The Last Lover

Through loungers and glass tables, your hips swing because hot sand demands you walk on tiptoes. A wide brim shades the soft sensitive skin of your shoulders. The swimsuit wrap comes off and you are off to the slumber lay-out where the hot sun blisters and the oil slick is slathered onto wishful white-shiny body parts. You watch as the others in their colourful fawning-feathers weave themselves in and out of the surf and tanned bodies. A ritual of selection that the ready, willing, and able engage in every year at this time. Your body trembles not from cold but from the excitement of possibility. You gather yourself under the soft light of translucent fabric, shielding you from the direct rays of hungry eyes and the searing sun.

Repose, no matter how languid, makes you fidget. Not used to moments of calm, long moments where no one penetrates the atmosphere and takes the oxygen you have built up by breathing in pulses. No need for a paper bag, you tell yourself, turning over to let the sun hit the pages of the book you’re engrossed in.

There’s a ruckus over by the old lifeguard stand. Arguments that come on a breeze but have no effect. You shade your eyes and watch someone pulled by the arm out of the surf. The waves look weird. A couple of people run by you kicking up sand, “Rip tide!” they yell.

Last thing you remember is reading your book. You open your eyes, cheek firmly planted on the page. You look and see twilight is a sliver on top of the horizon so you pack up to go make yourself up in shiny things and finery.

Appearing at the entrance to the evening revelry, like Calypso, you present in fine form with bangles and braids, a gossamer veil over your shoulders, and golden strands streaming from your hair. A server immediately comes and hands you their specialty drink as you stand on the edge of the room.

Finding warmth in a warm place is not hard, finding intimacy in the cool night is just as easy. Finding love in a temporary town such as this is only possible if real-life rules don’t apply.

You see her staring at you from across the room. And then there she is right in front of you. “I saw you earlier today.”

“Oh?” You wonder what she’s getting at because a lot of people did.

“At the old lifeguard post. The one with the faded sign on it that used to say, “Swim at your own risk.”

“Yes. I was there.”

The woman stands away from you. She tells you, “You are the only woman for me. I could tell from across the room when you smile.”

“I smile because I’m glad to be here,” you say as you sip the drink that is a reminder to you of where you aren’t. The elixir, special to this region of the world, the natives swear it changes you. The sweet divine in liquid form rests within so you are unrecognizable since your arrival. You feel open and free.

“Don’t play coy with me.” She dances around you and settles back in front of you. Puts her nose to your nose. You put the curly straw that glows back into your mouth as she leans in for a kiss.

“What? Are you drunk?” You say intrigued by the attention.

“A little bit. Drunk on you.”

You smile at this because of the cliché that it is and it endears you to her even more. Looking at her, her eyes darting flirtatiously in their sockets as she speaks to you about attraction and kismet, you wonder if it is possible for you to change your stripes if only for one night.

Her lips going a mile a minute about letting things go and risking and what do you have to lose. Her hair is fine, gathered in one of those loose buns that would illustrate the point she’s trying to make of release and throwing caution to the wind once the clip holding all the weight of the world is unclipped and the lusciousness of windswept and sea salt hair cascades down upon her shoulders and you are mesmerized by how beauty changes when you reveal your hard-won secrets.

She drags you onto the dance floor, gently taking your drink away from you. The lights flicker off and on. Darkness comes and goes until eventually it is lit by pixie lights and fluorescent sunscreen and the curly straws. Your feet move before the sound transfers in beats per second to the tin and concrete floor. The thump and the jolt keep rhythm and rhyme, synchronizing with the warm flow of your presence. She entwines you into her so that as the music throbs you are unable to tear yourself away. So entangled you are that you are afraid to take the wrong arm or leg out of the centre for fear of ripping her limb from limb. So, you stay circling each other on the dance floor. One first down, bended knee and writhing, then tall and reaching for the sky. She moves in to you, hands holding hips and pulling close. One hand on your shoulder another at the small of your back. You swoon into her and then your lips meet in the middle, your red lipstick clashes with her coral orange lips.

She grabs your hand and draws you out of the venue to your room where she tucks herself under your skirt and stays for what feels like only a moment but a perfect one. Embrace the moment and let it carve out what seems to be the thing you need the most. You feel a little shy, the way she looks at you and the way she desires you, but hiding isn’t an option. You haven’t felt like this in ages, or thinking about it, ever. Does it come with a price though? You have a family back home. Relationships that are burnt at the edges with an ex waiting to play devil’s advocate. After all you have gone through, will they be on your side after you describe how your body felt, how your soul was lifted, the beat of your heart? You want to tell her but she keeps putting her hand to your lips. It stops the confession.

You talk about nothing except what to do the next day and how this was your first time.

“It’s mine too,” she confesses. She smiles and the glint in her eyes reminds you of the kind of relationships you had when you were younger. Adventurous and thrilling.

You feel safe with her. You fall asleep as she leans over you whispering what sounds like Rumi poems. You dream of lovers spinning in each other’s arms, whirling dervishes conjuring the divine presence of shakti. Sleep doesn’t come easily to your companion who sits on top of the bed watching you all night. Early morning, she slips herself out of the four-poster bed. You stir to the sounds of the shower, like summer evening rain, its sound dulled by a thatched roof. You fall back asleep and dream of shadows tucking back into dark corners, masked men shouting and swift chaotic hands taking you “back to where you belong.”

You are awake now, to an empty room, round in two corners, the smells of deep forest green and mist penetrate your nostrils. The shower is warm. The headiness of the night before keeps you from opening your eyes fully. You look up in the shower and catch a glimpse of a tiny gecko. Whatever is there, hanging over you, will exist for now in the haze of the vibrations that linger in your body. You recognize nothing but the sensations on your tender skin.

A note she leaves says she’ll meet you on the surf by the lifeguard stand. Spend the day plunged into the mystery that is materializing before you, life-changing, otherworldly.

The water is blue. Like the sky. The air is warm like the sea. The sun is as bright as it has ever been. She is on a crest of a wave, bodyboard surfing speeding through the tumultuous sea. She absorbs the sun, she stands on the board, wet and wild, gleaming as if she were a ray of light. She beckons you to come to her.

Now in the pulse of the sea, waves hit your body as you wade deep beyond the shore. Water pushes into you over and over again, reminding you of the energy of being in her arms. Taking your beath away, risking everything.

You lie on your back, waving your hands back and forth to keep you afloat. Every now and then you crank your head around to see where she’s at, making your way to her. Floating farther out, out farther than a football field. Far enough away from shore, far enough away from the horizon, the in-between. It feels unsettling.

You lose sight of her. You panic. You can’t touch ground and you try not to imagine what living creatures are waiting beneath you to nibble at your toes like squirmy little worms ripe for the picking. You are pulled farther away from the safety of the land, by what feels like hands tugging at your legs. The safety of all you’ve known: the angry faces, the wagging fingers, the arguments that mean nothing when they start and mean even less when they’re done, melt away like sugar on a hot summer day. Dipping below the surface from just the weight of your thoughts. Panic is the only sensation you feel at this moment. Don’t panic. Don’t react. Don’t escalate. Staying afloat becomes even more arduous when something wants to pull you down. Something invisible, unseen as the water becomes clouded with the flailing of arms and legs.

But you know it’s her. You can tell by her touch. It feels like when she laid her entire body down along the length of yours and breathed in your breath as you exhaled. You don’t open your eyes for fear of losing this image. Because it feels more like when you were surrounded by people who did not have your back. Who insisted that you are the pain they feel that you are not good, you are not worthy. Even if it’s not your weight, somehow you feel heavier than a bag of rocks. Going down and down and down. Your lungs expel a sweet whistling sound, a sign of rupture, you can’t help but let out a little giggle. Because it tickles. Laughter is not a sign of consciousness because you can laugh in your sleep.

Sometimes the sea doesn’t want you and it spits you out at a moment that feels like the last. The wave lifts you up out of the water and pushes you onto the shore after gulping down too much water, breathing in the bad stuff, breathing out the good stuff.

You arrive unceremoniously onto shore when someone grabs both arms and then another grabs both legs and you are hurled through the air onto the soft sand. Someone leans in without consent, a kiss, then air, and choking and sea lather then a feeling of tightness in your lungs and you are faced with the challenge of air passing deliberately through sanguine lines and bubbles standing at attention soon deployed.

A bell rings, a bell tolls, an alarm goes off and the day-to-day wrestling with the preoccupation of sustaining the beat like a metronome keeping time with fingers on keyboards and the pulse of an existence becomes laboured. The chaos around you is like the time you waited for the car to come pick you up and take you to the airport, you knowing that you wished your love was enough for those around you. That they would step back and not have opinions they needed to share without asking you one question about why you needed to leave.

Faces appear around you. You can see them through your eyelids. No one you recognize but surmise that it’s for the best.

I am dead, you think as you lie there limp. As you debate the question. Was it all worth it?

Whirligigs and sirens cast circles on the scene. They spin you into an awaiting emergency, still pumping at the spot on your chest, sore and cracked. More people gather. You wish you could see her one more time but you are whisked away before she walks nonchalantly out of the roaring sea, seemingly rescuing herself.

You would like to scream into the space between light and dark, between warmth and coldness, between you being able to reach out and hold someone and being alone. But you are not moved by anything except the swaying of the motion along the journey that takes you where they’ll pronounce you and at the last moment, that familiar face will lean in and kiss you and drench you with her tears.