Tales from Mexico: That Girl with the Vaginal Piercing

One night after dinner and a show, the four of us went down to the beach and stared out into the dark ocean. It was lovely. It was peaceful. There were a few other people on the beach--a few older couples, a few parents with their little kids--but everyone was being quiet, serene.

After a couple minutes, the Boy From Work decided he was going swimming. He asked if anyone wanted to go in with him. At that moment, no one did, so he dove into the still-warm waves by himself. We watched him tumble head first into the salty foam for a few minutes before a tipsy group of college kids came and crashed down in the chairs right next to us. There were a million other places to sit on the beach--practically every single chair was free--but this threesome decided to sit on top of us. In fact, one of the girls sat in the chair the BFW had been sitting in before he stripped out of his T-shirt and ran to the water.

"Hi, ya'll!" one of the girls--the pretty one--chirped.

"Hi," we all said.

There were two girls, one guy. The pretty girl was tall, dark, thin, pretty. And quite obviously southern. The other girl was blond, chunky, giggly, and squrimy. She was the girlfriend of the guy, a frat boy with a capital F who was wearing a graphic tee and backward hat. He had a puffed-up chest. He walked like he had something lodged in his ass.

"Where ya'll from?" the pretty one asked.

Katy took over answering, which was fine by me. I didn't really want to sit around and make pleasantries with college kids who had already funneled more booze into their systems than I would all week. The girl kept asking questions, and Katy kept answering. And then there was silence for a beat or two before the pretty girl snapped upright and said, "I want to go swimming."

The girls were wearing dresses. The other one drew the pretty one's attention to that fact.

"Oh, I don't care!" the pretty one said. "I'll go in naked!"

A couple yards away from us, a little boy was making sandcastles while his parents rested against their own reclined chairs. Beyond them was another couple that was walking its baby through the sand for what looked like the first time. I stared at them and back at the girl. Did she see them? Did she see the other people on the beach?

"There are some kids over there," the chubby one said.

The pretty one slumped back in her chair and was quiet for a handful of seconds before snapping up again and saying, "I don't care! It's my birthday, and I'm gonna get naked!"

She turned to us again. "Ya'll wanna get naked with me?" she asked.

Katy giggled. Matt laughed. I said, "I think I'm gonna have to pass."

"Okay," she said, and shrugged. Then she was out of her chair and unwinding the ties of her dress, shrugging out of it, pooling it at her feet. And there she was, a naked girl standing a few feet from me.

I hadn't planned on being that close to a naked girl on my vacation. I'd been surprised by some topless sunbathers on our beach earlier that day ("Where does it say this is a nude beach?" I asked, to which Matt sagely replied, "Jess, there is a different culture down here. Nude sunbathing is standard." And then he--and every other man on the beach--ogled their bronzing nipples.), but that was as close to nude strangers as I wanted to get over the course of our stay. But then the southern girl and her very fake breasts were bouncing up and down next to me.

"Come on, come on, come on!" she shrieked and then took off running. She ran right into the water, right out to where my boyfriend was playing chicken with the waves. And then the chubby blond was naked and chasing after her. The guy gave a little shrug and jogged after them, still clad in shorts.

Katy watched the girls with big, surprised eyes. There was something kind of beautiful about that moment--all that shrieking, giggling, splashing. The other people on the beach were grinning and needling each other with elbows.

"I think I want to go in," Katy said, and then she was up and out of her chair and pulling off her clothes.

"Oh my God," I said.

"I'll go too," Matt said, "but I am keeping my clothes on. All the guys have their clothes on."

"My boyfriend is going to see your boobs," I informed Katy, who was already nude. But she didn't care. She was going in, and she was going in naked. She dashed toward the shoreline with her hands trying to cover the important points. She and Matt joined the others who were rising and falling with the swell of the waves. They shrieked and giggled and splashed. They screamed and jumped and dove. They were bright white forms cutting through all that dark, all that night.

And I sat in my chair, tapping my toes, laughing at them, and knowing that the easiest part was over. The getting in--the quick dash to the water, where people could only see their naked butts--had gone surprisingly fine. But now, now they were going to have to drag themselves out of the surf and face the beach and everyone on it--including those couples with the kids, including the couples old enough to be our grandparents--and sprint toward the chairs, where they would have to wiggle awkwardly into their clothes. Trying to get dry clothes over so much wet is not easy, so there would be several tenuous seconds where they would struggle, struggle, struggle to get their slick bodies inside clothes that got stuck, got damp, got tangled in the haste. And I knew it was going to be funny. And, oh, was it ever.

Katy realized all those troublesome things when she started swimming back toward shore. That's precisely why she demanded Matt take off his shorts and give them to her, so no one saw her lady bits. He had underwear on, at least, and could walk out with a little less terror than she would if completely naked. And they scuttled through the wet sand that way--Katy with her husband's pants bunched around her waist, her other hand desperately trying to cover a chest that was too big to be covered with one hand; Matt dripping and laughing and wearing only a pair of underwear.

And it was funny. It was the funniest thing ever. Until later, after the frat boy and his two girls--dripping, squirming, wondering how they were going to dry off and not drip all the way up to their room--said goodbye for the night. When they left, Matt turned to me and opened his eyes wide. "She," he said conspiratorially, "had a piercing... on her vagina."

Which is a sentence I was pretty sure I would not hear on my Mexican vacation.