No sooner had I removed the last vestige of grit from private anatomical nooks and crannies, when some manical party machine decided to organise another 'fill up on intoxicants and sand' event. Yes, it was the only two other remaining Australians at the hostel responsible, and their imminent departure was a better reason for getting wasted than the random justifications they came up with on a nightly basis.
The crowd is changing at Barnacles hostel as long termers check out after reaching their threshold, or finally realising they passed it a long time ago. New faces arrive, mostly German, armed with only a photo of their boyfriend and a burning desire to cheat on them. Sorry to make such sweeping generalisations, but it seems the only girls not getting any action are the ones that don't have a boyfriend. Julia insisted she was one exception to this rule, but like the no less licentious male population, I was happy to play Lawnmower man as long as a spurned lover didn't have their cross hairs trained on me.
With Julia's departure two weeks previous, I always knew the party was going to be less interesting in her absence. Plenty of other opportunities would arise, as little German princesses project non-boyfriend qualities onto anyone vaguely breathing. But with a different crowd, I was more interested in socialising than snogging. Others obviously had a snog as their sole purpose, and many achieved that goal with the privacy clause being easily overlooked.
Bacchus the God of wine and general debauchery conspired with um..Frank the God of Good Fortune, to give me a solid 12 hours off either side of the party. That gave me sufficient time to thoroughly prepare, experience, and recover from the entire range of alcohols effects upon the human body. Preparation included filling up on non white bread or sausage orientated food stuffs, rolling a few baseball bat sized joints and buying my particular flavour of liquid idiot.
The party experience rolled out something like this. Firstly there was a couple of games of table tennis on the newly acquired table at the hostel that I accidentally broke on the third day. The table now strongly favours one side, which seems to be the side I frequently win on in a totally unrelated coincidence. A few beers cans were discreetly emptied as I made a turtles start on all the other hares. I knew they would be jumping out of the starting blocks with their shots of home brewed imitations of brand name liquors, courtesy of a dodgy contact of the Australia duo.
No one seemed to mind the howling gale from the first party and the same spot was used, open as it was to the elements. Being out in Nature is a large part of the appeal of a beach party, but it also proves to be a large part of the negative after effects like crying sand, having to style an afro, walking like you've just been on a three day bare-back horse safari, and a need to buy a large tub of paw-paw ointment. The only preparation for a night in sand paper underwear is to get sufficiently shit faced to be able to ignore the chaffing sensation akin to a bout of savage nappy rash.
To this end, a larger but more subdued crowd kicked things off as they spread bodies liberally across the sand in small collections of tipsy chatter. Mr. Genuine himself, my dorm mate Paul from the UK, lived up to usual form by being the first to semi-facetiously announce his personal superiority to anyone and anything, dance recklessly free from the restraints of co-ordination and zero in on a female target like a heat seeking man missile. He was the first, and the last unfortunately, but it inspired similar displays of drunkenness that any aliens watching would consider to be a particularly strange, if not uncommon form of human courtship.
People started hooking up left, right and centre as though the party was meant to be a Desperate and Dateless Ball. More like a swingers party with the German girls conveniently forgetting to bring their partners! Like the animals I thought we had evolved beyond, the more intimate aspects of the mating ritual were played out before eyes cast askance out of politeness. The air was thick with cannabis incense and surging hormones, usually quite a heady aphrodisiac. As the first to succumb normally, the potential of the night inspired me to rise above such basic instincts.
I felt a great sense of self satisfaction in my restraint. When I actually overcome my libido, only to find a strong desire for sleep, I realised my new found chastity was more exhaustion than saintly virtue. Either way, I left the orgy early and let others decorate the dunes with various body fluids. I ended up taking so much sand to bed with me that I might as well have just slept at the beach. Those that stayed behind made me regret my early retirement by staying conscious enough to see a supposedly beautiful sun rise. The new Barnacles crowd seems more capable of holding their booze, so I shall endeavour to see the night out should Beach Party III: Return of the chaffing ring be held before I depart.
