Maggie had never been more excited. She was going on a safari! As she and her best friend Juliana drove to the airport, Maggie made a mental checklist of all the things she wanted to see in Africa: Victoria Falls, giraffes, lions, rhinos. Those termite mounds that were taller than a person. Parrots! Chimps! A three toed sloth - the slowest mammal in the world! The list of interesting nature Africa boasts was practically endless, Maggie thought. The people who lived there probably had no idea how beautiful their land was.
“Mags?” Juliana’s voice punctured the daydream. “You remembered your passport, right?”
“Give me a little credit, Jules,” Maggie responded. Just to be safe, she reached into her jacket pocket (inside breast) and felt it. Then, to be extra, extra safe, she pulled it out of the pocket and took a look. Yep, there she was.
And even though the photo was poorly lit and taken in a pharmacy, she looked pretty good, Maggie thought to herself. The picture was taken last year. She had just gotten back from a cruise - hence the honey tan and extra blonde hair - and had just taken out the braids she had paid some island girl to give her, so her hair had extra body. Pulling down the passenger-side mirror, she checked herself out. Yep, still hot. Actually, even hotter than the pick, now that her osteotomy nose job from early summer had finally healed and left her with the thin, straight nose she wanted.
“Oh my God, Mags! You check yourself out every five minutes! You’re so arrogant!” Juliana teased.
“Yeah, like you don’t do the same thing when I’m driving!”
“I guess that’s why we get along! We both understand the importance of looking hot, even when you’re about to hop on an eighteen hour flight to go on a safari in Africa!”
They laughed. It was ridiculous when you said it aloud. Their last few weeks had been spent preening in front of the mirror, practicing their poses for selfies they would take in front of armadillos and wildebeast, and trying on different, cute safari outfits. They each brought five different safari outfits, in colors ranging from tinkerbell blue to hot pink. With matching safari hats and boots, of course.
Moments later, Juliana announced that they had arrived at Miami International Airport. Next stop: Tanzania! (or to be more precise, next stop, security, then the airport lounge, then the plane, THEN Tanzania)
*****
The flight was uneventful. First class is the only way to fly internationally - Maggie’s dad had taught her that at a young age. In fact, it was the only way she had ever flown, but she had heard horror stories about coach. In first class, you could just recline and let the Ambien and white wine do their jobs.
In a moment of lucidity, Maggie noticed Juliana chatting up a well dressed black man whose accent indicated that he was from Africa. What a fucking tourist!
Maggie drifted off to sleep again in her comfortable, fully-reclined seat.
*****
Maggie next opened her eyes in Kilimanjaro International Airport. The plane had landed, and all around her, passengers hustled to disembark. Juliana was still flirting with that man.
The flirtation continued through baggage claim. The man - whose name was Abassi, it turns out - even helped with the dozen or so suitcases they had brought. As Juliana and Maggie got in a taxi to their hotel, he slipped a piece of paper with his phone number into Juliana’s hand.
“What are you doing?” Maggie asked her friend.
“What? He’s fucking hot! You has a beautiful smile, and you can tell he’s like chiseled from granite.”
“Agree to disagree,” Maggie thought to herself. She wasn’t a racist by any means, and had even dated a Latin man once. She simply wasn’t attracted to black men. Maybe it was their skin tone, maybe it was their stereotypical features, like fuller lips and wider noses. Whatever it was, the end result was that Maggie was content for Juliana to experience this aspect of the local scene by herself. Still, she had to get in one last dig. “You always do this. You always have some kind of romance with the natives.” Maggie recalled the torrid (and brief) love affair between Julia and the Jamaica kid last year.
“Well, I like to experience everything the countries we visit have to offer!” The girls laughed. Yep, Juliana was going to fuck that dude.
*****
At their amazing resort hotel, the girls threw some shillings at the concierge to arrange for their bags to be brought up to their room and headed to the spa. After a long flight, they needed some pampering. Otherwise, what would the selfies look like? An hour long massage and cucumber mask later, they felt refreshed and went to their room.
Or suite, rather. With two walk-in closets and a hot tub big enough for a half dozen people. Maggie wasted no time unpacking her belongings and arranging her outfit for tomorrow’s safari. Watermelon would be the color, she decided.
While Maggie was in the closet, Juliana was on the phone. “Don’t be mad,” she told her friend when Maggie emerged, “but Abassi is coming over now.”
“Oh great. Well what am I supposed to do?”
“I dunno - can’t you check out the gift shop or the beach or something?”
Maggie grumbled, then changed and complied.
*****
Maggie walked through the gift shop. A snow globe of Mount Kilimanjaro. T-shirts with local soccer teams on them. Toy gazelles. Nothing compelling. She meandered to the postcard spinner rack and lazily looked at them. Postcards with pictures of Mount Kilimanjaro, local soccer teams, and gazelles. Nothing compelling.
Then, a bizarre image caught Maggie’s eye. Toward the bottom of the rack was a dusty card with a picture of some tribespeople. The men wore loincloths, their torsos painted. Some sported plates in their lower lips, extending their lips by inches in one of the most horrific examples of body modification Maggie had ever seen. The women were equally bad. They, too, wore only loincloths, their breasts hanging, exposed. Their hair hung in long dreadlocks or hung around their heads as unkempt afros. Their bare feet were adorned with numerous rings, and their toenails were uniformly as long as most women’s fingernails. Many sported some kind of nipple piercing. Most also had what appeared to be a kind of ritualistic scarring all over their bodies. Maggie put the card down and left the store, repulsed.
The beach was much better. Maggie was practically the only person there, except for the hotel staff that returned periodically to ply her with drinks. It was awesome sunbathing weather, too, with a high sun and no clouds in sight.
After about an hour on the beach, Maggie, who had been lying on her stomach, decided her ass had gotten enough sun and flipped over. Feeling naughty, and with no one else around, she undid the straps holding her bikini top on, exposing her breasts to the warm, moist air. “Juliana will flip,” she thought, “when she notices that I don’t have any tan lines…” Maggie smiled and thought back to that summer in Nice where she last got that “all-over” glow.
Shortly after doing so, Maggie’s attention was drawn to some commotion closer to the water. Staff had gathered and surrounded a small group. Voices were raised, puncturing the serene beach setting. Curious, Maggie got up for a closer look.
She stopped at about five meters distance, seeing that the staff had intercepted three interlopers. Most likely, they had wandered onto the resort beach without invitation, as they clearly weren’t guests. In fact, they appeared to be tribeswomen, like those in the postcard. The group consisted of three women, each wearing loincloths and each topless. Two had long, black dreadlocks; the third’s hair was a frizzy/kinky rats nest. Their breasts were shocking - enormous and hanging down the bulk of the length of their abdomens. Maggie looked down at her own breasts, also still bare. They were indeed much smaller than the trespassers’, but Maggie was very glad her B cups were so perky. She also was grateful at that moment for her moderately-sized, light colored areolas and normal-sized nipples, which contrasted starkly with these women’s dark areolas as big as saucers and ending in giant nipples, several pierced with thick metal bands. Maggie could only imagine how painful those piercings were.
Her jaw dropped further when one of the women turned her face, and the sun caught the metal in her face. A blunt rod traversed her nose sideways, halfway between her bridge and the tip, passing through both sides of the nose and the septum. Likewise, metal protruded from either side of her bridge. Several septum rings dangled from her nose. Each was connected by a chain to her ear. As if sensing Maggie’s derisive gaze, she turned and locked eyes with Maggie, cracking a smile and playfully knocking one of the chains with a finger. The fingernail was at least 2 inches long, and the hand bore some kind of scarred design.
Altogether, Maggie had never seen anything so grotesque as these women. She was very grateful to the staff for removing these people from her beach - the mere sight of them discomfited enough to ruin Maggie’s sunbathing experience.
Maggie headed back to her room, found that she was still sex-iled, and returned downstairs to the hotel bar. After she was drunk enough not to care whether her friend was having sex next to her, she went back upstairs and passed out.
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