Guadeloupe: An Uneasy Relationship With Paradise (cont.)

According to French law, all beaches are public, but my new Gwada friends said Club Sea courts tourists from the motherland and does its best to make locals feel unwelcome. I shrugged, wanting little to do with what I dismissed as a passe symbol of hollow decadence.

If only I hadn’t fallen for what looked like an enormous monowinged dragonfly skating across the horizon. I will never be happy if I don’t learn to windsurf, I decided, and the part of my brain that handles rational decisions (is it right or left? Can anyone ever remember?) quickly realized that before my new career could take flight I would need a big board, a tiny learners’ sail, a safe little bay, and an instructor trained in assisting the clumsy.

I decided to splurge on an overpriced day pass. Happily car-less I avoided the fortress-like Club Sea main entrance and walked, taking the beach route. I had to pass through a heavy metal revolving gate cemented to the shore, past a guard box, and along the glistening white beach. Suddenly most of the people were white too, except for the maids, food staff and guards, but I didn’t really notice, laughing as the waves splashed against my sun-burnished calves and returning happy “salust!” to everyone I passed. In a week I’d be skating across the seaglass-like surface of the water, carried by a dragonfly’s wing.

But when I ascended the sand dune towards the reception pavilion, I was startled by a guard with an attack dog in a studded collar and a muzzle worthy of a canine Hannibal Lector. The two blocked my path and the guard spoke in harsh Creole. I told him in my pathetic French that I was going to buy a day pass. He wouldn’t budge. A skinny, chain-smoking redhead (wearing the barely-there cotton bracelet that identifies one as an overnight guest) paused, cigarette in hand, to intervene. Even after five minutes of back and forth the guard remained unconvinced that I had any right to be on Club Sea property. She made one of those puckered-lipped French faces and shrugged, apologizing before walking away, dribbling ashes on sand so white you could see them.

Seething (but frightened), I stalked past the duo, determined not to miss the first windsurf lesson of the day. They followed. At the reception desk the guard and his terrifying best friend planted themselves behind me. Other guests kept their distance, and it wasn’t until I had received my large, plastic, couldn’t-be-more-obnoxious day bracelet that the guard took his leave. But not before asking the receptionist if everything was okay.

My blood was spider spit. “I don’t think it’s very nice to treat your guests like this,” I stammered in barely intelligible French. “Not to mention the Guadeloupe community,” I added, boiling in self-righteous fury.

“If you come tomorrow,” replied the receptionist, “you should drive in through the main gate, because the guards are trained to watch for intruders sneaking along the beach.”

“If I come tomorrow,” I hissed, furious and irrational, “the guards better remember me!”

I stalked off to my lesson, past French tourists lounging casually on chairs or at the bar, past the bracelet-less Gwadas sitting on blankets very close to the water, no more than fifty feet away from the surf, as dictated by posted signs that read INTERDITE!, which means forbidden. What balls I had displayed to ignore them, to ignore everyone, to just walk into Club Sea like I was free and lovely and loveable, a prospective guest, a vacationer, when I was clearly an intruder.

In spite of a more than limited budget, I went to the Club several times that month, mostly out of spite. Each time I felt bruised and mistreated, and, oddly enough, further vindicated. My plastic bracelet was examined; I was stopped and questioned. I began to treat everyone, even, towards the end, my dreadlocked windsurfing instructor, with rage.

I spent my 34th birthday at Club Sea with my partner of fifteen years who flew in from the States and treated me to a few nights at the resort. Now I had the unobtrusive, bracelet like most of the other guests. Nevertheless, after an exhausting day on the windsurfers, we were lounging with other guests and staff members at the beach side bar, watching the sky darken and drinking a (highly recommended) rum and passion fruit concoction. I got up to use the bathroom, and a guard tried block my way. I waved my braceletted hand in his face, hissing and spitting like the half-lizard, half-woman I’d become.

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