Thanksgiving

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Spending Thanksgiving with Sid and Esmeralda at Universal Studios hadn't been amongst my plans, but an inability to make it to Cincinnati for the Holiday with Lydia's family led to this wretched event.

Sadly, my travel problems didn't spiral into a hilarious, sprawling Planes Trains and Automobiles- style madcap adventure; instead it merely involved thirteen tedious hours in a small section of LAX Terminal Five.

Due to a mechanical fault, the flight was delayed initially for four hours, at which point, if we lived in a better world, the women would have turned to the men, shrugged, and said, “Well, I suppose we might as well pair up and fuck on the carpet.” Instead, this being Earth, we chose to resign ourselves to a morning of lonely, excruciating boredom.

When the replacement plane was also delayed with a mechanical fault, the serious drinking began, and by the time the third plane was finally ready, I was judged too inebriated to enter the cabin. After walking for hours through the dark long-term parking lot I eventually sobered up enough to recall that I had taken a taxi that morning, at which point I essentially forced my way into someone's passing car and got a lift to the exit to find a cab.

Sid has grown a scraggly reddish-grey beard over his three week holiday because his disposable razor was confiscated from his hand luggage at Gatwick - “What am I going to do, shave someone?” he said and has told me about four times – and he has refused to buy another on principle. The beard, predictably, makes him look ridiculous.

Esmeralda insists that we go on the Simpsons ride three consecutive times, and I suspect her of falling against me unnecessarily spectacularly and often, which, although it unnerves me, I put down to paranoia.

But when on the Mummy roller coaster her hand gently rubs my thigh, my suspicions become indisputable. I fail to move her hand, partly through shock and partly because no one except Lydia has touched me so intimately for some years, and, as in the pitch blackness I don't have to look at Esmeralda's face, it actually excites me. Only when she slides her hand onto my crotch do I slap my thighs together and turn as far away from her as I can on the speeding coaster.

I am certainly starved of unfamiliar female attention. I have barely even spoken to any women in Los Angeles that haven't been serving me drinks or food. Last week I took my landlady's dog Cash to a park and sat next to a beautiful woman watching her Labrador. We exchanged a smile and I was about to strike up a conversation when Cash did a big shit in the middle of the park and I was forced to shovel it into a trash can. By the time I returned to the bench, the woman was chatting to a muscly guy with a rottweiler and running her fingers through her hair. Their dogs were sniffing each other and nuzzling.

After some animal stunts show, during which I make sure that Sid sits in between us, Esmeralda goes to buy ice cream and Sid starts to sway around with his hands in his pockets like an embarrassed child. He nods at me as though he is agreeing with my thoughts.

“What?” I say.

“She's great,” he says, as though I have been complimenting her via telepathy. He looks over at her. Even from here I can see that she is trying to flirt with the startled teenager manning the snack booth. “She's just...a wonder.”

“Yeah,” I manage. “She's just...wow.”

“Yeah! This holiday has really brought us together. Things have slotted into place.”

“I think she's feeling that guy's abs.”

Sid glances around. “She's just friendly. She doesn't even realise she's doing it, y'know? Just a bit...over friendly. Sometimes.”

I nod but frown. “It didn't seem like she was doing that two weeks ago.”

Immediately, Sid's smile drops and he grabs my elbow. “No, she wasn't, and I don't know why or how to stop it. You've got to help me.”

I had been planning to ride out my final full day with Sid and Esmeralda as quickly and uneventfully as possible and this sudden unwelcome disturbance of this fantasy makes me physically recoil from his grasp. “Are you kidding? What do I know? I've never helped anybody.”

“Come on. You're a ladies man. You're the most world-wise, coolest bloke I know. Just tell me what to do.”

His desperation and his pathetic admission leaves me sad for the state of his life and even absurdly flattered so I am forced into making him feel temporarily and mendaciously hopeful. “Well, she's worth sticking with. You should be with her and I'm sure she knows that too.”

Instantly he becomes cocksure again, a gleeful glint in his eye. “I'm going to ask her to marry me.”

Instinctively, I glance over to the refreshment stand where she is still talking to the terrified clerk, licking her ice cream in an obscene manner. “No,” I almost shout. “I mean, her?”

He nods confidently. “I know she's the one. And we love it in LA. We're going to move here. We're going to buy a place and get green cards.”

A cloak of apocalyptic dread floats over me. “She touched my cock on The Mummy,” I say.

He is momentarily taken aback, then smiles as he would to a confused, potty-mouthed child. “She was scared,” he says. “She didn't know what she was doing.”

“She told me she wanted to fuck me,” I lie.

Sid gives me a disapproving look. “You're married,” he says, as though that, if it had happened, would have been my fault.

She rejoins us and gives us our ice creams. Mine looks as if it may have been the one she licked, and when they are exchanging smiles, I flick mine off the cone and swear.

“Ohhhhh,” Esmeralda says, and offers hers for me to lick.

I take a shuddering taste and force a smile.

“Let's go on The Mummy again,” Esmeralda says, and we head off again to the terrifying roller coaster.