I was spending the summer in Mallorca, in Deya, near the monastery where George Sand and Chopin stayed...
That's how Anais Nin's "Mallorca" begins. It's a very brief story, no more than three or four pages in the 'Delta of Venus' collection. The plot of it is simple enough. A young girl, the daughter of a local fisherman, is walking by the sea one evening, and a voice calls to her to come into the water and swim. She thinks the voice belongs to a beautiful and wealthy American tourist girl, and she goes into the water, shedding her white dress. In the water, it turns out that the voice belongs not to the American girl but to the American's younger brother. They swirl around one another, naked in dark water, learning one another's bodies, and have sex there and on the beach.
It's a story that would've made a lovely Zalman King vignette. King understood about sunlight and colours and how to film summer heat. He understood about wordless desire and the beauty of yielding oneself in silence. "Mallorca" should've been made into a 'Red Shoe Diaries' episode, and I'm sure there were episodes that followed similar plots. In another world, a better world, I'd have a complete set of 'Red Shoe Diaries' episodes on DVD.
My friend did write me about her adventure in Austin at the SXSW festival a few years ago. Details matter, I'd told her, and she did offer up the sorts of details I like. She's known me for a decade; she does have a good sense of where my interests lie.
It was March, she wrote. Warm for an early spring. She was in a sundress--- blue-and-white, summery-short ---and Keds. She was in one of the town's older venues, up on the balcony level, watching the band. She'd had a few, maybe a few too many, tequila shots. The club was crowded; there'd been a long line to get in.
What happened next was simple enough. She was leaning on the rail, looking down at the band and the crowds when someone brushed against her from behind. Nothing so unusual in a crowded club, and she thought nothing of it. Then something was behind her, and she could tell it was someone standing almost against her. A finger brushed along her back and side.
There had been boys on the balcony, one or two fairly attractive. She was startled by the touch, but she hadn't been touched in a long while. It just seemed like something that never happened to her, like something in a movie. She started to turn around, but a hand stopped her. She pushed back into him a little and kept looking at the band.
The finger made its way up along her shoulders, then down her side. She flinched when it touched her nipple through her sundress, but she willed herself not to move. I asked her if she'd been scared, and she told me that no, she hadn't felt scared. She'd thought about what people might see, but she felt--- and wanted to feel ---daring. She could hear him behind her, and he pressed his face into her hair. It was very, very important to her not to look and see who he was, she said. What mattered was just the feeling. She wore her hair long that spring, she said, down to her shoulder blades, and she turned her face to hide in her hair.
He held her hips against him, then slid his hands along her thighs under her dress. He worked her underwear down slowly, close enough against her to hide what he was doing. Not a thong, she told me, just basic cotton VS bikini. Sorry to disappoint you, she wrote, but I do wear underwear most of the time. She did wonder how far he'd go in public, if she was just going to be fingered, if she was about to be thrown out of the venue. What mattered, she said, was to just let it happen, whatever it was.
A bit awkward when her underwear got past her knees, she told me. Once she realized that they were coming off, there was the awkwardness of discretion: trying to use his body for cover, trying to step out them without being obvious, trying not to catch them on her Keds. She kicked them against the base of the balcony rail and felt the flat of his hand caressing her.
She didn't hear his zipper come down, but she knew it was happening. The diving board moment, she said. Like being on a diving board at a pool: there's a last moment before you have to just stride down the board and jump. He still hadn't said anything, and she was still keeping her face hidden in the fall of her hair. He ran a finger between her legs and then kissed the side of her neck. She imagined what they looked like, imagined them both as hidden in the shadows and as obvious to anyone who gave them more than a passing glance. Her mind kept jumping to possibilities--- was she wet enough for this to be easy, was he covertly spitting in his hand to lubricate himself? She tried to bend forward just a bit and get into position, and then he was inside her.
Writing about it years later, she told me that it all felt very...easy. She'd been wet enough, and he felt good inside her. No gasps from passers-by, no security guards. He had one hand on her hip and the other around her. He wasn't moving fast or hard--- nothing obvious ---but she did move against him. Like we were dancing, you know? Again, the hard part was willing herself not to turn, not to look. When she was with boyfriends, she'd always preferred face-to-face. But this wasn't about whoever it was behind her, and it wasn't about how he was looking at her or what he thought of her. What she wanted was for this to just happen, not for it to be about him.
It didn't take long. He came inside her, and she came a few moments later. Not any world-shattering orgasm, she said. Nice, but contained. Breathing hard, not screaming. He rested against her back for a bit, and she felt his chin on her shoulder. She kept her focus on the band. In a minute or two, he kissed her shoulder and neck and then moved away, She reached back and squeezed his hand once, and he was gone.
She was twenty-two when that happened. Friends would ask her later if she'd been worried about who he was. What if he'd been ugly or gross? What if he'd been fifty or married? Those things didn't matter, she told them. There was no reason to know. If she'd met him at the bar, or while standing on line for the venue, she'd have cared about all that. But not this way. This way was about the experience, not the person.
You understand, she wrote. You know what I'm talking about. I didn't want him, I wanted to know that I'd done it, that I could do it. I wanted to know what it would be like. I know you understand.
I do understand. And I envy her not so much the sex, but the lights and details and music that made it all into a story,.
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