The Wave

Would you email him? He asked you to promise you would.

There was a part of you that wanted to get in the speed boat with them. A part that was hard to ignore.
You hadn’t wanted this tidal wave to stop
A wave that had started at the Cambodian Vietnamese border. You’d found a taxi for the 4 hour journey to the coast. You were keen to get to a beautiful beach Your plan was to then lie on that beach and read your book occasionally swimming or snorkelling.

You needed some other tourists to share your taxi with because of the expense. You walked up and down the street outside the border crossing as desperate as the men on the beach who looked for customers to sell their homemade jewellery too. You eventually found the mainland Chinese group you see at the visa office the other side of the border. You”d loved how they got so animated and how they had been so playful with each other hooting with laughter at their visa photos.
Now it was more than sharing the cost of the taxi, you wanted the fun of the drive with them.

You agreed to go the long way around that they wanted to go so they could eat crabs on the way to the beach,
And we all piled in the taxi including an extra at the last minute a “brother” of the taxi driver who looked as much like the driver as Laurel and Hardy looking like identical twins,
I was squashed in between two of the women, one of the two lads behind me, He kept furtively touching my hair (a big mass of almost afro curls) when he thought I wasn’t watching. One of the men in the front got his phone out sang along loudly to very mournful music. The others fired questions at me in broken English , Alone , ? Really ? No children / really ?{{/i}/i} Laughing and poking each other.
And so we ate crabs and the main man sat next to me and wanted to know my story. And he told me the connections between the group and the names of the cities they lived in, not from China, but from Korea. I was so heartened to find out there were a bunch of friends all of on holiday together in middle age.
I loved the energy. The joking. We got to the beach and we ate at a Korean restaurant where they treated the chef with such deference. We booked into a loud garish hotel ( not quite the quiet beach hut I’d planned on) The oldest guy Tip, he cracked my crab shells for me. We strolled up and down the sea front, laughed at his mates trying to get girls to do selfies with them.
The fact that we were being stared at so much added to the wave of intensity we were surfing. I could only think that ll the other mixed asian and European twosomes walking around , had female Asians nd europeans men, Me and Tip were the other way around. A woman looked over at Tip, She came over and stood at our table at the cafe by the beach. Her whole body communicated in a way I have never been able to fathom. A message that that she would do anything you wanted, that she needed something off you. She was pretty just in a teeshirt and some jeans with wide hips, but she was compelling , her friend a large plain woman in a tent like dress, just stood beside her.
I wa fascinated, and my complete obsessions with Tip and his with mine meant we barely responded and she moved on,
Tip and I were high on each other, every feeling every experience intensified. Here I was in a foreign country walking along with a businessman in his early 60s feeling like life is an adventure, and relishing the instant connection I felt with him. What a joy at 53 to be having these feelings, these connections, this intensity.

The next day when they said they were off to the islands and would I come, Tip looked at me and his body and face gave off the same absolute longing and focus as the woman in the tight jeans and wide hips. I was so tempted to say yes, to forget my fight the next day back to my life. I was so tempted to go off with them and see where this feeling so alive led to.
If I was only 33 would have I gone.
We’ll never know .
I can just think about that speedboat looming off and the loud mournful karaoke just coming over the sound of the engine and my thoughts wondering. Wondering. Was this a reminder that life can be exciting and to take it as a lesson to go and live? Or should I have got on that boat. Had I only dipped my toe in of what could have been a lifetime more of those feelings, those experiences, that intensity?

I’ll never know.

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