of my life with people I couldn’t stand. The woman who told me this tale took an instant dislike to the man who was to become her most passionate lover. I love this story; it proves the point that uncontrollable desire manifests itself in the most unlikely places and is often inspired by the strangest people.
I looked around the walls of my mud hut on a nature reserve in the middle of the Indian jungle and thought to myself: How did I end up here? When my friend Sarah suggested a different kind of vacation, I jumped at the chance to do something other than the usual swimming pool and tropical tiki-bar shtick. In the brochure, this health-kick holiday in the wild had seemed like a great idea: yoga every morning, herbal tea, vegetarian food, and long-distance hikes through lush countryside. I had visions of emerging as a thin, spiritual creature, unburdened by Western values and ideas of beauty. I had looked forward to traditional Indian beauty treatments to leave my skin glowing and to returning home tanned, blissed out, and serene. And of course I had hopes of making an amazing sexual connection with some bronzed, toned, dreadlocked gap-year student who would make soft, tender love to me on the shores of the Arabian Sea. Well, what’s the point of being a single girl on vacation if you don’t enjoy every facet of your freedom?
All those visions were cruelly shattered when Sarah canceled on me at the last minute because of a work assignment she simply couldn’t get out of. I toyed with the idea of staying at home, but I’d paid for this trip, so I traveled alone, still buoyed by a sense of adventure and anticipation. The reality of it was that I was sleeping under a smelly mosquito net in a crude mud hut, surrounded by aging hippies who routinely tried to outdo each other with extreme travel stories.
“Of course, this is just a mild weekend,” said a bare-footed guy with a scraggly gray beard and sagging pot-belly. “The real hard-core ones are the kind where you go to an ashram and live off only juice. You get a really clear head after the first few days. It’s very spiritual.”
The only person my age was David, and frankly he was even worse than the old hippies. An outward-bound instructor from the West Country, he was convinced he knew everything about anything, and his arrogance pissed me off from day one. He also thought he had a great body, which he insisted on displaying at every possible opportunity—we couldn’t pass a waterfall without David suggesting an impromptu group shower. I suppose that he was good-looking, if tall, ripped, mus cled guys with strong, smooth, brown bodies without an inch of fat are your thing. And if you go for strong jaws, melting hazel eyes, and soft waves of light brown hair, well, David might be your type. However, even had he looked like Brad Pitt, his awful, know-it-all, patronizing personality still would have turned my stomach.
Of course, as I was the only single woman under forty there, David made a beeline for me. He didn’t understand my reluctance to sit around the campfire every night listening to him carry on about mountains he’d climbed and rapids he’d ridden. I started off by giving him the polite cold shoulder, but after day two I was openly snapping at him. Mild irritation gradually turned into an unsettling feeling that I couldn’t shake. Every night as I got ready for bed, I cursed Sarah for leaving me alone with these people in the middle of nowhere. I found David so intensely annoying that he was the last thing I thought about before I slept. And when he crept into my dreams, explicit erotic dreams that made me wake bathed in sweat, throbbing between the legs and clutching the bedclothes, well, I just took it as a sign that he was such an irritating asshole that he could even creep into my sleep uninvited.
Toward the end of the week, I was having fun despite myself. I loved the daily yoga sessions—all five hours of them. And I also enjoyed what
I looked around the walls of my mud hut on a nature reserve in the middle of the Indian jungle and thought to myself: How did I end up here? When my friend Sarah suggested a different kind of vacation, I jumped at the chance to do something other than the usual swimming pool and tropical tiki-bar shtick. In the brochure, this health-kick holiday in the wild had seemed like a great idea: yoga every morning, herbal tea, vegetarian food, and long-distance hikes through lush countryside. I had visions of emerging as a thin, spiritual creature, unburdened by Western values and ideas of beauty. I had looked forward to traditional Indian beauty treatments to leave my skin glowing and to returning home tanned, blissed out, and serene. And of course I had hopes of making an amazing sexual connection with some bronzed, toned, dreadlocked gap-year student who would make soft, tender love to me on the shores of the Arabian Sea. Well, what’s the point of being a single girl on vacation if you don’t enjoy every facet of your freedom?
All those visions were cruelly shattered when Sarah canceled on me at the last minute because of a work assignment she simply couldn’t get out of. I toyed with the idea of staying at home, but I’d paid for this trip, so I traveled alone, still buoyed by a sense of adventure and anticipation. The reality of it was that I was sleeping under a smelly mosquito net in a crude mud hut, surrounded by aging hippies who routinely tried to outdo each other with extreme travel stories.
“Of course, this is just a mild weekend,” said a bare-footed guy with a scraggly gray beard and sagging pot-belly. “The real hard-core ones are the kind where you go to an ashram and live off only juice. You get a really clear head after the first few days. It’s very spiritual.”
The only person my age was David, and frankly he was even worse than the old hippies. An outward-bound instructor from the West Country, he was convinced he knew everything about anything, and his arrogance pissed me off from day one. He also thought he had a great body, which he insisted on displaying at every possible opportunity—we couldn’t pass a waterfall without David suggesting an impromptu group shower. I suppose that he was good-looking, if tall, ripped, mus cled guys with strong, smooth, brown bodies without an inch of fat are your thing. And if you go for strong jaws, melting hazel eyes, and soft waves of light brown hair, well, David might be your type. However, even had he looked like Brad Pitt, his awful, know-it-all, patronizing personality still would have turned my stomach.
Of course, as I was the only single woman under forty there, David made a beeline for me. He didn’t understand my reluctance to sit around the campfire every night listening to him carry on about mountains he’d climbed and rapids he’d ridden. I started off by giving him the polite cold shoulder, but after day two I was openly snapping at him. Mild irritation gradually turned into an unsettling feeling that I couldn’t shake. Every night as I got ready for bed, I cursed Sarah for leaving me alone with these people in the middle of nowhere. I found David so intensely annoying that he was the last thing I thought about before I slept. And when he crept into my dreams, explicit erotic dreams that made me wake bathed in sweat, throbbing between the legs and clutching the bedclothes, well, I just took it as a sign that he was such an irritating asshole that he could even creep into my sleep uninvited.
Toward the end of the week, I was having fun despite myself. I loved the daily yoga sessions—all five hours of them. And I also enjoyed what
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