Mary Anne Rose - Chapter 4: Montego Bay, 1996
4. Montego Bay, 1996
Mary Anne Rose sat on a chair in an empty outdoor restaurant while her friend Julienne sat next to her. It was almost eight in the evening and dark outside. She looked at her clothes and thought that she didn’t pick right clothes tonight. She didn’t have a lot of clothes, but she had enough; she usually picked right clothes and made her look captivating, but she thought that she looked rather lame tonight. Montego Bay was a small city, so there weren’t that many people; she was also in the east half of the city now, the area that tourists stayed, so there were even less people, which meant that far less girls competed with her on attracting men. Plus, she looked fine even with the clothes that she felt ‘lame’, so she should stand out among other girls. But she felt like she was not living up to her full potential and that bothered a little, though no one around her could tell what she was thinking except for Julienne.
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She was born and grew up in a small village near Montego Bay, Jamaica. Average crime rate in the country was very high, but the village was not like many towns of high crime rates though it was certainly not the safest or the most peaceful place to grow up as a child. That was not to say that Jamaica was a terrible country, but high crimes rates were statistical facts; all reputable reports backed up these facts. She could not help herself getting to know a few lawbreakers and thugs as a result. Though she did not get a lot of harassments from them, drug related crimes were rampant, and murders were also not uncommon. There was no industry or established education system in the country, so a lot of people eventually grew up to become gangsters and alike. While she did not waste her time hanging out with them, she did not exactly become a studious young woman or a career woman. The latter option was very difficult though because there were really no real jobs offered by multi-national corporations, nor were there any real businesses. Hospitality industry was the only existing industry, and there was nothing else. What she grew up to become was a kind of hustler. She was not as ruthless or greedy as a real hustler, but she was that categorically speaking. She was not the female version of womanizer or misogynist, but she could make herself to not be attached to any men emotionally. In that sense, she had a characteristic of the hustler.
She had a suggestive physical figure. She was about 170 cm (5’7) tall; she had very smooth and strong skin. There was no pimple, dark spot or scar on her skin. Like many other women in the island, she had very dark skin. She was slender compared to other women of African descent but had the ideal figure in the eyes of Americans and Europeans. Curvious and balanced but slim. She had large eyes and straight nose; lips were rather small but not thin. Had she been a little taller, she had a fair shot at becoming a fashion model. Many fashion designers, especially those in Europe, were very keen on using slender radiant looking women of African descent starting in the last decade, so this was not exactly an impossible dream to her; in fact, she was encouraged to become a model in the past. She met a man from France about three years ago in Montego Bay; she already started hanging out and spending a lot of time with tourists then. He worked in the fashion industry, and he casually suggested that she give it a shot at becoming a model though he admitted that it would have been ideal if she had been a little taller. She thought about it for a while but never pursued. She did think about getting out of the island though. Over the last couple of years, she met many men from U.S., Canada and Europe. She learned that they belonged to a different world from one, which she lived in, not just in the sense of geography but also in the sense of the social structure and the fundamental wealth in the society. She spent a lot of time with men from that different world and she naturally spent a lot of time at hotels, bars and restaurants hosting and serving them. They showed programs by CNN and BBC all the time, so she ended up following oversea news more closely than local news; it wasn’t that she cared a lot about local news to begin with though. She followed major events that way and had a rough idea of what the world outside of the island was like, but, as she actually spent time with men from there, she physically experienced that they were different. They spoke differently from men in the island. They ate differently. They made love differently. Many of them read. They thought differently. They treated her and other women differently from the way that men in the island treated them. She shared meals, drinks, walk on the beach and yacht ride around the island with those men. They belonged to the different world; it was just a guess at the beginning and then it became a belief. From then on, each encounter simply became yet another affirmation. But she didn’t belong there. She hoped that, a man from that world would come and get her out of here someday. It was not a result of her hatred toward her birthplace; it was a fine place and she neither disliked nor hated there. But over time, in her mind, it became inevitable that there wouldn’t be much to experience or explore here; if she wanted to do something other than hanging out with them, she ought to leave here. Upon making up her mind, she thought like an optimist. She was confident that she had something to offer to get what she wanted, that was, her salacious figure; she was good mannered and playful as well. Without being overconfident, she asserted that when men look at her, they were enthralled. She was right; she was a beautiful woman. This was not a sell out; this was an offer. She did not believe that she was being unethical or immoral; she was simply concerned about herself without hurting anyone.
She had a friend, Natasha. They used to hang out in Montego Bay up until a year ago. Natasha was a looker though Mary Ann had a more charming face. She was slightly taller than Mary Anne and had a little more exotic face; her nose was a little taller and her eyes were sharp. She met a man from Germany a year ago; he was in his early thirty’s and single. He was not an affluent man but had a handsome income. He arranged the passport and a visa for her so that she could go visit Germany and stay with him for a while. This meant that she essentially got the permanent entrance path to Europe. She knew that he would just lose interest in her a year from then, if not, in near future, but she was not concerned about that. She had the permanent entrance path to Europe; that was what really mattered to her and nothing else really mattered. When she got it, she thought, “Who knows? While I’m Europe, I can find a way to go to U.S. or Canada if I decide that that’s what I want to do.” She was right; at the moment that she got her passport and the visa, she belonged to the different world, and she knew that she would not come back to the world where she was born and grew up. She flew to Germany two weeks later and she was gone. Mary Anne thought that Natasha got the chance a little earlier than she did. She did not feel any resentment toward Natasha; she felt very happy for her.
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Mary Anne spent too much time sitting today, so she wanted to stand up and stretch her legs. She walked around the empty restaurant and then walked to the side facing the ocean; she reached the end and stood for a few seconds. The restaurant that she was in was built on the mountainside, so she could look down the traffic and pedestrians on the main street running along the coastal line. She looked around and saw passersby. She saw the usual crowd. Men in mid 30s; some were by themselves, while others were with local girls; they were from either U.S., Canada or Europe. A few blond women here and there with local boys; they were mostly from U.S. or so she guessed. They were not unattractive women but looked like they passed their prime; it was rather obvious that they came to the island to look for flesh. And young girls from East Asia; they all dressed like black girls in U.S., though their clothes were far more expensive than what they imitated. They were always with local boys; she wondered if she missed anything in men in the island because there had to be good reasons why girls flew all the way from East Asia to meet men here. She couldn’t think of good reasons but then she said to herself, “Well, most things in this world are so inexplicable.” She was going to turn around and go back to where Julienne sat but she saw a young guy who looked like he didn’t exactly blend into the crowd. He looked like that he was from somewhere from Asia but she couldn’t tell exactly where. Many tourists came to visit Jamaica from Asia but most of them were girls; some men came to visit the island but they were never alone. They were either with their families or with their male friends. It was rare that any man from that part of the world came to Jamaica alone; he made her a little curious.
She looked at him from above, thought for a second and called “Hey!” He looked up and stopped. She ran down to the street, stood in front of him and asked, “Where are you going?” He answered, “Nowhere in particular. I’m taking a walk.” She asked if she could come along; she did this very often, and she usually did this confidently or her new friend, so to speak, asked her to come along before she asked. But today, she felt a bit insecure because, according to her, she wasn’t dressed right. He didn’t look sharp, but she knew instantly that it was because he arrived here just several hours ago. She knew this because she met so many tourists before and she knew about them very well; how they looked when they arrived, how they walked when they were about to leave, how they talked after they spent a week or so here and many other things. He looked a little surprised, but he let her come along. She also made a gesture to ask Julienne to come along.
She spent the next couple of hours with him. At one point, he took off his glasses. He told her that he typically wore contact lens but he took a red eye flight to Jamaica; he wanted to get his eyes rested on his flight, so he wore glasses. But, in the end, he could not get sleep well on his flight, so his eyes felt a little tired still; he explained that this was why he was wearing glasses. She found that he was actually a handsome young man when he took off his glasses. He looked a little stiff and pensive though. She liked how he looked, but she was disappointed to find out that he was just a student and was not carrying a lot of money; he was going to a college in California and he was taking a little time off now. She did not show her this disappointment on her face, but she knew that she could not set her expectation high; there wouldn’t be any yacht ride or scuba diving.
Most men came here to party, and they were interested in any girls as long as they were physically attractive; if they met Mary Anne and Julienne, they always made eye contacts with both. Julienne was very attractive on her own right and she often got more attention than Mary Anne. But he seemed to be much more keen on Mary Anne. Three stopped at a couple of outdoor bars, though they didn’t order many drinks. They also walked around the east side of Montego Bay, where tourists hanged out. At one point, she held his hands, and he did not resist. Though he did have thick chest or big biceps, he had masculine hands; they were kind of hands that could hold her firmly. After he held her hands long enough, he asked her to come back to his hotel; he was a little nervous because he was essentially asking her to sleep with her and he recognizably had not asked too many women something like that. She was one of those women who could tell whether a man was experienced or not, and if he were inexperienced, whether he slept with any girls before or not just by looking at a man for a short while and she knew that he slept with one or two girls before but her observation and familiarity with the subject told her that he was not very skilled in bed, either. She generally preferred well-experienced men but she felt a little different about this one. She casually answered “Ok.”; he looked relieved.
She sensed that Julienne felt a little left out tonight. Many men found that Julienne was a seductive young woman but he didn’t seem to be interested in her; he was not ignoring Julienne intentionally, either. Now that she was going to his hotel, Julienne didn’t know what to do. She just told her to go home; a little boring night for her, but she thought, “What else can she do?”
He took her to his hotel, but he apparently felt a little awkward to ask her to come straight to his room, so he first took her to the bar inside. This was the first time that she entered this place, but she saw it many times from outside; it looked like a budget hotel, and she confirmed it as she entered. The bar didn’t look very pretty, either, though there was a pool right next to it; she had seen worse, but this was definitely not most glamorous one in Montego Bay.
The bar was completely empty. He ordered a drink for her and he also got a drink for himself. She sat beside the pool and he sat right next to her. The bartender figured that this guy was a little inexperienced, so he decided to help him out; he just turned off the light in the bar, left only two of them, left work and went home. Ten minutes later, he managed to kiss her in the midst of nervousness; he was ok, though he could definitely improve his techniques; he then took her up to his room where she spent the night.
She spent the next day and the day after with him. And then she left. She told him that she had a few things to do and she’d be back the next day. She didn’t exactly lie; Julienne and she were invited to a party in Kingston a couple of weeks back. Hosts were going to arrange a room for them to stay so that they could party until late night. She thought about canceling this but she wanted to go to a ‘real’ party. She also missed Julienne, her best friend. She also thought that her new boyfriend was going to leave here in several days, so she couldn’t think of any reason why she should attach herself to him. She asked her friend’s friend to give Julienne and her ride to Kingston. He said fine and took them to the capital.
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The party was fun but it dragged on for three days; she was a little tired at the end and was happy to head home at that point. When she came back to Montego Bay, she was not thinking about him at all; she assumed that he totally forgot about her, picked up another girl or left the island by then. The day that she came back, she stopped at a bar that she went to visit regularly; he was there. She was surprised because he was there to meet her and he figured out that that was where she was probably going to show up that night somehow. It turned out that he made a lot of effort to find her whereabouts for the last three days. He even found out where she lived and went to visit that place; she guessed that, given that he was not a local, he must have made a lot of effort. After she spent about an hour chatting with him, she told him that she’d stop at his hotel later that night. This time did she lie because she knew that he was going to leave here the next day; that was his flight schedule. She was not looking to have any emotional attachment.
After he left for U.S., she spent her days in Montego Bay like she used to. She met a couple of new men, though she strangely never met any men from U.S., Canada or Europe. One was from Brazil and the other was from South Africa. Memory of her past men faded away as time passed, but she kept remembering about the guy she met. Then, one day, it suddenly occurred to her that he was different from anyone she met in her life. He genuinely believed in the idea of hope and dream; he believed that there were wonderful things like love, romance and beauty in this world. In the end, he had a false sense of love toward her, but he developed that feeling because he believed these ideas were not figments of imagination. That was one thing about him very different from those she met in life up to then. He was not a saint, but he was not a spiritual degenerate, either. It was because he was naïve given his age and inexperienced but also because that was his nature. In the end, he was just playing with her, though he believed otherwise because of his naiveté; he was going to remember about her less and less, and in a couple of months, he would look for another girl; he might even believe that the new girl would be the love of his life because he would still be rather naïve then. But she knew that he would still believe that the world was a fine place; he was not cynical or perverse. He was not a man of optimism, but she knew that he would always hold onto the idea of hope and dream. She did not intend to become a different woman now, but she wanted to make, having ‘hopes’ and ‘dreams’, a part of her. That moment did she decide that she would leave here in the not too distant future; there was not much else left for her to do. Many said that it was a beautiful island; she did not disagree, but to her, this was a place that she could not believe in the idea of hope and dream. That was why she decided to leave.
