Would you call it kismet? Synchronicity? Weird as all get out? I call it all three.
Since Starr Ann is sleeping late this morning, I thought I'd talk about how I ended up stranded on a deserted island with the three things I would have chosen to bring if I were going to get stranded on a deserted island and with a person way up there on my list of women to get stranded with.
It started early this summer when my friend Lori, from Hahn at Home, won a free Olivia cruise. Well, Lori needed to be at home, as her blog’s name implies, so she gave her cruise to me. God, I love cyber friends.
Everything happened in such a whirlwind, that right up to boarding time I still didn’t know where the ship was headed or who the celebrity entertainment was. Still don’t know our intended destination, but I lucked out regarding the celebrity. It was the delectable Tina Fey. Yeah, I know she’s married. But still.
The last tiny speck of land had disappeared on the rear horizon at least a day before the incident occurred. Seems a novice crewmember way over on the starboard side forgot a bit of crucial lesbian-specific training and yelled real loud, “Anybody got a pocket knife?”
Naturally, every butch on the whole ship went running over to that side, groping for their thousand-function pocket pals as they went. They were followed closely by all the femmes aboard, who thought it would be kicky to watch the handy butches assist the hapless sailor.
I identify as a cowgirl, neither butch nor femme, but a joyous blend of the best qualities of each, so I didn’t join the stampede to the right side of the boat. That’s how I happened to be all alone when I slipped on a hastily discarded mango peel and tumbled overboard.
When I hit the water, one hand was still clutching the plastic bag that held my brand new lesbian short story anthology. With the other, I held on for dear life to the deck chair I’d instinctively grabbed for while falling. Lucky for me, the deck chair floated.
Not long after the Olivia cruise ship vanished, my deck chair slammed to a halt and I found myself on that godforsaken island. With no fresh water available, and no food, I started to fantasize about what I would have brought with me, had there been time to prepare. I’d have chosen a GPS for determining my coordinates, an iPhone for relaying said position to the authorities, and something good to read until they arrived.
Well, cowgirls make do with what’s at hand. So I unfolded my deck chair in the shade of a scraggly tree and opened my new anthology, The Mammoth Book of Lesbian Erotica.
It soon became clear that this is not the book you want to be reading in the middle of trying to conserve fluids. So I decided to get vertical and take one more walk around to the opposite side of the island. I saw her just as I rounded a huge mound of sand. Tina Fey.
Since she’s straight, she hadn’t run to that other side of the ship either! And mango peels must have been practically carpeting that deck, because she had slipped on one too! Anyway, we’ll never know all the details of how it happened, but there we were, stranded together on a deserted island. Me and Tina Fey.
Only thing is, as Tina Fey explained, she prepares thoroughly for all contingencies. So when I came upon her there on the beach, she was just finishing up with taking her GPS readings and was about to use her iPhone to contact our rescuers. Tina Fey took one look at me and decided the call could wait a few minutes while she gave me a long drink of water from her cordless miniature desalinator.
When Tina Fey ended her call to Olivia’s main office, she broke the news to me. It would take them 36 hours, at least, to reach us. She then pulled a couple of sandwiches from her little rucksack and sighed. She said, “I can’t believe I didn't bring something good to read.”
I just smiled and produced The Mammoth Book of Lesbian Erotica.
It ended up taking those Olivia people 48 hours to reach us. No worries, though. That gave Tina Fey and me plenty of time to talk and read and talk about what we read. Yeah, I know she’s straight. But still.
