Hvar – a Lesson in Repetition and Tragedy

My friends Jeff (Dr.) Jones, Gregg, and Jeff (the Godfather) all meet me in Split, so we can take the town of Hvar by storm. It’s nice to see some familiar faces, even though I’d had a slight amount of anxiety leading up to their arrival. After all, I hadn’t followed a schedule in months, and we had our next 2+ weeks mapped out already.

I had made a couple contacts along the way that helped us grease the rails in Hvar at the best (and really, the only) club in town, Carpe Diem. For us, there would be no First Night Follies*. We are all set with a table reservation for that night, and our excitement is more or less uncontainable. These guys had been looking forward to this for months, and I was just excited to wallet-whip the player’s scene a bit after living on a backpacker’s budget for the last two months.

After docking in Hvar, we head to the taxi station to get a ride to our apartment. Apparently, you need a phone number of the apartment in which you are staying, and of course, I am not prepared for this. I go into a random travel agency to ask what else I can do, and in a strange twist, the apartment we are renting is adjoined to the one owned by the girl (actually, her mother) working there. The exchange is a pleasant one, and we are off to our apartment.

The owner is an imposing, whiskered old woman with the requisite butter-teeth and smokers gasp. She too seems pleasant. But the best part of all, is the view from our apt is insane. From our balcony, the town glistens with fuck-you yachts and dangling earrings, with the faint throb of a baseline underscoring the evening twilight. Not coincidentally, the same throb can be heard from our collective livers, as they prepare for the bottle-beating onslaught they’ll be forced to endure over the course of the ensuing week.

We are running late, so we grab a bite at the first restaurant we see in the Old Town. It’s a seafood restaurant, where I order the grilled calamari. There’s a lot of schmegma inside the squids. I realize I’m not living upstairs from Il Bagatto anymore, and the seafood is bound to be a bit less “prepared.” But by the end of dinner, we’re buzzing with a couple bottles of white wine under our belts, and the anticipation of absolutely destroying Hvar.

WARNING: The next several paragraphs may not be suitable for readers who either hold me in high esteem, or those who do not appreciate a good dose of blue humor. Scroll down to the next bolded portion, if you wish to skip. I realize there is no chance anyone actually does this, but my own fragile ego insists I at least provide this warning.

We arrive at Carpe Diem. We glide past a mobscene of sycophantic wannabes with disdainful glances down the slopes of our raised noses, and are greeted by our waiter, Ivan. We’re seated with reasonable location, and our bottles are on their way. Ca-fucking-ching. The place is already resonating with expectant energy. An intense baseline provides the soundtrack for a bustling herd of the most absurdly attractive cross-section of women I have ever seen in my life. The hot girl from the Pula tourist agency is a far-gone, distant memory. We smile at each other with knowing looks of accomplishment as our cocks get progressively heavier.

A couple of harsh baselines rattle me out of my inward back-patting, and I feel a knowing rumble in my nether regions. I turn to Gregg and declare that I might find it difficult to last all evening without the benefit of a one-hit stall. As I say this, I lift a cheek to release a little pressure and buy myself some time, when it happens.

I woefully miscalculate. I turn to Gregg and inform him that I’ll be right back. I dart out past the once-friendly velvet rope, and begin speed-walking the 3 km hike back up to our apartment. Why don’t I take a taxi, you ask?? Because I am terrified at the thought of sitting back down, that’s why. And fuck you very much for asking.

I am darting past models and would-be models, musing that all some of these girls would need for a contract at Ford is a simple eating disorder. I think this as a way to get my mind off the burgeoning shame I am sure to encounter should anyone know what I am carrying beneath my pants pockets, as I am unsure of what I might look like from behind. As such, I try desperately to pass people only by sneaking up on them under the street lamps, and making my move past them in the shadows. It occurs to me that this technique is also probably widely utilized in the rapist community.

One km uphill, and my ass is torched. Clearly, my not-so-viscous feces are suffering from high thermal breakdown. Between the astonishingly high amount of friction between my cheeks, and my constant need to clench them, I am in brutal pain. Every step is an exerted effort, and each time I wince, I curse the fact that our bottle has probably just arrived… making my pain both physical and emotional. I am comforted only by the baseline, which can still be heard over my stifled whimpers.

This is my first trip back to our apartment. It is pitch-dark for the final km, and I am in a town I don’t have the slightest knowledge of. I make the choice to climb the wrong daunting staircase countless times. I am determined, yet direly fearful of the inevitable aftershock. I consider several times a hop into the bushes, but remain strong. I decide for some reason that a dash to the bushes would be admitting defeat.

I finally find our apartment. I release my demons while I confirm that in fact, my horrible accident is indeed visible from behind. Cursing those nasty calamari, I shove my clothes into the European lock-as-soon-as-the-door-closes washing machine, to presumably handle the mess later. I shower, and afterward layer my entire ass in aloe. They say it’s good for burns.

NOTE: Anyone who sympathetically skipped the above portion, may continue reading from this point forward. If you actually did this, you are indeed a gentleman and a scholar, and I thank you dearly.

Donning a new pair of jeans, I arrive back at Carpe Diem, about 45 minutes after I left. Question most often asked is “where have you been?” My secret won't be revealed until my first cocktail is safely numbing my brain. And ass. The place is positively exploding. I smile triumphantly knowing that my seafood mishap cost me so little in the long run. My smile widens when I realize that our dear friend Jones is somehow already murderously hammered. I remark that one tragedy begets another, or that things happen in threes, or something else that exacts a look of confusion from whomever I was speaking to at the time.

Jeff is toast. He's asleep on a banquette by about 1:00, despite my ruthless back-handed chest whipping "motivational" beat-down. He'll come around eventually, though I'll have nothing to do with it. This night was not resurrected for the purpose of babysitting others. He's dead to me.

We head up to the only late-night club, Veneranda, and I lose some time. My next memory is Gregg and I singing and drinking out on our balcony at 7 am, getting yelled at by the apartment owner and her daughter. Their words “You are not sorry, you are sick! Sick in the head!!!” seem utterly poignant as Jones comes stumbling through the door. I had already written him off for dead, mourned him, and moved on with my life. His reappearance is eerily unexpected.

He apparently found a group of Australians doing mountains of blow in some random hotel room. Mind you, none of us sign up for that accelerated party level, so I am sure this situation was especially interesting for Jonesy.

Next day, we go to the beach club, Hula Hula, drink some more, take a nap, and again are running late to Carpe. We slam down a pizza at Mama Leone’s, a place we’d had lunch at the day before.

We get to Carpe in reasonable time, and nail down an even better location. I am watching the hordes of people out front accumulate when I recognize some people I’d hung out with in Ljubljana. I get them in, and they love me. Memories of the tragedies of a day earlier are long forgotten. Jones is safely on beer-only status, I have ingested about 400 mg of Tums, and the party is underway.

More of the same, great, high-energy times take place until around 5am we are somehow back at our apartment with a couple people from Ljubljana, a couple of random New York girls, and the Australian guy who saved Jones the night before. I’ve already scolded one of the New York girls for disparaging the good name of the Godfather. No one criticizes the Godfather, lest they be met with extreme ire and repercussion.

There are a good number of us, but we are keeping the music inside this time, so as not to piss off the owner. Mission: failed. The owner storms in, and is visibly vibrating in unbridled anger. She tears the Ipod speakers from the wall, only to become even more infuriated when they don’t turn off (stupid rechargeable batteries!!). Johnny, the Australian (whom I nicknamed Johnny Snow Nose) proclaims “I speak Crohayshun!” and that he’ll handle speaking to her.

It should be noted that he’d been proclaiming a lot by this point:

“I hahve the best coke in Crohaysha!!”
“Jonesy, he’s loyahl, he’s ‘onest, he’s trustworthy, he’s a good dancah, he’s an esteemed Siebel project managah, he’s a wohthy adversary...”
“I can hahve 3 grahms of coke here in 20 minutes.”
“Are you sure you don’t need any coke?”
“Jonesy, he’s loyahl, he’s tendah, he’s gentle, he’s caring…”
“My guy’s on the phone, he wahnts to know how much coke you guys wohnt.”

In any case, his 20 second conversation with our apartment owner went nearly as follows:

JSN (in Crohayshun): Words, words words. Words words, words words American words.
Apt lady: Words words American words words [shakes head]!
JSN: Words words words? American words.
Apt lady: No. American words words words words!! Words!!!!!!
JSN: Ok. Words.
JSN (to us): Well, she’s cawling the cops if you guys ahn’t out of heah in 30 minutes.

Fuck. I could have done that!! I could have told her to shave her face and go fuck a Serbian and wound up with a better result that that. Fuck Johnny Snow Nose.

It is 8am. Granted, any better-behaved group of adults (Godfather is soon to be 45) would have been long asleep by then. However, we were all still in ramped-up party mode, and now are hiking our crap down to the nearest hotel as a penance. It also happens to be one of the most expensive hotels in town. At this point though, I’m feeling the need for a good night’s sleep, much the way I did after spending several hours holed up in a Mexican jail cell in Cabo. Any amount would be too little to pay for me to get a clean, safe place to sleep, at this point.

The next day at Hula Hula, we all share a vindictive laugh over the fact that my soiled clothes from the night before are awaiting our apartment hostess at first inspection. Last laugh? America.

Are you sensing a pattern? Because there is one: Afternoons at Hula Hula; evenings throwing food down as quickly as possible, nights at Carpe, late nights at Veneranda, all peppered with drastic tragedy and mild triumphs. Clearly, Hvar is hardly a big town. In fact, I commented to the Godfather one night that this beautiful, quaint little town with so much history and culture, exists purely for the gluttonous indulgence of the Haves, and all else can fuck off. It’s pretty much a reason to rethink that “money isn’t everything” mantra that people without money like to regurgitate, when faced with what they perceive to be a decision not to have. Truth is, Having is much more desirable than Having Not.

It’s like the guy in high school, who claims he’s not into chicks. Oh, he’s into fucking chicks, alright. But his is not a choice borne of his own volition. In reality, it is the choices of the hundreds, if not thousands of girls in his high school that won’t fuck him. Sure, he may eventually wind up being a searingly witfull, well-adjusted, mildly athletic and virile stallion in his latter years, but those sexually developmental years are mostly spent lying to yourself and others about why you’re not boning every (any??) girl with a claspless bra. Trust me, I am that guy.

[/digression] By the time we left Hvar, we had a rather approving reputation at Carpe Diem, and a boat ride to the surrounding islands under our belt – which, by the way, managed to compact my spine to the tune of about 2 inches. Inasmuch as Gregg was driving, methinks he pushed the throttle to the hilt in order to make us all as short as he is. It’s a theory I plan on sticking to, at least until my next massage.

Hopefully my tragic night in Hvar makes up for what has been a long blogging hiatus. I get the sense I’ll be relentlessly forgiven. You know, I’d like to think that awful story is up there (in substance, not talent) with Richard Pryor telling the story about how he set himself on fire while smoking crack; although I accept this as being a probable fabrication of my need for creative approval.

* - First Night Follies are often encountered when you visit a city on the first night. It takes a night of stumbling around to the shitty clubs before you meet enough people to direct you were the hottest girls are making the poorest and most morally bankrupt decisions.