February 09, 2005

I'm sure readers of a certain age remember Rupert Holmes' "Escape (The Pina Colada Song)", or, alternatively, readers of another certain age might be familiar with the Jimmy Buffet cover. To refresh your memories, the song details a couple who are bored with each other and independently take out personal ads. Lo and behold, the new loves they find are each other! In the song, they laugh and, one can assume, live happily ever after. In real life, however, the results aren't so pretty:

A budding romance between a Jordanian man and woman turned into an ugly public divorce when the couple found out that they were in fact man and wife, state media reported.

Let's compare and contrast their saga with the Pina Colada couple's story:

Pina Colada:

I was tired of my lady, we'd been together too long. Like a worn-out recording, of a favorite song. So while she lay there sleeping, I read the paper in bed. And in the personals column, there was this letter I read:

Real Life:

Separated for several months, boredom and chance briefly re-united Bakr Melhem and his wife Sanaa in an Internet chat room, the official Petra news agency said.

Pina Colada:

"If you like Pina Coladas, and getting caught in the rain. If you're not into yoga, if you have half-a-brain. If you like making love at midnight, in the dunes of the cape. I'm the lady you've looked for, write to me, and escape."

I didn't think about my lady, I know that sounds kind of mean. But me and my old lady, had fallen into the same old dull routine. So I wrote to the paper, took out a personal ad. And though I'm nobody's poet, I thought it wasn't half-bad.

Real Life:

Bakr, who passed himself off as Adnan, fell head over heels for Sanaa, who signed off as Jamila (beautiful) and described herself as a cultured, unmarried woman -- a devout Muslim whose hobby was reading, Petra said.

Pina Colada:

"Yes, I like Pina Coladas, and getting caught in the rain. I'm not much into health food, I am into champagne. I've got to meet you by tomorrow noon, and cut through all this red tape. At a bar called O'Malley's, where we'll plan our escape."

Real Life:

Cyber love blossomed between the pair for three months and soon they were making wedding plans. To pledge their troth in person, they agreed to meet in the flesh near a bus depot in the town of Zarqa, northeast of Amman.

Pina Colada:

So I waited with high hopes, then she walked in the place. I knew her smile in an instant, I knew the curve of her face. It was my own lovely lady, and she said, "Oh, it's you." And we laughed for a moment, and I said, "I never knew".

"That you liked Pina Coladas, and getting caught in the rain. And the feel of the ocean, and the taste of champagne. If you like making love at midnight, in the dunes of the cape. You're the love that I've looked for, come with me, and escape."

Real Life:

The shock of finding out their true identities was too much for the pair.

Upon seeing Sanaa-alias-Jamila, Bakr-alias-Adnan turned white and screamed at the top of his lungs: "You are divorced, divorced, divorced" -- the traditional manner of officially ending a marriage in Islam.

"You are a liar," Sanaa retorted before fainting.

"Escape" was one of the first singles I ever owned and I've always had a soft spot for the song. This is so sad, I wish this couple could have had a happy ending too.

I can't believe the story didn't mention the parallels to the song. It'd be like if a fight broke out in a club over a showgirl and there was blood and a single gunshot and no one could figure out who shot who and yet there was no mention of "Copacabana". Is the media biased against cheesy 70s love songs? Perhaps they are. Perhaps they are naught but an ugly reminder of the Carter Era malaise to our gentle reporters.

Posted by at February 9, 2005 11:33 PM

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