The Freediver

Preamble:

This is a banter-style teasing, titillating story, written in literature nuanced prose.

The action is light, the culminating lovemaking savage, but poetic. If you are aching for bruising, caterwauling, torrenting action by rippling triathletes, this is not for you.

***

Chapter 1: Thoughts And Yearnings

Chapter 2: Vacation

Chapter 3: Air

Chapter 4: Island

Chapter 5: Café

Chapter 6: Rick’s

Chapter 7: Prep

Chapter 8: Hirsute

Chapter 9: Freediving

Chapter 10: Couple

Chapter 11: Fire

Chapter 12: Nocturne

Chapter 13: Surf

Chapter 14: Playback

Chapter 15: Singularity

Chapter 16: Betrayal

Epilogue

***

Chapter 1

Thoughts And Yearnings

I look at the wildflowers in the vase on my coffee table. There is really no point trying to arrange them. The honeysuckle, the forget-me-not, the iris, they have tumbled into their symmetry.

I tilt back my chair a little, and survey the photos, mementos and books on my shelf, as one might a life.

How often do we tell our own life story? Our life is not our life, even if it seems so. It is just a story we have told about our life. A story about our life told to others, but mainly to ourselves.

I think of everything that has happened in my life, and how little I have allowed to happen.

I am fifty today. I have been married for thirty years. One son. He is twenty years old.

Fifty is a quietly tumultuous time in a woman’s calendar of life. A sort of existentialist angst sets in, maybe not so different from the youthful variety. Déjà vu? Yes, but also not quite.

For the longest time, I cannot figure if I am going somewhere, or just going. Now, I am decidedly launched on a trajectory arc, on the cusp to something novel and life-changing.

But, what precisely? Is it a journey? A destination? Or, more intuitively, a journey to an end destination? A longing to be accepted for my radical new aspirations, but too old to be seeking approval.

If there is a destination, where is that? I philosophise this in my swirl of mind. The destination is the end point. But, is it in reality? More pragmatically, the destination is that point of the journey when one passes the point of no return. The rest, beyond the hump, as they say, is freewheeling downhill all the way.

I have been reading erotic literature for about two years. It is only since the beginning of my menopause that I feel a need or desire for new forms of stimulation. I have given myself the time, opportunity and permission to enjoy myself alone.

I chance upon a mature female English author in a popular erotic literature website. I am caught up by the potential reality of her stories, and the engaging way they have been crafted. I value well-written stories, imaginative language, beautifully described images, and believable situations and action. Her stories carry these elements. What I want is to have my mind stimulated and excited, dancing, pirouetting dizzily on edge, and to imagine things more than meet the eye and mind. I like the stories to focus sometimes on sensuality and tenderness. An unlikely brew of savage carnal tenderness. I enjoy her stories for these very reasons. I can feel herself in the picture. See what the story character sees. I want in on the story, and is admitted by the narrative force. Once in, that force will not let me out until the story, and hence me, is spent.

I particularly like the stories about teasing photo sessions, and a bit of mature woman and young man frisson. I find myself eagerly scheduling time to read yet another story in her collection, or a second or third instalment of a story.

Outside of erotic literature, I have a particular appreciation for women writers. I enjoy Pat Barker, Anne O’Brien, Philippa Gregory and Hilary Mantel. Their historical work has given me so much pleasure, especially so because of their perspectives. The historical novel can be a backdoor into the present, which is very valuable.

I was first drawn into this realm by Philippa Gregory’s ‘The Other Boleyn Girl’ of book, then movie fame. An unlikely story around a woman who is a footnote in history.

So too Pat Barker’s war-themed ‘Regeneration Trilogy’. War is terrible and never to be repeated. And yet, the experiences derived from the wreckage, after considered introspection, are of enormous value.

And Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell trilogy. Twice Booker Prize laureate, with a shot at a third.

I think women do view the world differently and being able to express that difference, not necessarily in what is said, but in the way it is said, has given me enormous satisfaction and a sense of being part of the sisterhood.

And this applies to that author in erotic literature too. Erotic literature is dominated by male authors, who focus too much on the animistic hump and grump, and graphic depiction, very much a man’s lurid pleasure, when what I want is stimulation and excitement at a subtle, more abstract level.

I have never tried my hand at writing erotica. I feel that I will not know where to start, or what sort of subject or genre my imagination should inhabit.

Perhaps a mature woman being seduced by a young man? Or two young men? Perhaps stir in a little taboo, my son and his friend?

If I am really wicked, I may imagine a scene where my son and his friend cajole me to pose for them, for an art project or something artistically worthwhile in the creative sphere. I know that the idea is not particularly original, but is exciting. I unconsciously writhe my body, and then realise that I am animating my story. I blush shyly to my sentinel other self. But, I feel a stab of devilish pleasure in these private thoughts.

At a time when I am pondering the sensual order of my life, of what has been, and what can be, the erotic stories have helped in making my mind race giddily into yet uncharted dangerous and daring areas. The point of no return must by necessity be fraught with high hazards. Otherwise, it would not be a point of no return. A crossing of the raging Rubicon.

Menopause is a physical, and then, psychological marker. Since the beginning of my menopause, I have been aware of so many changes. Much of it has been flowering in gratifying bloom. I feel that the linear constrained life I have led, and being hidden away under a shell is over. I am emerging from myself in a lush of reinvention. Appreciating myself much more. Affording myself time and opportunity to enjoy things more, to satisfy demands and desires that I have rejected or ignored for most of my life.

This has gone along with an increase in my libido. I sense a different heat of fire in my loins.

***

I look at a bit of porn. I initially treat porn with a sort of fascinated repulsion. But, it grows on me. Some videos have been a big help. The ones that suggest and imply, rather than tell and recite.

But, it is the written word that satisfies me most. This has led to my exploring all sorts of genres and concepts that I would only a few years ago been shocked by, and felt were outrageous.

***

I discover that being naked around the house is wonderful. When my husband is out, I enjoy doing house chores naked. Wandering nude around the house is quite thrilling. In the hallway, there is plenty of see-through glass on either side of the door that leads to the street. The curtains in my sitting room are open.

In the beginning, getting habituated to the pleasant sensation of soothing air caressing my private skin, the tingle of naughty nakedness is overwhelming. I get moist. That soon builds up deliciously to copious dribble. I have to wipe myself.

And soon after, a noticeable wet spot builds all over again. At first, I use tissues. One day, I run out of tissues. I use my panties as wipes instead. The sensation of sheer material grazing my delicate nether flesh creates as much fluid as it soaks up.

And there are other sensual innovations to fire up little pleasures.

***

I am tidying my son’s room. I am nude as usual. My son has his own apartment. But, my hubby and I maintain a room for him, his former room, for him to use on days when he stays over.

There is a portrait of my son on the shelf. An artfully posed intent, a little brooding, sort of observing look, yet softly engaging. I just cannot suppress the impulse to reposition the picture a little each time before I begin to clean the room, so that it surveys the room, his room, properly.

I am tidying, ordering his drawers when I discover a stash of briefs. Male thongs to be precise. Effectively cock socks, I muse in muted wonder.

Is he a hipster? Or, maybe gay? Or both? I do not follow male fashion fads, let alone male intimate wear. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. He is who he is.

Hmmm… so this is his male measure. I raised him. Is it sized to full flourish? Or, sedate normal form?

My moist has turned to flow. Instinctively, I pick up one of his thongs to soak up my piquant excitement. I gaze guiltily at the portrait picture. Is that a smirk on his face?

His brief is the exact opposite of my sheer panties. Even though economical of textile, it is rough, raw and male. A muscularity to the garment. I close the drawer as if to shut out my thoughts.

I wipe up the inside of my thigh, soaking up the rivulets of feminine fluid. But, his minimal thong is too small to soak it all up. My thigh is still wet. I’m going to shower shortly anyway after my chores.

I leave my fluids be. It feels so wrong walking around naked with my fluids on my leg. I feel deviant.

Hereon, I will dispense with wiping up my fluids. They are what they are. A part of my constitution and bodily self-expression that I must not deny. But, only in so far that it does not dribble down to the floor.

***

On an inexplicable whim, a whim whose time has come, I put on my fuck-me high heels one day when I am naked in front of the bedroom mirror. It elevates me to a whole new level of high. Physical, psychological and sensual.

Footwear is not worn just for the benefit of men. It is to tease and please both the woman wearer and observers.

Most of the pleasure of buying shoes involves a private fantasy that begins with the woman, and ends at her feet. And that is the case with me.

The stiletto becomes a part of my naked repertoire. And on particularly productive days when my feminine arousal runs down to my feet, and then collects a little at my high heels, I experience a curious queasy sensation that is repulsively pleasurable.

***

I love walking naked in my, mostly private, garden. My very own secret garden.

In Frances Hodgson Burnett’s novel, ‘The Secret Garden’, the garden is a metaphor for self-discovery and wondrous rejuvenation. A thing that is neglected withers. But when it is worked on and cared for, it thrives.

I cannot think that I am an exhibitionist. But, I can understand that delicious thrill of being seen fleetingly naked to unsuspecting eyes.

It begins mundanely, if not perfunctorily, with gardening. Naked bliss or not, those earthly chores must be done. Watering, trimming, culling, weeding. Oh, the heady smell of turned earth!

Once, when I felt the urge to ease myself, I decided to just do it, rather than beetle indoors.

A small defiance of rule. So small as to be undetectable. Such are the petit rewards I hold out for myself.

The garden nook that I most want to fertilise with my personal stock of urea is also the most vulnerable to neigbourly eyes. But, a pee is fleeting. And no one is the wiser. To the best of my knowledge…

***

Chapter 2

Vacation

Shit happens!

Three days before our departure, my husband, who works in an adequately awesome Investment Bank, wins a megadeal. The biggest ever.

He has to cancel his leave to get started on the project. I have been a corporate animal before. Lived the drill one too many times. They will go through the workplace human drama of formin’, stormin’, normin’, performing, before a sort of functional sanity is bedded down, to execute real work. Tuckman’s theory. Time is of the essence. In a sense, it is a happy problem. A nice hurrah to top my husband’s career before he contemplates early retirement.

We can get a refund for one pax, but not for two. I have to go without my husband.

I have mixed feelings about this turn of event. Annoying and liberating.

***

Chapter 3

Air

The plane is half full. No, more like half empty. Just when I think that I will have two seats to curl up luxuriate, a late boarding blustering lad treks up the aisle. I hear him shaft his bulging worldly sausage of backpack into the overhead luggage compartment.

Gazing up from my cellphone screen, I suppress a gasp.

Uncanny. No. Surreal. A near clone of my son, except for his darker hair. Twenty. Maybe twenty-one max. My tribal instinct tells me he cannot be anything but English.

I recompose myself. He settles down on the aisle seat. He smiles. His gleaming teeth betrays a startling over consumption of calcium.

***

The plane soars above time and space. The sky is a drifting canvas of sun and clouds. Of brilliant and filtered light.

I think of the Joni Mitchell song. A fave of mine. A folk anthem of my era which came to my consciousness in my teens. It resonates with me like I have written and composed it myself right off my head, unbeknownst to Joni Mitchell, one inspired morning in time. Some songs do that to you. Most songs sing by you, seeking its listener to fasten on.

“Rows and flows of angel hair

And ice cream castles in the air

And feather canyons everywhere

I’ve looked at clouds that way

But now they only block the sun

They rain and snow on everyone

So many things I would have done

But clouds got in my way

I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now

From up and down, and still somehow

It’s cloud illusions I recall

I really don’t know clouds at all”

Art songs, they call these. Poetry on wheels.

Such beautiful words! No words can describe these beautiful words. And that is me on song. A cloud illusion I am. I don’t know me at all.

***

“I’m Sebastian. Seb. Pleased to meet you.”

I smile in widening increments, “Sophia. Sophie. Soph. Pleased to meet you too.”

Short light brown hair. Dark eyes. Light nuances of Mediterranean, mystified with hints of Levantine. He sports a little arrow tail of hair at his nape of neck. The only outward badge hint of what I suspect is his artistic bent. Good shoulders. Tops six feet. He bears the marks of a racing swimmer’s arrow of V-build. Or, maybe a sailor, or some watersport. Bronzed toned arms. Lean. Mean. Fresh faced. Exactly what a young Englishman named Sebastian should classically look like. A lovely young man in our Brit vernacular.

I am a watersports fiend too. A champion swimmer in my glory days. As is my son, in my wake.

I think we will get on swimmingly on this flight interlude.

“You look like you’re on the cusp of backpacking through a gap year?”

“I just finished uni. Backpacking six months before I begin work.”

“Ah! A missionary looking for a theology.”

“Hmmm… this is one way to think about it.”

“Do you mind if I ask what you majored in?”

“Philosophy. A minor in Lit.”

“Ah! A humanist!”

“I’ll probably do something which puts pen to paper. Packing and unpacking words. Publishing, journalism, creative writing, and the like. If they would have me.”

“And your ambition?”

“An accomplished creative writer. Maybe a Julian Barnes, a Kazuo Ishiguro or a Zadie Smith, but increasingly with my own imprint as I assert my craft. I give myself five years.”

He continues, “That said, there is the writer, and there is writing. I want to write because I’m enamoured of writing. Not because I like the idea of being a writer. People romanticise the idea of a writer.”

He has a clipped public school precise way of speech. A little courtly.

I offer, “You can’t force creativity. But, you need to force the start of your creativity.”

“That’s a good tip. I’ll remember that.”

“So pray tell, how does a writer go about his craft?”

“A writer is obsessed with inventing stories for people he comes across. An overwhelming curiosity makes him ask himself what their lives might be like. He wants to know what they do. Where they are from. Their names. What they may be thinking of at that moment. What they regret. What they hope for. Whom they have loved. What they have dreamed of. And if they happen to be women, then, the urge becomes intense. How quickly he will want to see her naked. Naked through to her heart. Learn where she is coming from. Where she is going. Why she is here and not elsewhere. While letting his eyes wander all over her, he imagines love affairs for her. Ascribes deep feelings to her. He thinks of what her bedroom might look like. And a thousand things besides…”

“So, what’s my story?”

“I’m still figuring…”

“And you…, errr…, Soph? What do you do?”

“Do you feel uncomfortable calling me Soph?”

“Kinda…”

“But why? Because I’m old enough to be your mum?”

“That’s a third of it.”

“Oh? A third?”

Smiling, “Mum’s name is Soph.”

The right corner of his mouth slants upwards, and his eyes half-close, almost owlish if in dim light. It is the smile of someone who knows he is the luckiest person in the world, and trusts that you are generous enough not to resent him for it. Cocky. Yet, somehow winning.

Piqued, “So, what’s the final third?”

“This is uncanny. Surreal. You look like mum.”

Teasingly, “Would it be easier on you if you call me mum?”

Quipping, “No, mum. Soph is fine.”

An icebreaker. We laugh a little too spiritedly. The stewardess casts a glance in our direction with fascinated alarm.

“You know, Seb, I don’t want to spook you. You look like my son.”

“Oh! What’s his name?”

Lisping, “Seth”

Laughter. A reverberation through the cabin. Did the plane just traverse an air pocket?

Emboldened, he ascertains me more closely. He puts his hand in his pocket. Is he starved for it? I feel my clothes tighten on my body. Is that my brassiere tightening its clasp on my bosom?

He has a quality of interpretability. You can find in him more or less whatever that you are looking for. Clever but not cynical, involved but not aggressive.

Finally returning to his question, “I was a raging, raving, ranging corporate warrior. Tech. The archetype of the species. Retired a year ago from the insanity. Living up my belated gap year. The gap year wasn’t invented yet in my time, you see.”

“Which are the places you’d like to immerse in?”

“The places that drove me nuts during my corporate road warrior days, where I could never get anything done. Hawaii, Tahiti, Latin America, Spain, Greece, Portugal, Thailand, Indonesia. I saw a great many things in these places, but always from afar. They say living well is the best revenge. I want to go back to these places to do just that.”

“Soph, you’re so devastatingly rational.”

Admiring his clamshell burst of chest, “You’re a competitive swimmer, aren’t you?”

“How can you tell?”

“Because I was one too.”

We look at each other as if searching for ourselves.

“I’m intrigued by your creative writing ambition. Is there any particular theme that captivates you?”

“Transcendence”

“Your inspiration for that?”

“Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being.”

“I’ve watched the film, but not read the book. What’s it about the work that so inspires you?”

“Challenging Nietzsche’s concept of Eternal Recurrence. The idea that the universe and its events have already occurred and will recur ad infinitum. The story suggests the alternative. That each person has only one life to live, and that which occurs in life occurs only once and never again. Thus, the “lightness” of being. This lightness also signifies freedom. The characters, Tomáš and Sabina live this lightness. Whereas Tereza’s character is weighed down.”

“Interesting. I never thought of the film that way. But, then again, I’ve never pondered much about the inflight movies I watched, or rather, half watched, in my corporate road warrior days. Tell me more.”

“The unbearable lightness also refers to the lightness of love and sex. Love is fleeting, haphazard and possibly based upon endless strings of coincidences, despite holding much significance for humans.”

“Hmmm… And how is sex light?”

Maybe I am too forward. He doesn’t answer. He asks me a question as if in answer.

“Tell me, Soph, which was your moment of highest transcendence? Apart from induced transcendence from alcohol, substances, lovemaking.”

A good question. A question that is larger than its answer, even though I am still working on the answer. I mine hard and deep.

“Once, I had a rare couple of days of idle time on a business trip because I unexpectedly closed a difficult substantial deal ahead of schedule. This in itself was a bearable lightness of being.”

Chuckles.

Continuing, “On impulse, I visited a mountain monastery. It pushed high and pressed into the clouds. The air was thin and true. A lovely rustic chapel of soaring architecture, yet, with plenty of glass and skylight for all to see the light. A fairy tale garden in flourish. The monastery crouched on a slender ridge. Drop dead gorgeous views both sides of the abyss. Seaview on one, mountain the other. Beautiful biblical art works on the walls. A glorious high hit me during the evening prayers, vespers, amid the lifting gospel music and the lilting choir singing.”

I pause.

Continuing, “I’m not particularly invested in faith. Kinda cultural Christian. Why do you think I felt that way?”

Seb thoughtfully, “Transcendence to the power of four.”

“What?”

“The garden and awe-inspiring scenery are Nature. The architecture and artworks are Art. The gospel music and choir are Music. And you’re in a religious realm. Nature, Art, Music, Religion in a singularity hit. All the inspiration realms of humanity, secular and religious, in unity.”

“It didn’t occur to me then…”

“The religious hierarchy understood the human need for transcendence. This is not by accident. They conspired to gather all the forces in one place, in one moment. And that was the sum of your experience. Physical as in the physical mountain, the artworks, the building, and yet, abstract. Multidimensional, yet one. Fleeting, yet enduring.”

“Seb, I’m convinced. You’re going to be a successful writer. The rush of detail makes me giddy. But, you relish it. You appear to yearn to be lost, childlike, in the detail of life, to wonder at its texture.”

***

“Where will you be staying on the island?”

“I haven’t booked anything. I’m trying to make my budget stretch my six months. The accommodations offered online didn’t meet my low expectations. I’ll check out the options when I arrive.”

“And where are you off to after the island?”

“Portugal”

“April in Portugal is so atmospheric. I choked in a sort of ecstasy the whole time I was there.”

In a motherly tone, “My husband and I rented a cottage. He had to cancel the trip at late notice because of a work contingency. There is a spare room in the cottage. A sort of gentrified outhouse, I think. You can stay there if you wish. I promise that I won’t mother you.”

“Cool! Hobos can’t be choosers. Soph, thank you so much.”

“Things are not always what they seem. Do you know the origin of the word hobo?”

“No”

“Hobo is short for homeward bound.”

“Oh?”

Our eyes gaze at each other. A little too full of connection for people who have just met.

***

Chapter 4

Island

The island is ten square miles, though one will have difficulty to find a square anywhere as the lay of the island runs in strange directions. If I hold the map with east on top, it looks like a gangly teen about to break into a run.

There is no spot on the island where I cannot hear the ocean. It is the quietest place I have been, bar the sounds of the ocean. I sit and watch time. Watch my thoughts. My emotions. Listen to the whisper of the wind voices. Some faint, nagging echo of my Anglo-Saxon conscience tells me that I should be doing something useful, or at least active. I pay it no heed.

The cottage has fine architectural bones. It is built in the traditional local rustic style, poised at the head of a valley. The valley slopes down toward the sea. Wooded slopes surround the valley. The kind of beautiful countryside that poets like Yeats would forever try to do justice. Perfect! I want to be looking at flowers longer than I should. When night falls, study the clockwork of the stars.

The garden is a study of how one disciplines nature. Straighten it. Clip it. Smoothen it. Trees lined up as if in parade, or planted in symmetrical groups. The lawn is picked clean. In the corner stands a huge tree. The stem does not send off a wild branch here and there to take its own way. All the branches share in one great fountain-like impulse. Control freaks control everything. Except their minds.

The only traces of disorder in the garden are human. Now, what would I do if I want to create an imaginary garden? I want the roses and the toads to be real. The garden is a shelter for the soul. There is the garden, gardening and the gardener. Is gardening for the garden or the gardener?

But, is gardening a defence activity? A perpetual military campaign? In creating a garden, we acquire, by force, a patch of land from the forest. We mould it so that it becomes an oasis amidst the wilderness. It is an endless struggle. Turn your back for a moment, and the darkness of the forest begins its insidious invasion of your tiny haven. So, gardening is for the garden.

There is a swimming pool which I can use if I feel too idle to walk the mile down to the secluded beach.

It is a cottage, but in fact, it is quite a substantial house. More so a villa. Peaceful, quiet and private.

There is honesty in its design. Neat undecorated brick. The colour of the brick is old, yet fresh and clear. Although rustic, it is mutedly modern in its sense of order, cleanliness and light. A hard lust for quality, and yet, softened by sentimental cravings. Traditional without seeming stale, and romantic without being naive.

I sleep in a white room with white sheets, in white silk nightie. I am white as sheet. It is the colour of fresh snow, chalk, milk. And weddings. It is the opposite of black. But, is white a colour, an absence of colour, or a mingle wash of colours? Is white beyond colour? White is the hardest colour to preserve because it is so vulnerable to everything else it engages with.

I like the sensation. The soft white cloth brushing my skin. It is like being in a cloud.

Unfiltered light falls on my face in the morning to wake me up.

The interior, unfussy antique furniture. Wood-burning fireplace and stove. Wide-plank floors of honey-coloured wood. I have a sense that the space where I will be spending most of my hours, morphed from Drawing Room, to living room, and now sitting room, in that social order evolution. I am grateful for that as that is what I will be mostly doing in it.

I discern a meticulous attention to detail so that no detail is apparent to the eye. It looks beautiful without being precious. Comfortable good taste. It gives the feeling that you can actually live in it, which is not always the case with pretty photogenic houses.

A mile away is a charming seaside village of quaint shops, homey cafés, F&B establishments and a nominal harbour. There are hundreds of inlets in these parts, which break the coastline. An intricate tapestry of coves. In days of yore, lusty pirates hid in the less accessible coves. The main village street is an open museum. The village is named something enthrallingly impossible-to-pronounce sur-Mer. The name itself confers lavish charm on itself without the village having to show up.

I have not brought my camera. Taking photographs can assuage the itch for possession sparked by the beauty of a place or a person. Our anxiety of losing a precious scene or sensual sight can decline with every click of the shutter.

People cannot just enjoy beauty. They have to possess it as well. The only way to possess beauty properly is to understand it, by making oneself conscious of the factors, visual and psychological, responsible for it.

***

Chapter 5

Café

The morning dawned beautifully. The sunlight is everywhere. Everything is the colour it usually is, only brighter.

I comb my sleep-tangled hair a bit differently. Leave a little of the edges wild is how we should live every now and again. I look at the mirror one last time.

Was it Virginia Woolf who said: “I am not one person. I am many people.”? I want to be someone I don’t know. I feel good about my new self. But, did Virginia Woolf not suffer bipolar disorder, a mood disorder? Who is afraid of Virginia Woolf? Me. A little. For myself. Am I going soft? Just not so long ago, I was a kickass corporate warrior, sure and sharp.

I step outside. The sky is a spacious cloudless blue, of the exact same hue as the sea before me. The sky, sea and me in my blue blouse, are in total accord on this morning. A great day to be alive.

This is the first time I am at the outhouse. Two rooms. Each room sparsely decorated with beautiful things. A bedroom with nothing much but a mattress on a carved divan, and a leopard pelt rug on the floor. A long shadowed corridor with a single Buddha head in an alcove. An unfinished painting on the wall. A still life abandoned by the painter. Why is it even hung up here? At a certain angle though, the painting appears finished.

Seb is not here.

He is under the cathedral of trees in the far corner of the garden, in a pool of shade cast by the trees, reading an e-book or something. Pensive. At one with the moment and with the place. From a distance, it looks like peace. He is in a kind of paradise. The word paradise comes from the Persian word for garden. Should I interrupt him?

“Seb, I need my fix. Would you like to join me for an espresso at the village café.”

The Coffee Dive. Tables adorn the sun-kissed patio as if painted there by the tip of an artist’s brush. The vista, a calming simplicity of land, sea and sky.

It is early. The machines are yet to warm. I ponder this chance to reflect a moment longer, to drink in the aroma of this place.

The barista has a glimmer in her eye, a dead give away of her good heart. She is one of those surviving sparks, one of the ones who hold on to who they really are, proud of her craft. How we do one thing is often how we do everything. A gentle soul on good terms with the universe.

I ask for an espresso, a brioche to be warmed to a particular temperature, and fruit, apologising, “Sorry, I’m just feeling like being a bit of a fuss pot this morning.”

I see her spark glow a little brighter, her face more relaxed, a smidge more joy in her eyes, “That’s alright, you be a fuss pot.”

She speaks with a faint but recognisable Irish lilt. It is musical as only a human instrument can emit.

I laugh unexpectedly. I know that I am feeling that tiny bit better too, “Thanks for indulging me. I need that.”

At the table, for some reason, I think of my happy daze in Amsterdam when I was twenty. Maybe because I am in a foreign coffee shop. In the clarity of this morning, I have smoke on my mind. I can feel it in my mouth, drawn down into my lungs, filling me in a long rich dirty cinnamon sigh. And then, the rush as the nicotine hits the bloodstream. A rolling anticipation in my mouth. But, this is no time to restart. Thinking about it will suffice. Perversely, it does give me a mild hit. What did Schopenhaeur say about free will? You can choose whatever you desire, but your desires choose you. But, you can control it. You can negotiate your desires. Somewhat.

Seb observes me eat.

“You seem to have an anthropological interest in my feeding ritual?”

“Yes”

“Why?”

“You eat one thing on your plate at a time. You enjoy the full richness and taste of that singular item. Eating with intentionality. Your simple meal is a ceremony, a concert. You don’t watch something while you eat. You eat with your eyes and your mouth. You put down your utensils every few bites and think about the flavours as you eat them. This may seem theatrical and dramatic, this slowing down, but your treating your meal as a performance, is a great way to stay centred, peaceful and present.”

“Did I manage all that? On a gourmet breakfast of brioche, fruit and espresso? Or, the creative writer in you is beginning to imagine stories for me?”

His laugh, the sound of wind chimes.

Seb perceives, “You look happy. You look the sum of all your joys. It is said that the highest and purest happiness is happiness for its own sake, not attributed to anything in particular.”

Sceptically, “Hmm… Mr Philosophy major, was it Jeremy Bentham who had a math formula to compute happiness in his Utilitarianism?”

Seb a little annoyed, dismissively, “If one has to compute and maximise happiness, one doesn’t know what is happiness. This is so Anglo.”

I quip, “And so we are.”

Seb can’t help but flash a wry smile that only the English have perfected. I see that he is expecting a laugh so I quickly supply one.

This is what I love about Seb. The rippling jock swim torpedo with a killer instinct in the water annihilating all competition in his wake. And yet, a sensitive humanist attuned to the fluff of art, lit, music and philosophy. I have since learned that he can cite Marcus Aurelius, refute Nietzsche, demolish Sartre, and burn rubber hot-rodding Saturday nights through the town with his mates.

Seb makes me feel better about humanity’s prospects in the furnace face of today’s polarised political and social fractures.

I snap out of my flight, “Yes, I’m in a happy haze this morning.”

The café has a gentrified, but not sterilised, homey feel. Mercifully spared of plasticky kitschy hip.

One breadth end of its rectangular layout is the barista’s stomping ground. The other end is a massive glass window that looks into the depth of a swimming pool.

One length side of the rectangular layout overlooks the cliff edge, dropping to the moor of ocean. The other side is a wall adorned with underwater marine themed ornaments and artifacts, primarily diving.

We enjoy the view. Cliff, ocean, sky and cloud stitched purposefully together to assemble this vision, for this moment, for our admiration.

You can be made small by a doorman in a posh hotel, by heroes of great achievement, or by the Sahara Desert. The choice is yours to choose the most satisfying way to be diminished. My choice of diminution is this assembly of wonder before me.

I feel half of me is ocean. The other, sky. I hear the ocean waves of time, hinting at a larger outer vastness. I hear sounds within sounds.

Infinity is not a concept. Not physics. Not math. It is an uncalculated emotion. Then, it got mathematicized into a symbol.

I think of all that life can be.

Seb perceptively, “Penny for your thoughts. What are you mulling?”

“That we are the mere playthings of the forces that laid out the oceans, and chiseled the mountains. Only the surface of the ocean is available for human observation and interpretation, while its depths conceal unknown and unknowable truths.”

“I think that you’re the ocean. You can dive that depth to uncover a little more of yourself.”

I gaze wistfully at the beckoning ocean, “Maybe I will.”

“You were a kickass corporate warrior. And yet, the things you say, you’re quite a philosopher.”

I contemplate, and look wise. Philosophically, “No, I’m not a philosopher.”

I add, “Though I did humour Philosophy and Lit as minors. I sold myself to the Devil. I offered myself prostate at the altar of Science, and never looked up since.”

“I’d like to know. How do you make sense of the tension between Science and the Arts?”

“The artist in me observes. The scientist in me orders these observations into patterns. The writer in me takes notes. The scientist shakes her head in despair, tells the artist she is a hopeless dreamer. But, they make some kind of peace. And so, I am placid.”

“In your career, how did you resolve matters when you were conflicted between head and heart?”

“It’s all in the sequence. Apply head first, then, overlay heart. Never the reverse. That way, you’re always on terra firma. It’s alright if you swing the heart way, because you made an informed decision. Ultimately, the right decision is the decision you’re at peace with. At peace at the time you take the decision. More importantly, at peace with the eventual outcome, whether it pans out positive or negative.”

I study Seb. Head first. Then heart. Not his. Mine.

He is studying me too. Did he see the furrow on my forehead? He knows. That I don’t know.

He has touched a place in my heart deeper than I thought he is capable of reaching. Or, have I fallen into lust, mistaking its lighter tones for something else?

***

In our conversations, we have discovered that we both love swimming, watersports, all things water. We love the sea. To look at. To immerse in. To listen to. To smell. The scent of seawater on our skin in the sunshine.

“Soph, how did you learn to swim?”

“We lived on a farm. Miles from nowhere. No swimming pool. No swim coach. But, we had plenty ponds and rivers. I learned swimming on my own, from a book borrowed from the village library.”

“You did what?”

“Yes. It can be done.”

“I believe you.”

“How do you know?”

Seb pensively, “You’re a noticer. The photos you showed me of your study in your home. I see your shelves lined with shells, bird feathers, pebbles, eggshells. The skeleton of something that might be a bat. They were just bits that were lying on the ground that anyone else would step over or on. Flowers growing tiny and low to the ground. But, you saw beauty in them. So, I can imagine you poring over the swim instruction book pictures by the waterhole, and then, making them come alive.”

“But, that ain’t the whole story. My family moved to Hawaii. Growing up there, slicing through turquoise waves is a birthright, as easy as stepping out the front door. Pleasures that cost nothing, belonged to no one, and were accessible to all. I perfected my swimming those years there. Hawaii is an exaggerated version of paradises everywhere else.”

***

I relish such pensive moments with Seb. We enjoy the comfortable silences between us. The resting place of the mind is the heart. The only place the mind will ever find peace is inside the silence of the heart. And that is where we are.

A look of astonishment on Seb.

“What’s up? You look like you’ve just seen a ghost?”

Seb moves to the massive glass window that looks into the swimming pool. I join him.

A woman is finning underwater. Other than her face mask and fins, she is naked. Her identity is obscured by her mask.

She fins gracefully, vertically down to the bottom of the pool, arcs dramatically, then fins up vertically again. In the next cycle, she spirals down to the bottom like a power drill, arcs, porpoises obliquely up.

Little do I know that the whole giddy swirl of everything that is to come begins this moment.

Her tan skin is stretched smooth and tight, like filled sails, over her chest. But, when her body tension falls away, she actually has sporty, fun-looking rococo breasts. Rather cute. Her pelvic bones stretch clear of her skin.

Her pubes, bushy, revealing peek fleeting glimpses of her femininity as she tunnels the water.

I smirk, “Enjoying the show?”

“What a glorious body of water. She is very talented. So at one in and with the element.”

I realise that it is not Seb’s hormones talking, but Seb the swimmer, the watery aficionado, “Yes, indeed. It’s a wonder that we’re viewing this in a public café open to families and children.”

“They sure have a different attitude to nudity, don’t they? Maybe they celebrate this as art?”

“I’m really piqued by this. Are we viewing a life-like recorded free dive on a high-definition TV screen? Is this a show? Is the diver actually an underwater robot diving to a software algorithm?”

“Why don’t we ask the barista?”

The diver is executing loops now, close to the viewing window, as if performing for us, or maybe for Seb. I see Seb following her every movement in earnest, taking in the detail. I wait for this display to end.

***

We walk over to the barista.

“Excuse us. Can you please tell us a bit about the freediving?”

“Sure! The proprietor of this café, Rick, owns this building. Back-to-back to this café is an indoor swimming pool. Well, more like a tank. Rick runs a freediving school, as well as some other freediving activities.”

“So the diver we saw through that window is a student?”

“No. She purchased one of Rick’s freediving video service packages to record her dive as a memento. The pool is equipped with underwater cameras at various locations to capture the dive from multiple perspective angles. Rick can tell you more. His office is through that blue door over there, up the stairs.”

“Many thanks!”

***

Chapter 6

Rick’s

Knock, knock.

A good-looking tanned surfie dude with an insouciant winning smile gazes up with a back flick of ponytail, “Of all the dives, in all the towns, in all the world, you walk into mine. Hello! I’m Rick. What can I do you for?”

I smile. Rick is the type who can disarm an overly accessorised terrorist into expired K-Y jelly in a sec. He has the olive Mediterranean skin that seems to retain the glow of the sun long after it has set. He appears well-travelled, a sublime worldliness, carrying with him a trace of all the lands he has crossed. The type who sees the world as a small and easily managed place.

Rick ascertains us politely. A May-December pair is what he must be thinking. But, he betrays no leak of emotion.

“I’m Soph. This is Seb. We were at your café. We saw the free diver. We are watersports enthusiasts. Can you tell us about your freediving services?”

“I run freediving classes. Some of the graduates of my class, as well as other experienced freedivers, want a video record of their freediving as a memento. I offer a freediving video service.”

Rick leads us to the poolside. It is illuminated brilliantly by a skylight roof construction, affording it a stark post-industrial glass, steel and water outdoor aura.

Continuing, “I’ve high-resolution underwater videocams installed at various points of the pool, to capture different perspective angles.”

Rick points out the videocam locations.

“I’ve installed a grid of transparent cables vertically, horizontally and obliquely in the pool. The freediver may follow these cables by feel of hand, to swim in a particular pattern, for example, vertically up or down, horizontally, and so on. The cables are thin and transparent, invisible to the videocam. It will not be apparent that the diver is following any cable guide.”

Continuing, “Most freedivers dive with fin and mask. A small number of experienced ones dive without any equipment, so that they look completely natural in the video. Like a human fish.”

Seb curiously, “What was the arrangement for the freediver we saw in the café?”

Rick appears to process the question. He studies me, and then Seb.

“Some divers prefer something more memorable. Like, dive nude. Or, a couple dive. Maybe, a couple nude dive. Or, a couple nude dive with a bit of intimacy. It’s really up to the customer.”

“Do your customers feel awkward about their nudity?”

“The bold ones dive without the mask. Others enjoy the anonymity the mask provides, which allows them to express themselves freely without worry of privacy.”

“What about the viewing window at the café?”

“I’ve a control button to open or close the window. It’s up to the diver’s preference. Some divers who dive nude with the mask, like the diver you saw, enjoying performing for an audience. Seen and yet anonymity preserved.”

Rick leads us back to his office. He points to his computer.

“Once the video shoot is completed, I video edit the footage from the different videocams into a single video. I can optionally overlay a background underwater scene as if the diver is in a coral garden, shipwreck, deep trench. Or whatever. I’ve a suite of underwater scenes for the customer to choose.”

Continuing, “Finally, I add in the music.”

I am impressed, “Wow! Fantastic innovation!”

“Well, I was an underwater cinematographer for many years in Splash Studios before I opened this business. Labour of love.”

Rick ascertains us again.

Addressing me, “Well, what do you and your… partner have in mind?”

I am about to tell Rick that Seb is not who he thinks he is. For some inexplicable reason, I feel an itch to say that Seb is my son. That will really raise the ante to murky heights. But, that wouldn’t be fair to Seb.

I bite my lip. I look at Seb. There follows one of those pauses where people tacitly agree on something without really knowing what they are going into.

Turning back to Rick, I see a knowing smile. He must have heard all the things I did not say. Curiously, I get a twitch from all this circle game of innocent intrigue.

I do not know what came over me just now, “Cool! I’m interested in your freediving video shoot service.”

Seb’s jaw drops precipitously.

Rick passes a form to me, “Here, fill up this self-explanatory service order form on your freedive and video shoot preferences. My service prices, including promos, are behind the form.”

Rick ascertains Seb and me briefly, “I’ve to attend to an admin matter now. Take your time to discuss this with your… partner. Would you like to do that at the café? Complimentary coffee for freediving customers. When you’re ready, let the barista know. She’ll message me.”

“Cool!”

We make our way back to the café. I sense a series of tensions and relaxations between Seb and I, building a sense of anticipation, which is both enthralling and disturbing all at once, to resolve.

We order our coffees, sit down, facing the ocean.

I surprise myself. I shock Seb. I pass the form to him.

Matter-of-factly, “Seb, help me with this admin mumbo.”

Now, why did I do this? Is it because I want to dive in full mermaid glory, and transfer the moral burden to Seb? That it is a strapping young lad whom I have just met who wants me to dive nude? Am I being fair to Seb?”

I have to help Seb, to help myself, “Look Seb, we’re a thousand miles from home. Just you and me. Blissful anonymity. Let’s just let ourselves out. Swing out of bounce a little. Hang our hair down. Enjoy the place and experience.”

I wink. Seb grins sheepishly.

Continuing, “You fill out the form however you please. We don’t need to discuss. I won’t look at the form. After our coffee, you just hand the form to Rick. I love surprises.”

Seb looks at the ocean for inspiration. He appears to breathe the ocean wind air of the moment. He appears pensive, then smiles to himself. I think he found it.

He fills the form like a pleased student who knows all the answers in the final exams paper. Ticks the boxes methodically. And then appears to write a narrative.

Looking at Seb, I get a little worried. What has he committed me to? But, it is a delicious anxiety.

***

Chapter 7

Prep

Seb passes the form to Rick. A small look of surprise creeps on his face. Maybe Rick didn’t expect the one wearing the pants to be the one wearing the pants.

Rick processes the form. He looks a little astounded. But, he says nothing.

Rick nods, “When do you wish to start?”

I reply a little too eagerly, “Now”

“Cool! I’ll lock the shop reception entrance with a “Video Shoot In Progress, Come Back Later” sign so that there are no interruptions. While I do that, can you go to the changing room and prep yourselves.”

I wonder aloud “Yourselves?”

Rick is a little amused that I am asking this, “Yes, you and your partner.”

Continuing, “Choose the masks and fins that best suit you in design, colour and size. When you’re fitted up, put on the bath robes. We meet poolside.”

Finally, Rick concludes in an uncharacteristically sheepish tone, “And, there is a trimmer and shaving kit in the changing room in case you need it.”

I look at Seb with arched eyebrows. He shrugs nonchalantly.

Once in the room, I look quizzically at Seb, “What next… partner?”

Apprehensively, “I signed us up for the nude dive. We’ll wear masks and fins. As Rick said, the masks give us the anonymity so that we can express ourselves freely.”

“Oh?”

“The dive is in two parts. You do a solo in the first part. We then have a breather. I then join you in the second part, a so-called couple dive. The result will be that we’ve three videos. Your solo video. Our couple video. And a combination of the two by artful video editing, with you starting solo, and me seamlessly inserting into the video at the appropriate time.”

“Hmmm… You seem to have gotten all this figured out to a T.”

“I mess around alot with video editing for my Youtube channel.”

“I hope you’re not planning on premiering me on Youtube?”

“That’s an idea!”

“Don’t even think about it!”

“Just kidding.”

“Hmmm…”

“Are you OK, Soph?”

“It’s a wee offroad and daring. But, I quite like the poetry of the idea.”

I pause.

Seriously, “No other person apart from my husband has seen me naked. And he had to marry me for this exorbitant privilege. Now, in one fell swoop, you and a total stranger will be seeing me naked. And I will be seeing you naked.”

Seb assures, “Topside, we’ll be in our bath robes. I will see you only in the filmy translucent pool water, in an artful rendition. Rick will not be seeing you in the flesh, but only on video footage, and again, in an artful rendition.”

“Hmmm… Art purifies and justifies everything, doesn’t it?”

We go about the business of picking out the masks and fins.

Yes, looking at the mirror, the mask, like an opera mask, does obscure my identity. For some inexplicable reason, even though I am no stranger to Seb now, it emboldens me. I leave the mask on.

I am kind of in another realm. A bit uncanny. What has come over me? I am not even in the water yet.

The changing room is not big. It has no compartments. I make an exaggerated movement of turning away from Seb. I peel off my blouse and skirt. Down to my half-cup bra and high-cut thong panty.

I adore the disproportionately huge power fins. I want to be compellingly powerful. And yet, I desire to be a fairytale mermaid. I feel like the competitive racer I was in my teens, power scrunched up in my sinews. I want the fins to be an extension of me. Here, I am a little conflicted. Should I choose the fin colour that contrasts starkly with my skin complexion? Or, a nude colour to match my complexion? As if I grew the fins. I will poll Seb for his opinion.

I turn around. Seb has picked out his mask and fins. But, I’m surprised his clothes are still on. What has he been doing? Maybe he is busy with something? He has an expectant demeanor. Has he been checking me out?

“Seb, I need your opinion.”

I see a gleam in his eyes. I follow his gaze. It is my translucent thatch of lawn. And a little wayward spill at the sides. My first instinct is to place my palm over my thong. But, my right hand is holding the yellow fin, and my left, the nude colour one.

“I’m conflicted. The sharp contrast of the loud yellow? Or, the subtle seamless nude colour? Contrast versus harmony?”

“Put on the nude.”

I chuckle at the seemingly contradictory statement.

“Can you help me put on so that I don’t fall over. These fins are huge!”

Seb kneels before me. His face inches away. A twitch on his nose. I think he smells the beginnings of my arousal. I can’t help it.

I hold Seb’s shoulder to balance myself. I leverage myself on his shoulder as I lift my right foot. He slips the fin on. For a few seconds, my mound is inches from his face. Then, as I pivot my torso for the left fin, I inadvertently graze my mound against his cheek.

“Sorry, Seb!”

Seb runs his hand down the curve of my calf, as if priming my limb to slip the fin on.

Seb steps away, but not before ogling me there one last time. As he looks up, his eyes lock mine. A fleeting bonding of sorts, although I don’t know of what precisely.

Pointing to my panty thong, “Oh Seb, sorry, I’ve to trouble you one more time! I should have gotten rid of this before the fins.”

I turn around, my back to Seb, in a calibrated act of modesty.

“Seb, can you?”

I sense Seb kneel before my buttocks. I feel his hands on my hips. He hooks his fingers on my thong panty, pauses, then pulls it down, as I hold his shoulder to balance myself. I leverage myself on his shoulder as he slides down my panty. I writhe a little to help Seb, although I am not really sure if it helps. My bare derrière inches from his face. As I lift my left foot for Seb to remove my panty, my left orb grazes his cheek.

I turn the other cheek. I lift my right foot for Seb to remove my panty. I feel a delicate brush of skin again.

“Seb, help me undo my bra strap. Then, pass me the bath robe.”

As he unfastens the strap, I hold up my bra cups so that it will not fall off. Seb wraps the bath robe from behind. I let the bra drop, and insert my arms into the arm holes.

As I kneel to pick up my bra, I realise that I forgot to secure my bath robe. As I rise, I see an inspired Seb.

We have a bonding moment, although I don’t know of what precisely. It is as if I have admitted him to my secret club, with its own code word and special sign, and degrees of initiation. But, it is a revolving membership that lasts a fleeting instant. But, like a newborn baby’s smile, it doesn’t have to last long to be meaningful forever.

Seb tries on his mask and fins. He has picked the same designs and colours as mine, so that there is a uniformity and symmetry between us in the couple dive. Satisfied with the fit, he takes them off, as the couple dive won’t be on until after my solo dive.

Seb turns around. He strips and dons his bath robe. He does have sweet buns. I dare say they will complement mine nicely in the couple dive.

***

Chapter 8

Hirsute

I am eager. “All set to meet Rick poolside?”

Sheepishly, “Errr… Just a minor detail. Do you need to use Rick’s trimming kit? I’m mown. I don’t need to.”

“Oh?”

“Yes…”

I mull a few seconds about the implications of this, “You’ve seen a little of me in my thong panty. What do you think?”

“This is different from the usual hirsute maintenance for a thong where there’re clear demarcation perimeters. So, I can’t really tell.”

“You’ve video shoot experience. You can visualise the final product imagery. So, tell me, what exactly are we striving for?”

Seb ponders, “A rendition that heightens the artistic sensuality. But, not so prominent as to overwhelm your delicate femininity. Yet, enough presence to obscure your feminine bits when you’re finning vigorously.”

“OK, this sounds sensible.”

Seb continuing, “And your bush should not be visible from your butt cheeks, like tufts peeking out, when you fin.”

“I agree. I’ll probably never have the opportunity do such a video shoot again. And I’m in my fifties now. I can’t imagine doing this again, even if the opportunity arises, when I’m older, when I’m all awry.”

“You’re lovely and sexy. You’re being dramatic. You’ll look just as appealing when you’re in your sixties. Trust me on this one. A little fuller maybe, but that will add to your allure.”

“Oh?”

“Yes”

“You seem very sure.”

Seb turning to face me, his bath robe falling open a little.

An itch emanates from my loins. I suddenly have a longing to range, somewhere wild and vast.

“Seb, you’ll be seeing me later anyway, in the pool, and on video footage. I do want the video shoot to turn out well. Can you help me with this?”

“Are you sure about this?”

I drop my bath robe in tacit affirmation. I am now naked in front of a young man I hardly know. Only the second male to see me naked after my husband. I must be quite a sight, a mature fifties woman in native glory, with mask on face, and fins on feet.

The opening view of my nakedness appears to seize Seb with its daring clarity. He takes in everything with a monk’s focus.

I tease, “What do you think of this august woman?”

Seb roves my body. He makes a contemplative stop as his eyes admire my top. I feel a touch of proprietorial pride. And then, he makes another stop.

I urge, “We need to get on with what we’ve to do.”

Seb gets the trimming and shaving kit.

He combs my mangled pubes to work it into some obedient form. I feel him sampling my pubic hair at different parts of my mound. He stands-up my rip curls of pubic strands here and there to ascertain their length. Gentle tugging. His touch sends sparks of sensation showering through me. I feel a liquid ripeness.

He admires my now moist femininity. He parts my petals, lifts my hood as if seeking out hair. Is this really necessary? Can he smell my piquant excitement? He peers into me intimately. This is something so wholly female and defining, so connected to the great cycle of nature. I should be properly ashamed. I have never been so unpeeled, revealed, unfolded.

“Oh!” he sighs silently, with a reverence otherwise reserved for opera or privately held Monets.

He appears encamped at my mons pubis experiencing its subliminal charm. It is as if he moves away, it will not be there again.

Nudging, “Seb, we’ve to move on. Rick is waiting for us.”

“Can you sit down? Part your legs. Drape your hands over your head so that they are out of the way.”

Seb proceeds to gently brush my pubic hair away from the middle of my mound, out to either side so that both my outer, and a peeking hint of my inner lips, are visible.

My vaginal entrance is slightly dilated from the arousal of exposing myself to this young man. My inner lips are quite pink and swollen making them protrude down and outwards. My visible wetness betrays my aroused state. This detail appears not to be lost on Seb. I blush at the thought, even as I get a tingle from it.

Seb proceeds to comb back and trim the dark, curly hair that still covers my lips. As he does this, I start to wiggle.

“I’m ticklish down there. Be careful not to cut off anything that isn’t hair.”

I help by pulling my swollen self out of the way so that he can trim without nicking me.

Seb stands back, as if to admire his effort, and then still not completely happy, proceeds to trim a little more of my outer pubes.

“Soph, I’m done with your front. I want to check out your back. Turn around.”

“Like this?”

“Yes. Can you simulate a finning motion as if you’re in the water.”

Seb is crouched behind me. I simulate the finning motion. This is quite odd. He is observing my arse orbs undulating rhythmically.

“There’s a tiny tuft showing.”

“Oh dear!”

“This maybe a little awkward and intrusive. Stand up, your back to me. Part your legs a little. Bend your torso down low. Clasp your ankles with your hands to lockdown your position.”

I feel a comb run over me. I sense delicate trimming movements. A little ticklish. I imagine the view that Seb is seeing. Have we gone too far? I can feel the units of shame multiplying in me.

Seb pats my butt cheek, “Soph, you’re good!”

I want to thank Seb for subjecting him to this awkward intimacy. But, he looks thankful enough. I put my bath robe back on.

I march backwards to the poolside. This is the way to walk when in fins, to not trip over.

***

Chapter 9

Freediving

Rick explains the system of guide cables in the pool that I will dive by. He describes the possible dive patterns for my solo dive. We agree on a particular dive pattern which is not too complicated, and yet, will look good in the video footage.

My first two dive iterations will be practice runs. The third iteration will be the final one. But, all three iterations will be recorded so that Rick has the flexibility to choose the best footage.

After my solo dive, there will be a breather. Rick will then outline the couple dive details.

“Oh, Soph, before I leave you and Seb here to go to my office where my video control console is, would you like me to close the café viewing window? This is for your solo dive. We can decide again later for the couple dive.”

I look at Seb neutrally, then smile, “Rick, I don’t want you to go through any trouble. What was good for the other free diver earlier is good for me.”

I chuckle, “For once, I will be a spectator sport.”

“Seb, you can stay poolside and help Soph with the bath robe before and after her dive session.”

I make my way to the water edge. In an act of modesty, Seb takes the bath robe from my back as I slip into the water.

I adjust to the water a little. For a minute, I mull over the stark realisation that, here I am, a mature woman, nude before the gleaming eyes of a young man, a total stranger Rick, and assorted whoever looking at the café viewing window. Barely an hour ago, nobody has seen me in my full glory aside from my husband.

I wonder how I will present myself in the water. Will my breasts undulate as I propel through the water? Is my slit visible despite Seb’s best grooming efforts? Will my vigorous finning open and close my slit like breathing fish gills? Will my inners see watery light of day?

I fin to the starting point of the planned dive pattern in the middle of the pool. I can feel the cable guide. I give a thumbs up signal so that Rick may see me through the video cam.

I take a scrutinising look at the depth of pale pastel blue. Ploosh! I duck dive, breaking the frothing barrier as the burbling of water covers my ears. I am segued into another world. A world I am so familiar with, and yet, not of my own. I enter it by grace of invitation, and I can only sojourn so long.

I fin vertically down as guided by my touch sense of the tendril of cable. There is a second graceful young woman inside me bursting to get out. I am a teen competitive swimmer all over again, except that I am older and more powerful now with my fins. This is so liberating. I am a free spirit mermaid. I fin vigorously. I can feel the power pulse through me. My arse orbs are marching rhythmically, clenching, relaxing, clenching, relaxing, to the silky flow of water. I feel the caress of water on my contours. This is the first iteration of my solo dive, but already, I feel I have been doing this all my life.

The water is cold. I can feel it wrap around my face. Peering through my crystal clear mask as the radiance of the skylight permeates the pool floor, I can see underwater as clear as the morning sky. A couple of delicate strokes and my fins propel me toward the bottom. The water is a large living structure. Stark aesthetic scenery.

I fin past the café viewing window. Is that a mother and her son looking at me? They are about Seb’s and my age. They must know that I am a mum from my mature form. What must they be thinking?

I arc my torso, execute a rip curl into cartwheel. I fin horizontally for a distance, then porpoise obliquely to the far top corner of the pool. I do not feel naked. I am clothed by water.

I fin past the café viewing window again. The son is now behind the mum, pressed against her.

I ascend with a dolphin motion toward the rippling surface. I watch the sunbeam from the skylight amuse itself on the water. I have never seen light cast so clean and pure. I want to cry with joy. But, one cannot cry underwater.

I leave my body. The pool. The planet. I step through time. Enter a void. Inside the void now. But, I am also the void. I am looking at the void. All at the same time. Is this the high water mark of transcendence in as far as humans can ascend?

Strangely, prose from Charles Kingsley’s “Water Babies” flow to mind from a subconscious crevice: “The most wonderful and the strongest things in the world, you know, are just the things which no one can see.”

And just when I remember that the protagonist drowned, I break the surface and sucked the sweetest air ever.

***

Chapter 10

Couple

I warp all sense of spacetime. That space is water, and the water is compressing time out of dimension.

Seb the gentleman wraps me in the bath robe as I emerge sprightly from the pool.

Rick outlines the dive plan for the couple dive.

“The concept is to repeat the solo dive, but now as a couple. That way, there is continuity and a symmetry across the solo and couple dives. When the two footages are grafted together in the video editing, the footages will appear seamlessly unified.”

He adds, “Different couples have different ideas on how they wish to render themselves as an artistic dive unit.”

I ask, “Can you give us some ideas based on your past customers’ preferences.”

“Some do it with ballroom dancing-like body engagement. Others like a more intimate rendition, bodies melded, surging through the water as one.”

Rick pauses.

“I find that the most inventive couples have no particular design plan. They just do what comes naturally with jazz-like invention. The video footages for those tend to pan out well because they capture, in essence, the natural impulses and expressions of the couple. Most couples who choose this laissez faire option feel comfortable in water. Divers, swimmers, watersports fanatics.”

I wink at Seb, “We know who we are, don’t we?”

“Soph, I’ve seen you move in the water. A water babe. I’m sure ditto for Seb. I’ll leave you both to it. Give me a thumbs up signal when you’re ready to rock and roll.”

Rick adds, “Oh, I almost forgot. One last admin detail. How do you want the café viewing window?”

Seb casts an oblique glance at me, then smiles, “As it is is fine.”

Rick smiles an internal smile and saunters back to his room.

“Seb, let’s just go with the flow.”

Seb appears a little lost in his own interior. I can almost hear his noisy thoughts.

***

First dive iteration.

In an act of socially conditioned modesty, Seb turns away as I drop my bath robe to enter the pool. Seb then drops his, and joins me in the filmy water.

Seb flashes Rick the thumbs up signal.

We swim to the starting point of our dive path, in the middle of the pool. I detect an unease in Seb. I decide to take the lead as I have experience from the solo dive.

“Seb, we’ll just meld our bodies as one, front-to-front, feel the guide cable, and fin together. We’ve 3 dive iterations to perfect this, so we’ll take the first one as a familiarisation practice run.”

Seb nods, somewhat relieved that we have agreed on a way forward.

We begin our descent. My right hand is on the guide cable. Seb’s right hand is over mine. This becomes a sort of unified pivot point for us.

We fin. Seb’s torso awkwardly bumps mine every other fin stroke. My nipples poke him repeatedly like one testing a pudding. My pliant breasts compress then release against his chest repeatedly.

After awhile, we get into our groove of flow. We meld comfortably. He brings his mid-body into an anxious, tense alliance with mine.

I feel Seb’s mounting excitement. It is pressing urgently against my belly, below my navel. As we fin more vigorously, his penis drifts. He is lodged in the juncture below my mound and my upper thighs. I instinctively tighten my thighs, thus slowing down my finning a little. It sends a shower of shudders through me in many directions. I muse. This is, perversely, a wet dry hump.

We reach the bottom of the pool. We arc our torsos in harmony and in unison, execute a rip curl into a cartwheel. I feel the soft nudge, just short of dig, of a swollen helmet head. Its underside ridge slides along the edge of my petals, one way, then the other, in synchrony with our arcing movement. Like a train on rails, going one way, then the other, in confused commute.

Seb’s finning goes a little awry for a time. But he gets back in groove after a bit of self-calibration.

What might Seb be thinking right now? Can Rick see all this? What will this video scene look like? And the Big Question! Have we crossed a line?

We fin horizontally for a distance, then porpoise obliquely to the far top corner of the pool. We break the surface with dramatic gasps.

Oh! This is the sweetest air I have ever drawn. And I share it with Seb.

A breather. I take off my mask, and then Seb’s. I lean in to kiss Seb on his forehead. I feel a poke at my mound. Seb recoils.

“It’s OK. The exhilaration of the dive. Enjoy it as part of the experience.”

I kiss Seb again, and then give him a long hug. He feels good. As I do. I relish the moment. I feel a rising forbidden attraction to this young man. Perhaps it is yet another one of the great trials of the human experiment.

Seb nervously, “We’re in the pool. The video cams. Can Rick see us?”

“He sees us as lovers.”

“Oh!”

“If you’re worried that Rick can see your boner, here, I will obscure you.”

I nudge Seb to the corner of the pool, then draw closer to him. Seb has drawn level to my navel now. Quite a male feat considering that the water is clammy cold, even on this summer day.

“Seb, in the next dive iteration, I want my top to look stand out good. Can you help?”

I bring Seb’s hand to me.

“Yessss!”

***

Second dive iteration.

From the get-go, I clamp Seb’s arousal below my mound in an uncompromising vice grip. This is the centre from which our dive revolves.

We fin more slowly this way, but our bodies are seamlessly unified. I can just see it, it will look good in the video optics. Two heavenly bodies as one tunneling the watery blue.

It is increasingly easier to grip Seb as our dive progresses, as his excitement is mounting. The traction is quite pleasurable. It must be more so for Seb because as I fin, my hold on him tightens, loosens, tightens, loosens. Is he getting a little harder and bigger with each fin cycle? My thighs seem to think so.

***

Third dive iteration.

We are in a bit of a state from the exhilaration of the first two dive iterations.

We begin the dive in earnest. Seb is in high arousal. As we arc at the bottom of the pool, I feel Seb slipping away. I instinctively tighten my grip. Maybe it is the angle of it?

I feel him in me. I let this sink into me for a moment as I take this all in. This young man is making carnal acquaintance with me.

Is this an accident? Is Seb even aware of what is happening? Have we crossed a line? Does this amount to copulation? Have I indulged in adultery? Can Rick see this?

Seb’s helmet head rim nicks my lip in its hasty retreat. The contact sears my delicate feminine edges.

The moment passed. Even though it didn’t happen.

I wrestle my emotions to the ground. Curiously, my mind ranges back to the romance novels I devoured in my teens. I see in my mind’s eye Seb and I running hand-in-hand through golden meadows at twilight.

They like to say in the novels, “I’ve taken a lover.”

Have I? I am teeming with need. I don’t want to be ushered back to my own small borders, my own mortal confines. I can’t imagine how I had crammed myself into a puny box of identity when I could experience infinitude instead.

We surface rapturously. As I brush my last strand of hair from my eyes, Seb is in my face. He is so nice. Exactly the kind of lover to frolic in the water with, like they do in classic romance movies.

I experience an inexplicable and random sense of complete bliss, unrelated to anything that is happening in the world. Swollen with wonder. Overflowing with bliss. Everything, for no good reason whatsoever, is perfect.

***

“Soph, Seb, It has been my pleasure shooting you. You’re the most competent freediving customers I ever had in my professional life. Naturals. In your element.”

“Rick, thank you. Water people dealing with water people. That’s what we are. Such a rare pleasure.”

“I’ll email the 3 edited videos to you in 3 days time. Enjoy the rest of your vacation here.”

I look at Rick, likely for the last time. He embodies that additive masculine bit of devilish monstrosity in his mien. Humour sharp and sly. A look that knows things, and a laugh that doesn’t give a damn. This profile appeals to women who are longing for something more, but don’t know it. Beasts with brains.

He will be video editing my most private charms shortly. This thought sends a twitch, just short of an itch, to my loins. But, I flatter myself. He probably video edits miles of enthralling footages in his work, and I’m just another cloud of pixels.

***

I feel a little sad that the dive is, all too soon, over. Maybe Rick will contact us later that the video footage is a washout, he forgot to hit the record button, and has to reshoot?

Oftentimes, the journey is the destination. And the destination is not the end-point. The destination is the point of no return, because the rest of it is incidental.

I don’t know if Seb feels the same.

These thoughts… They play gentle on my mind.

***

Chapter 11

Fire

Seb and I go down the valley to the cove. We have a few hours before the cove disappears into the tide.

The protrusion of cliff towers over the cove. A massive erection. We are at the top of the cliff. An open abyss staring down the sea. An austere drop.

For some inexplicable reason, I feel tempted to step off the edge.

I sing to Seb, “Stand by me.”

My right hand is entwined in Seb’s. I am right-footed. I raise my left foot and stop short of stepping off the edge.

I think of Kierkegaard’s “fear of falling”. Anxiety, dread and angst are unfocused fear. When the person looks over the edge, she experiences a focused fear of falling. But at the same time, she feels a terrifying impulse to throw herself intentionally off the edge. That experience is anxiety or dread because of her complete freedom to choose to either throw herself off, or to stay put. The mere fact that she has the possibility and freedom to do something, even the most terrifying of possibilities, triggers immense feelings of dread. The dizziness of freedom.

I feel compelled to peer down the edge just once more. I want my fear to be whole, to be all of it.

I think back to the blindfold game I once played with my neighbour on his treehouse, at the bottom of his garden. I was ten, and he, twelve. All the while, I was fearful of falling off the treehouse. And yet, I did not wish the game to end. And when at last I thought I fell, I did not. And here I am now, on a cliff top, only higher and older.

Seb holds my hand as we wind down the dizzy cliff path to the beach. My feet, in my sneakers, count their way down the hewn steps. He doesn’t let go when we land on the sand. I lean on him a little. My hair brushes his face.

The dusk sky is letting the early night in. A blazing sky that could have been rented from Universal Pictures for our pleasure. And then, we enter a twilight zone.

***

We sit by the sea. I can hear small lapping sounds beside me, as if a kindly sea monster is taking discreet sips of water from a large goblet.

Seb tends a bonfire of driftwood, meticulously assembled into a pyramid form. It is getting chilly.

I watch the dance of flames intently.

I squeeze Seb’s hand, “We drifted into uncharted terrain today, didn’t we? Not where two people who have just known each other would normally traipse.”

Seb pensively, “We did.”

I wonder aloud, “Tell me, when you see the shapes that the bonfire makes, do you feel kinda strange?”

“How so?”

“I don’t know, Seb. It’s like all of a sudden, I get very clear about things. Watching the fire now, I get this deep, quiet kind of feeling.”

Seb the budding creative writer, “You know, a fire can be any shape it wants to be. It is free. So, it can look like anything at all depending on what is inside you. If you get this deep, quiet kind of feeling when you look at a fire, that is because it is showing you the deep, quiet kind of feeling you have inside yourself. You know what I mean?”

His words are like night air.

“I guess so…”

“But, it doesn’t happen with just any fire. It won’t happen with a gas stove, or a cigarette lighter fire. It won’t even happen with an ordinary bonfire. For a fire to be free, you’ve to make it in the right kind of place. Which isn’t easy.”

His voice comes out in the cool smooth tones of a late-night jazz radio DJ.

“But, you can do it?”

“Sometimes I can, sometimes I can’t. Most of the time, I can. If I really put my mind to it. Freedom is a bonfire. Try toasting marshmallows on a gas stove. And then on a bonfire. There is something going on. In you.”

“And this bonfire, Seb?”

“There are degrees of fire. Gas stove fire. Placid beauty in symmetry. Order and discipline. This fire is functional, purposeful, useful. Boils your water. Cooks your food. Predictably well-behaved too. Best of all, you get to control it. Cut the fuel, and you conveniently snuff it out.”

Seb pauses.

“At the other end of the firelight latitude, there are houses on fire, forest fires. Wild, combustive, raging, ranging firestorms. Poetry gone rogue.”

Seb tosses a twig into the bonfire. It crackles.

“And then, there is the bonfire at the campsite, or by the beach. You are moved by kindling captivation in watching its hissing, dancing flames. It warms you even on a balmy night. That you do not experience from a gas stove fire. And when you douse the bonfire at the first light of dawn, its embers have a lingering stubborn persistence that defy the new light of day.”

“Penny for your thoughts, Soph. What’re you thinking?”

“Fire”

“Tell me…”

“I was on a business trip in an authoritarian country. One night, I went for a walk near my hotel. There were some people, men and women, burning books in the park. A scene right out of a political thriller movie. Chilling, and yet cheesy. They must’ve poured gasoline, because the flames shot high. They began dumping books and magazines, from boxes. Not too many at a time. Some of them were chanting. Onlookers gathered. Their faces were happy. Ecstatic almost. Fire can do that. A large woman, with a soot smear down her cheek, turned to me and asked, “You want to throw one on, dear?” Like throwing a steak onto a barbecue. She didn’t wait for me to answer. She thrust a magazine into my hands. It had a pretty woman on it, naked, hanging from the ceiling by a chain wound around her hands. I threw the magazine into the flames. It flapped open in the wind of its burning. I saw big flakes of paper came loose, sailed into the air, on fire, parts of women’s naked bodies, turning to black ash, in the air before my eyes.”

“How did you feel?”

“An absurd happiness. Ecstatic almost. For the briefest moment, I shared their passion, but not their cause. Fire can do that.”

***

We talk no more, enjoying the hush that is just short of silence. The quality of a conversation is in its comfortable quietude. Quiet is not peace. But, this is.

***

Dusk is dimming. Assuming if you just rise from a fairy tale long deep slumber, there is this moment in time when it is impossible to tell if it is dusk or dawn. And then, you know.

A downpouring of darkness. Nothing it seems, can resist the flood of darkness. It creeps past the clouds, over the far horizon, through the valley, seeps through keyholes and crevices, and devours entire landscapes.

Why is it that night falls, instead of rising like the dawn? Yet, if you look east at sunset, which I am doing now, you can see night rising, not falling. Darkness lifting into the sky, up from the horizon, like a black sun. Like smoke from an unseen line of fire just below the horizon.

The night has come. The way is dark. The moon is the only light we see.

But, is it the moon, or a searchlight trying to pick Seb and me from the dark? No. It is the moon. So bright, it paints out the stars with its silver-hued wash.

A moonsong is in order here. Debussy, one of the greatest composers who ever died.

I lift my chin and hum a hushed Clair de Lune to the moon as we make our way back. Light of the moon. Moonlight. Light and airy. Yet mysterious. Darker, more complex chords move underneath the basic melody. Sad, yet also triumphant. Soothing and calming. But, can also be turbulent and emotional. A tune that can dance me away.

Some songs, you have to close your eyes, to listen. I hum Clair de Lune with my eyes closed, as I listen to myself. I link my arm to Seb’s, for him to lead me. I steal a peek at him just to be sure his eyes are open. I don’t want us to fall off the cliff path. But, oh, what a beautiful place and moment to die!

The most compelling art captures the most accurate ambivalence.

Wife, woman, human. And mother.

***

It has been a long day’s journey into night. We go to bed. The night is my time out. But, where do I go?

I reach over and pull open the bedside table’s Bible drawer. I draw out an erotic novella, “Take Back The Night”.

***

I can’t sleep. I want to be held and told my name.

I fold back the sheet, get carefully up, on silent bare feet, pad to the window like a child, to see the moon. I am not disappointed. A wishing moon. I let the pupils of my eyes dilate, like a cat’s, or owl’s.

The moon is now full of itself. It is enormous. A comforting vision. Some greater force is watching over me, and stoically approving.

Time passes.

Am I asleep now? I can never really be sure if what I think is sleep is actually sleep. Sometimes, it is just another level of consciousness.

***

Chapter 12

Nocturne

For the longest time, caves were the abodes. Humans are made for the light of a cave. And thus, for twilight.

Twilight is the time we sense best. When light is dim, and the pupil opens. Feeling comes out of the eye like touch. Then you really can feel colour, and experience it.

4am.

Summer twilight.

She ascertains him for a time. She slowly comes toward him, holding herself erect as always. She is barefoot. The floorboards creak faintly as she walks.

Silently she sits down on the edge of the bed. She remains still for a time. Her flowing white silk dress reaches to her knees. There is something carved and still about her face.

She reaches out and touches his head. Fingers groping through his hair.

She stands up again. In the faint light shining through the bay window, she begins to undress, like it is the most natural thing to do. She is in no hurry. But, she doesn’t hesitate either. In a smooth natural motion, she lifts off her dress. It falls to the floor. The soft fabric making no sound.

She has a dreamlike look. Her eyes are open. But it is like she is sleepwalking.

Naked, she crawls into the narrow bed. She wraps her pale arms around him. Her warm breath grazes his neck. Her pubic area pushing up, pressing against his thigh. Electric.

She takes off his t-shirt. Pulls off his boxers.

He is aware, but not awake. After a while, he spoons her. His groin right on top of her orb cheeks. He swivels his hips and massages her bare thigh almost unconsciously. It feels heavenly being connected to her in this way.

He nestles right between the gap in her thighs. He is not fully aware, but it is rubbing her petals.

He continues to stroke her bare thigh, adoring the smooth, muscled contours of the limb. She purrs. She is a new breed of cat. His hand rides up her leg and wraps around her waist to possess her. She presses her bottom into his groin. She feels the hard, erect penis press more firmly against her labia.

She bites her lip to quieten any illicit sounds she may emit in her bliss. He feels like a steel pole between her legs. She imagines what it looks like for she still has her head and eyes facing forward toward the window. She feels him from the base of her buttocks, across her labia, and forward to her mound. She speculates on his reach of rise. She bites her lip again. Her eyes roll back in her head.

She kisses his neck over and over. Then, reaches out to hold his penis, which is cast in bone china by now. Firm and yet so fragile. Gently, she wraps her hands around his sac. She wordlessly guides his fingers to her most intimate. Warm and wet. She kisses his chest. His fingers are slowly sucked inside her.

Is this dream or reality? She doesn’t really want to know.

He struggles to place himself. To find where he really is. He is trying to find the direction of the flow. Struggling to hold on to the axis of time. But, he cannot locate the line separating dream and reality. Or, even the boundary between what is real and what is possible. Some sort of time passes.

He faces up. She twitches her lips to an arc, which never quite make it to a full smile.

She gets on top of him. She guides his hard arousal inside her. He is quite helpless. She is the one in charge. His breath sounds like the wind in a cave. She bends and twists her waist as if tracing a picture with her body. Her straight hair falls on his shoulders and billows noiselessly, like the branches of a willow. Little by little, he is sucked down to the warm mud. The whole world turns warm, wet, indistinct. All that exists is his rigid glistening penis. He is the extension of his penis. His penis is wagging his torso.

He closes his eyes. His own dream begins. Is it even possible to dream a dream in a dream? It is hard to tell how much time is passing. He is intent on his inner journey. That place he is hurrying towards, which recedes as in a dream at the same speed at which he approaches it.

The tide comes in. The moon rises. Everything arrives that single moment. And so, he comes.

There is nothing he can do to prolong it a little longer, to stop it. He comes over and over inside her. He wants to savour one orgasm at a time, but they arrive all at once. The warm walls inside her contract, gathering in his semen.

A long time passes. He cannot move. Every part of him is paralysed. Paralysed, or else he does not feel like trying to move.

She lies down beside him. They hold each other. They listen to time passing.

She stirs. She buries her face in his chest. He feels her breath against his bare skin. She traces his muscles, one by one.

Finally, she licks his swollen penis, gently, as if healing it. He comes again, in her mouth. She swallows it down as if every drop is precious.

He kisses her petals, touching every soft, warm spot with his tongue. She shudders.

After a while, she gets up, slips into her white silk dress. He cannot decide if she is ghostly or angelic. She gently reaches out again, brushes his hair. All this takes place without a word passing between them. She hasn’t said a thing since she entered the room. The only sounds are the creak of the floorboards, the sea wind blowing ceaselessly outside. The room breathing out, the window pane shivering. That is the chorus behind him.

She crosses the room. The door opens just a crack. He watches from the bed as she makes her exit, still unable to move. She slips out like a delicate, dreamy fish with a flick twist of her body. Silently the door closes. It is that moment that her soul excuses itself from time and place, and merges with the infinite.

He can’t even raise a finger. His lips are tightly sealed. Words are asleep in a corner of time. He lies awake for awhile, just so that he can relish the rest of his dream. This dream is for a night and no more.

***

Chapter 13

Surf

On the way to the beach, we buy strawberries from the refugee teen hawking tentatively at the street corner. The teen flashes a grand smile such as only people who have nothing to lose, and nothing to gain, can give away. I sense an emotional flicker on Seb’s face. He must be feeling a slight envy for the teen’s spontaneity flash, and the sheer largesse which he is capable of scattering so easily, with only a smile.

The life guard nods, cheerfully aggressive, “Beach Patrol killed a shark today. You’ll be safe.”

Seb looks at me, then says a little too intensely, “Nothing safer than dead.”

***

The surf is pounding not ten feet away. Our surfboards are planted vertically in the sand.

“Tell me, what’s it like growing up in the surf in Hawaii?”

My eyes sparkle, “Oh, just where do I begin?”

“From the beginning. Time is what we’ve in abundance on this island. Our time here is so out of time.”

I nod instinctively, “Yes, our days here are such a glorious twirl of time, some of the loosest days of my life.”

I think a little about the philosophy of surfing. Unpack a bit.

Waves. Surfing. Surfer.

“Let’s start from the beginning. Here’s how waves form.”

I pause.

“A storm out at sea churns the surface. Creates a chop. Smaller, then larger wavelets. These amalgamate, with enough wind, into heavy seas. What surfers are waiting for on distant coasts is the energy that escapes from the storm. It radiates outwards into calmer waters in the form of wave trains. Groups of waves, increasingly organized, that travel together. Each wave sets off a column of orbiting water, most of it below the surface. The wave train produced by a storm are what surfers call a swell. A swell can travel thousands of miles. The more powerful the storm, the farther the swell travels.”

I pause.

“As it travels, the swell becomes more organised. The distance between each wave in a train, known as the interval, becomes uniform. In a long-interval train, the orbiting water may extend more than a thousand feet beneath the ocean surface. Such a train can pass easily through surface resistance like a chop or other smaller swells, that it crosses or overtakes.”

Seb senses the excitement of my account.

Continuing, “As waves from a swell approach the shoreline, they begin to feel the sea bottom. Wave trains become sets. Groups of waves that are larger, and longer-interval than their locally generated cousins. The approaching waves bend in response to the shape of the sea bottom. The visible part of the wave grows. The resistance from the sea bottom increases as the water gets shallower. It slows the progress of the water. Finally, it becomes unstable. It prepares to topple forward, to break. The rule of thumb is that it breaks when its height reaches 80% of the water’s depth. An 8-feet wave breaks in 10-feet deep water. But, many subtle factors conspire to determine exactly where and how the wave breaks: wind, bottom contour, swell angle, current.”

I pause.

“So, now you know. Your ride was set off a thousand miles away. Just for you. And you’ll know it’s for you, when you see it. It kinda has your name on it.”

“This is the most poetic and yet scientific description of waves. I will use this some day in my writing.”

“And now, surfing.”

I pause.

“A surfer just hopes that the wave has a catchable moment, a take-off point, a rideable face. That it doesn’t break all at once. But instead, breaks gradually, successively, allowing the surfer the privilege to coast roughly parallel to the shore, riding the face, for a glorious while, in that spot, in that moment, just before it breaks.”

Continuing, “Surfing has a far horizon. A fear line, that makes it different from other sports. You can surf with your bros. But, when the waves get big, or you get into a foam of shit, there never seems to be anyone around. Everything out there is tangled with everything else in random unity.”

“Waves are the playing field. The goal. The object of your deepest desire and adoration. At the same time, waves are your adversary. Your nemesis. Even your mortal enemy.”

Continuing, “The surf is your refuge. Your hiding place. Your watery bolt hole. But, it’s also a hostile wilderness. A dynamic, indifferent world.”

“I’ve talked about waves and surfing. And now, the surfer.”

Continuing, “The ocean is a power beyond measure. But, as a surfer in its shifting embrace, you need to take its measure, as a matter of survival. You need to know your limits. Physical and emotional. Water psychiatry.”

I pause.

“But, you don’t know your limits unless you test them. And if you fail your test, you’re to stay cool if things go awry. Panic is the first step to drowning.”

“And when you prevail, in that fleeting moment, composed by an unconscious conspiracy of body, mind and ocean, the wave and you are a single state of nature. The universe is you, and you, the universe, if only for a moment. And that moment is forever. Nobody can take that from you. Ever.”

“Soph, have you been there?”

“Once”

“What was the feeling?”

“In the tumult, this was the centre, where nothing moves. I was floating on a cloud of swelling music.”

I spring up dramatically, grab my surfboard off the sand, and thump the board head on Seb’s bum.

“I wanna do it again!”

We surf.

There is no shark attack on this glorious morning. The shark has already been attacked.

***

Chapter 14

Playback

Seb’s cell phone chimes.

“That was Rick. It’s in the mail.”

“Let’s view it on the widescreen high-definition monitor in the cottage tonight. We’ll bring every pixel to bear.”

“Let’s go stock up on the popcorn!”

***

We have a lovely dinner at our usual village restaurant. The evening is just beginning to hang the night with stars.

I am thoroughly charmed by the place. Perched precariously on the cliffside, as if daring the sea to tumble it down. Tables out front. Bright conversations humming. Ivy and wistful wisteria growing all over the front façade, a warm homey glow coming through the windows.

The assembled clientele is interesting. Across our table looks like a professor of something utterly important. His partner appears really wealthy, with plenty of everything. But, these are mere speculations. In this place, the shopkeepers look like professors. The barmen, tenors. The street sweepers, jazz musicians. What a highly evolved society. There is never a people more rationally ordered.

The man at the bar is moaning jazz blues.

Enthralling places and fascinating people render us aware of our inadequacies in our language. We are at a despairing loss of words to describe certain orders of beauty and wonder. We conveniently and unjustly classify them under the sublime as if the word means anything.

We are served a rare off-menu treat. A basted wild boar which was tragically run over accidentally by the farmer’s tractor just this morning. The Lord provides in mysterious ways. We stare up the heavens in unison and murmur silent thanks.

“Praise be.”

The wine is dutifully poured, admired and sipped in that classical order. All good moments finish around a glass of wine. Wine has that charm to cajole us to just be.

Mid-meal, the proprietor, who is also the cook, comes chat with us.

“Everything OK?”

“Lovely, just lovely! Especially your asparagus spears. Do you grow them yourself?”

He replies in a troubled tone, “Everything I plant grows wildly. A thicket of vines. Fine but high grass. Obscenely swollen gourds. The tomatoes are too ripe. Cucumbers, erotica artifacts. Roses flowering vulgarly, petals opening up more than they should, on dainty stalks. Some even menacing. I don’t know if it’s me or the garden.”

When the cook walks away, Seb turns to me, looking wise, “Flowers are the genital organs of plants.”

We enjoy the rest of the dinner. Oh, the fine nuances of eating the right food, at the right time of the year, in the right place.

As we leave the restaurant, the proprietor bids us goodbye. He presses a slip of paper on Seb’s palm. It looks cryptic. Oh, it’s a website address.

“You must go to my mother’s restaurant when you visit the next village. Eat her stew of intestines of newborn lamb. If you didn’t eat it when you are there, lie to me the next time you see me, and tell me you did.”

***

Seb plays the combined solo-then-couple video.

I shiver a little from the gusts of sea wind. “It’s getting a wee chilly.”

I scoot over to Seb. I sit in front of him, pausing momentarily, as if giving him notice of my next move. I then laze in front of him like he is a lounge chair. We make some fine body adjustments, moulding into a unified whole.

He wraps his arms around my waist as if he is buckling me down in a seatbelt. He tightens his arms, pauses, and then relaxes them as if I am now secured.

Relishing his bakery warmth, I coo, “Thanks Seb, lovely…”

The mood is candlelit boudoir.

My nightie has crept up wayward a bit. Some line has been crossed. He is touching me above my hemline now. Seb places his right hand just above my mound. His forefinger doodles on my silken skin in an algorithmic motion. A sort of hieroglyphics. So cuddled, we enjoy mutual warmth. I feel his spirited lower muscles jump and flutter a little, like a moth trapped beneath his skin.

Rick has done an excellent job stitching up the footages from the disparate vantage points to render them a coherent and whole stream. I don’t know about Seb. I feel like I am at the café viewing window all over again, only this time, viewing myself. I am my own spectator sport.

“What do you think of venerable me?”

He doesn’t answer. He cocks his head, and plants an affectionate lingering kiss on my lower cheek. And then I feel something else. A reptilian jerkiness.

I feel a little validated by his nuanced response. Show, not tell. He will make a great creative writer yet. The most important words are not those on the page, but those left out for the reader to fill in.

Next up on the widescreen, Seb joins me. His manhood is artfully rendered in the imagery. Seen, but not really. A teasing ambivalence. Is this his custom dignified formality? Or, is he in flourish? The charm is in not knowing for sure.

I cannot tell if Rick has done any inventive editing. Seb and I are so coalesced as one water being, burrowing through the pastel blue in surreal unity.

“Seb, we were quite close in the couple dive. Can you see any detail of our… proximity?”

“Only one way to find out.”

Seb replays the couple segment slo-mo. Yes, there is that fleeting moment. I remember that vividly, all too well.

Photographs and videos are useful. But, they somehow always confirm the memory rather than liberate it. I decide to let this slide, lest it is awkward for Seb. We have a choice to classify this moment as incidental or defining.

The video ends. We are silent for awhile. Unpacking, processing. Not your custom holiday video for family night viewing.

***

Chapter 15

Singularity

He says, not exactly in an undertone, but sort of quietly, yet firmly, “I want to see you.”

I am a little surprised by his forwardness. A baldness that appears an assertion of power rather than age.

I study the brimming young man. There are things he wants to prove to me. Gifts he wants to bestow. Services he wants to render. Tenderness he wants to inspire. Do I permit his impulses?

“But, you have. The changing room. The pool. The video.”

“I want to take you in properly.”

“Take me in?”

Chuckling, “Admire you properly, for admiration sake. Unrushed. Tranquil contemplation.”

A giddy onrush of guilty pleasure. I might as well enjoy this a little. I stand before Seb.

I enquire with a flirtation tilt of face, “What would you like to see first?”

“Everything. To begin with.”

“Hmmm… so, I am to give all my gifts at once.”

Will I be the gift that keeps on giving? I wonder.

I turn around, lift my nightie off. Before I can turn back, Seb nudges me to the full length mirror.

“Look at you. Look how beautiful you are. Every line is a curve.”

“What about my caesarean cut line?”

He ignores me.

Oops! He accidentally knocks the mirror down. It didn’t crack. Have I earned seven years of good luck?

Commanding, “Get on it.”

I gaze at him with what must be an astounded look of fascinated repulsion, “What?”

“Perspectives”

I give him that.

***

“You’ve the simultaneous air of a chapel and a bazaar. You wear your sexuality with an older woman’s ease.”

Seb kneels before me. He looks at me there in a way that makes his attentions and desires plain. He places his nose at my most intimate. He breathes my feminine air, and then appears duly inspired.

This is what I love about this young man. I can never tell if he is playful or profound, dramatic or authentic. I can never tell whether the bruising jock or the thoughtful humanist will show up next. But, once his turn of demeanour is done, he resumes his quality of interpretability.

Gazing up, “You’ve to breathe the air, to really know a place.”

“So, is that chapel or bazaar?”

He gets up, leans over, tucks my hair behind my ears, “I’m still ascertaining…”

I have never been adored like this by anyone. Never with such pleasure and single-minded concentration. But, then again, I have never been so revealed.

“You do fit the body I’ve imagined for you that day I met you on the plane. I’m glad for that. Nature at her most benevolent.”

“Hmmm… Praise be.”

Whispering, “Pose for me…”

I arch my body. Thrust my bosom. I am growing a little nervous. And yet, I instinctively tilt my casual hips for emphasis, to add a little asymmetry colour to the imagery. He watches me, every inch, every flicker. I so want to be touched. In love or in desire.

He looks grave, as if rebuking an overly frisky kitten, “You’re a naughty mum.”

I discern that he is viewing the scenery with the eyes of persons accustomed to drawing, deciding on its capability of being formed into pictures.

As if confirming my thoughts, he observes, “All arranged according to the laws of pictorial sensual art.”

“What do you think of your mommie dearest namesake’s mammaries?”

“A limited edition of a form and substance which nature makes no more. Your arc sag provides the essence of my satisfaction. They quiver a little when you breathe. A pair of ornate genuine articles.”

Relishing this erotic opera, and emboldened, “Please let me…”

His hands mould my full swell, apparently loving the feel of its heft and balance in his palm. He methodically weighs each in his hands with an air of preoccupation, finally concluding, “They are heavier than they look.”

I am lifted by proprietorial pride, even though it is a strange way for a young man to take my measure. He is so wildly loving. My breasts have not felt so full in a long time. Seb seems to enjoy my sharp intake of breath.

“My breasts are too white. Despite my spending so much time in watersports and tanning whenever I can.”

“Your breasts are a lovely pristine bridal white. I much prefer white to tan. Breasts that are white from being covered are way sexier. They make a muted statement. That they are private. And secret. They make the admirer feel privileged. And that’s what I’m feeling now.”

“Privileged? You should be. Only my husband has seen them.”

“Thanks, Soph, for saving yourself for me.”

I smack his groin in mock indignation.

“What do you think of my posterior?”

“Not a young girl’s butt for sure. A woman’s tail, curvy and longish. But firm.”

“Señor Aficionado, my thighs?”

Ponderously, “Smooth. Soft muscle definition. Nothing is hotter than lean, defined muscles shaping a woman’s thigh. Your thighs are gorgeous with chiseled definition at the quadriceps. Your return on investment on your years of lapping the swimming pool.”

“Hmmm…”

He adds, “But, this I can’t tell from a static body pose. The biggest appeal for me is the way the muscles ripple gently when a woman is walking towards me.”

He is devilishly egging me. I am feeling slavish. I do exactly that. I pose my legs this way and that, flexing, as if to validate his critique. A male sigh.

“Sturdy thighs, muscular yet softly pliant, that are wicked in their delight.”

Seb adds archingly, “A triangulation of athleticism, grace and sensuality in equal measures.”

I pose a little more. Tilt my chin sweetly, elfin, as if tucking a violin under it. Seb backs up, and gazes at me.

Soliciting shamelessly, “Well?”

What Seb does next astounds me.

He examines my breasts again. He rests his cheek on my soft breast. I feel an intense longing for him to spend the rest of his days there. I so want the life that it implies.

He roves. A hunter-gatherer all over again. Bloodthirsty, craving for a decent cut of meat. Males never lose this instinct. Right this moment, he owns everything he touches. My buttocks. My minutiae of feminine bits. He leaves them, like some treasure he’ll come back to dig one day.

His exploration and experimentation takes a new creative turn. My anus. Oh my God, is he looking in my creased oily ring?

He appears bemused by so many pleasures on offer. He has to declare a pleasure major, or he’ll be overwhelmed.

And just when I think he is done, he returns to the fold, my folds of petals, in a recommitment to my womanhood.

He is licking my petals, then drifting to my pearl of nub, nibbling gently.

“You’re enjoying this?”

Coming up for air, “Yes”

“How so?”

“Read my lips.”

It is as if he has to take me apart to see how I am fitted. No other unlawful action on this planet can be more joyous than this. My being an illicit object of discovery.

I am in a state. A little bit is too much at first. But, it soon grows to not nearly enough. Enough can be alot to ask of oneself. But, I decide, enough, before we go too far. But, it can’t be wrong if it feels so right, can it? Am I seeking a tragedy with a happy ending?

I notice that now Seb is getting properly excited. He is erect with conviction.

Teasing can almost be as good as love, and sometimes better. But really, is it?

“Seb, we must stop. Before we lose ourselves…”

He stops. But, he is still lost, adoring me from a distance.

I need to help Seb. I need to help the lad.

“My turn.”

“What?”

“Well, you saw me and stole my most intimate secrets. Fair is fair.”

***

The mood is chiaroscuro. Light and dark, representing strongly contrasting tones. Darkened shadows and vivid shafts of light heightening emotional tensions.

He has an adorable penis. So full of cock. But still, nothing too dramatic. Suitable for many applications.

I didn’t grab him. Not at first. But, I hunger to commit the act of touch.

My hand, half gentle, half menacing, comes to rest on him.

I run my fingernails experimentally up and down him slowly, softly. My first touch. Then again. On one side. Then the other. I trace an imaginary axis line up to the bulbous head.

“You’re pleasing to the eye.”

I examine him closely. I want to see what can be seen of him. Take him in. Memorise him. Save him up so that I can live on that image later. The lines of his body. The texture of his flesh. The glisten of sweat on his skin.

I bend down to look. I touch it. More of a specimen than a human. Mine to have and to hold, but not quite till death do us part.

“And this. This is so hard.”

“What’s this? Biology lab?”

I pay him no mind. Take it all in for a moment. I squeeze him a little. Stroke it. Feeling all around. He is a bit of a handful now.

“Do you mind if I ask if this is only your second experience, up close and personal, after your husband?”

“Yes. A long time coming. So, I want it to be a long second time.”

“It will be our long night’s journey into day.”

“I love the way the skin stretches as you grow. The way the head gets bigger and bigger. Those first little drops of excitement. And the way your balls tighten up.”

I cup them like treasured objects with one hand.

“Then, they loosen again, hanging down and swinging. Then, tightening up.”

“I didn’t know you can be so poetic. In praise of balls.”

I use a finger to move them back and forth, fondling them, just slightly swinging them as if they are bells. All in slow motion. No hurry. A studious look on my face.

I halt. I grasp him with my whole hand. Hold it there. Feel its thickness and hardness. Squeeze it ever so slightly every few seconds.

I can see it is driving him closer to the edge. But, I am just getting a sense of his physicality. My feeling is indescribable. As must be Seb’s.

With my thumb and index finger, I encircle him. Grab it right below the head, ascertaining its circumference.

I trill, “Marvelous. A work of art.”

“Now, you’re making fun of me.”

“No. No. It is so beautiful. A life all its own. You can will it, and yet, it has a stubborn persistent will force of its own. Kind of like our free will. We have it for all intents and purposes, and yet, do we really? Again, what did Schopenhaeur say about free will? You can choose whatever you desire, but, you are not free to choose your desires. It is so you, and yet, not you. Spasming. Swaying. A poetic beast. It takes my breath away to watch how fabulous your body is.”

“All this abstraction. Philosophy. Metaphysics. This side of you. You surprise me, for a competitive, pragmatic career woman and an ex-kickass swimmer.”

“Well, this is a night of surprises… And discovery.”

I touch the tip with my forefinger, teasing more drops to seep out. I roll my finger in the liquid. Lightly spread the moistness over his head. Coating it.

I lean over for a closer look. He appears to love watching my breasts with my every move. My undulating arcs. My nipples, hard and pointed. They too, seem to have a life of their own.

I hold his erection straight up, at a ninety-degree angle to his stomach. I wrap my fingers around it. I begin stroking. Then, slowly pumping up and down. He is slippery from his own fluids. He is in such a state. I bend over closer, my face hovering above his head. A saliva drop. My finger smoothens my saliva. Not that he needs extra lubrication. I am just having fun.

I pump more. Up and down. Then, with my hand firmly at his base, I hold it there, his shaft sticking straight up, like some spire. He wavers a little, leaks even more, the drops dribbling down his length. This will not take long. More pumping.

I sense a reptilian jerkiness along his spine. He groans. I freeze. Stare at it.

He splutters all over the air, raising the humidity of the room a notch, even as he rains on my naked breasts. He makes happy baby baboon noises.

Then, a second spurt. Even higher. Falling down, landing on my knee. One or two more follow, falling back on my hand. He ekes out one last spurt. He is in an extravagant mood.

So much. Enough to put out a small fire.

“My God! Amazing! Simply amazing.”

“I’m sorry I came so fast.”

“I’m not. It’s a testament to my skills.”

“Are you sure I’m only your second?”

“Are you alluding that I’m a slut?”

“No. Your initial wonder, and tentative experimental exploration, is telling that this is your second male in the flesh.”

I feel a stab of guilt, “Do you think this is so wrong?”

“Probably, by societal norms.”

He pauses, then continues, “But regardless, I like it. I can’t begin to tell you how much I liked it.”

“Me too. God is in the details, they say. So is the devil. And regardless, no one else needs to know. This is just about us. This makes societal norms tangential, if not irrelevant.”

“But, we haven’t crossed the line, have we?”

I test Seb, “Have we not?”

He does not say anything about our couple dive. I let it slide.

Innocently, “I guess not. But still…”

Some moments pass. I am still sorting out my moral disorder. I grow pensive. My mood rubs on him. I touch him intimately again.

“And now it retreats. Losing all its power. Quiesced. Getting soft and quiet.”

I trace an imaginary line down, around his balls, then take his flaccidness in my hand, as if it is a valuable artifact. I am emotional now. My eyes water.

“But, even now, it is still so beautiful. Such a marvelous mystery.”

We sit side by side for awhile reflecting on what has just transpired. In the aftermath, there is a creeping awkwardness between us.

Quietly, I draw my legs up, turn sideways, and stretch them across his lap. I place my head on his shoulder. We nuzzle.

He whispers, “We’re going to break all the rules tonight, aren’t we? We’re going to do this. It’ll be our secret.”

I do not answer. I am conflicted on four counts. One, that this is happening at all. Two, I will be cheating my husband. Three, I am old enough to be his mother. Four, am I subconsciously playing mother, and he, son? This is an inconvenient excursion into truth. I feel a stab of guilt, that I am my own pimp.

The more reasons to the sin, the bigger the sin. I feel a cold thing land on my heart. It is the fear of God. I have always been distant from Him. But now, I know his omnipresence. Will I burn in the hell that I don’t quite believe in? Salvation by grace through faith. Maybe God will love me because there is so much to forgive?

You can think clearly only with your clothes on. I am naked now.

Seb puts his hand on my bare legs. He begins caressing my skin. With just the tips of his fingers, he brushes, ever so slightly, down to my knees, then back up my thighs, higher, just short of my mound.

I slowly open my legs wider on his lap. He strokes my thighs again, desiring to feel all the way to the satin of my mound. His fingers touch soft hair, even softer puffed lips, and the moist opening.

I lie down. Head on a scatter cushion. Legs still across his lap. I part my legs a little wider. There is a raw nakedness to my posture. Is it sensual and erotic? Or, lusty and lewd? I think it excites him to see me like this.

Signore Bertolucci lurks in a dark corner. He is silently directing me. Willing me in parts. Le Dernier Tango à Paris. The Last Tango In Paris. Middle-aged man, young woman. I remember now. The movie ended badly. The protagonist was shot. We’ll always have Paris. But, this not. This is yet something else. But, is it?

He slides a finger inside me, gliding in easily, engulfed in warmth. Withdraws his finger slowly. His fingertip traces a delicate path around the edges of my opening. Everywhere he touches is glistening in warm moisture. His finger glides all around. He appears to relish my wetness. Through the dim nightlight, he sees me studying his face.

I sense that he wants to go fast. To mount me. Take me with wild abandon. Like a teen sowing his wild oats the first time.

But, he seems to be resisting his impulses. That this should last. Go slow. Take our time. The night too precious to waste by hot haste. That he will go by our plan. A long night’s journey into day.

He traces my soft opening and those most secret small hidden petals with his finger. He inhales my sex as more liquid coats his finger, and dribbles down into the crevice of my buttocks. Not without some difficulty, he finds my clitoris. He plays softly with it. Caresses it experimentally until he discovers what brings a reaction. Moving his thumb across my nub of pearl, then back down. That works. Sighs. Shudders.

I move my hand down to the slight bulge of my mons and my pubic hair. I begin caressing myself there, just above his thumb.

We are in tandem. Heavier breathing. More shudders.

He lets his little finger slip way down. Finds the opening to my anus. Small, moist, oily. Rubs his finger around it. Pushes on it a little.

Breathing heavier now. His thumb and little finger moving in a slow rhythm, back and forth, pushing into both my openings. All in one back-and-forth motion. Slow. Over and over again.

And then, a sequence of shudders and low groans. Stronger, convulsing. Pelvis undulating.

I come with a scream, a sound he swallows in a kiss.

I grab the back of his head, grinding myself against his face. My piquant earthy juices flow into his mouth and over his face. He must be breathing my strong womanly air. He must be wishing that he can bottle a little of it, to stow away in an unlabeled shoebox deep in the attic. He takes a final big deep hit on my feminine scent.

I curl up in his lap. Two bodies melding together to form a single arcing sinew. Hair ruffled. Skin warm. Face flush. I grow quiet. Tender and soft.

***

He strays his hands over me. From my shoulders, down my back, to my haunches. Toward those dark, secret places. They are still warm and wet. I am perched on his lap. He pokes up between my legs. I touch it. Stroke it. Hold his testicles. Gather his liquid arousal with my fingers, bring it to my lips. Then, hold his male flourish. Eminently a better class of hardon than my husband. My marriage just doesn’t have that same straining energy anymore.

Was it the Bible? Or Marx? From each, according to his ability. To each, according to her needs. Seb is able again. To do the needful.

I am excited, yet fearful, “So powerful. So strong. You can split me asunder.”

“I will never.”

“This is what is so amazing. You can really hurt me bad. But, I know you won’t.”

I run my fingers around. Play with the gathering granules, the small but compelling evidence of human desire and passion.

“A little terrifying.”

“Actually, in the locker room parade, I am just average.”

“No, no. Don’t tease. It is really frightening. But, beautiful. I can imagine, with you inside me, I can really lose myself.”

I pull his face to mine. We kiss. His lips taste a little salty.

Our legs entwine.

I lie on my back. Arms stretched out beyond my head. A tacit act of surrender.

“Suck my nipples. Bite them. Hurt me.”

Take me. I am screaming silently. My nipples are thick once again, and painfully pointed. My areola soft and puffy. He is testing the edibility of my nipple. He sucks them. Bites down. Like a gourmand. Burrows his face into them. Will my steely nipples puncture his eyes, blind him?

He reaches down. Pulls my knees up to my chest. Moves his face down, kissing, licking, smelling. The secret womanly scent that he knows will be with him from this day forth.

His tongue caresses, darts inside me and back out. Finds my clitoris again. Back and forth over it, this time with the tip of his tongue. He is nibbling fire. I relish it, this lick of dissipation. I think I can see myself, though blurrily, as he may see me.

I come on his face. A little orgasm. He is shocked to discover that I come like a man. White fluids ooze out of my lips, and almost seep up his nose. He loves the fluid. I think he wishes he can save it in tiny glass ampoules, to relish it again at his pleasure another time.

My passion escalates. His head is clamped between my thighs. I begin squeezing wildly as a second orgasm nears. This one evidently harder, stronger. I squeeze his head harder. Will I crush his skull? Finally, I groan. Relaxed. Wipe my hair out of my eyes.

Pleading softly, “We can’t…”

I am tender and vulnerable. He puts his head at the entrance. Moves in some. Backs out. Only the second male in my life. My slit seems small. Inadequate. Will he tear me?

He starts again. Slowly. Slowly. Slides half way in, then back out. Then, a little farther.

Whimpering, “We mustn’t…”

With one hard roll of his hips, he enters me all the way. He is the stealth bomber of sex. A transcending sharp muted shriek marks the moment that will forever redefine who we are.

He pulls my knees back down around his waist. I unconsciously wrap my legs around him, even as I murmur, “We can’t…”

After a flurry of awkward eager stuttering movements, he hits his stride. A slow rhythm. The side of his face against mine. Our bodies sweating, hair wet. The smell of us all around.

I whisper, “We will never tell. Our little secret. Always. We will keep our secrets.”

Out the bay window, the first streaks of light of day creep up the horizon.

He maintains the rhythm. He lifts up his arms for a few seconds. Sweat drips down his chest, dropping on my breasts, mixing with my own. Our eyes lock in the dimness. The look from me is impossibly one of agony and exhilaration.