Voyeur, Writer, Beach Walker
Learning that a secret place is not so secret
I’d had lunch, left for me in the fridge, a salad, with a glass of Rosé. Before thinking about a power nap, I decided to take a leisurely walk, having started to keep myself in better shape and enjoying the prospect of not travelling anywhere for a week or two. Just to settle down on the property and enjoy the cooling breezes coming off the Pacific Ocean and generally do nothing.
There are hundreds of small inlets along the Mendocino coast, some so secret that I consider them to belong to me. It took me about twenty minutes to walk to my favourite, seventy feet across, a complete horseshoe, surrounded by difficult terrain and dangerous if not knowing the tides, but I knew every safe step after years of walking there and never once came across other persons.
That changed yesterday.
The two lay together in tender closeness on a large beach towel with red stripes and a pile of clothes stacked neatly beside them. They hadn’t come prepared for the beach; the man was wearing his briefs, she the briefest of underwear, revealing completely her tanned bottom. She, at a guess, I’d put in her late twenties; the guy, similarly. I could understand why, being so hidden from view, they felt secure enough to be as free as they looked.
Any decent man who didn’t have voyeuristic tendencies would simply have walked on by, turning inland and recalling his youth with a smile. That was not me. I crouched.
They’d been into the water; their hair, hers a rich brown, his blond curly, was matted with sand and saltwater. The man was muscular, lying on his back; I watched his chest rise and fall to the rhythm of the waves. She had risen to support herself on her left elbow, resting her head into her palm while the forefinger of her right hand traced lines over his blond-haired chest. Her left breast was exposed, heavy, not large, with a dark nipple.
I assumed they had been in this place for a while, undisturbed, probably made love and went into the water.
It was in this same spot, twenty-six years ago, Jenny, wearing her jeans rolled up to her knees, walked back and forth ankle-deep in the surf with a child clinging to her hand and kicking saltwater sparks into the air. I remember the child, her son, broke free of her hand and came racing to me to ask me to build another sand octopus.
I remember I felt frustrated having a child along, but something had gone wrong, and the plan for us to be alone for the afternoon fell apart. I recall it was the first day I arrived back in California, not having seen Jenny for six weeks. There were things going on in my body her son had no understanding of, but if we were going to build a sand octopus, we better get on with it.
The man lying on the beach gently pushed the woman onto her back, coming on top of her, careful to keep his full weight from crushing down on her breasts. He kissed her passionately. I felt a stir. I imagined his eyes were closed. He stopped kissing her and returned to lying on his back, letting his right hand fall on the tightness of her tummy, and instinctively aware of her gaze as he let his head fall back onto the sand.
Her breasts were then exposed, beautiful, young, and white, telling me she rarely went topless. But here, in their own serenity, with the man she loves, she threw every care onto the breeze.
After another five minutes, the man got to his feet. I watched as the woman, still lying there, admired the tightness of his buttocks; then, she, too, rose to her feet, gathering up clothes. When fully dressed again, they embraced in a loving finale.
I scampered over the rise, knowing I was out of sight from the only tricky route up and down, and listened as they passed, talking like lovers, arm in arm, their perfect afternoon noted and now written down.
PS: From this voyeuristic observation came this:
She lay in deep thought, staring up into the bluest depths of space with the gentle sound of the surf and caressed by the soft touch of the warm California breeze. In those tender moments, she had become aware of her own insignificance. He rolled onto his side, said nothing, fingered away the strands of her rusted-red hair falling over her forehead, and gently brushed the sand from her brow. After a longer moment, he got to his feet, and in doing so, she admired the tightness of his buttocks as he searched around, gathering up their clothes, clothes that had been discarded to the ocean’s edge as they’d embraced in an uncontrollable desire to explore each other.
Harry Hogg: English writer raised in Scotland, living between California, Missouri, Colorado, and Scotland.
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