The honeymoon: sun, sleep, sunsets, staph, snorkeling, sushi, sexy-sexy. There you go.

But two things that might actually interest you:

We spent part of the honeymoon on a rather remote part of an island. There was only one tiny market that we’d drive to for food and beer. We walked in one time alongside a woman I recognized immediately. She was dressed like a local (and by that I mean t-shirt, shorts, flip-flops, and a serene smile), and that was what threw me at first. But I knew it was her.

Since we were in a rather tiny market and standing about two feet from her, I didn’t want to lose my shit right there at the store. I turn into Cameron in the back of Ferris’ cab.

[scripty]
stee
The beer is over there. Why are you… what are you doing?

pamie
Oook over err.

stee
You have to move. You’re blocking that lady’s way.

pamie
Ook oo da ladee iz.

stee
You’re going to have to move your mouth or talk louder. One or the other.

pamie
Hat iz Hat Ennatar.

stee
What?

pamie
HAT ENNATAR.

stee
Are you drunk?
[/scripty]

I pushed him out the door and into the parking lot.

[scripty]
pamie
We are shopping with Pat Benatar!

stee
Oh. You ARE drunk.

pamie
I swear it is her. I know it’s her. Hell! Hell is for Children!

stee
Don’t embarrass us in paradise.

pamie
This is the coolest thing ever. Why don’t our cell phones work? I should call EVERYBODY.

stee
Let Pat Benatar buy her papaya.

pamie
Do you think it’s really her?

stee
Here we go.
[/scripty]

So then I’m doing that staring where I’m trying to not stare but clearly I’m just staring right at her and she stares back and she gives me this look: “God damn, girls in their thirties go ape shit when they see me.”

It took an Internet search yesterday to prove to stee that I was right. Because Pat Benatar’s second daughter is named after exactly where we were. Which is where she lives. Because who lives in paradise? Pat Benatar.

Second story:

Other side of the island. More inhabited, a resort. It’s our last day of the honeymoon and we are sad to be leaving paradise. We’re walking back to the hotel to flop by the pool with a pina colada, having spent several hours on a private-ish beach. We’d been having fun eavesdropping on what all the other tourists are reading. Three in five sunbathers prefer The DaVinci Code. Stee loved the one incredibly sunburned, pot-bellied man reading Michael J. Fox’s autobiography. (Stee: “It’s good, but the prose is a little shaky.”)

Nick Hornby wrote in The Polysyllabic Spree that if you’re a certain kind of writer of a certain kind of book that you can never pass a crowd of vacationers without scanning their reading material to see if anyone’s holding your novel. So when stee went, “Oh, my God!” I figured he’d finally spotted a girl having the time of her life with my paperback.

But then I heard, “What the fuck, BITCHES?”

And then I looked up and saw Mr. and Mrs. Muppet Blowjob. Faye and Jason married one week after we did, and we had all been staying in the same hotel for the past three days.

I am sad to see my tan is fading because it is a reminder that I’m back to work. Neither of us had ever really taken a vacation before, and I have to tell you, it was pretty easy to fall into a pattern that involved reading, sleeping, tanning and swimming for eight to ten hours. Our biggest decision of the day was whether we’d soak in the hot tub before we went to the pool or after.

Now it’s cold and rainy and there’s a stack of bills to the left of me and a script that needs finishing and a recap to do and my life has come crashing back in full effect. Aloha!