note: the writing is a bit different, split into a present and a past, with two different narrators. In the present, there is a narrator who is 60-year-old Sofia Huntington. In the 80s, it is a schismatic narrator who narrates Sofia's adventures, because we cannot completely trust the judgment of a single person, or can we?2024 (narrated in the first person)80s (narrated in the third person)

thanks.

𝐂𝐎𝐌𝐄 𝐓𝐎 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐅𝐀𝐋𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐑𝐘!
HAVE A BEAUTIFUL SEASON
AND TRY NO TO DISGRACE
YOUR FAMILY IN THE PROCESS.

«keep it in the family»
it doesn't mean fucking
your own family member!

 There were two things I had learned by the time I was 22. The first, of great importance: not to have sex on the same day as shaving. A huge mistake that any young girl in the 80s must have learned the hard way. The 70s were simpler in that regard, everyone walked around with their bush untrimmed, and it was sexy.

 Oh, yes, the second one: everyone wants something.

 It's always easier to get along with people if you know what they want, because then you can make it easier for them, and life was always good with those who made life easier for others. First class flights, smiles and a cocktail, the rare gift of a pair of playful hooker shoes... It was a valuable lesson, I suppose. I also believe that it was more beneficial for me to learn those two things in the warmth of the argentine summer, instead of in the boring country house that my parents did not use and was filled with dust.

 If only Gabriel García Marquez had been inside my unconscious at that age, things might have been even more bearable. I could have learned a third thing, which I didn't learn until two years later and a biographical book published. By then, my Spanish was even better than my English. I understood the diverse regional idioms without even blinking or being surprised by the tourists and the rest of the people who saw me and asked where I was from.

 I was never able to blend in very well within the panorama of the typical young Argentinian girl. There they are all very pretty. With long legs and golden skin. I, on the other hand, remained as pale and lanky as a closed parasol.

 At least the food there made me lose weight immediately.

 If in London I was a fat girl, there in Argentina I was obese. Looking back and seeing my current reality, I guess all girls are fat until they get their period and get their boobs out. I had that good fortune.

 Although my diet was not restricted until I was older, the love of the Argentinians flooded my palate and made me their secret lover. The sponge cakes, the pepas, the mate with sugar at 4 in the afternoon instead of tea, the nights of late dinners and large lunches, were a culinary marvel without any trace of repetition.

 Perhaps I longingly remember a very different time.

 It would be ridiculous, wouldn't it?

 During the war, I only cared about cakes and looking pretty in my gym uniform. I learned the language in a short time and I was already friends with a lot of girls who were fascinated by my money. It was a tough time, the 70s. There was a dictatorship, and unlike other girls my age, my parents made sure I didn't notice anything. I lived like a princess trapped in a glass castle, protected and away from the rabble.

 That would be my public life, Gabriel García Márquez would tell his biographer two years later. Growing up and entering into awkward puberty and exciting adolescence made me worthy of my second life, the private one, the one I used to talk to kids from political groups who hung around the school I attended, trying to get our attention. They were very nice and had many ideas that dazzle at that age, right? Well, maybe just the idiots.

 Women are always aware very early of a lot of things that men only understand in adulthood, and in my teenage years, I not only became less fat, but also less stupid.

 So those cute boys, those Argentines with big noses and captivating charisma who smoked cigarettes and drank beer from bottles on a corner of the square, did not dazzle me mentally, but they did stir up my teenage hormones.

 My first time was a misfortune, like almost all. The boy, Ulysses—I could never forget his name—treated me well, but perhaps I got ahead of myself, because I have always had the need to be the first, the best, the most striking and mature. Being mature entails learning, and the best way to learn is always by making mistakes.

 I spent the rest of my school years making mistakes, one mistake after another, and becoming wiser. I learned, I cultivated myself, and at 22, when I thought I was better than almost anyone, my third life came and I believed I was up to par.

 My biggest mistake, the one I learned the most from. I don't have his name engraved anywhere else but on my body.

 I did not grow up with grace, elegance, or outstanding features to anyone who knew me as an adult. She was an ordinary girl, from the average. But when you spend your entire childhood being a pig in a wig, any improvement is welcome. And that's what happened to me, and that's what Basil Baddingham seemed to think, on the afternoon of May 1, 1985, when I saw him again after years apart.

 Basil and I weren't very close despite technically being family. My aunt, my mother's sister, and his brother, united in holy matrimony, were the tenuous bond that could bring us together on any given afternoon. It started in the following way:

***

Like any other Polo season, it started at the end of March and lasted through April and the first few days of May. That meant dinners, press events, and after-match parties that Sofia didn't miss even if she wasn't invited; everyone let you skip the queue if you brandished the "British Ambassador's Daughter" card.

 The air was already cool these days, and Sofia dressed in the comfort of pants instead of long dresses. Women all over the world wore them, and although it didn't exactly suit her, she could afford to stand in the back of the crowd watching the game with her binoculars. Or she would have, of course, if the universe hadn't started rolling out its evil plan to destroy the little sanity she had amassed by the age of 22.

 "You seem familiar to me."

The manly, playful voice was the first thing that reached Sofia, before she lowered her binoculars and turned to the side. In front of her was the most coveted heartthrob of the entire Polo season. He was what the Spanish girls called a "quick and clean" fuck, and Basil Baddingham never left a girl unsatisfied during the Polo season; he was the best stallion in the stable, and everyone wants to ride a pony. A purebred one. Even if he only holds the title.

 "Basil Baddingham, you are an adult, finally."

 The man in front of her must have crossed the threshold of thirty in delightful ways. She could understand the girls' taste for him. Dark complexion, the foxy smile of a porteño and the security that only a family that was wealthy before your birth gives you. The wretch also knew about horses, and some mares of different caliber, always on the lookout, as if everything in life were a competition. Maybe it was, at least for him.

 In many ways, Basil Baddingham was perfect.

 "Then we do know each other."

 She wasn't the smartest fish in the pond, but Sofia had to give him some indulgence. He hadn't seen her since... What was she a baby? Since she was 7 years old and his old brother scolded her for eating anything?

 "I'm Sofia, Sofia Huntington, it's a pleasure."

 Basil did not make the obvious connection until late. In the middle of the sheets of his hotel room he looked at her with strangeness and a certain lust.

 "Does this count as incest?"

 Sofia just laughed before kissing him again and dragging him with her under the soft sheets of the warm bed.

 Although they were related, they were only politically related. And distant in appearance. It wasn't as if that made him his uncle, it was just sex... political?

 Laughter infected both of them.

 Yes, she was screwed, literally and metaphorically, and if it would continue to be such a good experience, Sofía didn't see why she should stop.

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