A man named Abel begets a pipe dream once his tight little swim trunks settle into the virgin sand and another man named Payton brings him over a frosé from the tiki bar. A sweet and small camera crew follows Payton’s back as he walks to the beachfront and squats beside Abel, offering his wet, pink cocktail to him. Abel looks to the Sparkle Ocean and sips his second frosé of the day while the camera crew forms a semi-circle around him, “now rolling.” Payton playfully punches his dude Abel and says, “I hope you find someone you love as much as you love frosé someday. I want someone to look at me the way you look at frosé!” Sweat, sugar, and condensation slide into Abel’s mouth as he swallows the last of his nectar. He spits partially to Payton, but mainly to the cameraman, that he has been looking for love in all the wrong people, oh my god! “Sorority girls, southern belles, girls-next-door…they’ve all left me with a broken heart. Being young and fun doesn’t have to include adultery.” “Damn straight, brother.”
Far behind the boys, out of focus by the tiki bar, three women in bikinis deeply inhale, hold their breath, then claw their French tips into one another by the forked shoulder blades to form a circle. They’re triplets! Conjoined, they rotate clockwise, increasing speed as the wasted sun starts to set. Running in circles now, they struggle to keep their airways stuffed, their eyes rolling into the back of their heads like meatballs off the table. They collapse onto the sand and lay dormant for a few minutes.
Payton has a kitty cat back home; his mom and baby sister are watching her during this journey. He would like to find a cat-person that also enjoys country-pop music and “adventure.” Abel is a personal fitness instructor/influencer who is actively looking for a classy, gym-rat fiancé at Sparkle Ocean: “Sparkle Ocean is great, because everyone is here to find their forever person…or at least, that’s what we hope for,” he tells the camera.
“I’ve got sand in my bottoms!” Tracey shrieks, coming to, scratching her bikini line. Stacey and Lacey rub their knockout eyes to open and heckle giggles at their sister, seducing the cameraman to their area of the beach – the bar. The current of the crew moves with the cameraman, luring Abel and Payton to follow after them like a couple of groupies or dragged about sea glass, past the compound of four white-curtained cabanas next to the tiled platform patio with a desert-inspired fire pit, indoor-outdoor landscaped grasses, ∞ pool, and tiki bar with a white sand floor, frosé, frozen margs, and daiquiris always turned on to “churn”. Stacey and Lacey brush the dirty white sand from Tracey’s ass as she squirms, and the three of them smile to the cameramen, Abel, and Payton. “We’re kinda weirdos,” Stacey says, making everyone laugh both with and at them. “Who are you, guys?” Tracey pliés her eyes up and down, almost like a gyrate, obviously directed at the two topless boys.
The five of them snack on fresh pineapple slices and island girl cocktails at the fire pit while they make introductions and look to the finishing sun. Lacey, Stacey, and Tracey were born in that order in Minnesota on the winter equinox: Lacey is a cat-person, phlebotomist. Stacey is a dog-person, personal trainer. Tracey is a cat-person (?), lawyer. The three of them have always been best friends (“soulmates more than sisters”) and have never once been in any “real” disagreement with one another. “A triangle is the strongest shape,” they murmur as they hold each other close and nuzzle their witchcraft into each others’ throats. Past seasons of Sparkle Ocean have promised them each a person if they just trust the process, and they do, as much as they trust each other. Payton only watched last season but is stoked to try anything in this world he can get his hemp-lotioned hands on. Abel loves how Sparkle Ocean grants us the opportunity to reveal the true self to a network of romantics and other young people ready to settle down, start a family. A thirsty, dry-earth fire reflects from his ridiculous eyes onto his American Eagle chest piece when he looks down to his bulked thighs and talks about all this. Suddenly stimulated by his proclamation, Lacey weeps into her palms. The crew dives onto her: the cameraman falls to his knees and tilts his equipment upward to catch her tears while the assistant camera bags a closeup of her wet cheeks. “Are you okay?” She is touched, triggered, and drunk but sends loving-kindness to herself betwixt lion’s breath. Stacey and Tracey breathe beside her until she finally settles enough to speak: “I have never heard a man as hot as you speak that romantically before!” It’s true, Abel blushes, especially after he’s been wolfing down pink all night. “How do you feel about some alone time?” he asks Lacey, uprooting her by her tired wrists before she can assume her sisters’ approval. He pulls her to a rose-petaled cabana, sits her on the buggy daybed, and confesses that he suspects she’s got feelings for him. The rest of the night is sweet with evening primrose flowering tops and footsie beneath the white sheets as Lacey and Abel graze each other to sleep in cabana 1 while Stacey and Tracey talk shit about hometown haters until they pass out across a senseless Payton in cabana 2. Overnight, Sparkle Ocean blesses their resting bodies with healing salt, minds with mortal worry, souls with moon shaft, and sex with succession.
Morning cums and hightide swells break onto Abel’s and Lacey’s briny feet like a mammoth lapping tongue, waking them into cobra pose. With a swan-strained neck, Lacey tongues Abel’s morning breath down for the squatting bedside camera crew. He tastes like salt water and throw- up-in-his-mouth. She swigs his salt, absorbs his GERD. This is mhm crazy love. “I am here for you 100%, no doubt about it.” She grasps him firmly by the sandy helices. The cameraman positions himself behind Abel for an over-the-shoulder shot. “I’m falling for you…and it feels so right.” She pulls his face close to suck on his white tongue, then implants her acrylics into the space between his ears and sideburns, tugging downward. She shucks his ears from his cranium. He looks really silly when blood shoots out from both of his newfound ear holes: a spewing sprinkler or a liquified Pippi Longstocking! She laughs. It stings! He freaks out into a maniacal sprint, flapping his arms like propellers toward Sparkle Ocean, the cutie camera crew “still rolling” close behind him. He plunges into the water for relief but smacks his skull on a rotting reef instead. His hot corpse floats to the surface of the ocean face up, mouth open, ready to eat bird shit and score a crisp new tan. Lacey can’t believe he just did that. Why did he literally kill himself? Her shot at love is gone, and she needs a drink.