Someone to Swim With

Now                        

It’s a warm September day down on the banks of the Swannanoa River, when I first encounter the guitar man. We don’t exactly meet. But, sunning myself on a rock, I hear music floating in the air. I sit up and catch a glimpse of him, downriver, seated on a log with two friends, six legs dangling over the water, someone’s fingers strumming, someone’s voice audible over the currents’ rush.

Instantly, I feel a tug in my chest. I want to know those musical men. Around them, the water seems to sparkle and dance to their rhythm. 

New in town, I’m a little lonely, though I wouldn’t admit it. I’m used to loneliness – sometimes relish in it. After three years alone on the nomad road –[not to mention] thirty years divorced,  never remarried – I’m staunchly independent. I just want someone to swim with.

But that’s not quite true, either. The truth bubbles-up, shame warms my face. I dive into the cool jade pool and swim alone, stroking and kicking the yearning out of me.

I long for love again. Though—age fifty-nine going on sixty—it’s late. The past holds me back – left its  indelible imprint.

Then

I am fifteen going on sixteen. It is well-past midnight. Reclined on the sofa bed of the beach bungalow, beneath the thin sheet, butterflies swirl in my sunburned stomach as my music teacher, the maestro bends over, his blue eyes staring into me. The foghorn blares. He leans closer, scent of wine on his breath, as his mustached lip touches my mouth, and one thousand new sensations ricochet like pinballs inside me.

I want him. Need him. Love him. He will rescue me from me from my father’s terror, my mother’s depression, from the sinking ship that is my family. But, no, it’s unimaginable, impossible. He’s a married man eighteen years my senior. I am the babysitter, the student, principal flute second chair in his youth orchestra, that is all. His wife and three children sleep just steps away, on the other side of closed hollow doors.

Beneath the sheet, I lay frozen, every muscle bracing from the good feelings as, out of my peripheral, I see his head shake.

The door opens; humidity rushes in. And he’s gone, though he’ll never be gone.

Now

At the Champagne Bar, a few weeks later, the guitar man plays before me. Seated at a table for two, I feel the discomfort of being one, the invisibility of my age, unable to attract the server’s attention. I fiddle with my cocktail napkin and try to let the music take me. It’s not difficult:  cool Django jazz and light, bright Joplin – his  fingerings are like a waterfall.

On the break, I step out to the patio for some air, when he approaches and lays a flower on my palm. “Plumeria,” he says. “From the tree in my kitchen.”

“Your kitchen?” I inhale the heavenly scent and look up to thank him. But he’s turned away. Through the window, into the bar’s amber light, I watch him take a seat, pull his guitar close, strum some chords, minor key. And it hits me: this man is wounded, too.

That feeling should warn me away – after many men with secret wounds I could not mend. But the desire runs deep, down to my belly, into my groin – to help them help me help us heal.

On the drive home, the blossom’s perfume  fills my car. Before bed, I place the flower on my altar to the fiercely loving Goddess Kali, spirit of darkness and light.

Feet spread wide, legs strong, I squat down into goddess pose and pray for tantric power. I’ve climbed mountains and traversed deserts, lost myself in remote canyons, then found myself again. Encountered shaman and energy healers, yogis and tarot readers. All this wisdom lies within; so does the damsel’s need to be saved – that makes me vulnerable.

Over the winter, guitar man and I orbit around each other. I catch his band playing, from time to time, at venues around town. Admiring his talent from afar, I sip my wine and find partners with whom to dance to the joyful rhythm.

One lively night, as the band takes a break, I approach the stage and stuff a ten in the tip jar. I’ve made myself seen. Guitar man hops down, sprite-like, and buys me a beer. We riff and flirt. He’s funny, I’m funny, the air around us is electric.

Perched on my stool, through the second set, I cannot stop grinning. The notes he strums verberate inside me. Then I catch myself – bite my lip, take a sip. This is fantasy. 

Then

Entering high-school, I lead a double life: responsible eldest daughter, straight A-student, Mother’s confidant – and slinking, slithering adulteress.

Everything goes fast.

My maestro holds the baton and keeps the tempo – accelerando!

It’s my sixteenth birthday and he has something special planned. “Don’t let him pressure you,” my best friend, sworn to secrecy, begs me. “He’s twice your age!”

But I need the pressure. Without it, I’ll never be ready, I protest as I lay back on the motel room bedspread, noticing the faint scent of cigarettes, wondering: how am I supposed to lie to be sexy, but not too sexy, not trying too hard, but not resisting, not being sixteen?

Making sure he’ll still love me.

Now

March arrives and I’m still in town. The place has grown on me. I’ve met neighbors, made friends, joined a yoga sangha, a writing group. And still, the secret lover in me has a hand in this, coaxing the nomad to stick around, find ground, maybe even home, for now.

On the night of my Sweet Sixtieth, Guitar Man appears at the door carrying his guitar, and my heart skips a beat. Weathered olive skin, hooked nose, wiry, salt-pepper hair, he is not wildly handsome; but the attraction is undeniable. Coolly flirtatious, I greet him, smoothing my palm down the sleeve of his brown velvet blazer, then show him to the stage.

He’s the last act of Open Mic Night at the venue where I hold my birthday party. It’s a packed house.

Perched on a stool beneath the lights, he strums the opening notes. Over rapt silence, his fingers pluck up and down the neck as his milky voice croons: “Give me – a kiss before you leave me – and my im-ag-i-nation…”

My girlfriend nudges me. “Marina, he’s serenading you.”

I shake my head, and nod at the same time, contradictions swirling, cheeks turning teenage fuchsia in the dark. I’ve had a hundred lovers since my marriage to the maestro ended at age 27 – among them several proposals.  True love, lasting love, has eluded me. 

“Sweetheart, I ask you only this…” he croons. His leg swings playfully with the rhythm as his eyes glance my way.

I turn to see what he’s looking at; but no one’s there. A gasp of breath held in my chest, I glance down at the floor – those youthful wanton feelings live within me – the yearning and the danger of being seen.  

But I’m no longer sixteen.

In the parking lot, after the show, party balloons stuffed in my car, we stand in the shadow of the streetlamp. Guitar Man leans in, breath on my cheek; I lean in, heart thumping against his chest. When our lips meet, it’s a kiss so delicate, so dreamy, it’s as though the hands of time have dialed backwards to before the very beginning, sweet lost innocence. 

Then

“Your daughter knows exactly what she’s doing,” the maestro tells my mother that New Year’s Day in the basement when, after a year of sneaking around, we’ve finally been caught. But we weren’t actually caught. I just reached a breaking point and gave him an ultimatum. I would not keep lying to my mother. “We confess, or it is over.”

Though it would never be over.

My mother, hysterical, swears she’ll call the cops, put him in jail. But I know my mother: she’s incapable of enforcing a thing. My bombastic, alcoholic father will be of no help; she’ll have to hide the truth – or he’ll be in jail, too.

There’s nothing anyone can do to stop us. I say us. By then, the maestro’s already abducted me – heart, mind, skin, soul – into his underworld. There is no me, anymore.

That’s the thing about predators I later learn: they grab ahold and never let go. They blame everyone – they turn the tables – they are the innocents.

I am guilty; I go deeper undercover.

Now

“It’s a beautiful world; might as well get out and enjoy it,” Guitar Man says. This makes me smile, feel safe, as we sit on a plastic poncho on a lakeside beach laden with geese turds. We talk – mostly I talk, which I do when nervous – fill silences, attempt to draw him out. He says punny things, quippy things, sings David Cassidy lyrics. I want to share life stories, reveal my checkered past, know his, ponder dreams, together. But I’m careful, it’s early, I don’t want to scare him away.

When the words run out, he scoots closer. His interest is clear; so’s my reticence. I jump up to pace, barefoot, along the tiny, tepid lake shore, feel the mud between my toes as my heart flutters. 

We go for tamales at his favorite Mexican place. He drops me home. I don’t invite him in.

We wait. We’ve waited ages for this – even if we don’t know what this is. Divorced four years after a sixteen-year marriage, he hasn’t had a date in twenty years. We are old teenagers, together, discovering new pleasures, honoring the seductive pace we have set.

I say we – I mean me. I know what sex does – it happened, back then, with the maestro – and later in life, when I should have known better, with other men – giving too much, losing myself.

But I’m sixty! And the heart wants what it wants.

I invite him over for dinner, make pasta – pancetta and peas  open a bottle of wine. To cook for another is sexy, elemental, ancestral the best way I learned to love in my Italian family. 

 Seated at my kitchen table, guitar propped on his knee, he plays a Brazilian ballade. My body lights up with the feeling of longing called saudade – and I sing along in Portuguese as he sings in English, our voices merging. “I love you more each day, yes I do…”

As he plucks the final note, I applaud. He chuckles, bashfully, clearing his throat.

Bloodstream flooded with dopamine, I cannot wait a minute longer. I take his hand and lead him to the bedroom. My desire, my consummation, at this wise age, is the driver.

I promise not to lose myself.

Then

“It’s time to legitimize this relationship,” says the maestro. He’s divorced his wife, given up his family, risked his career for me. I’ve given up things, too, I want to say, but the words are lodged in my throat. To be loved I’ve become someone else – a wispy version of me. At eighteen, I relent to his urgency and elope with him.

Standing at the altar beside my husband to be, winsome notes of Saint Sans floating up to the rafters, I tell myself: Yes, I love him, in this moment, the way he looks at me like I’m everything, butterflies fluttering in my chest, the feel of our fingers interlaced, as we speak our vows.

I do.

Is that, finally, the feeling of true love? Or am I still pretending? Could speaking vows before a minister, a congregation of friends and family – even if only his people, my side of the pews empty – stained glass light shining down upon the floor where we stand – transform our sinful affair into sacred union?

Even young me knows the answer; but it’s too late.

I do.

Arms raised to heaven, the minister pronounces us man and wife.

You may kiss the bride.

Our lips touch; though I feel nothing. Drifting up, diaphanous, I watch from the rafters, separate from the present, from my new husband, his face aglow with adoration. I am good at this; I’ve learned how to split in two – leave my body – even though, now, I must stay.

Now

It’s April. I’ve extended my lease, again, bu tnot because of Guitar Man. Dating for a joyful month, we’ve watched and waited for a warm day to return to the river, the place of our first meeting.

The treetops are bursting with new life, and so are we. We picnic on a rock, feeding each other cylinders of tuna maki held between chopsticks. We kiss with wasabi-tinged lips as the river roils beside us. Then, sated, we climb up, toes curled over the edge, anticipation rising. We know it will be cold.

Arms raised, he’s about to dive in.

“Wait.” I grab his hand. “Together,” I scowl, perturbed he’d even think of jumping alone. Fingers interlaced, I count to three – there’s a bossy sideI haven’t let him see. “Now!” I chime as, in unison, we leap.

Breaking the surface, we whoop and holler with childlike glee, floating with the river’s currents. Then, cleansed and shivering, we climb onto the rocks and lay back, shoulder to shoulder, letting the sun infuse us.

Warmth radiates from my heart down to my toes, and I wonder, as clouds drift by: Is this, finally, at sixty, the feeling of true love? Or am I still pretending?

Guitar man leans over, shading the sun with his body, droplets of water falling on my chest, eyes smiling into me. And for a flash, I see myself not as the solo swimmer, nomad loner – parentless, partnerless, childless, petless. But I picture us a little family – and his mean gray cat makes three – living together happily in his yellow bungalow in the holler.

I blink away the embarrassing fantasy. Because I hardly know this man – yet I’ve known him for a lifetime. The familiarity is uncanny. Though, yes, I sense conflicts, already – my expansive nature, his rigidity. He likes his world as is – he values his privacy – he’s protective of his family and circle of friends, his history, his co-dependent pussy. And, yet, the wispy daydream is so surprisingly sweet, tears burst from the corners of my eyes.

I notice the pattern I don’t want to see: let me work a little harder to make you love me.

It works.

“I love you,” he says, right on cue. “Will you be my girlfriend?”

We both giggle like kids; I blush, it’s so saccharine. “Yes,” I say as I see, reflected back in his amber irises, the love I’ve been waiting for.

I know love is more than a feeling and more than three words. It’s action and communication, compromise and curiosity, weathering storms together. I’ve waited long enough: I want the real, adult thing.

Still, this being seen feels so good, like sixteen.

When

  One day, in the not-too-distant future, his dreamy amber eyes will pierce me with disdain. “Apologize, Marina. That wasn’t nice.”

That night, preparing a meal in my kitchen, I’ll blink in bewilderment, feigning innocence when I know I bated him, castigated him for being sulky, silent, inflexible, confining; when I really hated myself for abiding by his comfortable limits – in my attempts to ask of him things outside his realm of interest – come meet my friends, listen to my music – in his resistance – in my acquiescence following him everywhere, , pretzel-bending to fit in. I’d become someone else, just to be loved by him.

It’s been going on for weeks – or months – gradually – or since the very beginning. With oxytocin and bossa nova coursing through my veins, I was oblivious to it.

“No.” I’ll stand firm, barefoot on the linoleum floor, tears of defiance streaming. “Don’t squelch me. Don’t reprimand me.” I’m sixty – and sixteen. Patterns repeating.

He will shrug, pick up his guitar, and walk out the door, the notes of his final serenade, the spicy scent of him hanging on the humid night air..

I will crumple like a rag doll, all that reactivated love churning like whitewater with no place to flow.

But I will not go after him. I’ll stay put, forehead pressed against the tile floor, bowing to Kali  as the salmon dinner gets cold. 

Then Again

There’s no going back – Mother Nature will make sure – as Hurricane Helene barrels 800 miles from the Gulf of Mexico into our valley. She’ll decimate rivers, drown villages, fell forests, and send me packing. I’ll sob for six straight hours, tears of compound grief, as I descend from mountains to coast – back on the solo nomad road.

Ankle deep at the surf’s edge, inhaling sea air, I’ll wish he were beside me – someone to hold my hand. But no!  Time to stop wishing and just – one, two, three – dive in!

Late afternoon, the beginning of fall, temperature’s brisk,  so I’m allowed to scream as I hit the water. Then, head down, I’ll stroke into the waves, thrashing the disaster out of me.

Pausing for a breath, I’ll lift my head and notice, salt water stinging my eyes: I’m swimming straight into a golden band of light.