Leaving, Leaping...

Content note: This post contains sexual content.

—06.30.2000—

I went down to the edge of Gugh the other day after hearing that a few people would be jumping off the Hakestone, a sheer-faced slab of granite rising 30 or 40 feet out of the sea. Jumping off the stone into the sea is a bit of a coming-of-age ritual for island teenagers and their visiting friends. It was fun to watch them climb to the top, hem and haw, doubt, face their fears, release them, and leap. Some screamed—some didn’t. A girl, 17 or so, sat on the rocks nearby watching and weighing whether she would make the leap. I ended up leaving before she reached her decision.

On Monday I leapt off St. Agnes for good—well, for now. It was a bit of a hasty departure but I planned on meeting my friend Mira from San Francisco in Barcelona so I needed to be quick.

Monday evening I arrived in Penzance on the Scillonian with my mountain of luggage and took a taxi up to the Penzance Art Club, a gallery, bar, and guest house comprised of four rooms.

The trip on the Scillonian was good, if quiet and contemplative. I tried to sleep. Everyone onboard rushed to the windows, however, at the announcement that dolphins could be seen on either side of the bow. A woman knocked off the hat I had propped low on my head in her gleeful haste. On the wall next to me, in a “Life on the Islands” photo essay, an 80s-era picture showed Galen, Andrew Fox, and Jon’s brother Oliver, at about fourteen, walking up the quay on St. Agnes coming home from school.

My evening in Penzance was quiet. The first thing I did was go upstairs and have a shower. After months of baths, and most recently puddle bathing, a shower felt like luxurious bliss. The Arts Club had a lot going for it, wide-planked wooden floors and high ceilings, paintings everywhere, high-backed armchairs in the bar. My room was small, white, and simple, with a bright orange painting and sheer curtains that had dried flowers sewn on like buttons. “It’s a shame I’m alone,” I thought. That night I went out to dinner, had a drink in the bar, and went to bed.

The next morning, walking through the town, I ran into the girl that had been working that morning in the Club. She smiled as she approached and immediately turned around and began to walk with me in the direction she had just come from, so I assumed she hadn’t been on any important mission. I invited her out for a coffee. She smiled again, “Would you like to?”

We walked along the seafront to the village of Newlyn, and to a little general store we both happened to know that sells great fishing smocks, chatting as we went. She was half Nigerian, half English, grew up in London, and came to Penzance a few years ago to ease the pace of life. She was nowhere near my height, very curvy, beautifully freckled with an innocent face which often shone with the most amazingly disarming smile. Over coffee she told me about a daughter she had when she was quite young, who was just going off to college. I immediately began to calculate. College age in England is about sixteen but Lia—short for Malia—didn’t look a day over thirty. “Fourteen?” I thought to myself...

There was a giggly, nervous tension in the air by the time we left our coffees half finished on the table. “Where would you like to go?” she asked, “Would you like to sit somewhere?”

“Yeah, let’s do that.” Five minutes later we were sitting in a church yard overlooking the sea. I asked if I could kiss her. She was too shy to look at me but said, “Yes, I think that’d be alright,” and there we stayed for a large part of the afternoon talking, laughing, kissing, and staring at the sea.

Down at the end of the line, at Penzance Station, the train I was meant to be on would be pulling into the station soon. “Will you stay with me tonight if I cancel my train?” I felt I was going out on a limb but she said she would. So we spent the last part of the afternoon walking down the coast in the other direction to Marazion and St. Michael’s Mount, a monastery built on a tall conical island about a quarter mile offshore.

After dinner and drinks we grabbed a taxi and headed back to Penzance. She got out a few blocks from the Club to go check on her daughter and I met her later in the bar. A quick chat and we went upstairs to my room, the one she had made up that morning before going out to find me in the streets (as I later found out).

There was no use pretending it was evening. It was only about six o’clock and the sun shone through the window like it was afternoon. We laid down next to one another and I made my hand fast in her kinky-straight hair and slid my lips across hers. We kissed for a long time. Tugging at the shoulder straps of her bra and little t-shirt came to nothing. She always managed to slide them back into position. I took my shirt off and asked if I could take off hers. That went, then after a moment’s hesitation she decided I might as well free her from her bra. I undid the clasp, she laid her arms back in front of her chest, looking up at me in a moment of modesty before the black lace slid down the length of her arms and I bent down to kiss her full, pendulous breasts.

——

I just found an errant page, written after meeting Lia. Here’s what it said:

It’s difficult for me to write about sex but I will tell you what I remember.

How her brown skin, freckled and innocent, looked against the white of the room. Her look of utter surprise and pleasure as I grabbed her ass and slid my crooked thumb between her small, nether lips, my knuckle rubbing her right. Panting, she asked under her breath, “What are you doing?”

“Come first, ask questions later,” I said.

The wide-eyed surprise hadn’t yet left her face. “I will...”

How long it took us to get out of our clothes. We were both lying on the bed with our shirts off and then got under the covers, trousers on. According to Lia, removing them would have been “too much of a temptation.” Wearing slacks to bed is never a good idea. Within minutes I was absolutely baking. “Can I take off my trousers if I promise to be good?”

“Ok, if you promise... Take mine off too.”

The more we kissed, the more I held her by the back of her neck, the more she embraced me, the harder that promise became to keep and I eventually had to withdraw it.

How her mobile rang around eleven. It was her daughter. “I’m at Danielle’s,” she said stiffly. “I’ll be home soon.”

“You’re not a very good liar,” I told her when she got off the phone.

How I kissed her until late.

How she smiled in reply.

How she looked on top of me, a modern day Venus of Willendorf, only much saucier. The pillowy softness of her breasts.

How she snored and the incredulous expression with which she greeted me when I woke her.

How she denied it in the morning with a smile.

Those are the things I remember.