The Topsail Accord (23 page)
I didn’t believe it until he was doing it to me. And even then I barely believed it. I hardly believe it still, though he is folded into me and behind me, still holding me, sensually, though not possessively. Though he has known me in ways no man ever has, he does not possess me. I cannot be possessed. But I can give. And I have given everything that I have to give, freely, wantonly, without restraint, and with wondrous result.
Nothing like this has ever happened to me before. Such complete surrender and abandon and lust. It has never been like this for me before. Ever. I have made love and I have fucked, but this was neither and both all at once.
I had no idea a man could make a woman feel like this. That a man could make
me
feel like this. That I or anyone could even feel like this. Even at my own hand I have never experienced what I have just felt.
me
feel like this. That I or anyone could even feel like this. Even at my own hand I have never experienced what I have just felt.
Do other women feel this? Does my sister feel this with her husband? Will I ever feel this way again? Or was it the novelty and the newness and the months long wait for the release?
I don’t even know the questions to ask. Just thinking about this makes me want it again, and again, and again. I feel the very tip of him resting against my bottom. I shift just a tiny bit, to brush against it, and feel him respond.
I could get lost in this. And perhaps that would be a good thing, for a while...
But although I could get lost, it would only be for a while. I am only here for a while. I have my routines, and my life, and my family. He can be a part of my here and now, but when I go I will not think about him, will not allow him to be a missing part. He can be part of here, and that is all. Just a part of Topsail, and a part of the beach house. He is not and cannot be a part of the rest of me.
It is unfair. I know it, and I suspect he knows it. But he appears to accept it. And so I will not question his acceptance, even though I know it is a one sided and unfair deal that I am making.
Joe
Although I have dreamed about her, and fantasized about her, seen her face and felt her body when I release myself alone at night, neither the dreams nor the fantasy nor the momentary relief can compare to the reality of what just happened. I lie behind her, cupping her firm tiny breast in my hand, my stomach against her muscled runner’s bottom. I am as empty and complete as a man can be.
Colleen never gave herself over as completely as Shannon just did. Colleen always tried to maintain some type of control, and thus I was always somehow restrained. She was never fully in the power of a man and woman being a man and a woman.
I am surprised, amazed even, that Shannon, reserved nearly aloof Shannon, was capable of such absolute surrender. That she could give herself so utterly and so completely to everything. I thought she might be rigid, or prudish, or something. Anything but the total consummate uninhibited lover who lies in my arms.
I am gone. I know we will not be able to do this every day, every moment. I know that she will not move here to live with me, and she will not allow me to move and live with her. I know that I will have this time in January, and then perhaps no other time. I accept this, and I accept the gaping pit that awaits me when she is gone. Because she will go. After having shown me this possibility, after having given me this reality, she will go. She will not miss me, she will not think of me when she is gone. She will be a cruel lover. An unforgettable, unmatchable, irresistible, and unattainable lover.
But she will return from time to time, as part of her ritual, as part of her routine. She will be here every July, and every January. It will be difficult in July, with her family in the house. It will not be difficult in January. So it may be another year. But I will wait for her. Because when she is here, she is completely here like no-one has ever been completely here for me before. Is it the finiteness of the time we have together that allows the full extent of her presence? Is she only here now in this unrestrained way because it is another separate part of her world? I should not question it. I should let it alone, let it be. This unexamined moment of life is more than worth living. However many of these moments there will be.
I have forgotten to discuss the bargain. I will bring it up later. Now is not the time. Not so freshly after discovering an entire realm and plane of intensity that I did not know existed. Not now. Later. When there is a normal moment, neither sunrise nor sunset, but a moment when we are just Joe and Shannon and not transcendent in some way, not the sated lovers reveling in the newfound brilliance of an unimagined and undreamt of coupling.
She shifts slightly, her ass brushes against the tip of me, and I begin to feel the arousal.
Shannon and Joe
Their days blend together into a menagerie of ocean, sand, sky, and sex. They are naked as often as they are dressed, and they are ravenous for each other. They go from beach to bed and back time after time every day. They are unaware that their cycle merges with the tides, flowing from high to low every six hours and thirty seven minutes. For these hours and weeks they become part of Topsail Island and the sea that dominates it, as much a part as the dunes and sea oats and ever present Atlantic.
Shannon has only spoken to her sister once during this whole time. She called her to let her know she had arrived safely and then mentioned that she was having a “nice” time. She has never been one to talk on the phone except to report an arrival at some remote location or to ask a specific question of a specific listener.
Joe has abandoned his coffee shop for the weeks she has been here, and has only seen his sister once. His business and Foundation are running without him, though they both run less smoothly, with less direction and passion.
During the day they are cocooned in each other, ignorant of anything or anyone else in the world. So few words pass between them that entire hours, and once an entire day passes without a word being spoken. Their understanding is on some level that mute yet sentient primal beings must understand. It is felt, breathed, internalized, un-described, and indescribable.
And yet each night she kisses him good-bye and he goes to his house. After she is sure he is gone she leaves her beach house and returns to her cottage. To her refuge. Sometimes she takes a circuitous route, doubles back on herself, goes over the bridge and comes back, goes up to the end of the island and quickly ducks into a driveway to make sure she is not being followed. She does not think Joe would follow her, and she does not think her ex is here. But she obsessively pretends to be a secret agent who has to slip a tail before she can relax into her cottage.
He has not been to her cottage, and he has not asked to visit. He knows she leaves the beach house, and he knows she goes to the cottage. He accepts that she will give only the time she arrives at the beach house until the time she leaves the beach house.
Part of him longs for more, longs to visit her in her cottage, to make love to her in her cottage. To feel every part of him inside every part of her and to take up their rhythm and to put that spirit and that result into her cottage. But another part of him knows that the cottage exists behind a barrier that no person can cross. Not even all of Shannon crosses the barrier. There is some other Shannon that resides in that cottage behind the barrier.
He knows and accepts that the cottage is not and never will be part of the bargain. He rationalizes that her refuge is part of what makes her who and what she is, part of why she can give herself without reservation in the way that she does. He knows that to intrude on that refuge, to cross that barrier, would be to destroy the power that creates her life force and her love force.
He does not try to follow her, he does not try to locate her cottage. He keeps it as a separate abstraction in his mind, while she maintains it as a tangible rest and refuge.
Shannon
He is coming over again this morning. Is this the sixteenth or seventeenth morning in a row? I have lost count. But it is more than half of my month here. This is my month to recharge, to think and plan the entire year. To review my data from the past year and to think about what it all means. In the late evenings and early mornings I still do this. But during the day there is only Joe, and me, and us, in my bed in the beach house, on the beach, us, together.
My sister would say I have been “fucked silly”, but she would be wrong. I am as much myself now as I ever have been. And for once I have something that a woman should have, that a woman needs, that makes a woman a woman. I have a man who is a skilled and patient lover, who asks nothing but takes everything. A man who cannot get enough of me but who will leave me alone.
I give him everything, and this morning I will give him something different. I will take him in a way that I have never taken a man before. I will make him unique to me. I will make a memory with him that can only be him in my memory. That when I am old and all of this fucking is over I will think back and though some things may be confused there will only be the one man with whom I have done what I will do this morning.
I actually got on the internet and did some research on how other women do it, or how gay men do it to each other. I can’t believe that am I planning oral sex. That I had to research it. But I have. I want to experiment. I want to try everything, because my time here in North Carolina is passing more quickly than ever. The days, especially the mornings when we make love, are a coital blur.
He’s never asked me for this. Never tried anything that I wasn’t willing to give. But today, after we run, and after we have showered, I will bring him to my bed and I will make him lie down first. Then I will kiss him like he kisses me and take him in my mouth like he takes me in his. And after I have kissed him I will slide him into me and then ride him until the spasms take him and he screams out in Paleolithic utterances that echo around my empty beach house.
He has taken me and I have surrendered. Today I will take him and he will surrender.
I will not criticize myself for the knowledge that this will be the final thread that I unravel from his tapestry of independence. He is mine, and he will always be mine, though I will be gone for months at a time. It is unfair. And I don’t care. I want him this way, and I will have him this way, and after this he will never think of another.
Joe
I will be seeing her for the eighteenth day in a row. She arrived back here on the 3
rd
, and we made love on the 4
th
, and on every day since. Sometimes several times in a day. My back hurts, my hips hurt, my knees hurt, everything hurts, and yet I cannot stay away, nor do I want to stay away. Her days here are numbered, though I am unaware of the exact number. But I know they are numbered. I will rest and heal after she is gone. Perhaps I will be healed by July, or by next January, when I will be with her again.
rd
, and we made love on the 4
th
, and on every day since. Sometimes several times in a day. My back hurts, my hips hurt, my knees hurt, everything hurts, and yet I cannot stay away, nor do I want to stay away. Her days here are numbered, though I am unaware of the exact number. But I know they are numbered. I will rest and heal after she is gone. Perhaps I will be healed by July, or by next January, when I will be with her again.
She is neither praying mantis nor black widow. She has not lured me in this way so that she can decapitate me or eat me. But she has bewitched me. I know she will return to Ohio, to her digs and drills, to her assays and papers and science and family. I know she will forget me until she returns. Her worlds are separate and distinct and well defined. There is beach house July and cottage January and digging September and cataloguing October and Christmas December and on and on in her progression. The order is part of who she is. And now I suppose that I am part of that order.
I still haven’t talked about the bargain I am going to propose. ‘Propose’, now there’s a word. I am going to ‘propose’ a bargain to her, not marriage, never marriage, she is clear on that. But I am going to propose an arrangement where we will see each other here, and where we will take vacations together. I will propose surfing and lighthouses, maybe surfing at lighthouses. But it is what I will propose. A new routine, a new separate world that she can separate and integrate into her current world. I know she can amend her plans, because she has amended cottage January to include a lover. Or has she had a lover every January? Am I just the next in a series? Will someone else fill her next January?
No. It cannot be. I know the island and I know the men and families here. If there was a woman conducting serial affairs every January on the island I would know. I think this is new to her. It is new to me. But I did not know that it was her that funded the clinic and the lifeguards. I had no idea that it was her who paid for the park. So the island clearly does have secrets about which even I am unaware. Could she be a secret January lover?
I tie my shoe incorrectly for the third time, I am so distracted with lust and longing for her. I finally tie my shoe correctly. She has told me today will be a longer run. I hope I can keep up, because she is ten years younger, more than a decade fitter, and she is not, like I am, wearing down close to exhaustion from sex. I am almost looking forward to her time of the month. After eighteen days in a row it has to come soon. Unless she is pregnant. But even this thought does not stop me.
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