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  In perfect timing for Rex to avoid answering personal sexual questions, we next came upon a mother hyena with her den of babies. We decided as a group that hyenas were quite possibly the most disgusting animals we had seen on safari so far, and that was including baboons.

  “Jeepers,” Rex responded. “You girls are flippin’ hard to please.”

  Molly, Simone, and I exchanged disappointed squints at each other. This marked the first time I was embarrassed for Rex and his vocabulary.

  “Do you still want to take him back to LA to be your pool boy?” Molly murmured. “Jeepers, Chelsea, we seem to have run out of AAAhced tea and vodka. Where’s the flippin’ store?”

  “Where’s the lip balm?” I asked the group, ignoring Molly.

  Later that afternoon they drove us over to a ridge covered in boulders and that overlooked a river, and we had drinks at sunset with Rex, Ryan, and another safari guide named Luke.

  It was very romantic… or it would have been very romantic had we been there with our boyfriends, had any of us actually had boyfriends, with the exception of Sue. Although until Chuck agreed to change his name to something more reasonable, he didn’t really count in my mind. Luke wasn’t attractive in any way, shape, or form, but he was well versed in what was in the sky.

  Me and Ryan.

  We all sat under the stars while he identified every constellation, its location in relation to us, and what parts of the world they were most visible in. He showed us the Southern Cross and its pointers, teaching us how to determine in the dark of night if you were headed north or south just by looking at the sky and making a triangle out of the Southern Cross pointers. I had heard about this sort of Boy Scout nonsense before, but I didn’t believe people really paid attention to this kind of thing unless they were members of some program that was trying to launch a rocket into space. After our tutorial, we all attempted to identify the Southern Cross night after night with a success rate of zero.

  I watched Rex down one glass of champagne after another and chase each one with a shot of Jameson, and it dawned on me then that we might not be the only ones with drinking problems.

  On the ride home we heard over the walkie-talkies from other safari guides about three lionesses that were found roaming on the airstrip where we had landed. One was injured. As we tried to track them we heard the three lionesses making calls trying to find each other.

  “That’s sweet. What kind of calls would we make under the same circumstances?” I asked the group.

  We decided collectively right there and then that we had no system in place whatsoever to locate one another if we were in a bind and forced to separate or, even worse, if Simone was injured and had to blood-let again. Molly and I took turns howling at each other before were told to shut the fuck up by Rex. He didn’t use the word fuck, but he was grabbing at his disheveled hair the way a man would if he were trying hard not to hit a woman.

  That night we had dinner in a circular wine cellar and were separated from the rest of the guests. Molly attributed this to Sue’s interrogation the night before of the triplets and their parents about the health issues the two small siblings had to endure due to the biggest of the three hogging all the nutrients in the womb. Simone attributed our isolation to our behavior in general, and Hannah attributed it to the camp having to keep me from sexually assaulting Rex.

  “I’m not the one that was upset the bag you were allowed to bring wasn’t big enough to house your black vibrator,” I told her.

  “I have extra condoms if anyone hooks up,” Sue announced as she helped herself to some curry. “Did you girls know that South Africa has one of the highest HIV-infected populations in the world? It’s a great place to hook up.”

  There was enough food to feed sixty-five people, and none of it was worth taking a second bite of. Multiple dishes consisted of multiple unidentifiable meats on multiple sticks. Molly posited that if we simply cut down on the amount of alcohol, the quality of food might improve.

  “It’s safe to assume they think we eat as much as we drink,” Simone commented.

  “I’ve thought a lot about my life today,” I proclaimed, “and I no longer believe marriage is in the cards for me.”

  June 26, Tuesday

  On the morning of our fourth day, I decided sleeping was more imperative than seeing more lions lick themselves. I blamed my knee injury on my passiveness, but the truth was when I woke up for the fourth time that week at five a.m., I wanted to cry. Why are babies allowed to cry when they wake up, but adults crying when they wake is frowned upon? Babies are permitted to act like assholes whenever they feel like it and no one blinks, but if an adult throws a temper tantrum, all of a sudden it’s on YouTube. It was just too fucking early too many days in a row. I mean, realistically, how many more animals were there to see?

  There was also a side story: I can’t begin to describe how much I loved the twin bed I was sleeping in. It was like a marshmallow surrounded in mosquito netting, and it made me feel like a princess. It was just the right size for me and reminded me of a childhood I never had. The only thing better than a twin bed with a mosquito net would be a twin waterbed. The decision was made. Once back at my house, I would keep the king-sized, custom-made leather headboard, but replace the king mattress with a twin-sized waterbed. I would center it in the middle of the headboard, in order to make clear to any visitors that this was an intentional design choice. I would run the water hose through the electrical system in my closet and straight through my ice machine (also in my closet). I love everything to be cold, and this was just one more thing I hadn’t thought of: an iced waterbed.

  While the girls were gone I arranged a massage for myself in my villa. The ninety minutes were up before I was ready, so I walked right over to Simone and Molly’s villa and called the spa from there, pretending I was one of them. Unfortunately for me, the same masseuse who had massaged me moments earlier showed up and looked at me quizzically, even though I had put on a baseball hat and sunglasses as a disguise. I pretended my sister had ordered the massage but that she had changed her mind at the last minute and I volunteered to take her place, so as to not waste any money. Getting two massages back to back from the same person wasn’t optimal, but the management at Londolozi left me with no other option.

  Of course upon return, the girls informed me that they saw sixteen elephants—mostly mamas and babies—on the horizon waiting for the sun to rise while breast-feeding. I could have kicked myself if I could have moved my leg in any direction but straight. They also told me about the herd of zebras (ZEH-bras) they came upon while a herd of rhinos stood closely by bathing themselves in mud and then licking it off each other.

  We then went shopping at the camp’s small store. Everyone proceeded to buy clothing they would never wear, useless knickknacks they would never unpack, and jewelry they would lose before the end of the trip. Sue bought a set of salad tongs for everyone she knew. She then kissed the manager of the store on the mouth as a thank-you for ringing up said items.

  I purchased a gray shirt with the continent of Africa front and center, only because none of the clothes I had brought still fit me. I was now wearing a women’s large. I decided to go back to my room and take a pain pill for my leg, something I was proud that I had avoided in the ninety-six hours I had been abroad. After the girls were done shopping they found me on the main deck stuffing my face with breakfast items at two in the afternoon.

  A small, blond nine-year-old boy walked in and sat himself at the table where the girls had joined me. He was fully equipped with binoculars around his neck and an animal-logging journal in his hands. His name was Westin and he had no guardian in sight, and it very quickly became apparent why. He never shut the fuck up. The only thing more annoying than underweight cats are kids who don’t know when to zip it.

  His family came here every year for vacation, so we agreed to let him give us a tour of his lodge, which happened to abut our lodge, and a look at his very detailed journal of every animal you