Uganda Be Kidding Me Read online

  We went on a sunset ride through the delta to check out the landscape before dinner. We met Z’s tracker, whose name was Sparks, and we drove for a bit until we stopped the jeep in a pond of lilies. The water was so placid and clear, we could see all the way to the bottom. There were different species of birds doing the same thing we were doing—sitting still and taking in the surroundings. It was a beautiful moment in a beautiful part of the world that took everyone’s breath away, including my own. It was silent for a moment too long, so I decided to ask the question that was on all of our minds.

  “Is this where we get raped?”

  Rex took this as an opportune time to describe to Z what kind of women he was dealing with and what to be prepared for. Z said he already loved us and that he had dealt with our kind before.

  “Well, then, I shall say no more,” Rex told him.

  This puzzled me. “Rex, you said you had never met anyone like us.”

  “I never have!” he defended himself. “I swear on my mother’s life, I never have.”

  “No, no, no,” Z said with a smile. “I speak wrong. My English is not perfect. I have never dealt with this kind of women before, but I like it.”

  “Like it or love it?” I asked.

  “I love it!” He smiled again. Z’s tracker didn’t speak a word of English but knew when it was time to smile. This was when I tackled both of them in the front seat.

  In Botswana we weren’t required to get up until seven a.m., so unlike the previous eight days, we really let it rip that night. Z had a harmonica, and Sparks played what I think was a sitar.

  I decided to make my move on Rex. I got up from the table after several cocktails and in the middle of the entertainment, announced I was going to bed. “Rex, let’s go.”

  I walked toward my room, and when I didn’t see him following me, I walked back to the fire everyone had moved over to and repeated myself. “Rex, let’s go to bed.”

  “No.”

  “Excuse me?” I asked.

  “I’m not going to bed with you.”

  I hadn’t even contemplated the idea that Rex might not be attracted to me: I was in shock, but I told myself to keep moving. When one of the African female staffers saw me walking, she joined me to escort me over the bridge to my villa.

  “Will you be needing anything in your villa?” she asked me.

  I looked at her and at the laundry basket on her head. “Do you guys have any thriller porn?”

  June 29, Friday

  I woke up to Molly staring at me, smiling. “Herro.”

  “Herro.” We’ve been saying hello like Asian people since we were very young.

  “Do you remember telling Rex last night that you were a gasoline heiress?”

  “Why is my hair in a French braid?” I asked her.

  “I did that before you made your big exit last night. And that you once taped a bar stool to a paddle board because you were crossing the Nile and didn’t want to overexert yourself?”

  My mortification was unparalleled. I’ve had many mornings where I’ve woken up knowing that something had gone terribly wrong the night before, but this was an entirely different level of shame.

  “Was it as bad as I think?”

  “It was pretty bad. I’ve never seen you like that.”

  “Why do you think he rejected me?”

  “Does it really matter, Chelsea?” she said, tilting her head to the side.

  “Oh god. How am I going to face him?”

  “You can face him,” Molly reassured me. “It’s just going to be humiliating.”

  “Thank god you’re here, Ricky,” I told Molly. I call her Ricky whenever we’re alone because it’s my safe word, and she knows when I use it, I need her to stick close by.

  I got up and walked over to the mirror, where I discovered the mosquito bite on my forehead had tripled in size. “I look like that boy from that Cher movie Mask. What was his name?”

  “Rocky Dennis.”

  “What am I going to do?”

  “Well, you need to apologize.”

  “I’m so embarrassed.”

  “Chelsea, it’s not like we haven’t all made asses out of ourselves on this trip. Just don’t make a bigger deal about it than it is.”

  She was right. There was no point in beating myself up over trying to have sex with a safari guide who rejected me.

  I wrapped a bandana around my mosquito bump and we got our things together, then joined the group on the main deck, where we were meeting to be taken to our bush breakfast.

  I locked eyes with Shelly, who was still wearing her pajamas that I ordered for her online from the AutoZone.

  “Hi!” she bellowed. “How are you feeling this morning?”

  “Great,” I said, and walked directly over to Rex. “I want to apologize to everyone for my behavior last night, and Rex, to you especially. That was really gross and I’m really sorry. I hope you don’t think that I think that you’re a male hooker.”

  “No worries at all,” he told me and patted me on the back like we were soldiers fighting together in Afghanistan.

  Everyone else reverted back to their conversations regarding the night before. Apparently, after I had gone to bed, everyone stayed up until 1 a.m. listening to someone play the guitar—a whole night had taken place after my performance, so no one was as concerned with my behavior as I was.

  I kept my distance from Rex that morning. Vurumba was a three-day camp, which meant we had two more nights to go, and I didn’t want him to think I was going to act like that again.

  We got in the jeep with Z and Sparks. I sat down next to Simone, who was sitting in the first row behind the driver’s seat. She had an ice pack for me and propped my leg on her knee. “Do you need any lip balm?” she asked me.

  The morning after Rex rejected me.

  Me, confiding about being sexually rejected.

  I don’t know what I would do without my sister. She has always made me feel better when I am teetering on the edge. The night before her own wedding she had to calm me down, because I had a meltdown. I was scared that once she got married, she would start having sex, which would lead to her own family, followed shortly thereafter by her desertion of me. She stayed up with me until 2 a.m. convincing me that her marriage was never going to lead to her abandoning me. “I’ll always be your real mother,” she assured me. “It doesn’t matter how many kids I have. You will always be my firstborn.”

  Simone wasn’t my mother, but my mother was so lazy, Simone had to step in and do the major disciplining. She knew how retarded my parents were. If “helicopter parenting” is the term to describe parents who are meddlesome and overprotective, “ceiling fan parenting” would be the term to describe mine.

  Simone taking custody of me early on.

  We arrived at our bush breakfast to find another happy African man smiling from ear to ear.

  “Chelsea, Molly, do you want one?”

  “No, I think I’m good.”

  “No, Chelsea wants one,” Molly corrected me. I did want one, but in my shame spiral I didn’t think I deserved one. Step 1: After apologizing, proceed as usual.

  The plan for the day was to eat breakfast, go for a morning ride, and then head back to the lodge. At 3 p.m. we would take a flat-bottom-boat ride through the delta.

  After our morning ride, Molly and I went over to Sue and Hannah’s room so I could commiserate with them about being rejected. Sue is always able to see things objectively, and I was desperate for someone other than a family member to shed some light on the subject. Plus, Shelly and Simone’s villa was a long walk across the bridge, and my knee was hurting more than usual.

  “Chelsea wants to know why Rex rejected her,” Molly announced when Hannah opened the door.

  “How’s it feel, Chels?” Hannah asked. Hannah’s bloviating had dissipated once we got to Botswana, so I was ready to have an honest conversation with her.

  “Not great.”

  “Yeah, in all the years I’ve