“This is starting to sound like a dare,” Sue declared.
“I know you ladies have had a lot to drink,” Rex told us in his native South African accent. “If you want to skip the afternoon ride”—which he pronounced “rahd”—“you can all just take a nap, and I can meet you girls at dinner to go over the next four days and what kind of animals we’ll be encountering.” Every “s” came out like a “z.”
“Sounds like someone is trying to lay down the law,” I said, trying to mimic his accent by replacing all my “s’s” with “z’s,” but instead sounding Indian. “I am Zexy for Rexy,” I slurred under my breath.
Shelly reassured Rex that this was no amateur hour, and we were willing to behave ourselves in order to go on our first safari “rahd.” He then politely informed us that he would be willing to take us on our ride as long as we followed the rules and did not “yell at any of the animals.”
“Oh my god,” Simone muttered. “It’s like we’re Make-A-Wish adults.”
There’s a very fine line in the African sand between being an asshole and being an American. So we drew it. “Rex, I apologize,” Sue told him. “We are not as obnoxious as we seem; we are just very happy to be off the plane and are blown away by this place. We knew we were coming on safari, but we didn’t know this is what it would be like.”
Sue does this a lot. She excessively apologizes on everyone’s behalf. I rolled my eyes at Shelly, but she was preoccupied with looking through her binoculars out over the deck—presumably trolling for single women.
“Oh my god,” she whispered. “I see a cheetah.”
“Shit’s about to get real,” Hannah announced, looking cross-eyed in my direction. “Oprah or NOprah?”
“Oprah,” I declared. “Let’s roll.”
A herd of elephants would have made less noise than the five of us clambering over each other on the deck to get a sobering look at the cheetah.
It didn’t take long for Rex to glean that although we were assholes with a hankering for libations—and lip balm—we were all genuinely interested in the adventure we were about to embark on. He took a long hard look at us, spit on the ground, and surrendered. “All right [which he pronounced ‘al-raht’], let’s go see some wildebeest [‘vilde-be-ast’].”
His tracker, the man who sits in the front of the safari truck mumbling in different directions, was named Life, which Rex pronounced as “laugh.” I’m a sucker for a good accent along with strong forearms on a man, and his happened to be covered in blond hair, which was an added bonus. Looking at him was like seeing myself in male form.
We pulled up to a watering hole and saw ten to fifteen hippos. One of the hippos was standing next to a crocodile whose jaws were wholly open. Upon hearing the six of us shriek with excitement, all the hippos charged into the water and the crocodile shut his mouth and whipped his tail.
Molly clutched my arm and blurted, “That’s how I feel when I enter a swimming pool.”
Rex on his walkie, telling another safari guide the coordinates for the hippos’ location.
When I asked Rex how crocodiles and hippos can just hang out together without one of them eating the other, Rex seemed irritated. He explained to us that the hippo is one of the most, if not the most dangerous animal in the world. They will swallow you whole or tear you apart by throwing your body around crocodile style; obviously that was why the two were such close friends.
Then he firmly informed us that we were going to need to shut up if we wanted to see any more animals. At Rex’s forcefulness, my sister glanced in Molly’s and my direction with squinted eyes. I know this look of intrigue, because the three of us all came from the same gene pool and we are all attracted to the same type of man.
After admiring the hippos, we ventured on and eventually managed to shut our mouths. Life would nod in a direction, and Rex would steer the car in that same direction. On that first day, we also saw wildebeest, buffalo, impala, and a single giraffe who hadn’t made the cut with his own family.
“Poor loser,” Hannah mumbled. “Do you think he did something to deserve being rejected by his own family?” she asked Rex. “Like Chelsea?”
“No,” he said, ignoring her last remark. “Sometimes they just reject some of their own because they sense they are weaker.” Rex seemed to know everything there was to know about animals, which was obviously a turn-on. He also went off road several times, knocking down tree after tree in his path in order to find a carnivore. This was when our vaginas collectively started to rumble. It was probable that one of us would require penetration from Rex, and it was up to me to decide if I wanted to volunteer my services.
Two hours later we pulled over and had champagne in the middle of an empty field, where we were also told that if we felt compelled to urinate, this would be the place to do it. I personally found it oddly comforting to pee outdoors. “Not to sound like a urinary tract infection, but I can’t wait to get back to Los Angeles and try this out,” I told Hannah. She and I put our heads together and smiled for Shelly, who was taking our photo. After Hannah pulled up her pants and left, she continued taking mine.
After we had dispensed with the necessities, I went and sat by Rex, leaned over seductively, and half-fell and half-whispered into his ear, “When will we see tigers?” Rex politely informed me that tigers were located on a different continent. More specifically, Asia.
At dinner that night we discovered that the only other people at our lodge was a couple on their honeymoon, which I always find unsettling. My sister was kind enough to point out to me that this is because I am incapable of spending more than two days alone with any person, never mind any man I’d ever dated. It was discouraging to realize the truth of this statement, which led me to observe this couple like a zoologist stalking a den of baby hyenas.
We only ever saw them at mealtime, and I constantly found myself watching them interact: how many gaps of silence there were and what each person did when the silence arose. (Each inevitably took a sip of wine or looked into the fire. The husband was constantly journaling with the help of his new captor. I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of reaction one would have to the prospect of looking through animal journals for the next ten to possibly seventy years.)
“Remember, Chelsea,” Hannah gently said, interrupting my gaze, “there is a lid to every pot.”
Something is definitely wrong with my feelings about marriage and procreation. I worry that not only am I missing the chromosome that allows me to dance respectably, but that I am also lacking a conventional vagina.
Simone and my other sister, Shoshanna, had come out to visit me in Los Angeles two months prior with their five children. After two days of nonstop pool noise, I stared at the smaller children with deadness behind my eyes, looked at Shoshanna, and declared, “I just don’t get the upside of having kids.”
She regaled me with her perspective: “Chelsea, sometimes I wake up and Russell [three years old] touches my face and says, ‘Mommy, you’re beautiful.’ ”
I stared at her waiting for her to finish. Then I told her, “That’s not enough,” and went inside for some more hummus.
June 24, Sunday
The morning after our arrival we were expected to be awake at 6 a.m. to be served coffee and biscuits.
Shelly and I were sharing a room, and our alarm went off at 5:30 a.m. I immediately rose, opened the safe in the room, took my Invisalign out of my mouth, and threw it in there on top of my passport and my signed copy of Into the Wild.
It was dark and freezing while Shelly and I scrambled around the room half awake. I slathered sunblock over my entire body and face, and then layered on piles of clothing that I would be able to take off as the day wore on. Shelly removed her contacts from the champagne she had stored them in the night before, and moaned when she put them in. “Goddammit, these burn.”