Vacation is coming
2001-08-24 @ 2:06 p.m.
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All I can think about lately is our upcoming vacation. It is exactly one week away.
We will stay in a condo on the beach; the same condo we stayed in last year and the year before that. We will have breakfast on the balcony that overlooks the gulf as it rolls in and out on the sand. We will watch the seagulls and the sandpipers, the egrets and the heron (there always seems to be only one heron) harass the people fishing in the surf. We will look for dolphins swimming by, headed for a place farther up the island where they play in the surf, jumping in and out as the waves head for shore.
When we get bored with that (is that possible?), we will take our books and our cocktails down to the pool and sprawl on the lounge chairs, occasionally getting up to cool off in the water. In the hottest part of the day we meander back up to the condo and fix lunch. Depending on our moods we will read or nap, cook or make crafts, until the sun goes down a little and we can stand to be back outside again. Maybe we will walk on the beach in the evening breeze. We will eat supper out or in, depending on our moods. After supper we rent videos and join my wife's sisters and their friends who are in the next condo for movie madness.
I cook on vacation because I enjoy it. I use the vast amounts of free time in the afternoon to make large cooking projects like bread or pasta, tamales or gumbo. Every year I search for fresh seafood, thinking that because we're in south Florida I might find it easily. Every year I try again, thinking that I must have missed something the previous year, or maybe something new has opened. But we are in a sleepy small town catering to retirees who don't seem to need a fish monger. One year there was a seafood shop in a strip mall across from the grocery store, but it is gone. Then there was a shop on the water at the entrance to our island, but now it's gone. I love to cook seafood, and I crave it fresh. But I am often frustrated. I asked the guy at the fish counter at Publix; their seafood is trucked in from their headquarters somewhere in Texas, I think. Why would I buy seafood in south Florida that came on a truck from somewhere else?
The four of us vacation together. My wife, my lover and my lover's girlfriend (who is also my wife's lover). They are my family. We're on family vacation. It is the highlight of every year.
We have gone through some adjustments, learning to talk to each other about what our expectations and needs for vacation are. They know now that I cook on vacation because I love it. They don't try to talk me out of it anymore. They just enjoy it.
We have learned that vacation isn't necessarily going to be a big orgy just because we are all there and we are so turned on in each other's company. Constant exposure to my lover makes me want her all the time. But she has a primary girlfriend who wants her attention, too and with whom she wants to spend relaxed vacation time. And my wife is there who wants to spend time with me, even have sex with me once or twice (and vice versa), and if I don't get enough attention from my wife because she is so busy being horny for my lover's girlfriend, I get cranky.
Is that enough confusion for you? Add to that our different tastes in movies and books - I can't watch their scary movies so we rent 2 movies a night and watch the chick flick first. Then I go to bed and read while they watch Silence of the Lambs again in preparation for Hannibal. We can't share a big stack of books to read because I take depressing literary books on vacation, even wine books, and they take romance novels, humor books and dense thrillers, the kind of thing one would expect to find on the shelves of a beach condo. - and one might wonder how the hell we enjoy this week every year.
But we do. We spend a whole week in the same living space, all four of us, loving each other and lusting for each other. Some years at the end of the week we hate to leave each other long enough to get into separate cars to come back home. When we get back home we congregate in one house not wanting to unpack and admit that the week is over. Other years we leave Florida relaxed and refreshed and desperately needing some time alone.
Time completely alone is in short supply during this week. I go for walks on the beach in the middle of the day when no one else is willing to leave the air-conditioning because I like to sometimes be by myself. In past years we haven't discussed the need for time alone or time with just your primary spouse. This year we have talked about planning time with our primaries so we don't forget that we are here to reconnect in quiet relaxation. But we will also want time with our lovers, maybe even a sleep-over date. Our lives are a constant scheduling issue. But we're used to that at home, so it will only be easier on vacation, right?
I can't wait.
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