Porto Rafael, a rash decision

Winter, as we know, makes us melancholy. Holidays are a distant memory, and even more distant seems the flight to some beach where forget cold. Among the ones more eager there is a person  we’ll call The Type: woman, around 45 years old, living on the continent in an industrialized town. She is married or separated, has two children or none, works in a communication agency or volunteers. She would like to be now on a boat, but the only possible crossing in these gloomy hours is the one navigable on search engines. Her smartphone is waiting for a simple gesture of her fingers to sail anywhere, but today she doesn't feel like pulling up even the anchor of her virtual sea. Maybe is this thick and thin rain, or the night outside despite it's just 5pm. She feels a hundred years old. She types the word "old age" on the phone with the same ambiguous curiosity one may have for a scary movie. First link appears on the screen, and at the same time a stairlift advertisement starts, in which a happy old lady transports herself from the ground to upper floor. The Type closes advertising, her house develops horizontally for 340 square meters, and then what are a handful of steps? It's just a day that doesn't take off. She reads random among words staring at her from the screen, and catches these few lines: … "65 years are considered the age of transition to the condition of elderly, although threshold for so-called old age tends progressively to move forward …". The Type breathes a big relief sigh:  65 years are infinitely far away! Before getting old she will have lived long enough, and by now youth will maybe have bored her. She feels wise, she's taking it philosophically. She sketches a small smile, but immediately regrets it.  Surgeon had warned her: for the first days better to keep her lips still. The labiaplasty surgery gone perfectly, but stitches are still alive, when stretching mouth it hurts. The Type must get used to prostheses, which for now are only bluish and foreign bodies.

More than Angelina Jolie, who inspired her for the operation, she seems Popeye, due to the straw  sideways with which she sips a vegetable soup, and the swollen jaw after anesthesia. She would like some radishes, but who can chew in these conditions? Breast augmentation was a breeze in comparison, coupled with liposuction of  hips that reduced her wardrobe by three sizes. The only drawback is that now, to dress from the waist down, she has to look in children's shops, while to contain her breast she buys anchor tie rods from a well-known company, with not always harmonious aesthetic results. However, the warm season will not catch her unprepared!  Blepharoplasty made the previous year fortunately eliminated imperfections of heavy eyelids, and even if now she is no longer able to blink her eyes, she can prevent any structural failure and intervene in time before fateful swimsuite season. That infinitesimal wrinkle crept along her forehead does not escape her, though she did a lifting once again just a few months ago. She'll ask the house keeper to iron it, the soleplate slips wonderfully.

The only doubt that haunts her, thinking about next summer, is that maybe she will be held ashore when embarking, since the picture on her identity card no longer corresponds to her true appearance. One day, in a downtown boutique, a saleswoman even approached her asking why she was all alone and where her parents were. The Type doesn't like Porto Rafael. Especially habitual women vacationers seem crazy: first of all, they don't hide their real age; they wear wide pinafores which can even reach size 50 (which The Type believed it had been outlawed); on the beach they laugh regardless of  inevitable expression furrows the sun will mark on their faces; they exchange fruit, focaccia, sunscreen and anecdotes about their loves full of scars; at sunset you meet them by the roadside, with long sarongs rolled up under their arm, holding soft straw bags. They go back home, and if by chance the car of one of their husbands or friends passes around, they accept a ride as if they were getting into a carriage: they play at being queens without turning into dolls.

The group arranges to meet for dinner at Villa Aidan, tonight the chef cooks based on fish, and the most daring ladies serve themselves spaghetti with clams twice. The Type is literally upset by this audacious naturalness, by this cheeky simplicity: these dangerous dissidents seem at ease even with their hair ruffled by wind. Their favorite mirror is sea water, which they shatter continuously with improvised dips and liberating exclamations.

The Type stops a few hours in Porto Rafael.
Upon returning town she will speak of it as an infamy place, she will advise friends against going there, describing its revolutionary climate. For next year, The Type has found a nice resort where short hibernations are carried out, no more rash decisions.