In June of 2012, my grandparents brought my extended family and me on a two-week vacation to Spain. I’m aware of how much of a spoiled asshole I sound like, but there is absolutely no fucking reason to bring a twelve-year-old kid to Europe. I was insurmountably more interested in playing Temple Run than touring a bunch of Renaissance versions of MTV Cribs. There was no shot I had the bandwidth to appreciate such an expensive and significant opportunity. I would argue that I still don’t…but I can legally drink in Europe now, so I’d imagine it would be pretty fucking awesome. That being said, there was a particular day that I was smitten for. While eating dinner in Madrid one night, I heard my Uncle comment on how on the nude beaches on Spain’s countryside, our next destination. For three days, I don’t think I slept once. I knew that whatever I was going to see on those beaches was going to change my life forever.
Sure enough, our second day in the countryside was our beach day. Sunglasses? Check. Forever on aux as a group of mostly black men rap about making it out of the struggle, while I sit in a rental car thinking of ways I can somehow relate? Check. Underarmour compression shorts to hide a potential boner? Double-check. And like Rajon Rondo in the first round of the playoffs, Spain came up big when it needed to. My little cousins were giggling, my Mom was trying to shield my eyes, but I was dodging tackles left and right. Big boobs, small boobs, saggy boobs, perky boobs, all boobs…I was swimming in that shit through my sunglasses like Squidward after eating his first Krabby Patty. The boys at home were about to bow down to the Connoisseur of Cleavage. I was going APE SHIT walking down that beach. Mesmerized by nudity, you could have shot me in the leg, and I wouldn’t have stopped.
But then my grandma killed my vibe. She told us we were going for a late lunch and then leaving. No fucking way I was going to give up this fix. Plans started incubating in my head about buying Rosetta Stone and selling my fingers while living on the beach in a tent. I scarfed down my lunch Joey Chestnutt style and immediately asked for permission to walk to a gelato store(one block down) to bring back ice cream for everybody. My parents were thrilled at my maturity and consideration for my little siblings, my dad even offering to come with me to help with this strenuous task. No thanks pops, I got this one by myself, and then I immediately sprinted off that boardwalk. I calculated that twelve minutes would be enough time for there to be no suspicion in my activities while also getting my last glimpse of naked people walking around a beach. But I just didn’t have the responsibility to draw boundaries on the tremendous opportunity I had. I walked 2.7 miles down that land of greatness. I was like Louis and Clark sketching mental images of the great things I saw, no longer a twelve-year-old boy, but an explorer.
But once reality set in that it had been fifty-five minutes and I didn’t have a roaming plan on my phone, fear kicked in. I turned back and had no idea where the fuck I was. There was no longer a boardwalk accompanying our beach, and the boobs I once loved so much just teased me. It was there I learned a powerful lesson that I still choose to ignore: boobs aren’t worth terrifying your family over. God damnit, I was fucked. My immediate thought was, let’s see what that B- in Señora Drew’s sixth-grade Spanish class could do now. As it turned out, screaming Ayudar as a foreigner isn’t something that the Spanish appreciate. For about an hour, I was going over to random naked people saying Ayudar por favor, not even having the decency to change the verb/pronoun to its appropriate translation… I really shouldn’t have cheated my way through sixth grade Spanish. The next hour I just cried. My ignorant twelve-year-old ass figured well I’m American in a foreign country, of course, these people will want to enter me every which way and sell me for parts.
I had been lost for about three hours and had walked all the way over to a DIFFERENT FUCKING TOWN. Luckily an Australian lady knew Spanish a little bit better than Bueños Tardes Señora Drew, and the cops in the town my family had eaten in managed to get in touch with the cops dealing with a kid in a flat-brimmed Vans: off the wall hat. My Parents claim it was the scariest thing that had ever happened to them, my grandmother was balling, and it really put a damper on the day. It’s a story that I will never go a Thanksgiving without getting flack for, and a tale family friends know all too well. But…I did go from seeing zero boobs to hundreds of boobs and cemented myself as a leader for discussion at the seventh-grade lunchroom table…so was it worth it?… I’d do it all over again. las tetas son increíbles
