Rick’s Tattoo.
I’m
not one for spending money on self-help books or listening to the advice of
‘Bullshit Gurus’. They’re full of the obvious, such as, be good and good things
happen to you or the ridiculous statement, think yourself thin! I’m pretty sure
you can’t think yourself thin whilst scoffing a cherry pie and that however
much positive thinking you do, it won’t cure your cancer. However, I did dabble
in the self-help field a few years ago…
I
had decided to go on a one-off luxury trip to Jamaica with a few friends, Kat,
Nicky and John. The day before we left, my boss at Household Bank, Jason, gave
me a book to read on the beach. Now, I wasn’t expecting the latest Jackie
Collins smut-fest, but I was surprised to see it was a so-called ‘self-help’
book. Jason was a Richard Branson wannabe, arrogant and self-centred - not the
kind of person who relied on self-help books for confidence. Or so I thought.
It had a grey-haired man on the front with the look of an American-President
about him. The words, ‘Thinking Big’
were stamped across it. I shoved it in my suitcase with no real intention of
reading it. I was planning to pickle myself with rum and relax with my friends
– not read self-help books!
Jamaica was luscious. Our hotel was on a
beach which reminded me of the beach on the ‘Bounty’ advertisement that I’d
dreamt of visiting since I was a child. It was also next to a nudist resort
called ‘Hedonism’. Their holiday-makers sometimes walked along our beach in the
buff which we wouldn’t have minded if they were young, athletic Americans, but
they were always grey-haired, pot-bellied old men wearing sunglasses, hats and
nothing else. And the grey hair wasn’t constrained to the head. We had a
birds-eye view of the pier where their daily activities took place. Naked yoga
was an experience and occasionally, they took the holiday cocktail term, ‘Sex
on the Beach’ literally.
We had planned to go on a hotel-run
boat trip to a place called, ‘Rick’s Café’. On the day before, I got terribly
sunburned so I grabbed my book, ‘Thinking
Big’ and headed for a shaded hammock on the beach. I started to read whilst
downing rum cocktails and was surprised to agree with everything Dr David
Schwartz was saying. ‘Believe that you will succeed and you will’ and ‘Cure
yourself of excusitis’ – it was like the old cliché of the light-bulb coming on
in my head – assisted by the Jamaican rum, of course. By the time we were ready
to go for our boat trip, I felt completely in awe of Dr Schwartz and in
hindsight, a bit brainwashed.
On board were my friends and I, two
Russians who didn’t speak English and two Americans. It was nothing fancy, an
old wooden boat with a green canopy on top to save our scalps from scalding. It
reminded me of that film, ‘The African Queen’. We shared some rum with the
forty-something Americans who were U.S Marines. We had silently formed a
clique, leaving the suspicious Russians to the other side of the boat.
Our boat was driven slowly into a cave
and I stood up to take a photo. Just then, one of the Jamaican boat drivers
threw a plastic cup up into the air and a massive swarm of bats flew down. I
dived to the floor screaming like a splatted star-fish. The American woman
tutted and said,
‘Jeez, it’s only a few bats,
Christ-sakes!’ The Jamaicans were laughing as they steered the boat back out of
the cave. Obviously, this was the highlight of their trip.
When we arrived at Rick’s Café, we were
told the boat would be back for us in two hours and to climb up the steps that
had been carved into the cliff. At the top, I understood what all the fuss was
about. It was breath-taking. A cool, vibrant bar area, a pool, huge soft
cushions to chill on and Jamaican music. The staff at Rick’s were jumping off
the 35ft cliff into the sea for our entertainment. They looked like they were
made from plasticine the way their bodies flipped and twirled mid-air. We had
Jerk Chicken for lunch looking out over the twinkling sea and lounged on the
cushions, drinking rum.
I was explaining how great ‘Thinking
Big’ was to my friends. They were opposed to self-help books and were mocking
me.
‘Listen, I, Leesa Harker can DO
ANYTHING!’ I said flinging my arms in the air to dramatize the revelation. ‘There
is no difference in ME and any other human, the only thing that stops me doing
amazing things is ‘excusitis!’ Kat was choking on her rum laughing and Nicky
and John exchanged glances, but I carried on, ‘Hesitation spells failure – take
risks!’ Through a rum and coke haze, I decided to demonstrate my theory. I
stood up, like a magician about to make a rabbit appear from a hat, and
explained that I was going to jump off the cliff like the bendy Jamaican boys.
A roar of laughter went up. Any fool could see that I was aerodynamically
challenged. I had never even jumped off the diving board at the pool at home –
and that was a two-foot drop.
I marched over to the cliff edge. A huge
black man with a bald shiny head looked at me, his face saying, really? I
kicked off my flip-flops and nodded, confidently. Dr Schwartz’s words rang out
in my head, ‘You can do anything! Don’t hesitate, just DO it!’ The Jamaican
said slowly in his thick voice,
‘Stay straight, hold your…’ That’s all I
heard. I had already leapt from the cliff edge like a giddy gazelle. About a
millisecond after I jumped, my mind went blank and only one word rang out.
Shhhhiiiitttttttt! The sparkling Jamaican Ocean came closer and closer in slow
motion. I took in the beautiful horizon where sea meets sky just before the terror
set in. And then I crashed through what felt like a huge pane of glass. Then…
blue… dark blue… navy…then black!
I was deep underwater – and panicking.
My stupidity hit me like a Red Snapper to the face. I felt excruciating pain
all round my bottom. I yelped out air which bubbled upwards, showing me the way
and even though I couldn’t feel my legs, I somehow floated to the top. When I
surfaced, there were about a hundred faces peering over the cliff edge. I was
mortified. I heard Americans shouting,
‘Oh My God, are you okay?’ My friends
later told me they thought I had surely died after entering the water like a
Ninja doing an air-karate kick. To my absolute gratitude, John was beside the
black man, taking instructions to hold his arms across his chest, feet together
and body stiff. He jumped off, went into the sea like a dart and back up again
to help me. I was in agony and still couldn’t feel my legs. I had to be carried
onto the boat, which had just arrived.
The Jamaicans were almost rolling about
laughing. The American’s high-fived me and the Russians cracked a smile, or two
in my direction. The American woman who had rolled her eyes at me for the
screaming incident in the bat cave said she had much respect for me and that
she hadn’t the balls to jump. The Jamaicans passed me a bottle of rum to ‘help
with the pain’ saying they had seen it all before and that I was going to have
a ‘Rick’s Tattoo’ – a huge bruise on my arse. The pain was so bad that I had to
sit on a life-vest on the way home. As if the day hadn’t been dramatic enough,
the boat broke down in the middle of the sea. I tried to recall how Katherine
Hepburn tried to save the African Queen, but couldn’t. Luckily, there was more
rum stored on the boat and we all got very drunk, even the drivers. I told
everyone about Dr Schwartz and the Americans suggested I sued, which I promised
I would. We began a sing-song and the only song that the Americans, Russians
and Jamaicans knew was, Rick Astley’s ‘Never
Gonna Give You Up.’ That’s what was ringing out as the rescue boat arrived.
The next day, my Rick’s tattoo appeared.
Both my bum cheeks were black and blue. Word had spread in the hotel and the
workers greeted me with,
‘Hey, J-Lo, how’s your butt?’ for the
duration of the holiday. I had in fact, broken my coccyx bone, which I found
out after weeks of not being able to sit down properly.
So yes, self-help books are a strange
phenomenon. Yes, you can do
anything, it’s true, but you may die or make a complete fool out of yourself as
a consequence. It doesn’t say that on the cover!
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