Chapter 14

Phoenix seemed almost wintry, after Oahu. Oh, the weather was dry and quite mild for the most part, but somehow, you knew it was the last week of February, in Arizona. In Hawaii, it almost always felt like the last week in May.

We got back to the RV late Sunday, and by Monday, the 26^th of February, it was as if we'd never left it. My worries about regressing to living in a bus, instead of luxury hotels in Hawaii, were forgotten. I mean, c'mon! It was a very nice bus!

The MasterCard Classic in Mexico City wouldn't get underway until March 9. We figured arriving by late Sunday, March 5, would be enough time to get acclimated and to practice on the tournament course. That left the entire current week free in Phoenix.

Of course, these two zealots would practice almost daily on local courses. As a concession to me, and as a way to avoid hiring a second caddy to handle Kim's bag, they generally practiced with a golf cart. That way, I could caddy for both of them. The cart also generally led to their playing more than a single round on a practice day.

They did deign to take a mini vacation from golf on that Saturday, and on the Sunday of our departure. We didn't leave the RV all day Saturday. It was March 4 -- Tess' 23^rd birthday. In honor of the big day, Kim and I got her an ice cream cake -- an elaborate, sinfully calorie-rich masterpiece prepared for her by special order by a local creamery. And, as part of the celebration, we required Tess to spend the entire day Saturday in her "birthday suit."

Yes -- that birthday suit.

Not surprisingly, Tess was more than willing to parade around all day in the buff. It did become a small annoyance for her from time to time, as Tess, like most people, enjoyed getting outside at least a little bit, even on stay-at-home off days from golf.

I knew she'd go outside -- with or without clothing -- if she thought she could get away with it, so I watched her pretty closely. It was pleasant duty. I remembered the old days, when Tess and I had first shared the RV on the road. She had worn a maxi-sized man's sweatshirt (and nothing much else) in those days.

The sweatshirt covered everything completely, but if she was going for subtlety or modesty around me, it definitely wasn't working. The shirt didn't completely disguise the undulations that were occurring underneath. It had made me have vivid dreams of poking my head in, at the waist, and taking a closer look at what-all was going on under there.

So Tess' Arizona birthday blast was, literally, a dream-come-true for me. I think Tess enjoyed it even more.

Kim must have been a little stirred by the event as well. Late Saturday, she initiated some nuzzling with Tess that was, immediately, welcomed enthusiastically by the nuzzle-ee. I think it was the first time Kim had been the instigator of a girl-girl contact, although neither Tess nor I had much reason to doubt that Kim had enjoyed their earlier times together.

Women aren't supposed to be as visually oriented as men; watching Tess walk around naked all day long was expected to arouse me -- but, another woman? Even a lesbian woman, or a bi-sexual? Not so much.

That, at least, was the conventional wisdom.

The conventional wisdom was bullshit. Kim got horny, came on to Tess in unmistakable fashion, and the two of them ended up in a sixty-nine that gave me two lumps.

One of them was in my throat.

I got the opportunity to join in -- afterward -- and Tess was able to give herself another minor-league orgasm in my honor. But I had the distinct impression that my male appendage was, on that day, nothing more than the erotic equivalent of a midnight snack. The main course had come earlier, and I hadn't been involved.

Well. There's a lot to be said for just being a fan. Without an enthusiastic gallery, where would all that LPGA prize money come from?

Around bedtime Saturday night, Tess declared that she was "tired of being cooped up all day," and that she was going to go for a walk around the RV park. "You two are welcome to come along," she said, "but you have to dress for the occasion.

By that, she of course meant that Kim and I would be expected to accompany her -- if at all -- in the nude. "I'm going to come along, just to keep an eye on you," I told Tess, "but I'm bringing two very large beach towels with us -- for emergency use."

"What about you, Kimmy?" Tess said. "You too chicken?"

So I was charged with the task of carrying all three very large beach towels.

It was reasonably late in the evening, and the park wasn't exactly a hotbed of activity. I'm pretty sure we could have avoided being seen at all, if only all the giggling could had been kept under control. Tess led the way, winding around between trailers and bulky recreational vehicles neatly aligned throughout the (unfortunately) well-lighted park. A range of foothills rose up on one side of us, providing a dark background that seemed to loom over the mass of parked vehicles.

Tess insisted on our walking around the outer side of all the trailers and RVs that made up the park's perimeter, but, in addition, she aimlessly led us on winding detours between vehicles parked closer to the interior.

After following Tess on her furtive barefoot trot among the scattered vehicles, I began to realize that we had become lost. Oh, we weren't permanently lost. The park was large, but not that large. We could safely assume that, with some wandering around, we'd eventually spot our own RV and be able to take refuge there.

But, for the moment, we weren't certain which way to go to find it.

This motivated a new round of giggling. None of us had been doing any significant drinking, before this adventure, but Tess sounded very much like a person who'd had too much to drink. I figured it was all part of the intoxicating effect that her nudity -- and, more acutely, the possibility of someone's seeing her in that condition -- always seemed to have on her.

"Keep the noise down," I whispered, "or somebody's going to come out to see what's shakin'."

"I'll show them what's shakin'," Tess answered at once at full volume, after which she burst into another round of uncontrolled giggles.

Kim was very little help to me. She'd liked that last one -- she was becoming an appreciator of the many opportunities the English language seemed to afford for humorous wordplay. So Kim soon joined in the giggling as well.

Sure enough, we were overheard and somebody -- probably bored with the wasteland that was Saturday night network TV -- emerged from a nearby Winnebago to investigate.

I tried to hand Tess her Emergency Towel, but she wasn't looking for cover. Instead, she continued in the same direction -- right toward the curious Winnebago-owner -- and, when she was certain he couldn't miss her, she stopped, directly under a streetlight that had been thoughtfully constructed there by the park management.

"Don't worry," Tess told the incredulous man. "We're not stealing anything -- see?" She held out both arms, palms spread toward her new friend, to demonstrate that she wasn't carrying any contraband.

By this time, Kim and I were wrapped in beach towels and were relatively uninteresting to look at. We also hung back a few yards, out of the full glare of the streetlight.

The guy -- forty-ish, with a big pot belly under his Bermuda shorts -- didn't say anything at all for the longest time. I figured he was just making sure he saw everything there was to see, before this all evaporated into the night air.

Finally, the guy just said, "Damn!"

I thought that pretty-much summed it up.

"Come on, Myrtle," I hollered at Tess. "I just remembered where the key was -- we can get back into the RV, now!"

Tess actually curtseyed at Winnebago Man -- holding out an imaginary skirt in each primly outstretched hand, bowing her head and bending one knee gracefully. Finally, reluctantly, she turned away from him and slowly followed us back into the relative darkness.

The guy just stood there, checking out the side of Tess he hadn't gotten a good-enough gander at, before. He didn't move at all until we were out of sight. I half-expected him to follow us.

More giggling. Kim was somewhat more subdued by now, and I was desperately searching for our RV. Tess was still snickering as if she were a 12-year-old boy, going from house-to-house after dark, ringing doorbells and running away.

We soon located the bus without further incident, and Tess -- still uncovered by terrycloth or anything else -- reluctantly allowed us to push her inside.

"This is the best birthday I ever had!" she said.

The following morning, the three of us agreed that all our birthdays would hereafter be celebrated in similar fashion. Kim had a birthday coming up in July, and I was going to have to wait until October for my big day. If the two of them would play that "pass the penis" game again on that day, it would, perhaps, be worth the wait.

We flew out mid-day Sunday for Mexico City.

Playing conditions were in sharp contrast to the two Hawaiian tournaments. Mexico City is a high-altitude location, and the air was thin and dry. The first two days of practice were enough, however, to acclimate my golfers adequately. The tournament course was similar enough to some we'd played in Arizona that neither Tess nor Kim regarded the challenge there as strange or new.

They skipped the Wednesday pro-am event in favor of light practice, rest, and relaxation. Free of my bag-toting duties for most of the day, I wandered around, looking for an opportunity to practice my Spanish.

Our hotel was a well-maintained, elderly grouping of three-story structures, several miles distant from the course. I found a young Mexican man pushing a fabric-covered cart full of discarded sheets and towels toward a laundry room on the ground floor. I'd had two years of Spanish in high school, and another two in college. Foreign languages weren't my strong suit, but Spanish had always struck me as an accessible, friendly language. All the vowels retained the same pronunciation, in almost any word in which they appeared. You couldn't ask for anything much friendlier than that!

I had a decent-enough Spanish vocabulary and was rather proud of my accent. I thought I sounded pretty damned close to a native Mexican. (Not a Spaniard, so much. We never screwed around with that Castilian stuff.)

So, anyway, I was all set. I'd rehearsed, in my mind, my opening. I greeted the guy with the standard "ola" that you heard, in Mexico, a million times a day. Then I launched my spiel. I said to him (in grammatically correct Spanish), "You have a beautiful city, here, and everyone in this hotel has treated us with great courtesy."

It came out just as pretty as you please, and I could tell the guy was impressed. I might be a Fucking Gringo, but I could speak Spanish pretty darned good! And like anybody, anywhere, the young man was pleased that I was prepared to converse with him in his native tongue, and that I'd said something nice about his city, his employer, and (by implication) about him, personally.