One Night on a Dark Island
An education in true love
My mother used to read with me on the sofa every night. We had no air conditioning, just screens on the large windows on three sides of the house to let the trade winds pass through. We never had a glass window in the house, but we had shutters to protect us from the rain and the hurricanes.
Isolated in an isolated community, we were all descendants of those who fled Saint Barthélemy in the early 20th century for economic success in the US Virgin Islands. We still clung to our creole French, spoken only by a dozen or so families on the island.
Our accents and the clumsiness in English set us apart. The criminal element that had long been a part of our community caused many islanders to shun us. We were white but not considered so by either race. We looked foreign compared to the native blacks and white Americans. They were scared to come into our little community, maybe rightly so.
The intimacy between my mother and I crept up on us. Marie needed affection, and I provided it to her by letting her rest against me or holding her in my arms. She was still young and beautiful and remains so today. She is also amoral and selfish, and needy, traits I would seek out in other women later in my life. What happened was inevitable. Her placing my hand on her breast signaled that we were at the point of no return.
I was 18 at the time, and I fell in love with her completely and shared her bed until 19. I loved her body and worshipped it, and gave her pleasure every night.
I tell few people about that and even fewer about the intimacies we share daily still. I’ve loved three women in my life, and I’ve only had sex with four. None of them are younger than me. The first of my loves was Marie, and I still think of her daily.
I never thought Marie and I ever did anything wrong. I’ve never thought it damaged me in any respect. It gave me a pearl of wisdom that few men possess. I am equally amoral as the women I love. I didn’t just love Marie, I adored her, and I still do. She knows that, and she knows something else, if I had no one to turn to in life, she would be there to fill that void. She waits in the wings still.
What Marie gave to me was precious. I learned how to love a woman while I was still young. I could have stayed with her, and a part of me wanted to do that. Islands are like small towns in the sea where others took up the opportunities. A place where what you are born to be is what you become. If you wanted change, you left.
I became American when I left the island. I lost my strange accent and began speaking in one that only sounded strange to me. I tried to fit in as best I could, but I wasn’t drawn to the university girls. I talked on the phone with Marie every day and still do. I was in New York City, and I found the women there tremendously attractive. Particularly those of a certain age and sophistication.
I had a talent for something that made me enough money to live a life few students do. It allowed me to dress in a manner that didn’t hide my youth but made me acceptable to a certain type of woman.
It was nothing nefarious, just the ability to write a legal argument that was irrefutable, but in a manner easy for a judge to read. Lawyers may know the law but expressing emotion in a brief is beyond them. Their avarice precludes it.
The second woman I had sex with was only the prelude to the third. She was married, twice my age, stunningly beautiful and narcissistic. I would have fallen in love with her if she hadn’t asked me to meet at a party and not shown up. That’s where I met my wife. We fell in love and, as if destiny didn’t play a hand in my life, I also fell in love with her mother.
My marriage has been an education in adultery. I was cuckolded within a few months of the wedding and have been repeatedly for the last ten years, but I adore my wife. She is ten years my senior and reminds me so much of Marie. I sometimes almost slip when I say her name. Her mother, Simone, fills the gaps when my wife is gone, and we love each other with a passion.
It’s a wonder that one night on a dark island, when Marie put my hand on her breast, shaped me for life, and made me the man I am today.
