“Maybe this is a bad idea,” he said. “Maybe this is a warning.”
My stomach dropped. I wondered if he really felt this scared, or if he was embarrassed from the fall, looking for reassurance to show him how much I wanted him to come home with me. No, he probably really felt that way. And anyway, I wasn’t going to beg.
“Whatever you want,” I said.
Theo closed his eyes. Under the blanket he looked like a child. I stood in the sand, tracing half-moon shapes with my toe. My life now came down to whatever he decided. But I didn’t convey any desperation. Just being with him relaxed me. When he was right near me I could feel strangely casual, as though he could disappear and I would be okay. I could just be there, languidly drawing my little sand prints. It was only when he wasn’t with me, when I was away from the ocean, that I felt like I was disintegrating.
“Come here,” he said. “Come under the blanket with me.”
I got in and pulled up the blanket as though we were going to bed. We hugged for a long time. Then we started kissing and I felt his cock get hard against me.
“I want you so much,” he whispered in my ear. “You are my earth girl.”
“I want you too,” I said.
“We shouldn’t do it here,” he said. “Not on the beach at daylight.”
“What do you want to do?”
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.”
But he began to finger me, first tickling my clit just a little, then teasing my hole. I was already soaking wet.
“Come on,” I said into his mouth.
“Okay,” he said, fingering me harder.
“You’re finger fucking me on the beach and you’re a very young man. This is your first time fingering a girl. What do you have to say about that?”
Of course it was not his first time. But I wanted it to be.
“I’m finger fucking your beautiful vagina and it’s my first time. You’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. I can’t believe it. I can’t believe I get to finger you.”
He intuitively knew exactly what to say to have me writhing. Or perhaps I planted the words in him, as so much of what our lovers do and say is imagined. We turn them into who we want them to be. We fill in their bodies and words for them.
He pulled out his finger and sucked it, then put it in my mouth.
“Taste yourself,” he said. “You are delicious.”
“I am?” I asked. I nibbled his finger a little.
“You are,” he said. “But it’s not safe here like this.”
“What should we do? Do you want to go back in the ocean?”
“Not particularly.”
“So then let’s try again.”
I rolled over, out from under the blanket, and stood up. Then I brought the wagon over to him.
“Okay, hold it very still,” he said, and hoisted himself on backward. I covered him up in the blanket. This time he stayed on.
As I pulled him across the beach, there were just a few stray joggers and assorted weirdos nearby. His blanketed tail jutted off the wagon, but it wasn’t the strangest thing to happen in Venice. No one seemed to notice or care. It wasn’t like I was smuggling a dead body.
36.
I wheeled him up to the side gate of Annika’s house.
“Wow,” he said, gaping up at the glass structure. “The other place I was in was just a wooden shack.”
“Yeah,” I said. “My sister’s place is really nice.”
I could hear Dominic barking from inside. I had never heard him sound so loud and unhinged.
“Oh God,” he said. “I forgot you had a dog. I’m very frightened of them.”
“Dominic is really sweet,” I said. “But I can put him in another room if you want.”
“Please,” he said.
I went inside. Dominic was baring his fangs.
“Okay, chill,” I told him. But he growled and showed his gums to me. I also saw that his penis was out, the red lipstick of it extended from its sheath. I knew this happened to dogs when they were angry or excited. Why was he so agitated?
“Come here,” I said, and he began to whimper. “You’re going to go in this room.”
I opened the door to my sister’s pantry and put in his food dish and water. Then I dragged him in there by the collar. He put his head on his paws and his tail between his legs, but when I went back outside he began barking maniacally again. I didn’t know what to do. This was not the glowing bubble I had envisioned.
“How scared are you?” I asked Theo. “Maybe if he just comes out and meets you.”
“The problem is that if he attacks I can’t get away.”
“He won’t attack,” I said. But I had never seen Dominic this irate and I wasn’t sure.
When we imagine a situation—when our hearts decide this must happen—we will go to any lengths to make the fantasy happen. In my fantasy there was no barking. There was only me and Theo on the soft sheets and a universe of silence.
“Wait one second,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”
I remembered I had seen some doggy tranquilizers in one of the kitchen cabinets for things like airplane flights. I got two pills and hid them in a treat, then went into the pantry and stuffed it into Dominic’s frothing mouth. Two was double the dose. Was I awful? Would I be punished? Next I turned on some music, something ambient of my sister’s, a soft electronic yoga chant meant to soothe the most stressed-out human or animal.
“He should be quiet soon,” I said, coming out the side door.
Then I realized that Theo was still in the wagon.
“Oh God,” I said. “I’m sorry, let me help you out of there.”
He smiled nervously as I pulled the wagon into the house. In my visions, Theo would be able to go anywhere on his own. He would be part Paralympic champion and part giant snail, easily gliding from room to room and up the stairs. But there really was no way of getting him up there.
“Maybe we can relax on the sofa,” I said, pointing.
My sister’s sofa was white and I felt nervous about getting it covered in kelp, sand, the sheen of sea dirt that accrued and attached itself to Theo’s tail. I was covered in the beach and ocean salt too.
I took the blanket off of him and laid it on the sofa. He flipped himself onto the floor and began to drag himself over. I felt proud of him that he was unashamed to do this in my presence, to let me see him so vulnerable. It was adorable—him flopping around out of water, trying to be strong for me, arms straining. Who was this magic creature in my sister’s home? How had this even happened?
He hoisted himself onto the sofa and lay down on his back.
“What’s that?” he asked, pointing to the big flat-screen TV.
“It’s a television,” I said. “It projects images and sound. But right now it’s off. It’s sleeping.”
“Do you enjoy it?”
“Not really,” I said.
“Come over here,” he said.
I got on top of him. We kissed each other with open mouths, sucking at each other like we were eating mussels. Then we kissed slow and gentle. I noticed that Dominic had stopped barking. How long could Theo stay with me? Would we be able to bend time in any direction we wanted, or would reality have to come snapping back? As long as we still had one more moment I felt safely enshrouded by a womb of light, protecting me from the nothingness. But as I lost myself in his kissing, I felt a strange darkness creep through that barrier and overwhelm me. I was part of him again, twins again, and I felt the surge of the ocean—the real one or maybe the ocean of consciousness—but this time the ocean was scary and dark, and I couldn’t breathe. I felt nervous, responsible for him, like I needed to pretend I was fine. He flipped me over. Now I was trapped under a strange fish.
He stopped kissing me.
“Are you ok
ay?” he asked.
I was the one who was supposed to feel comfortable, in this home, on land. It had been so brave of him to come, to do something so risky, but it was me who was suddenly afraid. I lied and said I was good. My sister’s home looked like a strange submarine to me, spinning in a vast ocean. There was nowhere for it to land. We kissed some more, but I was being consumed by terror and scared that I would float away or drown.
Just let yourself go, I said to myself. I wondered if the darkness and sadness were coming from him or from me. I stopped kissing him again.
“You have experienced great sadness,” I said.
“Yes,” he said. “But I suppose we all have.”
“But you’re so intuitive. I can really feel you, I can feel the way you feel. You feel other people’s pain, don’t you?”
“I guess I do,” said Theo.
I wondered if he could feel what I was feeling. Did he know that if I stayed there any longer I might choke on this new darkness?
“Let me check on Dominic to make sure he’s okay,” I said.
Dominic was asleep on the floor of the pantry. Everything was peaceful in there, as though there were a halo of okayness. Suddenly I wished it were just me and Dominic. Now the dog seemed like less responsibility than the merman. Why had I been so urgent to get Theo back here? Perhaps it was only because I thought that I couldn’t. Maybe this was my way: now that he was here, that I knew I could get him here, I didn’t want it. Maybe the group was right. I was intimacy-averse. I took a deep breath and gathered myself. I couldn’t just leave Theo in the other room.
“Do you want something to eat?” I called.
“No, just come back in here.”
I wondered what he ate. Plankton? Fish? His breath always tasted fresh, a little salty but not fishy. He tasted like ocean air.
In the living room he was sitting up in the sunlight that shone through the big glass windows, the blanket wrapped around him.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Why?” I asked.
“I think I brought some darkness in here with me. The sadness, moving from sea to land, sometimes I can’t shake it. I thought if anything I would feel scared, but coming here I couldn’t help but think, What’s the point? I mean, I guess the point is that we have an experience. I guess that is the point. I just, well, I am going to live a long time. And have lived a long time. I have seen a lot of people come and go.”
I wondered how many people. How many women, human women? Mermaids? I wanted to say I would be with him forever. But I didn’t know if that was what he wanted me to say. I couldn’t make that promise. I realized it wasn’t my impending departure for Phoenix that stopped me from offering the words. And it wasn’t my fear of intimacy. It was still my fear of rejection.
“But you seem so young,” I said.
“No, I’m not. I’ve been alive for a very long time. I’m not eternal. I can die. But we don’t usually get sick, not in the body anyway. Something about the saltwater. It brines us and keeps us young. It keeps illness from entering.”
“So how old are you exactly?”
“Honestly, I don’t really know. It’s not a thing down there. Maybe forty?”
“That’s how old I am,” I said. “Almost. Wow, I’m younger than you.”
“I told you you’re young,” he said. “I might be even older than that actually.”
“Who are your parents?”
“They are like me, but also very much not like me. They look like me, or my mother does anyway, but more content with their existence. They never leave the water. They aren’t scared, they simply have no interest,” he said. “Anyway, hoisting and dragging myself like that, on the sand, it made me feel tired. Sometimes I get so tired, even in the water. It’s like physical things don’t make me physically tired, but they make me mentally tired. Mental things make me feel that way too.”
“Everything is just so much,” I said. “All the time.”
“It is,” he said. “And I was scared I wasn’t going to be able to, you know.” He laughed.
“Get it up?” I said.
“Yeah,” he said. “Not because I don’t want you or because I don’t have it in me physically, but because of that mental exhaustion. I can doubt myself. I become more susceptible.”
“Theo,” I soothed him.
Now that I knew he was the one who had brought the darkness I felt that I didn’t have to be as afraid anymore. The gloom wasn’t coming from me. I was still responsible for him but not for the atmosphere. So many times I had tried to fix things, people’s feelings, the shifting moods of men, by adjusting my own behavior. But in this case it was beyond me. He was, after all, supernatural. Did he even exist? I decided that he existed like a mood. In some ways, my moods did and did not exist. People said that you could will a mood into being or will it away. Just think positively. But I never felt that way. My moods were their own entities, even if no one could understand why they were there. That was what made me scared of feelings. I realized now that what I had to do, in spite of what others said, was not try to change a mood but surrender to it. I had to surrender to whatever feelings arrived and in doing so I could maybe ride them, floating on the waves. I decided I was going to surrender.
“We could rest a bit,” I said. “I’m tired too.”
“Yes, let’s rest,” he said. “I’d like that. Come here, come lie down with me.”
I got on the sofa with him and we lay there face-to-face. He closed his eyes and I kissed his eyelids and cheeks. He gathered me in his arms and his upper body was warm. Everything above his tail was soft. I didn’t know what to do with our lower halves. I couldn’t intertwine my legs with his tail as if it was a pair of legs, so I wrapped one leg around him and pressed the other leg straight against his tail. Usually when I cuddled with another body, I would have to separate before falling asleep. I would feel too trapped or get too hot pressed so close against them. But Theo’s tail was cool, almost like a built-in fan or compress, and I was reminded of what my friend’s aunt taught me years ago as a trick for insomnia: keep one leg under the blanket and one leg out. It was as though I had one leg under a towel in the sun and one dipped in the sea. When I thought of it this way I slipped into the waves. His breathing was rhythmic and the slight scent of fish drifted up from him. The sun came in the window and shone on our heads, and we both drifted off with our faces in a glow.
* * *
—
We woke up around noon. Theo stirred and pulled me closer. “Mmmmmm,” he breathed in my ear. I kissed him on the lips. His breath tasted less fresh than usual, a bit like wet leather.
“I like how you taste,” I said. “I like tasting you in this state, no saltwater to cleanse your mouth. It’s so primal. I feel like I’m getting another part of you.”
“You really do?” he asked.
We kissed deeper, our tongues in each other’s mouths. I could feel his cock hard now against me. I pressed my body against his with pure want. I felt that I had a hole, not just my pussy itself but an existential hole, and that for the first time it was on the verge of being filled: the inertia of our mingled desire caulked it up. It was stuffed with anticipation. My anticipation of his cock was solid, its own entity, as though my desire were a second cock. He too seemed to exude complete want and devotion, which made me feel confident in my own wanting—as though, in his mirror, my lust was good and pure. He made me feel innocent and part of something bigger, like nothing had ever been my fault.
I did not say “I love you,” or even whisper it, but somehow I felt that I was praying it into his mouth without speaking. I was saying it with my breath, my chest, the magnetism between our pelvises. It was a swimming into each other. I also felt that he had a hole, or holes, and in some strange way my cock—an existential one, really—was filling him. I felt that we were moving in and out of one anot
her’s holes, nursing each other, symbiotic and magnetic. I felt the Earth rotating around us, or that we were the planet—spinning on its axis. In my head came a deep buzz of the Earth again and I didn’t know if I was actually humming out loud or if it was all inside me.
This is how you exist in the world, I thought. This is how you are alive.
“I want you so much,” he said.
Under the blanket, so we would stay warm, he lifted my dress up over my head. I was naked except for my undies. He put his face between my small breasts, cradling and then sucking on them. He kissed and licked my stomach, then down the front of my underwear over my clit. He teased around my underwear, the crevices of my thighs, the crease where my lips met. Then, caressing my ass, he slid my underwear down and put his face between my thighs. He inhaled deeply like there was oxygen in there.
“God, you smell so good,” he said.
He peeled my underpants down my legs.
“And your vagina is so gorgeous. I just want to put my face in it all the time and live there.”
“You should,” I said nervously, and giggled.
I watched the top of his head as he ate me. Even though he had said before that he wanted to eat me all night I still felt nervous about how long it might take me to come. I made moaning sounds. My clit felt good but my mind stayed disconnected. I wanted him in me, wanted to fuck him, face-to-face. As if he knew how I was feeling, he put a finger inside me. I gasped.
“I want your cock so bad,” I whined.
“How much?” he said with his face still buried in my pussy.
“So bad,” I said.
I could see that he was stroking himself as he ate me. I could feel his cock, hard against my shin.
“Give me your cock please,” I said. “Please can I have it?”
He climbed back on me so his face was over my face and his chest on my chest, his cock nestled between my thighs, resting on my wet clit and lips.
“I’m on the pill,” I said. “We don’t need to use anything.”
Then I started laughing at the absurdity of everything. Was I really talking about birth control with a merman? It was true that I was on the pill, sort of. I wasn’t great about taking it. Sometimes I would forget for days at a time. Occasionally I would just go off it for a month. Jamie knew this, but in all our years together I never got knocked up. He would always pull out and come on my belly. He feared me getting pregnant, how that would impinge on his freedom—the emotional fallout from an abortion, or worse yet, a baby. He was afraid, but not enough to wear a condom. I couldn’t remember if I had taken my pill the day before, but could a merman really impregnate me? Would the child have legs or a tail? Perhaps it would have legs and a tail, or multiple legs, like an octopus.
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