"Just You One?"

I recently took my first ever vacation alone. Unlike the stereotypical scene in the movies where the main character dreads going out into social situations without a date, I was really looking forward to my single vacation. I'd been working so hard at work that I thought having another person along - no matter how much I adored them - would grate on my nerves.

My vacation of choice was (of course) the beach. On a whim, I booked myself 3 nights at a beach front resort where I planned to do nothing but lay on the beach and bake in the sun.

"Just you one?" the cab driver asked when I got out of the airport.
"Yes," I said, revelling in how good it felt to be completely alone in a place where I knew no one.

"Just you one?" asked the receptionist at the front desk.
"Yes."

I laid out on the beach. Men (mostly white and balding with guts) walked by, staring. I ignored them. Apparently, a single black woman at the resort was a rarity because news of my presence soon spread like wildfire. Within an hour of me laying out of the beach, male resort employees who worked inside found some excuse reason to be walking by my spot. And they all did the same thing:

"Just you one?"
"Yes."
"How long you here?"
"Four days."
"Your boyfriend not coming?"
"No."

After the third one, I started to get annoyed. This was supposed to by my relaxing vacation, I didn't want to be picked up, I wasn't trying to get my groove back, I just wanted to be left alone.

Day 2 was more of the same. The local men just couldn't understand why a single girl would come to the islands by herself unless she wanted to be schtupped by one of the men there. Surprisingly, no one asked or thought I was gay. A couple times I thought about saying it just so they'd leave me alone, but that might have created another set of problems. LOL.

Day 3 wasn't much different, except a married man not too far away from me waited til his wife got in the water to tell me I was the hottest woman he'd seen all day. Blech! What a loser. I had a strange moment when I saw a young couple (early twenties) frolicking way out in the water. She was pregnant and couldn't swim, and he'd carried her out on his back. It reminded me of one of the last times before the dissolution of my relationship with First Love, when he'd taken me out on his back into the ocean. I started crying. Just out of the blue. And I realized that I had never really cried about the end of our relationship. I'd swept it under the rug, gotten over it, but never cried it out of my system. It felt good. Damn good. I met a nice police officer later that day; pity I wasn't in the frame of mind for flirtation. I'll give him a call now that I'm back. LOL.

But despite all the pushy men, it was a good boost for my self esteem to be appreciated and desired. In New York, I'm one of many beautiful people...at least on the island I was a rarity - even if only for a few days.

Yes, it's just me one...