“Anyone who isn’t embarrassed of who they were last year probably isn’t learning enough.”
– Alain de Botton
I stood on the stage practically naked except for a sheet wrapped around my shaking body. The stranger next to me adjusted his sheet around his bony, unfortunate body. We were supposed to make the five hundred drunk and stoned people in the audience shout with pleasure at seeing us do our act.
A few hours earlier, Ned, my boyfriend for two long years, talked me into going to toga night. Engaged the previous summer, I received no engagement ring. Only the practical gift of a new red-rider lawn mower. I refused to use the mower or set a wedding date. We came to the Hedonism resort in Jamaica to try to resuscitate our dying relationship. Ned draped his sheet over his muscular, tan, smooth body, and strutted around like a reincarnated Greek God. I, on the other hand, looked like a dumpling wrapped in cheesecloth. Crimson red from the sun with an itchy heat rash over my bloated twenty-something body it was a stretch for me to go to dinner in a sheet.
After a blasé meal in a coconut scented dining hall a man jumped on stage and said, “It’s time for the talent show! Break into small groups or go solo!” Ned wanted to do his skit solo. I needed to find a group to join to blend in with the other sheets. Tight clustered groups were already huddled by the stage. Only one man stood alone. He looked as wide eyed and desperate as I was. His name was Tom, and he had absolutely no talent for me to hide behind. We believed divine intervention would happen once we were on stage.
It didn’t. We stood together like two deer frozen in the headlights of so many white sheets. The crowd booed and we were gonged off stage. The night crawled on. Just like Ned to save himself for last. When Ned finally sprang onto the stage dancing the dance of a macho man in heat to a pounding drum beat the women in the audience went crazy. I sank further into my sheet.Ned won the talent show and pranced around the stage holding the plastic trophy high in the air.
Hedonism was our last act together. Ned was now free to do all his future skits solo.
