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MY DATE WITH THE THIRD woman did not materialize. I was looking forward to it since the first two did not go the way I had hoped. She called to say that it was a busy time of year for her and that she would call to reschedule early in the New Year. It was then that I finally gave in to an idea that I had been toying with for some years now – to experience Christmas away from home. I soon discovered that leaving the shores of Trinidad to travel to Europe did nothing to change my current path: a path of sexual awakening.
I’d had my fill of Christmas in the tropics. It was exciting when I was a child. We worked hard preparing for its arrival and at the end of it we were rewarded with lots of good food, some of which we only saw at Christmastime. Apples and grapes were at the top of that list, then came boiled ham, Cydrax and Peardrax – imported carbonated apple and pear drinks respectively which came in fancy glass bottles – marshmallows, imported biscuits in tins some with strawberry filling and cream, pastelles – a Venezuelan import resembling a pie made of cornmeal stuffed with minced meat, olives, raisins and some other green vegetables that I could not identify.
Local beverages like sorrel and ginger beer had to be made along with cake stuffed with fruits that had been soaked for months in alcohol, and to preserve the cake, the tradition went, it was doused with – what else? More alcohol. Coconut sweetbread – bread made with raisins and green and red mixed peel and glazed with sugar – also showed up on our table. Then there was the ponche de crème which was like spiked eggnog, and rum punch – a concoction of citrus juice and alcohol – a waste of fruits in my estimation.
And which child would not be content with his assortment of toys on Christmas morning? I especially loved my little blue train set. I could make the tracks into any of the three standard shapes that it allowed – an oval, a figure eight and another configuration with a bridge. I had my Lego set too and my little mind was always looking for new things that I could build – usually allowing creativity to get the better of me so I produced things that had little resemblance to their real life counterparts. The rubber balls, with their nice new rubber smell, always brought much joy to me and my siblings so I never did understand how it was that when I was older and I gave my niece a big rubber ball as one of her Christmas presents, she was so disappointed and muttered, “A ball?”
Which boy does not know of the pleasures of owning his plastic army – two sets really – for he needed two sets to have a war? The soldiers themselves did not move, but my fingers took turns holding one, and then the other, and made them take aim at each other. My mouth provided the necessary sound effects.
In adulthood, I realized that I was not a car fanatic and that probably stemmed from the fact that, as a child, though I played with my toy cars and trucks, I never really enjoyed them. I would attach a piece of string to the front bumper of one car and drag it all over the house or in the yard. Sometimes I would use pieces of wood to make little ramps for them so that gravity would carry them. I was never a fan of the remote-operated car: there was not much for me to do and up to this day I do not give my nephews toys where all they have to do is push a joystick.
As I got older, the trials of Christmas outweighed its joys by far. Commercialization had reached these shores too. I could not understand why Mom would start to strip the house at the start of December when she always took holidays from her administrative job at the hotel. Nothing stayed in its place for everything had to be dusted, polished and scrubbed – and we had to help. Curtains had to be changed, the house had to be painted, and groceries had to be bought for when the many guests arrived. We had to grate the ginger for the ginger beer, grate the coconut for the sweetbread, grind the seasoning for all the meat that was going to be prepared, and help Mom to mix the cake for in the early years there was no electric cake mixer. We had to remove the seeds from the sorrel, and remove the pigeon peas from their pods, squirming at the little worms we were sure to find.
When we were finished with chores inside, we had to venture outside to pull weeds, to sweep the yard so that it was spotless, paint Mom’s pots for her plants, wash down any concrete that may have any appearance of moss (we, the children never saw it, but my mother always did), and then go back indoors to polish the floor.
On Christmas Eve everything, now immaculate, would be returned to its place while somebody would be singing about a winter wonderland on the radio. The linoleum or rug would be laid down, the new curtains would then go up and plants brought indoors. The transformation of the house would then be complete when we hung bunches of balloons in every room. And every time the house looked spectacular.
But the novelty of all of that wore thin when we left our teenage years. We loved the food and the brightness of our home, but we did not see the need for all the fuss that went along with it.
When I joined the workforce and the number of nephews and nieces started to grow, and I got swept up in the storm of holiday shoppers, I started caring even less for Christmas. Secretly, I loathed it. Yes, I was happy that we could take time off from our busy schedules to recognize that God sent his son into the world to die for us sinners. I knew that his birthday was not in December and that, in fact, the December celebration had its roots in some pagan festival. I still did not mind that. I was happy for the time when the whole island was peaceful and people used the season to visit friends and loved ones. For that week between Christmas Day and New Year’s Day, it was as if reality was suspended and we entered into a fleeting utopia.
But I had to ask myself: Why wait until Christmas to buy my mom a nice gold watch? Or, Did Mom need that stuffed snowman that the some misguided, though well-meaning, soul bought her? I should be able to do nice things for people throughout the year and not wait until Christmas. But since it was expected of me I bowed to the pressure.
Christmas Day itself was usually a bit of an anticlimax. While the ladies got busy in the kitchen, the men usually played with the children’s toys or plopped themselves in front of the television. We had a huge lunch, enough to feed a village in India, and then went back in front of the television or retired to our beds. We had no visitors and we did not visit on Christmas Day. Bah, Humbug! I was tired of it. The days following were different though. Those were days of revelry when we visited or had visitors and true joy would fill our lives.
In my final year at university, I befriended a soul who was as disillusioned as I was about Christmas. We decided that we were going into the city on a Christmas afternoon to try to make a difference in the lives of the lonely and perhaps the hungry. We had heard the stories on the American television shows: lonely, desperate souls committing suicide on Christmas Day because nobody cared about them. But we were unprepared for what we saw: hundreds of people rushing to and fro, going to visit family, I imagined. There were vendors on the streets for, as I found out, it was just an ordinary day for them and they had to make a living. Then my friend, Brian, got into an argument with a Rastafarian whom he was trying to tell about the relevance of Jesus Christ and Christmas and the implications for Easter. I gently led Brian away by his elbow and we headed up the street where he quietly listened as a woman gave me a sad story which eventually led to my giving her some money.
Afterward he casually said to me, “She tells everybody the same story during the whole year. I’m sure she’s going to use that money on rum.”
Every year of my adult life I told myself that the next Christmas would not meet me in the same rut, but December twenty-fifth would find me in front of the television stuffing my face, or playing with the children’s brand new toys. And it remained our family tradition until the year I decided to spend Christmas in Europe.
I had to see what life was like outside my fish tank. I desperately longed to experience the yuletide season in a winter wonderland. I wanted to hear sleigh bells ring while I dashed through the snow. I wanted to roast chestnuts on an open fire and have Jack Frost nip at my nose, and, if I was really lucky, I would see the big guy himself going down a chimney while eight tiny reindeer waited for him on the rooftop, one of those reindeer sporting a bright red nose. Christmas in Europe had to be different. I had seen the pictures, I had read the stories and I had sung the songs which somehow made me all cozy on warm tropical nights.
I had little trouble convincing Brian, my equally misguided and still-disillusioned friend, to make the trip with me. Of course my mother raised hell when I told her of my plans the week before I left.
“What you mean you going to England? Boy, it’s Christmas. A time for family.”
“Mom, I’m tired of doing the same thing every year.”
“It’s called tradition. When I was your age...” And she launched into a tale of how she had been doing the same thing all her life. I refused to budge. “So who are you going with?” she asked when she finally conceded defeat.
“Brian.”
“Brian? I don’t know any Brian.”
“He’s a friend from university. He’s now a systems analyst at the bank so don’t tell me that he’s some flake.”
“His parents are alive?”
“As a matter of fact, he lives on his own so he has no one giving him hell.”
My irritation must have been visible for the old lady mellowed. Now I felt like shit. I sat down on the bed next to her and took her hand in mine.
“Look, Mom, let me do this just once, okay? I will be thinking of you the whole time.” I kissed her forehead and she hugged me until I had trouble breathing.
“Take care of yourself,” she said through the tears.
More than ever I was determined to make the trip, to have a good time and to return home safely. In recent times I had been getting the feeling that my family somehow felt I was incapable of surviving on my own even though I had been doing so for almost a decade. I guessed that was because I was the last of my mother’s children and she felt the need to keep watch over me. Either that or they really thought that I was stupid.
Brian and I took the Dutch airline simply because it was cheaper than our national carrier. In spite of the national airline’s high fares and government subsidies, it still managed to finish in the red at the end of each financial year. Flying on the Dutch airline meant that we had a layover in Holland and then a connecting flight to Heathrow Airport in London, England. I didn’t mind saving close to two thousand dollars for such a minor inconvenience. It was only near the end of our journey that we realized we had to fly over England to get to Holland. How I wished we could parachute out.
When the plane landed in Schiphol the passengers applauded as if that was the pilot’s first flight and by some miracle he had managed to get it right. But a fellow traveler in the seat next to mine informed me that it was the Dutch way.
We cleared immigration and went to the check-in counter for our connecting flight.
“Good day, Mr. Powers. How was your flight?” The customer service agent was what I imagined a Dutch girl to look like: white as milk, yellow hair. I checked her feet for clogs and I looked around for a windmill.
“Very good, thank you. The food was delicious.” I had been impressed with the hot cloths they had given us to wipe our hands before they served both meals.
“Mr. Powers, I’m afraid that I have some not-so-good news.” She was smiling. At least it was not bad news. “Unfortunately, there is some unseasonable snow in London so your flight will be delayed.”
“Isn’t it normal for it to snow in winter?”
“Not this early, sir, so if you’ve never seen snow before, you’re in luck.”
We thanked her and headed for the exit to find an inexpensive hotel that she recommended for the night.
“I wish they would turn down the air conditioning,” I sulked.
“I don’t think that’s the AC, man.”
The automatic doors hissed open and I froze. Literally. My body was in shock.
“Br – Br – i – an,” I chattered, and drawing from the same collective unconscious, we made an about-turn and waddled back inside. Unable to speak, we rubbed our hands together trying to generate body heat. People looked at us, not concealing their amusement, but continued on their way without a word.
“Bathroom,” Brian said and I understood. We went to the bathroom and put on our long johns beneath our jeans. (When we had left home it had been more important to look fashionable than it was to be warm.)
Still, when we went back outside, the thermal underwear seemed to offer little more insulation. With my one free arm I hugged myself but the biting wind made me feel like my bones were suddenly becoming brittle and that at any given moment, with one wrong move, I was going to break in two. If it turned out to be as cold in England then we would have to buy sweaters, coats, scarves, mittens, ear muffs... God, how I hated the cold already!
Brian and I hopped the train and rode a few minutes before getting off.
“Where do I pay?” I asked the Dutchman standing close by.
“You ride free if you get off before the conductor passes by to collect.”
“Really? Thanks.” I liked Holland.
The airline representative had been accurate in her directions to the bed and breakfast. We got a room and were glad to be greeted by another Dutch woman who had a kettle and enough tea and coffee for a week. We each drank four cups of tea.
“How can people live in this cold? Can you imagine what Russia must be like?”
“They must say the same thing about our heat,” Brian defended.
“Oh yeah? I’d rather go naked any day than to freeze my tail off.”
“Be careful what you wish for.” He grinned.
After flipping TV channels and not finding anything to hold our interest, Brian looked at me with mischief in his eyes.
“We’re in Amsterdam, right? Kind of like the flesh capital of the world.”
“I am not –” I started to protest.
“Hold that thought.” He disappeared for a spell and returned with a newspaper and a big grin. He found the classified ads, raced through them and then said to me, “Pass me the phone.”
He punched the numbers he had seen in the paper and we waited.
“What’s this all about?”
“You’ll see.”
He put the phone on speaker and I heard a sultry voice say, “Hi there, big boy. I’m Marguerite. What do you want me to do to you today?”
“Hi Marguerite. I’m Brian.” His voice dropped an octave.
“That’s a nice name. Brian. Where are you from, Brian?”
“The Caribbean.”
“Ooh, a Caribbean man. I love Caribbean men. They are so big and hard and I love it when you press all your muscles against me. I love the feel of your big, fat lips on mine.”
I hit Brian and mouthed, “Who is this?” but he was too busy enjoying himself to pay me any attention.
Marguerite continued. “Do you have big hands, Brian? I love big hands on my Caribbean man because with one hand he can hold my breast and squeeze my nipples and with the next one... Ooh Brian. I’m getting hot just thinking about you. What do you look like?”
“Just like you imagined: big all over and hard. What are you wearing Marguerite?”
“Nothing.”
Brian let out a whooping noise that I was sure all the other guests heard. I lay down on my bed, my hands under my head, and I listened to the rest of Brian’s conversation with Marguerite. I had only heard of phone sex before but always considered it recreational for cowardly people who were not brave enough to solicit the services of a prostitute. I certainly qualified.
“You know what I’m doing now, Brian?” Marguerite was saying. “I’m stooping on my bed and my back is pressed against my head board.”
I imagined Marguerite, slender and blonde, squatting on her pink bed sheet, her legs parted, hairless and inviting.
“My fingers are on my pussy and I’m rubbing it because I wish you were here...”
I imagine that I am under Marguerite, long and hard...
“I’m rubbing faster now, Brian...”
I am pushing my groin up so that the tip of my shaft is banging against the walls of Marguerite’s vagina.
“My palm is squeezing it, just as if you were lying on top of me, pushing your big prick in me.”
I’m lying on her now, pushing hard, pulling back and entering again, slowly, repeatedly.
“Ah, Brian, Brian. Ah, ah... I’m coming. I’m coming, Brian. Don’t stop. I like it. I like you.”
I’m feeling the electricity in me as I empty in her, pushing harder, hoping that the sensation would not pass, squeezing her hands, not wanting the pleasure to end.
Brian hung up and went to the bathroom. I knew what he was doing in there for I also felt the need to release. But I could not let Brian know, or even suspect, that I wanted to masturbate too, to release my pent-up sexual tension.
“Let’s get out of here,” Brian said when he rejoined me in the room.
“Outside? It’s freezing, remember?”
“It’s not like you’re ever going to be in Amsterdam again. Come on. Let’s take in the sights.”
As far as I knew, the only thing Amsterdam was noted for after dark was its red light district. I gladly accompanied Brian anyway.
Seeing a documentary on the red light district does nothing to prepare one for the real life experience. Most men would think it a paradise to be surrounded by naked women, but maybe because of the way I was raised, I just felt sick. Something inside me told me that naked women were not meant to be displayed in windows as if they were meat in a market.
When we went into one of the bordellos we were given a cubicle that contained a cot and a monitor mounted on the wall. The monitor showed impossible sexual feats being performed by three women on a man. Downstairs, by the heated pool, more naked women lounged about and others were being escorted away to the cubicles, I imagined.
“I’m going back, Brian.”
“Which one you’re taking?” He grinned.
“Back to my room. See you in the morning.”
“Okay.”
Brian and I never discussed that night afterwards but it certainly hung over us like the heavy grey clouds over London for the remainder of our European vacation.
I discovered that I preferred the Caribbean way of celebrating Christmas. There certainly was more spirit to it – more merriment, more festivity, more genuine feeling of warmth and good wishes. But then again, the British were notably stiff so maybe I misjudged them. As for my mom, she could not get enough of the English fruit cake I brought her.
