“Are you sure this is open? ” James asks the cabby.
The man shrugs. “You said you wanted to go to the local spot. This is where the locals go.”
James grimaces, then, remembering what Mona said about him looking like a frog, immediately tries to quirk his mouth into something less frog-shaped. Unfortunately, he can’t quite settle on what he wants to do with his face, and ultimately just ends up looking like he’s chewing on something bitter.
Clutching a sweaty $5 bill in one hand, having waited the whole ride to give it to the taxi driver, James hands the tip to the driver. When he gives it to the cabby, he makes a face, and James can’t tell if he’s just given him too much or a lousy pittance.
James decides he will worry about this for days. It will wake him up at night.
🕶️ ☀️ 🏖️ 🍹 🌊
The pub’s interior is a cool, dimly-lit room, with a heavy helping of sand covering its well worn floorboards. The only light source seems to come from the pink flamingo string lights that line the ceiling, and the very back wall, which has been lifted up like one of those garage-style doors, opening the room out to a picturesque sandy beach. The sun is slowly sliding into the ocean, giving the whole scene a hazy, almost dream-like quality, and there’s the slight stench of weed in the air, mingling with the salty ocean breeze rolling in from the beach.
Despite its rather ominous exterior, the place is decently populated with patrons all in varying stages of undress (apparently the ‘no shirt, no shoes, no service’ rule does not apply in Florida), effusing the room with a warm chatter. In the corner, there’s a small stage and a karaoke screen where someone is singing Kokomo by the Beach Boy confidently off-key. But, regardless of their terrible singing, a fair amount of people chime in when they reach the chorus.
“Aruba, Jamaica, ooh, I wanna take ya
Bermuda, Bahama, come on, pretty mama
Key Largo, Montego, Baby who don’t ge go
(ooh, I wanna take you down to Kokomo!)”
“Hi! Welcome! You gonna come in?” Chirps a voice.
James follows the sound to the bartop, where a petite woman stood with her hair done up in Princess Leia buns, wearing a faded red Tommy Bahama shirt. James, however, is no longer phased by this. He has learned by now to accept that everyone apparently owns and wears the same shirt– that is just the Florida way.
“Hi. Yeah. Sorry,” James slides into one of the stools at the bar, dropping his rucksack down by his feet. “Erm, what kind of drinks do you do here?”
“What are you feeling?”
James thinks for a minute, but can’t come up with anything that feels right for the atmosphere. Usually, when he’s out at bars, he sticks to simple drinks: beer, gin and tonics, or the occasional appletini if he’s feeling frisky. But looking around the sand-covered bar; at the grizzled sea dogs crowded around one table playing cards, at the group of college-aged kids shotgunning cans of beer on the beach, at the man dressed as the pirate asleep at the other end of the bartop– he knows it is decidedly not an appletini kind of night.
He shrugs. “Surprise me?”
Princess Leia raises her eyebrows at him. “Bold choice. I can give you whatever I want, then?”
“Just be gentle with me.”
Princess Leia smiles before setting about the bar.
James has never bartendered a day in his life, and quite honestly, probably never will. He’s seen many bartenders work in his day: from New York, to Australia, from fancy cocktail lounges, to sticky, dimly-lit Irish pubs, and he knows, intrinsically, that it is just something he is not cut out for. Juggling all the different customers and drinks, keeping it all straight in your head while also making engaging small talk, ringing people up; he doesn’t know how they do it.
From his vantage, he watches Leia pour various things into a shaker. Some, he recognizes, like when she reaches for the handle of a Malibu Rum bottle, and pineapple juice, but then she also reaches for a mysterious squeezy bottle, and something else too small for him to see properly that she tosses in before closing the shaker up and giving it a hearty shake.
“Not from around here, are you?” Leia asks.
“What gave it away?”
Leia motions a finger to his shirt, “You’re all buttoned up. A true local has at least three buttons undone.”
James undoes the top four buttons of his shirt.
“That’s better,” Leia laughs, and sets a drink down in front of him. Before James, sits a tropical looking drink with a gentle gradient from yellow to red, topped with a little umbrella and a swirly straw.
“What is it?” James asks.
“No idea.” Leia shrugs, resting her elbows on the counter. “Bit of a pina colada, bit of a Malibu sunset, bit of a rum punch– I just thought it’d be fun to make it match your shirt.”
James looks down at his red and yellow shirt, then back to his red and yellow drink. “So it does.”
He takes a sip, watching the liquid travel up the loop-de-loop, and gives Princess Leia a thumbs up.
“It’s good!”
Leia pours the rest of the shaker into a second glass and takes a sip. “Yeah, that’s not too bad. Needs a name though, got any ideas?”
James scrutinises the drink. “The… Tommy Bahama?”
Leia nods. “That's pretty good– but I think that drink already exists. What’s your name?”
“James.”
“How about: James’s Vacation Drink?”
He wrinkles his nose, “Bit of a mouthful, that one.”
“The Vacation James?”
“Guess that works.” He shrugs, taking another sip of his Vacation James. “D’you mind if I wander around a bit?”
“Well, technically, you’re not allowed to leave the premises with alcohol,” Leia says, “but, as you can see, our premise doesn’t really have an end.” She gestures to the missing back wall. “So, wander all you like, just make sure you come back.”
Picking up his rucksack, James motions to it. “Think I could leave this behind the bar? Plus, it seems like a fair trade if I walk off with your glass.”
Leia takes his bag, and he’s just about to walk off when she exclaims, “Oh! Oh shit! – Shit! What time is it?-- Oh shit.”
James freezes where he is, one foot still in the air, and one sleeping pirate still at the end of the bar, as Leia begins running around in a frenzy behind the bar.
“Something wrong?”
“I forgot I’m supposed to drop off this prize for this dance competition happening down the beach,” says Leia’s voice from below the bar top. Suddenly, she pops up, a white envelope in hand. “I was meant to drop this off way earlier today and totally spaced. I can’t leave the bar unmanned, do you think you could walk it down there?”
“Sure,” James says with another sip of his drink. “But I don’t know where I’m going. I’m not from around here remember?”
“They’re just down the beach,” Leia hands him the envelope. “Just walk along the water heading to the right and you should see them. It’s this big dance party on the beach. Really hard to miss. You’ll want to hand this to Reggie.”
“Reggie,” James repeats. “Down the beach to the right.”
🕶️ ☀️ 🏖️ 🍹 🌊
Princess Leia is right, the party is hard to miss. Almost as soon as James leaves the shack and hangs a right, he can spy the dancers off in the distance; a beacon of twinkling lights and laughter in the dying light of dusk.
So he takes his time (because why shouldn’t he?) strolling along the beach, letting his eyes adjust to the ever darkening surroundings as the last vestiges of sunlight paint the land in a rich purple hue. And even though the sun has fully sunk into the ocean, the water is still bathtub warm, and he takes his sandals off as he walks, letting his toes wriggle into the still-hot sand as the occasional wave laps at his feet.
And he feels…
And
he
feels…
At peace.
It dawns on him quite suddenly, as he walks along this deserted stretch of beach sipping on his Vacation James, deep in the Florida Keys, that nobody knows him here. Nobody knows that he’s even here. And it’s an odd marvel how little he is bothered by this thought. How adept he’s become at navigating the different clusters of people he encounters when travelling from city to city, country to country. Like a satellite in orbit: cruising by, close enough to be considered part of the atmosphere, but distant enough to know he remains in the void of space.
Just how easy would it be for him to disappear? How long would it take for someone to notice? He toys with the thought, batting it around his head the way a cat would with a ball of yarn. It’s oddly exhilarating to think about how he exists: independent, untethered, and unknown.
He can’t remember all the lyrics to it right now, but he thinks he might finally understand what that old Simon and Garfunkel song was banging on about.
I am a rock, I am an island.
To the left, he has the ocean: a dull far-off roar in his ears as the moon beckons the waters back out, and to his right lay the forest: tropical and wild. Where night things chitter and skrawk in the darkness, just beginning to wake. And like that, James strolls along, humming tunelessly to himself, swinging his sandals back and forth beside him as he goes.
Once James broaches the penumbra of the party, he lets the vibrance of the disco wash over him: the heat radiating off the dancing bodies, the technicolor lights they have bouncing off the disco ball they’ve strung between two palm trees, and the sounds of December, 1963 by Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons blasting over the stack of loudspeakers they have sitting at the edge of the dance floor.
On any normal day, this sight might thoroughly confuse him, but he is no longer Normal James. No, he is Vacation James, and Vacation James doesn’t question things like matching Tommy Bahama shirts, or mosh pits at the airport, or discos on the beach. Vacation James just rolls with it .
Downing the rest of his drink, James two-steps and jives his way over to the little front desk they have on the side. It’s nothing more than a plastic table with a tarp over it that someone has taped a sign to that says Check-In/ Sign Up, and behind it sits a bored-looking woman with a shock of vibrant purple hair pushed back from her face by a pair of sunglasses. She’s also wearing the same Tommy Bahama shirt as him, because of course she is.
In a spur of inspiration, he tries to slide up to her a la Risky Business , but fails horribly because, as it turns out, you can’t really slide on sand like that. Instead he trips, and rather spectacularly, too. He just barely saves himself from going careening into her lap by sort of… belly flopping onto the table at the last minute.
James realises, in this moment, that Princess Leia makes a surprisingly strong Vacation James and maybe he shouldn’t have pounded the rest of his drink just now.
“Jesus Christ!” the woman yelps, jumping to her feet and knocking her lawn chair back. “What the fuck?”
“Hi,” James wheezes, trying to play the whole thing off like throwing himself onto the table in front of her is a totally normal thing to do. “I have this, erm, envelope .” He pulls the envelope out of his breast pocket. “I’m supposed to give this to some guy? Reggie?”
The woman eyes him with understandable wariness. “ I’m Reggie.”
“Oh! Sorry. I got this from– erm,” James pauses, frowning. “Actually, I never did catch her name… The bartender down the beach?”
Her eyes light up, “Did Chloe send you?”
James shrugs, but she quickly snatches the envelope out of his hands and opens it, taking in the contents.
“Well it’s about fucking time.”
December, 1963 comes to an end and Play That Funk Music by Wild Cherry starts, and James can’t help but bob along to the song a little as he gazes out across the partiers. The dance floor is nothing more than a cordoned off section of beach; its perimeter defined by a few strategically placed tiki torches, but the scene before him is like something out of a movie. Like Pulp Fiction or Saturday Night Fever , he thinks, noting an excessive use of disco fingers all across the floor.
He glances back over to Reggie. “So, a disco on the beach? The lady– what’d you say her name was? Chloe? She said you guys were having a dance competition?”
“Yep,” Reggie says, popping the ‘p’. “It’s a freestyle competition. Five bucks to enter, all proceeds go towards Friends of the Everglades.”
James fishes a five out of his wallet. “Is it too late to enter?”
Reggie shakes her head, and he hands her the five.
He boogies his way onto the dance floor before turning around to spy Reggie at the edge of the dance floor, watching him with a look of bemusement on her face, arms crossed over her chest.
Come on, he mouths at her, trying to entice her with his best funky chicken.
She shakes, eyes shining as she mouths back, No.
Why not? He switches from the funky chicken to the robot and she snorts.
She gestures to the plastic table James body slammed earlier. I’m working!
He shoots her an disbelieving look. Come on! He tries again, pretending to lasso her and drag her onto the dance floor.
Reggie eyes him, chewing on her bottom lip until finally, reluctantly, jiving over to him on the dance floor.
“If I get in trouble for leaving my post, I’m blaming you!” Reggie shouts over the blaring music.
“Fair enough!” James shouts back with a twirl.
Oh yeah, he is maybe more than a little tipsy.
They groove their way under the glittering disco ball as the songs bleed seamlessly from one into the next. In the thick of the crowd, there’s nothing but the sand below, and the stars above as they sweat and twist and jive the night away.
Some time later, as the crowd around them seems to thin, James shouts to Reggie as he does the hokey-pokey, “Hey! How does this thing end, anyways?”
“The judges!” Reggie says, dance-gesturing towards a couple of guys in tropical shirts circling the perimeter of the floor. “If they tap you on the shoulder, you have to leave the floor. Last one on the floor is the winner!”
“Oh,” James says as he shakes his left foot all about.
“I didn’t think we’d make it this long, actually,” Reggies says with jazz hands.
Frankly, he is starting to get a little winded. Turns out he doesn’t really have the endurance to keep up dancing for this long, but he tries to keep up and dance.
He dances on through the stitch that forms in his side. And even when one of his sandals accidentally goes flying off his foot, he doesn’t let it slow his groove.
On, and on he went, for who knows how long. At some point he stops being James, and becomes one with the music, lost in a discotheque-transe. He no longer knows where he ends and the music begins.
It could have been minutes, or it could have been hours, but eventually the dance competition gets down to the final five: him, Reggie, and three other dancers.
James lets himself be dragged over to the side of the dance floor as all the finalists get the chance to have a solo out on the floor to Boogie Wonderland by Earth Wind and Fire.
The first finalist, a blonde girl dressed in a bunny costume, just simply spins around in circles really fast until she falls over. The next contestant, a severely sunburnt guy, does a pretty decent running man, and another guy does the YMCA, but with his feet until he falls over. Reggie bows out, as she’s supposed to be working.
When it finally comes to be his turn to do a solo, James strides into the centre of the dance floor with confidence. Music blaring, crowd cheering, he dives for the ground to do the worm. And it only dawns on him once he’s on the ground that he doesn’t actually know how to do the worm.
But it’s too late to turn back now, he’s already on the floor. So, James proceeds to do his very best attempt at the worm.
…Well, it was certainly an attempt .
However, the small fact of James drunkenly flailing around in the sand doesn’t seem to quell the audience’s support of him as many start chanting: “Go white boy! Go white boy!” And when he pops back up, one of the judges lifts up his arm and announces him as the winner.
🕶️ ☀️ 🏖️ 🍹 🌊
“So, there I am: just me, my camera, and the grace of God, clinging on to the back of this truck as we go hurtling through the bush at eighty kilometres an hour. I’ve got my first AD shouting into my cans ‘Don’t stop! Don’t stop shooting!’ while I’m staring down this pack of lions chasing after us, and all I can think, as I’ve got one hand on my camera, and the other clinging to the truck for dear life is: if I fall off now, I’m cat food.”
He milks the moment, leaving his captive audience on tenterhooks as James takes a slurpy sip of his drink through his silly straw, reclining back in a cheap plastic lawn chair. Moments where James feels cool, genuinely cool, are few and far between, so when they do come along, he likes to cherish them.
After winning the dance competition, James had been bequeathed the prize he had only just delivered to Reggie: a coupon for one night of free drinks at the Kokomo.
He made his way back to the bar with more than a few of the dancers in tow and now the place was packed to the gills. Making his way up to the bartop, James had slapped the coupon down in front of Princess Leia– Chloe – and proceeded to do something he’d only ever seen done in movies (but had secretly always wanted to do) and shouted: “Round of Vacation Jameses on me!”
And the whole place cheered, chanting his name: “James! James! James! James!”
They’d even lifted him up, and carried him to the middle of the bar where he now sits, drink in hand.
At some point in the night, James had lost one of his sandals. He thinks it happened while he was dancing, but he honestly isn’t too sure. But now he sits with one sandaled foot planted on the floor, while the other one, bare and sandy, rests on an adjacent chair, with his sunglasses on despite the fact the sun had set hours ago.
“And then what happened?” Someone asks.
“I got the shot, obviously,” James says, pushing his sunglasses up his nose as the crowd ooo’s and ahh’s at him. “This isn’t Hollywood, y’know? There’s no ‘back to one’ if we don’t get the shot. Documentaries are raw, real; there are no second chances out in the field.”
“Is that where this came from?” The bunny girl from earlier asks, pointing a finger to a jagged pink scar in his elbow.”
“Oh. That,” James takes another sip of his Vacation James. “Nah, that was from having to wrestle a crocodile off my buddy Mike. The thing tried to take a bite out of him while he was getting a shot of some impala down by the water.”
The crocodile in question had only been a baby, thankfully, no bigger than James’s forearm. He hadn’t even noticed the bite until they’d made it back to camp, having high tailed it out of there before the baby’s mum could show up. But, being several kilometres away from civilization, Mike had had to patch up his bite the old fashioned way: with a bit of leather for James to bite down on, some alcohol, and a needle that’d been passed through the fire a few times.
When James had seen the job listing go up to work on a NatGeo documentary, in many ways it had felt like kismet. This was his opportunity of a lifetime: to travel with a select crew of seasoned filmmakers to one of the most remote places on the planet and capture things most people could never dream of seeing. To see the world and things dangerous to come, to draw closer to the unknown, and tell its story from the other side.
He just had to break up with his boyfriend to do it.
But in the end, it had ended up being everything he’d dreamed of and more. James traversed all 1,500 miles of the Okavango delta with a camera in one hand and a machete in the other. He had been chased by wild game, swam through crocodile infested waters, and dangled upside down from branches nearly thirty kilometres in the air just to get the perfect overhead shot of a herd of giraffes. He learned how to throw knives, and got really good at Texas hold ‘em.
It had been everything he’d dreamed of and more, but by the end of the month, James had been tired. Tired of starting every day at the crack of dawn, only to fall back into bed well past midnight. Tired of hiking his gear across the bush and back. He missed hot showers, indoor plumbing, and T.V . He missed lazy days watching telly on the couch, and the ease of ordering take away when he didn't have the energy to cook. He missed talking to his friends. He missed Michelle, and Clare, and Orla, and–
“I was tired of my lady
We'd been together too long
Like a worn out recording
Of a favourite song”
James is pulled, quite suddenly from his reminiscing, back into the sandy bar as the first few lyrics of Escape ring out across Kokomo. Up on the karaoke stage stood the adonis from earlier, still clad in his board shorts, but now sporting a pirate’s tri-corner hat. He’s captivated the whole bar with his entrance, including himself, and James can feel himself flush when the adonis shoots him a wink before launching into the chorus.
The whole bar sings along, and James has lost his spotlight. Which is okay, and probably for the best. He could feel the attention going to his head, and can only imagine the things Michelle would say if she could see him now.
“If you like piña coladas
And gettin' caught in the rain
If you're not into yoga
If you have half a brain
If you like makin' love at midnight
In the dunes on the cape
Then I'm the love that you've looked for
Write to me and escape”
James has. Many times over, in fact. He’s been chasing the speculative adventure to the next city for a while now. He is practically an expert at it. But it has always been a solo adventure, his.
He wonders if there’s someone out there that’d come with him. A companion, maybe. He thinks that might be nice to have.
When the song ends and the adonis bows, James claps along politely with the rest. From the stage, he points a finger at James.
“Is our resident Crocodile Dundee going to grace us with a song?”
“Oh,” James can feel his face heating up, “well, I don’t know what I’d sing…” he says, trying to play coy. Unfortunately for him, the crowded bar was chanting his name again.
“What, so you can wrestle crocodiles, but you can’t sing karaoke?” The adonis goads him from the stage, his rippling abs glowing under the pink flamingo string lights.
“I never said that. ” James says defensively. “Karaoke,” he flips his sunglasses down for dramatic effect, “is a fucking state of mind ,” and traipses off with more confidence than he actually felt towards the mini stage beside the karaoke screen where Margaritaville sits cued and ready to play.
The crowded bar applauds him as he takes the mic in hand, the first notes of Margaritaville drifting out across the packed bar.
“ Nibblin' on sponge cake
Watchin' the sun bake
All of those tourists covered with oil”
And he’s good. He’s better than good. He’s on top of the world. And when he reaches the first chorus, the whole bar chimes in, signing along with him:
“Wasting away again in Margaritaville
Searching for my lost shaker of salt
Some people claim that there’s a woman to blame
But I know, it’s nobody’s fault…”
It doesn’t make sense why she should pop into his head now. Here, while he’s singing karaoke, drinking a Vacation James, and surrounded by all his new friends. While she’s probably home, maybe asleep, or doing something boring and drab with her boring and drab boyfriend, and he’s out here having the time of his life in this run-down beachside karaoke bar in the middle of nowhere. Him , surrounded by people cheering his name, and enjoying a personalised drink.
But then, why does it all feel so empty?
“ Wastin' away again in Margaritaville
Searchin' for my lost shaker of salt
Some people claim that there's a woman to blame
Now I think, hell, it could be my fault”
Suddenly, it’s as though someone has switched on the lights, and the bar loses its lustre. The inviting chatter of the strangers that surrounds him is now just that: the chatter of strangers, and the bar floor is sticky and cold under his flip flop free foot.
He sings the last chords of Margaritaville, looking out over the sea of drunk faces, his Vacation James sitting funny in his stomach.
“Some people claim that there’s a woman to blame,
And I know, it’s my own damn fault…”
Stepping down from the little karaoke stage, James puts his unfinished Vacation James on one of the tables and slinks back over to the bartop to get his rucksack back from Chloe.
He’s almost made it out the door when he’s stopped by one of his new friends– one of the disco girls that had followed him back from the party. Jessica? Or Jennifer, maybe?
“Jim! Where are you going? You’re not leaving, are you?” She stumbles over to him, flinging an arm around his neck that almost topples him.
“Erm, it’s James,” he says.
“What?”
“My name. You’ve literally been drinking a Vacation James all night.”
“Oh,” Jessica or Jennifer laughs, shrugging, “whatever. We’re gonna do bodyshots, come on!”
“No– I think I’m gonna call it a night,” James says, trying to disentangle himself from the drunk girl. “I’m quite knackered, actually.”
Jessica or Jennifer giggles, “ knackered , that’s so posh. Knackered .” She repeats the word over and over, mimicking his accent.
James forces a dry chuckle as he finally is able to pry himself free from her drunken snare. “Hey, did you choose Dancing Queen? Because if so, I think you’re up.” He gestures to the karaoke stage where it shows Dancing Queen as the song up next.
“Oh my gosh!” She gasps dramatically, “I gotta go– don’t leave while I’m up on stage, okay Jim?”
“Sure,” James nods, and then leaves as soon as her back is turned.
🕶️ ☀️ 🏖️ 🍹 🌊
Back at the airport, he casts his sunglasses aside, unsure why he was still wearing them when the sun had set hours ago. Passing by one of the many murals of cartoon fish that the Key West airport seemed to love so much, he catches a glimpse of himself in a mirror, and his shirt looks cartoonish on him under the unfriendly fluorescent lighting of the airport. He’s tired, and looks ridiculous.
He makes his way to the row of payphones that lines one of the long airport hallways without any idea of what he’s going to do or who he’s going to call. Inhibitions lowered from all the Vacation Jameses and urged on by the desire to hear a familiar voice, James has picked up the phone and is dialling the long-distance number before his brain has a chance to catch up with what his body is doing and tell him to stop. Call someone, but don’t call her. Damnit, don’t call–
“M’hullo?” Her voice is deep and scratchy, like someone just pulled from the deep recesses of sleep, and he realises just how long it’s been since he’s last spoken to her.
His breath catches a little before he manages to wheeze out an eloquent. “Hi.”
“James? Do you have any idea what time it is?”
“Sorry– I,” he looks around frantically for a clock, but is only met with more cartoon fish. You’d think an airport would want you to know what time it is at the very least. “Sorry, I woke you up, didn’t I? I’ll let you go–”
“Well now hold on, I’m already up,” Erin sighs, and he can hear the sheets rustling as she sits up in bed. “You might as well make it worth it. What’s up?”
“I–” He’s not really sure what to say, actually. He doesn’t really have a good reason. At least, not one he can say out loud. “Well. I just thought I’d call. Because. Y’know…”
“Are you drunk right now?”
“A little,” he says, chagrined.
He can hear her snort over the phone, and for some reason that makes him smile. “Right– oh! Wait, what time is it there?”
“You asked me this already, remember?” He teases, “no idea.”
“Well then we’ll just say it’s your birthday still and this can be your birthday call,” she says breezily, “where are you anyways? Been off fighting any more alligators?”
“Crocodiles,” he corrects her.
“Same thing.”
“They’re really not,” he mutters. “I did wrestle a crocodile that one time, though,” James whines. How is it that this phone call has lasted less than a minute, and she’s already brought out this moody, whiney side of him that seems to only come out when he’s talking to one of the Derry girls. How is it that she’s already got him melting into the side of the pay phone a little, as they slip back into the easy cadence their conversations always carry.
“ Sure you did,” he can practically hear the eyeroll in her voice. “And my Ma’s pound cake won you favour with the South African warlords, too.”
“But it did win us favour!”
“James, you wouldn’t even lamp that git for those Fatboy Slim tickets. How do you expect me to believe you fought a crocodile?”
“Well, the crocodile was smaller than that guy…” James says, sounding petulant even to his own ear. “I’d fight a crocodile again, before I’d lamp him.”
Erin laughs at this, and the sound ripples pleasantly over his ears. He’s always liked her laugh— and she has a lot of laughs: there’s the one that sounds like a witches cackle when something funny takes her by surprise, making her toss her head back and laugh uproariously. There’s the one that sounds like an angry duck that’s usually reserved for when one of the Derry Girls makes a particularly silly joke, where she gets all red faced and wheezy. This one, though… This one shimmers over the long distance connection, warm and fizzy, like bubbles in a champagne flute. It makes his face inexplicably heat up, and is by far his favourite of the lot.
If he didn’t know better, he’d even dare to say it sounded flirty.
“You didn’t say where you are.”
“Florida,” James sighs, “layover. You know how it goes.”
“I don’t, actually.”
“Sorry?”
“ Layovers,” she clarifies. “I’m not the jetsetter you are, I’m not flying all over the world like you. I’m just… here. You know?”
“Oh,” James shifts a little, shoving his free hand into his pocket. “Well you’re not missing out on much.”
She makes a little humming noise over the phone, and goes quiet. He listens to the muted sounds trickling in over the phone. He can tell she’s moving around, perhaps making tea, but he isn’t too sure. He tries to picture it: the way she might move around as she talks to him, but doesn’t really know what her flat looks like. He’s made it a point not to learn what the inside of her flat looks like, actually. He regrets that a little now.
He thinks about the piña colada song. About turning Mike down for the next project the group was to do in the Himalayas. About leaving Miles back in Australia. About getting on another plane and heading to California.
Maybe Erin likes piña coladas.
“But you might like it,” he says.
“What?”
“Layovers– well, travelling.”
She hums again, like she’s thinking it over. “Maybe… Liam and I were talking about going to France. Maybe next summer, or something. We haven’t decided. But honestly, I don’t think I’m cut out for all the travelling you do. I’m too much of a homebody, I think.”
“Well, I dunno,” in his pocket, James fiddles with a bit of lint he’s found, rolling it between his fingers. He doesn’t fancy the direction the conversation has turned in. “You might be cut out for it, you just haven’t travelled enough to find out yet. It’s one of those things you get better at the more you do it.”
“But I like my home.”
“I like my home too!” He says hotly. “I just… also like a bunch of other places. I don’t want to keep myself to just one place when there’s a whole world to explore.”
“Where is your home these days anyways? Australia?”
He winces, not missing the tone in her voice. But he doesn’t want to fight right now.
“Australia, a little bit. A little in New York, too. England. And Ireland, of course.”
“Right,” but she says it like she doesn’t believe him.
He wants to say he feels at home right now. That just talking to her made him feel more anchored in reality after a surreal day. But he doesn’t because he can hear more movement on the other side, and a muffled “morning” from the other end of the line.
Fuck it.
“Listen, I should probably g–”
He cuts her off. “I just called because, well, I’d actually just been thinking about that.”
“What?”
“About, y’know. Home. And the fact that I’m here. In Florida, of all places. On my birthday. And just, how did I even get here?”
“Well, I assume by plane. But maybe they’ve got trans-atlantic hot air balloons now, I dunno.”
“Come off it, you know what I mean, like,” he waves his hand around even though he knows she can’t see him. He wants to ask her why he’s like this. Why he’s spending his birthday alone in a random state, so far away from any of the people who love him. “Travelling, versus not travelling, versus whatever the fuck Orla’s doing these days.”
“Hurling.”
“What?”
“They’re coaching hurling. Might actually make it to the Olympics, or so I’m told. –Did you know hurling was invented in Ireland?”
“No. That’s…” A beat. “Huh.”
“Anyways. Reminds me of a creative writing exercise from uni,” Erin says conversationally.
“What, hurling?”
“No, the–” she goes silent, and James knows intrinsically that she’s making the same vague hand gesture that he was making earlier.
“And what’s that?”
“Well you’d write a sentence of a story on a blank piece of paper, then pass it to your neighbour. Then they’d write a sentence and then pass it to their neighbour, and so on and so forth. Until, eventually, the paper’s gone all around the room and back to you. And in front of you, there’s this semi-nonsensical story written in a bunch of different pens— kind of like people.”
James smiles into the receiver. “Semi-nonsensical stories penned by a bunch of different people?”
“You know what I mean.” He can practically hear the scowl in her voice. Her face always gets so scrunchie when she’s cross.
“Like, the way I pen my y’s is exactly like how my penmanship teacher taught me in primary school. Or— I still curl my hair using the trick with the flat iron and Michelle taught me. And I still cut my sandwiches the way you showed me back in sixth year.”
James frowns. “I what?”
“You don’t remember?”
He shakes his head, then remembers she can’t see him, but she chuckles like she can see him anyways.
Or maybe she just knows him that well.
“Figures you wouldn’t. I’d been making my lunch for school when you’d walked in and all but slapped the butter knife out of my hand! Banging on about how I was squishing the bread or something.”
“What?” James isn’t really sure what his face is doing right now. But there is something about being told a story about himself that he doesn’t remember, and getting to listen to the way she describes him that he can’t quite explain. “I don’t think I slapped the knife out of your hands.”
“Well how would you know? You don’t even remember.”
He rolls his eyes.
“Don’t you roll your eyes at me, James!”
He straightens, shooting a suspicious look around the deserted airport. Maybe she really can see him...
“Anyway, you showed me this trick for holding the knife— a way of cutting it and an angle that wouldn’t ‘destroy the structure of the sandwich’ as you put it. And, well, it was a good trick. I still use it to this day.”
He wants to tell her something in return. About how he compulsively scrunches up all his straw’s paper wrappers after she showed him how to make them wriggle like a little worm by dropping bits of liquid on them. Or how he always taps his shot glass on the table before drinking it after she told him once that it was the only proper way to do a shot.
“We should really get off the line now, though. The phone bill is going to be through the roof at this point.”
“Yeah,” James acquiesce. He really doesn’t want to hang up, though.
“You should… you should call more,” she says in a small, fragile voice. It makes his stomach flip in that old, dangerous way. “You don’t call enough.”
“I’m sorry.” And he means it. Really. “I should have regular access to a phone, now. I’ll call more often. And you can call too, I’ll have a phone number for you soon.”
“Promise?”
He presses his ear into the receiver like that will somehow bring him closer to her.
“I promise.”
She lets out a sigh, and he swears he can almost feel her breath fan across his face.
“Okay.” A beat. ”Happy birthday, James.”
”Thanks, Erin.”
After they hang up, he stands there for a little while longer, listening to the dial tone on the other end. Eventually, reluctantly, he sets the receiver back in the cradle, shoulders he rucksack, and trudges off in the direction of his gate.
🕶️ ☀️ 🏖️ 🍹 🌊
Later, once he’s high in the sky and nestled into his seat on the plane, James wakes with a start. Bolting upright in his economy class seat with the cabby’s face swimming in his mind's eye: that inscrutable expression, his sweaty hands, the Tommy Bahama shirt.
“What did it mean? ” James mutters to himself before worrying himself back to sleep.