Tenerife: Day Three

BLUE PENIS

It’s 8am and I’m not hungover.  Breakfast of stale croissants and black coffee.  Old couples are giving me looks of pity and suspicion and I pretend to text my non-existent girlfriend back home.  ‘At least I’m not waking up every morning next to some fat motherfucker I hate’ I write in my draft messages, saving that little nugget for later, thinking that one day it might come in useful. 

By 9am I’m sitting by the pool, trying to turn my alabaster skin into an attractive shade of brown.  I’ve spotted two men reading actual books – one has The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and the other has a Bear Grylls autobiography.  I’m just about to settle into Sparks Lil’ Beethoven album when some Europop, which seems to come from nowhere, almost makes me fall out of my sun lounger.  In front of me what looks like a guy dressed as a giant blue penis (I think he’s supposed to be a fish) and two very attractive club reps start up a dance routine for, well, nobody, really. 

Proof (if you need it):

I go back to my room.

SISTER LOVERS

It’s about 11am, I go to the bar and order a Bloody Mary.  I still haven’t seen old Pencil Eyebrows from my first night here and I’ve lost her number somewhere.  Her replacement, who can’t really speak English, seems to hate me.  Consequently, I don’t tip her.  Vicious circle.  I take my dreadful Bloody Mary down to the pool and find a quieter place, away from any areas that seem in danger of being made to have any ‘fun’. 

Despite feeling myself relaxing (Dr Chris will be happy), I must admit that I’m pretty bored.  I get another cocktail.  And then I get another one.  And then I listen to The Rolling Stones.  Hipster I may be, but musical snob I’m ain't.  I’m not one of those assholes you get stuck talking to at a party who claims to hate The Beatles just because it makes them seem edgy.  I don’t care how many records a band has sold, all I care about it whether I like their music or not.  And The Rolling Stones, well, I love The Rolling Stones because they make me want to do bad things to good people… 

Lying down, straight ahead, are two absolutely gorgeous sisters in their early twenties.  They’re sat next to their parents, but both look like they’ve been dragged against their will to this resort and are slightly underwhelmed by the OAP water aerobics and the Stathams.  Tell me about it, babes.  The older one, I think, is almost certainly checking me out from behind her aviators.  Who can blame her?  I’ve got my shirt off and my silver-speckled chest hair is sparkling in the sun.  I’m fucking Edward Cullen.  Hang on, her sister’s also checking me out.  Probably.  The parents will be cool with it - I think they’re German.  I didn’t come over here for any of that sort of nonsense, but sometimes, when the stars aligned correctly and when God is smiling on a boy, getting laid isn’t an option, it’s inevitable.  I’m also totally wasted.  On my own.  In the afternoon. 

So I’ll probably end up having a threesome with the sisters, right?  I mean that’s what hot sisters do.  I’ve got the internet, I’ve seen the world.  Maybe I’ll tell them about the band...Maybe they’ll catch me listening to Stop Making Sense…Maybe I’ll tell them I work for MI5…everyone fancies a bit of danger.  Thoughts of James Bond in my head, I decide the best way to seal the deal is show off my athletic prowess by taking a swim.  All those beads of chlorine water falling off me, wet hair.  Who could resist?  So I step into the pool.  Fuck, it’s actually pretty cold.  It takes me about five minutes to get totally in.  I swim around for a bit.  I’m a shit swimmer and for the most part look like I’m drowning.  I get scowled at by a grandmother and almost killed by some cunt with tribal tattoos doing lengths. 

That should do it.

You know that bit in Casino Royal where Daniel Craig gets out of the sea in the Bahamas?  Well it wasn’t like that.  I stubbed my fucking toe on the steps.  Plus, this was a swimming pool in Tenerife.  Plus, they’d both fallen asleep.  Guess that threesome’s off the cards.  Your loss, ladies.

I light a Coronas and go back to the bar.  I’m perched up there next to three American men.  It’s impossible not to earwig on their conversation because they’re talking so loudly and so emphatically.  These guys are right about everything.  Turns out they’re soldiers.  They all look like Jason Bourne.  Quite what they’re doing here, I’m not sure. 

‘And if I’d seen him drinking a white wine, I would’ve been, like, “Man up, dude, have a fucking beer.”’

‘He’s a fag?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Did you report him?’

‘Course I did, bro.’

‘Hey, what’s the film with Jack Nicholson and Demi Moore?  You know, “You can’t handle the truth”.  That one’

‘I dunno bro.’

And then they just keep saying to each other ‘YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH’.

It’s A Few Good Men, you dumb cunts.  Everyone knows that. 

I may have a temper on me, and every now and then my tongue gets a little too loose, but I’m not stupid enough to pick a fight with three soldiers, so I just downed my beer and fucked off back inside, where I passed out until the evening.

VERONICAS

‘Veronicas Strip.  That’s where everyone goes out, la,’ a good friend said to me before I left.

‘Sounds like a style of pubic hair.’

‘Nah, went once, had a reet good time up there.’  My friend is northern.

I decided it was time for the spring chicken to leave his coup, so I ventured up the coast towards Las Veronicas.  It was a ghost town.  Empty bars pumping out five year old house music, a few pissed-up groups of L.A.D.S., planning on puking before the sun had gone down.  The only place that was playing anything remotely passable was some tattoo parlour which was blearing out Guns N’ Roses.  No, getting a tattoo on my sunburnt arm in Tenerife, still slightly pissed and on my own is not a smart move. 

Any couples or girls (and they were few and far between) walking past would get hustled in by the lone guy standing outside on his own (who was more often than not a Brummie).  They didn’t hassle me.  Nope.  The only approaches I got were from couples who wanted me to take a photo of them (ungrateful cunts they were, too) and homeless guys.  I fended off the homeless guys by pretending I was Italian.  For some reason it seemed like a good idea at the time.  ‘Mi dispiace’ (went out with an Italian girl once and that phrase came in very handy on several occasions) I slurred in my best Michael Corleone accent. 

I considered going into one of two strip clubs I passed,  but I’ve been surrounded by tits all day, and besides, I’m not here to think about sex (although the Wi-Fi in the hotel is kind of destroying that). 

Took a few photos along my walk…

Classy.

Fund Grube.  A fucking elephant.  That's my idea of shopping in paradise.

Probably not affiliated with the Café de Paris on Coventry Street in West London…

Would’ve popped into Waikiki Beach Fun-Pub if they weren’t playing a techno track with the questionable line of ‘Whatever happens, I’m taking you home tonight’ repeated over and over again by an angry man.  Could be Martin Tomlinson's next project...

And then there was this place…

Pretty sure it’s a hotel, but looks a little like a prison.

As I walk along the beach, back to Pensioner Villas and those two sisters who I’m never going to sleep with, I notice some tennis courts.  Christ, they look familiar.  And then I catch the name of the hotel they’re attached to – La Siesta.  They were the tennis courts I used to play on with Sarah twenty years ago. 

I sit on a bench outside and smoke a filthy Coronas.  ‘When I get back to Blighty, I’m definitely giving up,’ I lie to myself for the thousandth time. 

‘Also, when I get back, I’m going to Barden’s and Efe’s and I’m gonna appreciate all the wonderful nightlife I’ve got on my doorstep.’

If I ruled the world, it would be mandatory for every half a mile to have a basement bar that played my iPod on random, had miserable bartenders (with hearts of gold) and sold cheap scotch from dirty tumblers. 

I finished my walk back and the busiest place I encountered was Mystique Swingers Bar, which was full of grey-haired, pissed Brits.  Did we really win the war so we could get drunk and fuck someone else’s spouse? 

Bollocks. I’m going to bed.