Cliff Notes

It’s about time that I introduce you to a “friend” of mine. Though normally I give guys I write about a nickname, I can’t resist the opportunity to title this post Cliff Notes. So we’re going with his real name this time. Introducing: Cliff.

I met Cliff a couple of weeks after I arrived. He’s a local artist (painter), and we had a mutual friend who introduced us casually at an Art in the Park event.  He wrote to her asking for my number.

Fast forward a few months, and Cliff’s portfolio of livelihood options had expanded from artist and sign painter, to taxi driver. With this expansion, comes an obvious increase in not only mobility but also access to money to buy credit for his phone. I know this because I started to get daily text messages, often multiple. 

He calls me Angel, which proves how little he knows me, though he did learn pretty early on how unimpressed I am when his calls or texts wake me up early in the morning.

Right from the start, I wasn't interested. For a variety of reasons. A wide variety.

But after a few months this strange thing happened and a couple of people started questioning my resistance. “He’s hot” they said. “I really like the way he’s been courting you for months” a close friend said. I laughed them off but the seed was planted and my mind started working against me. 

On occasion we’d see him while out and someone would comment on how sharp he was looking. I tried to ignore it.

There was a point when my resolve started to waiver, but that went away. I blamed it on his age – he "says" he’s 26. I told him I have a rule.  But it was about way more than that.

But because this is a small town, you need to be careful. You bump into people all the time. It’s probably a coincidence that his taxi is often parked on my route to work, and harmless that whenever he see's me or my car around town, I get a call or a text about it what I’m doing or how lovely I look doing it. It’s also probably just a bit of over eagerness that inspires him to stay up all night when he knows I’m at a party and might need a ride home at 5am (calling me every hour to make sure I haven’t called another cab and to remind me that he’ll come whenever I need him), or that he’s been parked beside my car waiting as I come out of a restaurant, or that I get messages apologizing for sending so many messages, followed by more messages. Interestingly, he won’t ever approach me in public if I’m with expat friends, but he’ll text right after to tell me that he wanted to talk to me but he’s ‘scared’. He’s also quite open about being scared of me in general, which I think I should explore further at some point because he’s not the first guy to tell me that he likes me and is scared of me all at the same time.

In some places we would likely refer to this as stalkerish, but I don’t feel threatened so I’m just going to label him as keen.

Either way, my friends and I here often sit around reading some of the messages that I get, so I've decided to share some with you. This is from just after the night that he told me he was 26 and I told him I was too old for him and that he should stop saying he loves me.

PS. There won’t be all that many of these to share because I’m actively trying to ignore him. It’s really for the best. You gadda know.

A resolution by any other name

Despite speculation to the contrary, I haven’t forgotten about you. The truth about why I haven’t written in so long? Well, basically, prior to Christmas holidays I was exhausted and grumpy (and trying to avoid dishing out negativity) and since the new year, I finally got my tv hooked up to cable. This, as you know, is my definition of heaven, and as a hobby requires most of my spare time.

Nevertheless, if you’ll allow me a little slack, we can play a bit of catch up.

Fiji, as I’m sure you expected, was fabulous. Everyone likes to ask what the highlight of the trip was, and I can unequivocally say it was sleeping in a super cold air conditioned room on a very comfortable bed. My friend Jules and I spent 10 days at a great resort called Outrigger on the Lagoon, but neither the lagoon pool nor the ocean just behind it could compare in satisfaction to the pure bliss that was our room. We didn't even pretend to be embarrassed when we would comment at dinner that we wanted to eat quickly because we couldn't wait to get back to our room, put the Do Not Disturb sign back on the door, slip into something more comfortable and climb into bed. Our ‘something more comfortable’ was a t shirt (me) and pajamas (her) and our beds were separate doubles. We got room service, spent a small fortune on in-room movies and enjoyed champagne in the late afternoon delivered by the butler. Worth. Every. Penny.

Another highlight? Fiji has a McDonald's! Don't underestimate the power of the
golden arches until you spend an extended period of time without
the option of a Big Mac.

This is the reminder notice for the massages we booked - I guess our
Do Not Disturb sign  sent the wrong message

As some of you may remember, after making my original holiday plans, I decided to extend my vacation by about 5 days. I figured we would have met people at that point that I could spend new years eve with, rather than returning to a fairly empty Honiara. Wow, what an overestimation! All the other guests appeared to be either couples of families, so with Jules leaving early on new years eve as per the original plan, I basically had to resign myself to the idea of counting down to midnight on my own.

Then we met a guy. He was a waiter at the beach side restaurant, and always worked the breakfast and lunch shift. In truth we met him the first day we arrived but we didn't chat all that much or learn his name until much later in our stay, when the resort got much busier (after Christmas and approaching new years) and was jam packed full of families who got up much earlier than we would consider, and therefore occupied all of the chairs by the pool, and we would end up in loungers by the beach. He was a rugby player in-season, cute enough and was flirty and chatty without being slimy. There’s also something super appealing about a guy who checks on you regularly to make sure you’re ok, brings you whatever you ask for, and throws in a little bit of added naughtiness by being seriously attentive to you to the detriment of other guests. Eventually, he asked me out for New Years Eve (no pressure huh?) and I was lacking any better options, so that was that.

Beach side, hanging out. I'm sure RugbyWaiter will be stopping by soon.

Now before I go on, it’s important to tell you that I’m not a fan of resolutions and am not one to make them to start off the end of the year. I feel like life already presents too many opportunities to fail and feel bad about yourself that I don’t need to feel like crap because I've screwed up by Jan 3^rd. Instead, I've been working a running list of things I’m just generally going to try to do differently. They’re not steadfast rules or promises, but more like things I’m going to try to keep in mind, in a low pressure environment whereby all ‘goofs’ will be cause for a little laugh and will cause absolutely no abuse targeting my emotional or psychological well being. It’s all predicated on the idea that true insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result (thanks Einstein!). So, I will probably let you in on more of the list as we go along, but for now, let’s start with some of the basics:

Non-rule #1: I’m going to generally try to be nicer to myself.

Non- rule #2:  No more dating 25 year olds. I feel like I've been dating 25 year olds for approximately the last 10 years. I keep getting older but the guys stay the same age. I've clearly been doing something wrong.

This becomes relevant to this story because on New Years Eve, as I’m chatting once again to RugbyWaiter and trying to figure out where we will go to countdown to midnight, the conversation eventually leads to him asking me how old I think he is.

“I hope you’re 30” I said with an optimistic smile.

He just laughed at my apparent ridiculousness.

“26?” Was my counter offer.

“Close” he said.

“Then you have to be 25”.

Which, of course he was. Because that’s my life.

“Ya, so, I’m 31, and I have a new rule about dating 25 year olds, which is that I can’t”

He laughed once again, slightly nervously as he started to realize I wasn't kidding.

As luck would have it, he got called away by his boss and I didn't stick around to talk it out any more, and instead welcomed 2013 on my own, in my really comfy bed in my really chilly room, with the tv on and some room service… and it was an awesome decision.

A fruity toast to good decisions

I swore in church.

I recently went to church for the first time in a (very) long time.

This may be shocking to some of you. Indeed, it caught me off guard that I actually went. I’m not a fan of church and haven’t been for awhile. A part of me wants it to be the sort of thing that feels right for me, for the community aspect of it all. As a child I was forced to go, but somewhere along the line my mom finally gave up on the Sunday morning fights and surrendered to the fact that we would be Tourist Catholics (Easter and Christmas, Amen) though even most of those occasions eventually slipped. Most recently, I've abhorred the idea of going to church because it reminds me of my Pops, and I just cry (which was ok the first time my whole extended family attended church together and sat there sobbing like we were watching The Notebook, but not something I care to repeat).

Yet here I was, agreeing to go, because a dear friend asked me to.

We were late of course, because I was driving (my housemates car battery died) and had spent most of the early morning laying in bed trying to figure out how I was going to tell Rodolfo that I was backing out. He had asked my housemate (Annalisa), her boyfriend (Elio) who is currently living with us, and I to join him on this day as his time in the Solomons was coming to a close. I thought I was sick and needed to stay back. It was probably psychosomatic. When he offered me an aspirin (“I will give you something. This is the best medicine you will ever have”, he said it in that innocent, eager and impassioned Italian way he always did), I was suckered.  I was going.

I wasn't the only reason we were late of course– I was travelling with two Italians and considering this country runs on Solomon Time anyways, even the Swiss-German that was getting into the car had no power to counteract the tardiness of the rest of our gang.

So eventually we were off, dressed like tourists with our hats on, all sunscreened up and packing large bottles of water, not entirely sure what to expect but ready to continue our Sunday with God and the good people of a technically illegal squatters settlement in the Honiara hills about a 30 minute drive from my house. We stopped to buy beer on the way*. No joke.

The service had already started when we arrived at the permanent structure built at the base of a hill we would later climb. Inside there were rows of plastic patio chairs and perhaps 30 or 40 worshipers scattered throughout. On the altar, a band was playing while a lead singer belted out an enthusiastic tune, probably something about Jesus being a Savior and his love or something, while the back-up singers swayed and sang. This was loud though. There were drums. The guitars and bass were electric and the swaying involved some jumping, with lots of eyes closed in that passionate way once does when they are truly in the moment. Hands were raised to the heavens.

The pastor greeted us as we entered, hugging Rodolfo, who had started coming to the church to do some research for his PhD in Anthropology. He had spent much of the last year in this squatters settlement and had become one of the community, including becoming ‘adopted’ by a local family who would present him with an impressive shell money necklace** later that day. The gift could be compared to a dowry, and represented that they had now ‘bought’ him and therefore he belonged to their family now, not his own. He was touched.

We were ushered to the front row of chairs, which had been saved for us. Rodolfo had already briefed us on what to expect and it didn't take long before his hands were above his head, swaying to the electric guitar, vocalizing his prayers like everyone else so that the pastor was really just leading a tidal wave of love, dedication, sorrow and hope that would rise up and crash over him passing through the church and up the hill behind it, then on to who knows where.  All the while the band would play, faster and louder until you could feel it in your bones and the power of it all was pretty undeniable. I dislike church for a number of reasons but none of them would come to mind in that moment. I think it was the kind of thing that would inspire an appropriate use of the word ‘awesome’.

I cried a little, because I was in church and thinking about my grandfather (who would have hated this experience in its entirety; he would have found it offensive that this was considered religious worship and altogether not serious enough for church, good ‘ol Catholic man that he was) but I just put on my sunglasses for awhile and tried to decide how cute I thought the bass player was because that was as good a way as any to get my mind occupied with something else. No one noticed because most of them had their eyes closed and were too absorbed in the music and their worship.

There was a normal sermon, then more singing. People came and went. Smoke and toilet breaks were allowed. The crowd got bigger. Then, the song changed, and the woman behind me came closer and put her hands around my waist and before I knew it she grabbed me and started dancing. I was startled. ‘What the Fuuuuuu….?!” . It was out of my mouth before I could stop it. I turned to look at the congregation behind me and it was like everything was in slow motion, my senses overloaded and my brain unable to instantaneously understand what I was seeing: people were literally running around the church. Across the rows of chairs, in the aisles, in circles with their elbows bent and a bit of a jig in their step. Rodolfo got right into it but the three of us looked at each other with wide eyes and we knew we were all thinking the same thing “What the hell is going on?!” So we laughed, then awkwardly started to join in.  The awkwardness began to fade as we totally got into it, dosey doe-ing at the front of the church, just below the alter, with the pastor. I eventually had a chance to listen to the lyrics ‘I am running’ must have been the name of the song, and every time the band got to the chorus, we’d all have to start running around again. It was hilarious and a pretty decent workout.

As the service moved on, the pastor said a few words about Rodolfo, then Rodolfo got up to talk about his experience in the past year and thank everyone in the community, before calling the rest of us up to say a little something into the mic. I spoke about growing up Catholic and how if my church and been like this one I may have been more inclined to attend on occasion, which was met with a round of applause and some whoops and hollars. I laughed, imagining anyone giving a whoop at a church back home.

We all sat back down and the pastor continued, but was interrupted by Rodolfo who had forgotten a few things he wanted to say. First was to tell people about a proposal he had just submitted to get some water tanks for the community, and secondly was to tell everyone that our second car had a flat battery and to ask if anyone had jumper cables that we could borrow. We nearly burst out laughing at how displaced this request felt in the middle of a church service, and yet were appreciative of the effectiveness of the approach – the next day the local town council representative dropped off some jumper cables at Annalisa’s office and I learned how to jump start a car.

 (At least Pops would have approved of that.)

* The beer was for Rodolfo’s goodbye feast with his family, not for church.

**Shell money is the traditional form of currency in the Solomon Islands, and still used though mostly symbolically. It’s literally made out of shells and has standard value throughout the country depending on the shell, design etc.