Lisa and the Rat - Part 1, Lisa

"Why is the air-conditioning in here not working? This place is so damn hot!"
This was Lisa. We had not met yet.
I stood in the doorway, tired and damp with sweat from wrestling my motorbike for several hours on the road back from Chandor. It was now dark, and i'd made it just in time, as i'd discovered on my journey back that my headlights didn't actually work.
As i'd pulled in to the hotel, I saw the boy whose bike i had borrowed for the day, and who had been waiting for god-knows-how-long, possibly all day, heave a sigh of relief that not only was I still alive, but more importantly the bike remained intact and entirely unscathed.
I had decided to go to reception and go through my usual ceremony of asking them if my room was free and whether i could stay another night. I had been doing this all week. Palolem was proving difficult to leave.
So, there i was, stood in the doorway of the reception, hot, damp and tired.

"Look at this poor man," she continued. "He's sweating in here it's so fucking hot!"
I actually hadn't even stepped into the room properly, so the likelihood of the lack of aircon actually affecting me at this stage, was slim.
"No, I'm alright," I reassured the busy receptionist. "I just got off my motorbike, so i'm hot and knackered anyway."
The woman looked at me and there was a pause.
I had inadvertently made myself sound pretty exciting.
A motorbike? Hot? Knackered? This guy seems pretty cool, I could hear her think.
I'd like to have sex with him.
"I'm also just generally quite sweaty."
She laughed and I winced slightly. Somewhere a waiter dropped a trayful of glasses.
I floundered desperately, trying to fill the awkward silence that the rather unsexy subject of my sweatiness had precipitated.
"Do you work here?" I inquired. Not an unreasonable question, I thought, seeing as she was sitting in the office with her feet on the desk, swearing at the receptionist.
"No... Not really. Well, yes, sort of..."
Now she was floundering, and I was confused. Her eyes wandered the room, searching for the correct phrase.
"I guess I kinda live here," she concluded vaguely.

She was of indeterminate age. I guessed that she could have been anywhere from 25 to 45, but it was genuinely very difficult to tell. She was very attractive, tanned, athletic-looking and had an accent that i couldn't place either. Everything about her seemed like a mixture of something else and the air of mystery clung to her.
I asked her where she was from. She said that she was Swiss-German with a Colombian mother, but primarily - and i assumed, expensively - educated in England and India.
She asked me where i was from.
I said London.
She asked where.
I said West.
She asked where.
I said Ladbroke Grove.
She asked where.
I said that up until recently, Saint Quintin Avenue, but i was currently between homes.
She said that she owned an apartment on Ladbroke Grove, had lived there for years, and worked as a yoga instructor in the Gym at the end of my road.
My gym.
I did yoga there.
Somehow we had never met, as she taught the daytime classes and i had only ever gone in the evenings and weekends. Very odd indeed.
She maintained that she recognised me from somewhere and definitely recognised my name -
"You're the Adam Rowland?" - but i was pretty sure I'd never laid eyes on her. She began to list names of people that sounded fantastically exciting that she was sure i was connected with but with whom i was not. She listed places we both knew that we might have met and mutual friends we did not share that might have introduced us, but i steadfastly maintained that we had never spoken to one another. She said she was sure that she had heard of me, like i was some kind of celebrity, which i thought a little odd. I didn't consider myself a famous denizen of West London. At best we might have passed each other in the gym, but i liked that she thought we knew each other and didn't discourage her from continuing her train of thought - she was after all, attractive and a yoga instructor.

"Well, I'm done here," she said slamming her laptop closed. "Do you fancy coming back to mine for a spliff?"
My, this girl was forward. I most certainly did.
We walked through the jungle-like gardens of the hotel back to her bungalow. If my treehouse was at one end of the Palolem accommodation spectrum, then her place was definitely at the other. She mentioned that hers was the most expensive bungalow in the complex but that she had struck a deal with the owners to let her have it cheaply. I asked her what the deal was and she told me that every year she took classes of London-based yoga-students and taught them how to be instructors. She came here for 3-months a year and brought with her at least 8 students each time - consequently guaranteeing the filling of 8 cabins for 3 months every year.
We sat down on hammocky-type contraptions on her deck and i flicked through a copy of Tatler I found as she rolled a joint with some very sticky looking hash.
Tatler, I thought.
West-Londoner, I thought.
Most expensive bungalow in the complex, I thought.
I could assume a series of wholly inaccurate, sweeping generalisations about this girl, I thought.

As she lit the joint, she reached down and passed me a book.
It was her book - a book by her - to be published in early 2009 to coincide with her world tour. It was an all encompassing overview of what she described as Quantuum Yoga. It seemed to me to be a combination of ancient Eastern mystique and sub-atomic physics - the idea being that everything, being part of the same universe, affects everything else; things only exist if you observe them and by observing them you affect their state and therefore their destiny; and that we are all one and built from the same molecules as everything else, so we should embrace that and realise that to aspire to material wealth or worldly possessions is to neglect our true path of spiritual enlightenment as a whole.
The book looked great and was full yogic history and glossy photos of Lisa in not very much, holding impossibly bizarre and sexy positions. I wondered whether it might be easier to take on the whole denying material wealth and worldy possessions thing, if you had parents who were diplomats and were therefore evidently quite wealthy, had been educated well, owned a large flat near Notting Hill, and travelled the world extensively every year in what appeared to be a very chilled out existence.
However, i did not pose this quandry to her, as she was, after all, attractive and a yoga instructor.

She told me she had just split up with her boyfriend via email. That is what she had been doing when we met in the reception. She passed me the joint.
The relationship had been on a downhill for a while and the sex had been bad for a long time, she said. With his visit to Goa imminent and looming, she had decided to call it off rather than confront him upon arrival and jeopardise both the remainder of her classes and book-launch and his holiday. He was a DJ/music producer based in London and Ibiza and they had been together for less than 6 months. When they had first met, she had told him that she was damaged from a previously relationship and that was not looking for anything long-term. He had said that he generally lost interest in sex after the first few months of a relationship, but that this in no way reflected his level of commitment. It sounded like a disaster from the word go.
I told her that i was fantastic at giving advice about other people's relationships and she continued at length. We both agreed in principal, that in this particular situation, honesty had been the best policy. She had needed to tell him that it was over before he got here - perhaps though, email had not been the best way of doing this, but it was done now.
I suddenly realised that the conversation had gotten very intimate very quickly and we were quite openly flirting with one another. She was fun - a little showy-offy and aloof, but good-natured and friendly.
I could forgive her these minor foibles. She was, after all, attractive and a yoga instructor.

I asked her if she intended to go to the beach party the following evening. I had been handed a flier earlier and it looked quite good. Organised by the same team who had put together a silent-disco a few nights previously, this one promised dancing on the beach, video projections, teepees, a stage and a bar - for free. I thought it would probably be quite fun and had intended to go anyway.
Lisa said that she hadn't been planning on it, but that she could be persuaded.
I said that i would pick her up at 8.
I left to go and shower and get changed out of my still-stinking motorbike clothes. I had arranged to meet a few of the Northern girls and their hangers-on for dinner. I had told them lst night that i was going out for a motorbike ride today, and that if i wasn't there by 8pm, they should maybe alert somebody of my disappearance as i was more than likely to be seriously injured or stranded somewhere. It was 7:30 already.
As I turned to leave, Lisa spoke.
"You can use my shower if you like. I have hot water."
There was a definite twinkle in her eye.
I was stoned and unsure exactly what she was saying, finding it difficult to gauge the seriousness and flirtaciousness of her offer.
I laughed awkwardly and smiled, saying that what i probably needed now, more than anything, was a cold shower, but I'd happily take her up on her offer the following evening. Anyway, right now, I had to go and get into some clean clothes.
Idiot!
Our date arranged, i said goodbye and staggered confusedly into the night back to my treehouse, incredibly stoned and quite aroused.
Mental note: If you ever again get offered a shower by an assertive, attractive yoga instructor who's just split up with her boyfriend and evidently hasn't had a good shag for some time, under any circumstances, you take it.
Idiot, idiot, idiot...

I smiled to myself as I made my way back. The past hour had been totally unexpected and rather odd. She seemed cool, and she was very attractive and a yoga instructor. I considered what kind of things she'd be able to do with her pelvic floor muscles and even entertained the idea of purchasing some viagra in order to keep pace with her obviously voracious sexual appetite and tantric requirements.
Suddenly I realised that I had already doomed myself to a holiday of definitely no sex by bringing condoms with me - a schoolboy error. If you come prepared, you can guarantee that you won't be getting laid.
Slightly deflated by this annoying realisation, but nonetheless looking forward to my date the following evening, I felt a rumbling in my stomach and prayed that tomorrow would not be the day that i was delivered my well-overdue heinous bout of diarrhea.