My Good Travel, Bad Sex Story

Purgatory in Paradise Cove

California dreamin’ - AI image by NightCafé

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They say that the best travel stories are the ones that go supremely wrong. The train that leaves the station with all your stuff aboard while you get a gelato on the platform. All you have left is a handful of kopecks and a mango ripple cone.

The toxic tummy bug that strikes you down when you have three flights and a complicated transfer — Milan has two international airports, what poor planning! — and you are down to zero clean laundry. Just a pair of flight socks to hold the tide.

This wasn’t like that. The travel was perfect, to be honest. I love California, and a drive down the coastal highway from San Fran to LA, it doesn’t get much better.

Stunning sea views, the sun pouring into our convertible, dark shades and my ponytail bobbing gently in the warm wind — a welcome change from a cold grey drizzly Melbourne winter, let me tell you! — the golden sunsets over the Pacific, lazy evening dinners where the local wines were both cheap and good, and the waiters — we were served by Jesus, imagine that! — delivered heavenly desserts that were light and healthy and utterly divine.

And a travel companion who punched all of my buttons. Slim, cute, taut, funny, and smart. He liked a lot of the same things I did. Travel for one thing. Maybe he didn’t care for my spirituality and I didn’t think his hanging around an airport to spot planes was time well spent, but hey, diversity is the spice of life.

Last day of the trip, we had a night at a hotel in Ventura, and tomorrow it was a morning in Santa Monica to finish off and back home to Melbourne on the late flight out of LAX, once we’d handed back the rental.

But this was a work trip, and talk about super awkward. This guy had no interest in me. None at all. I’d hinted that you know, maybe we could share a room, save the firm some money, but even that had no impact.

Apart from just totally chilling up the atmosphere between us. I kind of wished I’d kept my mouth shut, let him make the first move, like a normal man.

Todd was good-looking, tall, thoughtful, polite — way too polite, if you ask me — not gay, not married, just apparently completely uninterested in sex.

Oh, he knew all about it. As an advertising theory, and how babies arrived and all that. I’d seen some boudoir photography he’d done. Two models pretending to be lovers, nothing too racy, nothing too tame, the barest hint of passion with eyelines just so, lips pouted, heads tilted suggestively.

I do something like that, I put myself into it. I’ll urge my models to get passionate — come on, feel the emotion! — stick my camera in close, and like as not we’ll all be rolling around after the shoot losing the deposit on the rented linen.

So to speak.

But Todd was buttoned down, clinical, technical. I’d look at the glow in a model’s eyes, he’d be checking the exposure and fiddling with his flash.

The only models we shot this trip were incidentals. It was all landscape, and if a human figure in the shot was identifiable, we were supposed to get a model release so our shots could be used commercially.

Well, there were two models. We two. Occasionally we’d slip a figure into the landscape to show the scale. Or the road trip potential. We’d hired a convertible, and he took care with my wardrobe. Sunnies, scarf, a scoop top, and I did a lot of driving back and forth over some of the scenic bits while he handled the drone from an outlook.

But not an ounce of interest. The shots were fabulous, and I had a ton of fun, but not the sort of fun I’d fantasised when I looked at the trip notes before the project and mentally inserted Todd’s lean young body into my personal landscape.

Big Sur landscape (CC by The Todd Dwyer Operation)

And what a landscape!

The Pacific Coast Highway takes about ten hours flat chat from San Francisco to Los Angeles. It is a dramatic landscape: mountains, hills, canyons on one side; the blue Pacific rolling majestically away on the other.

We had six days to get to LAX, photograph every interesting turn in the road, atmosphere shots of towns and tourist attractions along the way, take notes on opening hours and admission prices and house specials of anything that tourists might stop at, and just, you know, work ourselves ragged during the day and write it up at night.

Sounds awful, I know, but it was great fun. With the right companion, it would have been a blast.

I’d leave my door unlocked, just in case Gentleman Todd wanted to look into my boudoir, but no. Wasted effort. If you ever find some of that drone footage of me driving across the Bixby Bridge, that smile of mine is a teeny bit tense.

We had dinner at El Pollo Loco the night before our last full day. Nothing fancy, but it had been a long drive, and we munched our Mexican-style fried chicken, sloshed our cola, and sent smouldering glances across the table. Well, I did. He was oblivious.

God, but the man was a machine. A wizard with a drone camera, but I had buttons that needed pressing, and I wouldn’t mind twiddling his knob a few times.

I almost twisted his doorknob later that night. Don’t judge me. I was desperate. But a girl has standards, you know? One doesn’t ask. I looked, but didn’t touch. My thoughts possibly scorched the paint, however.

Millionaires, Mansions, and Malibu

We got up at dawn — the best time for photography, but we weren’t going to see the sun rise out of the Pacific, now were we, Todd? — and picked up shots all down the coast. Surfers on sparkling waves, a pod of whales just off the beach, movie star castles on headlands, the odd convertible rounding a scenic bend.

Marvelous work, really, but it was more brunch than brekkie by the time we felt we had enough.

Now, I shouldn’t really name specific establishments — not without the money, anyway — but I’m here to say that the Paradise Cove Beach Cafe is perfection on a stick.

Tables and chairs plonked down right on the golden sand, the surf rolling in barely a champagne pop away — split a bottle of bubbly, Todd? — and an attentive waiter with a line of California patter. “Bloody Mary in a tall glass? You got it!”

I gazed after the waiter with some interest as he made his way back to the bar. Tall, tanned, terrific. He looked like he worked out on the beach at dawn before catching a few sets. He had a smile for the old ladies — was that really Barbra lifting a glass of OJ and winking back? — and a wiggle to his trim little bum that my eyes liked.

Todd wasn’t picking up on that detail. He had his eye to his camera viewfinder and was seizing the moment.

I savoured the moment. And the menu’s delicious spread. It all sounded super good. I wanted one of each, and a morning that lasted about a day and a half to lounge back and try it all.

Our drinks arrived. Bloody Mary for me and a latte for Bloody Todd. “Ready to order?” our waiter asked, lifting an eyebrow and my spirits.

“Old Number Three, ahh, Brett,” I latched onto his nametag and his eyes locked onto mine. Wide and blue and God help me, but there were dimples when he smiled back.

“You been here before? Old Number Three coming your way!”

That’s what it said on the menu. A three-egg omelette with all the trimmings. I could wrap myself around that. And Brett, if he played his cards right.

Hell, he could crook his little finger, beckon me into the pantry, and bend me over a box of bagels. No cards required.

Paradise Cove (CC by Michael Carian)

Todd and I discussed the day ahead while we sipped and/or slurped our drinks. Santa Monica was just down the coast. A long wide beach, the famous pier reaching out into the sea, full of fairground rides and souvenir shops and the official end of Route 66. Just made for tourism photography.

Brett came back with our meals. I purposefully ignored him, staring down at the table as he laid down our meals. No wedding ring. Good. A scrummy omelette for me and the Lox Box for Todd. I had no idea he was Jewish. Neither did he, I guess, but I was looking for ways to explain his moral stance.

I gave Brett a hot glance when he asked if we needed anything else. He lifted his gaze from my cleavage, and I nearly told him exactly what I wanted, but I demurely shook my head, “No, maybe a waffle later, see if I have room left.”

This time Todd looked thoughtfully after the waiter. We both did.

“You know,” he said as Brett used one lean cheek to butt open the kitchen door and I nearly came in my pants, “that waiter wants to fuck you.”

“No shit, Sherlock?”