ROBERT DAVIDSON

The two weeks we spent in Puerto Vallarta were really memorable. The courses were of high quality and the condition of the fairways were better than some of the greens at home. Our hotel didn’t skimp on catering. It had on-the-premises restaurants; a Japanese facility, one with Italian cuisine, an a la carte French dining room, two beach side bars and a hot dog stand, with hamburgers and ribs as well. Of course, there was also the hotel’s main universal dining room. This restaurant provided three meals of superior standing each day. I love breakfast, and a place with three short order cooks standing by to make a wide range of omelettes, among many other choices, gets my vote every time.

To be fair, we could have stayed in the hotel to drink and be entertained in the evenings after golf but it’ll be no surprise to know that we didn’t.

One night it was decided to sample the local nightlife in downtown P.V.

We made a booking for our party at a night club, and showed up en masse at the appointed hour. As we entered, the establishment’s hostess’s came out of the wings and took each one of us by the arm to conduct us to our table. I should say at this point that having been in similar hostelries in Singapore, Malaya, Hong Kong, Germany, and Belgium to name but a few locations, I was more than a little blasé and this was certainly no novelty for me. Ventures in my youth into these arenas had been disastrous to say the least and were in no way inexpensive. The German girls, for example, used to say, after their third bottle of Sekt, “ Ich liebe alle euch Britische soldaten; so reich, so gross, so stark und so verdammte blöd.”

I knew instinctively that Mexico was going to be no different. I did not intend to enter into the spirit of things in any way. As soon as we were seated the girls slid onto our laps. This was the signal for me to put Plan B into action and try out my Spanish.

“Lo siento, soy homosexual.”

“Que?”

“No me gustan las chicas.”

The girl immediately left my lap and went to sit on Ralph’s, which was vacant. Ralph had not heard what I had said but was pleased that she evidently preferred his much younger thighs to mine.

He joked with her,

“He too old. He my Papa.”

She replied,

“No, ella es tu mama.”

Again, Ralph tried to correct her,

“You no understand. He my Papa”

To which she replied, in excellent American,

“I understand perfectly, darling, your amigo is a fag.”

I admit to being somewhat concerned that Ralph, instead of being shocked, actually looked as though something that had been bothering him for some time had just been cleared up.

A little later I decided to hightail it out of there, fast, spurred on by the sight of the girl with the manager, at the bar, gesticulating in my direction and pushing a curly haired young waiter, face heavily made up, toward my table.