Better Than Fiction 2 by Lonely Planet

Author:Lonely Planet [George, Don]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781743609873
Publisher: Lonely Planet
Published: 2015-09-25T04:00:00+00:00

STEVEN HALL is a writer working in books, TV, audio drama, and digital/interactive storytelling. His first and only novel, The Raw Shark Texts, has been translated into 30 languages and has successfully avoided becoming a film on several occasions. In 2013, he was named as one of Granta magazine’s Best Young British Novelists.

Sleepless in Samoa

MANDY SAYER

It was supposed to have been a romantic week in the tropics, all expenses paid. My boyfriend, Louis, was researching Western Samoa for a screenplay he was about to write, commissioned by an Australian film producer. We hadn’t been together long, about nine months, and were still swimming in the early waves of lust. I packed vintage pornography and a satin bag filled with recently purchased sex toys.

On the plane I was introduced to some of the more unusual aspects of Samoan culture: a native returning home was so morbidly obese, due to an unhealthy Western diet, that he could not fit into the toilet cubicle. Two resigned attendants came to his rescue, holding up blankets around him in the aisle while he dropped his trousers and aimed his piss through the open door and into the bowl. Beside us sat a perfectly coiffed female impersonator, replete with false eyelashes, heavy make-up, and bee-stung lips. Louis later explained to me that the person was a fa’afafine, a boy who’d been raised from birth as a girl, not unusual in Polynesia, especially if a family has no daughters. Most of them made a living in Samoa by performing in cabarets.

We landed on the island of Upolo late at night. Through the open windows of the bus from the airport, I glimpsed traditional thatched huts, bamboo pavilions, and market gardens. The air was cool and fragrant with the scent of frangipani. No wonder Robert Louis Stevenson had chosen to live and write here, I thought. The place was an exquisite paradise.

At the registration counter of the famous Aggie Grey’s Hotel, we were the last to check in, and were assigned the final available fale, or traditional hut, in the complex. It was so far away from the main building, however, that we were unable to find it on a map, a piece of paper so riddled with circles and squiggly paths that it looked like an Aboriginal dot painting. After returning to Reception, perplexed and confused, we were assigned a teenage porter who led us on a ten-minute walk along labyrinthine tracks until we reached the chain-link fence that bordered the property. Here, at the end of the very last row of huts, was our very own fale, built in the shape of a hexagon and thatched with palm leaves. I didn’t mind being so far from the hotel’s restaurants and swimming pools; the distance would be a bonus, I reasoned, and would provide us with even more privacy and peace.

At dawn the next morning, I was awakened by a loud, industrial throb that sounded like a semi-trailer idling beside the hut. As I crawled out of bed, I could sense the fale and the floorboards beneath my bare feet vibrating.

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