From Torrance to Turks
“You guys might not know this, but I consider myself a bit of a loner. I tend to think of myself as a one-man wolf pack. But when my sister brought Doug home, I knew he was one of my own. And my wolf pack... it grew by one. So there... there were two of us in the wolf pack... I was alone first in the pack, and then Doug joined in later. And six months ago, when Doug introduced me to you guys, I thought, “Wait a second, could it be?” And now I know for sure, I just added two more guys to my wolf pack. Four of us wolves, running around the desert together, in Las Vegas, looking for strippers and cocaine. So tonight, I make a toast!”
Let me tell you about my best friend…
Going on 16 years ago, (!!!) I was a 13-year-old freshman at Bishop Montgomery High School in Torrance, California. There were a group of us whose parents had to be at work by a certain time, so we were dropped off pretty early, and would wander the hallways from 1st Building to 3rd and back to pass time until the 5 [minute bell] rang. Lisa, myself, and a couple other early birds would hit the snack bar for the most delicious cookies and breakfast burritos ever, and proceed to talk sports (especially the Lakers), French class, and the general trending topics of the hallways. Lisa is one of maybe 3 people I know who are at least as big of a fan of the Lakers as I am. Surprisingly enough, we had never been to a Lakers game until 13 years later in 2022. Now, we have been to numerous games together in multiple states, and it is only a matter of time before we are courtside.
If you had a time machine and transported back to 2009 and told us that before either of us officially turned 30, we would take a vacation to Turks & Caicos, we probably wouldn't have believed you. I personally wouldn't have even known what that was.
It all started with a text message on March 3, 2024 that read “also bro i'm thinking about going to turks and caicos for my 30th.” At that time, I had just moved back home to LA from San Diego, and she was still on the East Coast, and had no idea what I would be doing come January 2025, but in the spirit of more life, I was willing to lock in. Didn't know who was going to be there, how I was paying for it, or what to expect, but I knew it was something I wouldn't want to miss out on.
January 15, 2025, it was time to go. My dad dropped me off at Lisa's, and the trip was actually about to happen. We get to the airport and run into 1 super familiar face, 1 vaguely familiar, and 1 I had never come across. Eventually we land at our layover in Charlotte, and came across another set. Our group was almost fully formed, just waiting on 1 other brand new face when we got to the island.
Local Turks Beer (I don’t even rock with beer like that but this was good).
The whole flight to Turks, I kept wondering what it would be like when I first saw just how beautiful the water actually is. I’ve seen countless pictures on social media, countless glamour shots from movies, and somehow the real thing still continuously amazed me. I felt like I was starting my first ever real vacation. I’ve taken days off before, but never had I been to somewhere tropical, somewhere where the goal was to relax and just have a good time. My first introduction to “island time.”
In America, it is so normalized for something to always be a pressing issue. Emails that have to be replied to by 5pm, expensive doctor’s appointments that you can’t be more than 15 minutes late to, you get the gist. Especially growing up in the city of Angels, them angel wings work overtime. To be able to just kick back and relax surrounded by water? I don’t think I have ever experienced so much peace.
And that’s before even getting to what we did in Turks, which honestly, has very little importance. You kind of had to be there…
There’s a reason “making it out of the group chat” is a big deal - especially for Black folks. Something is bound to come up. Somebody forgot something that was supposed to happen on some day at some time. Somebody didn’t get they ticket in time and now it’s too expensive. Somebody never was going in the first place, but was trying to people please. So many somethings get in the way of a trip happening. Nevertheless, Lisa successfully got 8 of her friends out of the country as a unit.
As people have inevitably asked for me to tell them “about Turks,” my responses have all been very consistent - I have to start with the people. As I mentioned, I had varying levels of familiarity with the people in our group, ranging from 15 years to 5 hours ago at the airport. People with a variety of different backgrounds, stories, relationships to each other, and one shared understanding - we in f***in’ Turks! What does that mean? We here to have a good time and celebrate people we mutually love. By the time we departed, the people I gave goodbye hugs to at the airport were not strangers. They were more than just people passing by a common place at a common time. They were friends.
Beyond the people, of course we had fun. We tested our friendships with UNO & Spades, roasted each other like groups of favorite cousins, got to know each other through stories, and stayed hydrated the entire time. My favorite moments took place on boats - dancing along to Tipsy (A Bar Song), TV Off, and other songs that just hit different when you on a boat in Turks. At one point, a few of us (feeling adventurous) slid down into the ocean from the top deck of the boat, followed by leaps of faith directly into the ocean (with floatation devices as backup). Jumping into the depths of the Caribbean was the perfect encapsulation of letting go of whatever stressors of “reality” was in my head and fully embracing vacation mode.
There aren’t enough words in my lexicon to fully describe how freeing it was to be in Turks. Most people that know me probably have never seen me turn up one time for real, but for my best friend, we had to go up one time for the one time (and maybe another time). The vibes were immaculate the entire time, the DJ did his big one at the lounge, putting on an iconic run of songs that would make any LA native proud. We had our own driver who was the realest of ones, and we had a private chef with 10/10 hospitality/service. We ate goooood - from beef patties, to coco bread, jerk chicken, chicken patties, and don’t get me started about them damn chicken strips at Noah’s Ark (Chef’s Kiss).
Vacations don’t fix all of life’s problems, but they do give your spirit its own dance floor to 2-step in the sun for a while no matter how dark life has gotten. Hopefully this inspires you to go ahead and look up prices for that flight.
