Letters
Page 106
Fact is, Dad, it was the first such ever, in my memory; outside the cities such annoyances are rare. He’d said nothing? Not a syllable, either apologetic, explanatory, or obscene. That in that case our attribution of gender was presumptive didn’t occur to me till the evening, 2200 hours, as I made the day’s final entry in the ship’s log. I was after all a lawyer on vacation, eagerer by far than I’d expected to get O.J. loaded and under way.
Jeannine was a delight: her complexion fresher, eyes brighter, spirits higher than I’d seen them since her first divorce. She took my car to fetch the last of the groceries and the first of the ice while I topped up the water tanks, loaded and stowed, closed the cottage, singled up the dock lines, and started the diesel to kick us out into sailing room. We went over the checklists together—a disingenuous tête-à-tête which Jeannine smartly called me on by blowing her breath in my face. Cigarettes, coffee, and toothpaste, okay? No booze till the hook goes down.
I kissed her forehead; we raised the sails, cast off, and for the sport of it (but with the engine idling in neutral in case the breeze set us too far shoreward), fetched out to deep water under sail alone, close-hauled on a tricky port tack, by lee-bowing the outrunning tide to offset our leeway and lowering the big centerboard inch by inch as we beat out of shoal water. A neat bit of seamanship, landlubberly Father, which brought a cheer from the crew when we cleared our mark—a particular brush-topped stake on the last three-foot spot before good sea-room—by no more than that same three feet. Jeannine bounced happily back to the wheel from her watch at the bowsprit (those breasts bounced too, under that T-shirt, a man could not but notice with pleasure, whatever the possible consanguinity) to hug me (Ah) and take the helm while I cut the engine and made the first log entry: Day 1 (Sat 819): Choptank R. 1030: Last Cruise off to good beginning.
But even as I went on to log our weather, speed, heading, and trim, I decided to take no further chances that day. Tempting as it was, in that breeze from that quarter, to come about and close-reach straight into the Bay, we crossed the wide river-mouth instead, tacked up Broad Creek, anchored for lunch and a cautious dip off Hambledon Island (sea nettles, like a gross of old condoms, everywhere one looked). Then we ran back down again, banged out past Cooks Point to the Sharps Island Light to get a taste of open Bay and a bit of spray in our faces, and back into the Choptank and up Harris Creek to Dun Cove. The rationale was to get a good anchoring spot for the night before the weekend fleet piled in from the western shore—there’d be 50 boats by nightfall in that first snug anchorage on the Choptank. But we were also, as Jeannine airily observed, only eight nautical miles from home in case I wanted rid of her in the morning.
We could quit that now, I suggested. It had been a good day’s sail, the better for her having been aboard, and I hoped she’d have a drink with me after we swam. The hook was down in eight feet in the western arm of that roomy cove, off which yet another, lagoonlike little cove makes, too shoal for cruising boats to enter but a fine secluded spot for swimming. The breeze had waned from fifteen knots to near calm; the late afternoon had hazed over and stoked up; furling sail and setting the anchor left us both perspiring. With my permission, not to soak her only pair of shorts (they would never dry out in the overnight damp), Jeannine swam this time bare-assed, her T-shirt pulled demurely but sexily over her hips while she used the boarding ladder. That sort of modesty, she acknowledged, was not her long suit. On a sailboat especially, in her view, clothing was for comfort, protection (including against unwarranted attention), and other folks’ proprieties only. In hot weather, alone or with others, she preferred going naked, and never cared who looked so long as they didn’t care and left her alone.
Mm hm. My sentiments exactly, despite my local fame as a coat-and-tie-skipper in the spring and fall. The fact was, I told her, it was Arrow shirts or nothing, and after half a century of watching our rivers get yearly more crowded, I still found swimsuits unnecessary more often than not when at anchor on our side of the Chesapeake. That ice broken, we dinghied through the nettles to what we now christened Skinny-Dip Cove, where, as we’d hoped, we saw fewer of them; and wary as I was of medusa stings on my privates, at her challenge and example I Took a Chance.
I report to you, Dad, that at age near-70 it is still a pleasure to feel one’s male equipment floating free in the amniotic waters of the Chesapeake, so warm by August that they don’t even tighten the scrotum, and to splash about with a long-legged, suntanned, gold-haired (but, one observed with interest, brown-fleeced), not-at-all-bad-looking woman half one’s age. I had first done Dun Cove in the buff (we called it “buckbathing” back then), crewing for friends, when a woman of 35 was twice my age, and had I looked with awe upon a naked and unattainably mature 21-year-old, the skipper’s girl friend. I had skinny-dipped there in the 1920’s and ’30’s and ’40’s and ’50’s and ’60’s, with friends coeval to each decade. How old Polly, as late as last August, used to love to peel out of her Playtex and leap with a whoop from O.J.‘s bowsprit, nettles be damned! And beautiful Jane, modest Jane, who would strip only at night lest someone see her from the woods alongshore—how she loved the sparkle on us of Dun Cove’s phosphorescing algae, her nipples twinkling before me in Franklin Roosevelt’s second term! My itinerary for the rest of the cruise did not call for another visit to this first of my Favorite Anchorages; I was immensely happy to have a Naked Lady-Friend to swim with on my last stop in Dun Cove.
I told Jeannine so, and some of the above, as she ably rowed us back (there’s a pretty sight, Dad: conjure it, from my perspective in the stern-seat). She wanted to know Had I ever swum there with her mom? I said Sure, and no more. She swapped me some skinny-dipping memories of her own, tending toward the orgiastic and Caribbean but not excluding dear Dun Cove or the innocent pleasure of mere untrammeled wetness. As we toweled off (in the cabin: the fleet was piling in now from Annapolis, Washington, everywhere), we agreed that while solitary anchorages were delicious, the weekend party thing was fun too: rafting together for cocktails, boat-hopping to compare hors d’oeuvres and layouts and rigs both nautical and human. We also inspected each other less surreptitiously, Jeannine supposing, correctly, that her mother had been in better shape at 35, pointing out small striations on her own breasts and thighs and backside, complimenting politely my not-bad-physique-for-a-man-my-age (from the neck down), observing with interest that below the waist I wasn’t gray-haired yet. She liked my invocation of Boccaccio’s leek, white-headed but green-tailed; said she’d known plenty of the opposite kind; wondered if we could stay stripped on deck till the air cooled down, just covering ourselves with beach towels when boats passed close.
Sure.
And could she ask me a question? she wondered a bit later. We were stretched out now with light rum and tonics on the cockpit cushions, port and starboard, our backs propped against the cabin bulkhead, a plate of ripe olives and Caprice-des-Dieux-on-matzo, my favorite canapé, between us. The mosquitoes and no-see-ums were under control; the sunset over Tilghman’s Island was a showpiece; blue herons duly squawked as if being throttled; anchor lights were rigged for the night; from a nearby Concordia yawl the inevitable folk guitarist softened welcomely the transistor rock from elsewhere in the cove; there were splashes, ouches, laughter; and the last Harris Creek lighted daybeacon (Fl 4 sec “7”) blinked obediently every time we counted to four hippopotami. Got the picture, Dad? In short, I was relishing the dusk of Day 1 and wondering mildly why in the world a man of your age would hang himself, even in February 1930, for simple lack of cash, when it was so abundantly evident that Everything Has Intrinsic Value.
Sure, honey.
It was half past eight, dusk enough now to ignore our neighbors (though with a good pair of 7x50’s one can recognize faces from 100 feet at midnight). Jeannine swung her legs off the seat, reached across the cockpit, laid light hold of my penis with a hand cold from her drink—the old fellow shrank back as he had not when we swam—and said she’d ask it later. This had been
her happiest day in years. Could we please go below now for a while?
Since August 13, 1932, Dad (8 L), I have not easily been taken by surprise. Jeannine surprised me. If you saw “incest” in the offing pages since, it’s because I did too, this time around, recording her visit from log notes and memory. But at the time, though I’d certainly and clearly enjoyed Jeannine’s nudity, my pleasure was half impersonal and half the finally innocent admiration of a father for his mature and seasoned, still-attractive daughter. The sight of her, and our frisking about, had unquestionably reminded me of the pleasures of sex; but those were memories, not anticipations or desires. Or, if there was after all a mild touch of the latter, it was the wistful wish that she were not probably my daughter, possibly an adversary in the upcoming will dispute, and surely not interested in sex with a 70-year-old friend of the family. I was surprised.
But not out of my wits. Jeannine was sober; I too. Her possible motives, the possible ill consequences and other objections to our “going below” I believe I saw clearly, along with the great So What (and all the lesser Why Nots) in the pan. A lawyer is a lawyer; an old one even more so. Now Jeannine, I said, as neutrally as possible: that old chap there is semiretired.
She moved her fingers. Let’s un-retire him, Toddy. I’m feeling happy and horny. No obligations. No problems. Feel.
Well. We went below, took turns going down, managed a fairly routine coupling in the missionary position, but with her legs over my arms. No special frisson. We cooled down awhile then in our sweat, and later made omelettes for dinner with the last of the Caprice des Dieux and a cold Moselle. Not much talking. The Trout Quintet, agreeably, on the FM. Both of us, in modest reaction, wearing shorts and tops now. After cleanup and bed-making we finished the Moselle out in the dew-soaked cockpit, regarding Andromeda and her friends, wishing we could take a final swim but not caring to be stung in the dark. The air was balmy, the forecast fine; even so, Jeannine prudently queried me about our anchor-scope before we went back below. We changed chastely into our nightclothes, brushed our teeth, washed up, and with a friendly good-night kiss turned in, me to the double berth forward, she to a settee-berth in the main cabin.
When the lights were out and we’d soaked in for a few minutes the sweet creaks and chuckles of a boat swinging gently at anchor, Jeannine asked, mildly, Should she come sleep up there with me? Had she said Could she, I’d’ve said Sure. As was, it seemed both more prudent and more comfortable to say Too sticky. Then I added, only partly lest she feel rejected: But we could visit in the morning. She’d like that, said my daughter.
I reminded her she’d forgot to ask her question. The one back there in the cockpit?
Oh, that. Her voice was sleepy and amused. She’d only wondered, when she saw for the first time her mother’s old lover’s cock and balls, whether she herself had sprung from there in—let’s see—January of 1933?
Perfectly likely, I acknowledged at once. And just as likely you didn’t. Does it matter a great deal to you?
She considered. Nope. It would, she guessed, if she were 17, or even 25. But after 35 years and three failed marriages, her legal father dead and her mother happy with a new lover, the question didn’t strike her as particularly important. And it wasn’t why she’d propositioned me, or, she imagined, why I’d responded. Was it?
I laughed: Not particularly. She laughed too: Just normal depraved curiosity. One more taboo over the side. See me in the morning?
I was put in mind again of her mother and of Polly; now that everything was still I saw the questionable assumption in my thinking about the previous night’s phone-caller, that it had been a man. But Jeannine’s breathing indicated that she was asleep already; I’d ask her in the morning whether she was quite sure, etc.
End of Day One. (Almost. I never sleep soundly the first night out. When a tiny southeasterly swung us about at 3 A.M., I woke at once and went on deck to see how we all looked in our new positions. Half a dozen other skippers moved about with flashlights, doing the same: checking scope and anchor set and clearance from neighbors. En route back through the cabin I inspected my young friend; she appeared to be sleeping soundly, but when I bent and kissed her forehead she smiled and said wryly, Thanks, Daddy-O.)
Next morning, however, she declared she hadn’t slept so well in ages. She rose at first light and got right to it: peed, skipped out of her shorty pajamas, and piled headfirst into my berth, down under my sheet—cool and dry now in the fresh morning air—69’ing us before I quite realized what was what. Her thighs were sweet, her labia dainty-fresh beneath a faint sharp trace of urine; we tongued and tumbled for a spell, which with one fingertip (mine, right fore-) in her rectum brought Jeannine to a fine yelping orgasm. First woman I’d ever known personally to get there upside down, Dad. But old John Thomas would not stand so soon again; such things happen. Jeannine tried awhile longer, giving me the pleasure of her buttocks and belly as she scolded the Old Pensioner for not rising to his own past performance (the idea did titillate her, then) and threatened to swallow him whole if he would not Come Full Circle, her term. No use. Oh well, she sighed presently: it’s a better day for sailing than for incest.
It was: a perfectly dandy sailing day, best of the cruise. The night’s southeasterly shifted with the tide to a spanking west-southwesterly, perfect for a long reach up and across the Bay. We took a quick wake-up swim, got nettle-stung on calf (mine) and shoulder (hers), made short work of breakfast, and were first out of Dun Cove. It pleased me that when, as we lotioned each other’s welts, I kissed her from nape of neck to crack of ass, she said Let’s sail now and play later, okay? For the sport of it we sailed our anchor out and threaded wing-and-wing through the fleet, Jeannine at the helm while I secured the ground-tackle and cleaned up the foredeck. She’d lost none of her racing skipper’s sang-froid about tight clearances. Once we’d beam-reached down Harris Creek we cut in the engine, doused the jib, and let the main luff while we powered through Knapp’s Narrows and into the Bay. The waves were coming dead at us from the mainland, a foot and a half high already and lightly crested; we felt the old excitement you never knew, Dad, of leaving sheltered for open waters; we called things happily back and forth to each other as we reraised the foresail, lowered the centerboard, and sheeted in close. We were just able, by dint of some “pinching,” a push from the motor, and a little help from the ebbing tide, to clear Poplar Island on a port tack (Yesterday today! Jeannine cried merrily); then we set our course for 015°, a broad reach straight toward the Bay Bridge, fourteen miles up. On that point of sail, with the tide against us, it would be fairly slow going and seem even slower—faithful to his origins, Osborn Jones carries no spinnaker, but there’s a lot of off-wind push in that big, low-aspect mainsail. So much the better: we lashed the wheel, trimmed centerboard and sheets for balance, broke out some iced tea (the air was 80ish already and close, especially off the wind), and let Captain Osborn virtually sail himself up the Bay while we relaxed—tops off now, but bottoms on for comfort, and hats and lotions against the sun—and got some talking done.
I was more and more pleased. Not only was my girl (excuse me: the woman) in apparent control of her drinking; she was making sense right down the line. The will case: She wasn’t interested in litigation; she’d loved her father despite her well-merited later rejection by him. On the other hand she wouldn’t settle for nothing; she needed some money to start a new life with, especially since she had no professional skills and had ceased to badger Louis Golden for unpaid alimony. The split I’d proposed to Jane suited her fine, if her mother and brother were agreeable; otherwise she guessed she’d file suit in probate and take what she could get. Her personal survival might be a cause less worthy than Drew’s revolution, but she reckoned it at least as defensible as her mother’s wish to enrich a future husband.
That fellow: Nope, she hadn’t yet had the pleasure of meeting “Lord Baltimore,” whose real name however she understood to be André Castine. There was, coincidentally, a “Mo
nsieur Casteene” at the Remobilization Farm, but he spelled it differently, nobody knew his first name, and anyhow he was at the Farm, not with her mother. In any case, Jeannine wished them well and hoped that what was left of her own good looks would last half as long as Jane’s. One day, perhaps, she and her mother could be friends again, if she ever got herself straightened out.
Her parentage: Could I tell her what her mother’s and my affair had been like, back in the ’30’s? Had it been a ménage à trois, or what? She couldn’t imagine Mom letting her hair down so—though there had been that later fling of hers, with that English Lord. The month when she herself had been conceived, for example, was her mother putting out pretty regularly for both Harrison and me? How much truth was there in that novel that people used to tease her with, that was supposedly based on my life?
Some, I acknowledged. That part of it was a reasonable approximation, except that for purposes of plot it made Harrison Mack into a weaker and simpler fellow than her father had ever been. But her mother and I had indeed been lovers, with her father’s knowledge and complaisance, for two separate periods, totaling more than three years and including the date of Jeannine’s conception, when the odds on her biological siring were, by my best guess, about 50-50. I did not mention 10 R, our evening sail on Osborn Jones in mid-May of this year.
Our own copulation: It still didn’t bother her, either in principle or in fact. In Jeannine’s mind, Harrison Mack was 100% her father, and I was 100% her oldest friend (in both respects) and the only man she’d ever been the least close to who hadn’t wanted something from her. No doubt that that, along with simple gratitude and a touch of the old Kinky, was what had turned her on last night (she’d’ve laid me in the cottage, she confessed now with a grin, if she hadn’t feared I’d think she was a pervert, or ulteriorly motivated, and refuse to take her sailing). It still turned her on, she didn’t mind telling me; anytime Old John got his act together again, she was ready. As Kinky went, this struck her as pretty harmless; she wouldn’t be bearing me any two-headed children, or grandchildren. Could she have a beer with lunch?