A Week in the Balsamics

Geoff always looked forward to his week in the Balsamics.

He always booked in February and he always went in June.

He used to go with friends, but since they’d got married he went alone.  You

don’t break with tradition, oh no.

Geoff landed and went through customs, caught a scheduled bus.  The rep

showed him to his room.  Then she left.  Geoff got naked.  This was his favourite

time.  Well, there were lots of favourite times in the Balsamics, so this was a

kind of first-among-equals favourite time.  He sat on the bed and let his

descended clockweights rest on the stiff cotton.  The linen was much better than

it was at his house. It was a good feeling.  Geoff loved hotels.

Geoff also loved beaches.  After experiencing the bedsheets, he put on his

trunks and shorts and sandals and holiday shirt, grabbed the hotel towel

and picked up his sunglasses - free from a petrol station.

Geoff didn’t speak Spanish but that didn’t matter, no-one did, except the

Spanish, and they all spoke English.  It wasn’t any trouble for him to order his

Long Island Iced Tea - vodka was his favourite.  The hotel bar was right next to

the sea, so it was easy for him to sneak his cocktail across the little wall and

onto the beach.

He chose his spot carefully, close to the water but not too close, he wanted to

see what was happening.  The sun warmed his short, muscular bow legs,

which had been bald since he was thirty-one.  He made little fists with his toes in

the sand.  Ooh, that was good.

What Geoff liked most about the beach was the people.  He got such magnificent

feelings from all the splendid near-nudity!  He watched the salty bodies as they

emerged from the gentle surf; the endless knockers, drenched and

sparkling, half as many front-valleys glistening in the sunshine, tanned skin taut

with tiny goosebumps, erect palm-ticklers hard as Balsamic pumice stone.  The

bum puppies and the larger bottom possums.  Phoo!  The way they moved,

jiggle therapy, amigo!  He thought of their hidden-squirrels!  He un-did his shirt

and let the sun bake his man-barrel. 

‘It’s all bought and paid for’, his old dad used to say, ‘and there’s a tap at the bottom if you wanna try some.’

‘Canny life,’ he thought to himself.

T H E   E N D