Freediving Mum

Oftentimes, the journey is the destination. And the destination is not the end-point. The destination is the point of no return, because the rest of it is incidental.

I don't know if Seb feels the same.

These thoughts... They play gentle on my mind.

***

Chapter 12

Fire

Seb and I go down the valley to the cove. We have a few hours before the cove disappears into the tide. Seb holds my hand as we wind down the dizzy cliff path to the beach. He doesn't let go when we land on the sand. I lean on him a little.

The dusk sky is letting the early night in. We enter a twilight zone.

***

We sit by the sea. I can hear small lapping sounds beside me, as if a kindly sea monster is taking discreet sips of water from a large goblet.

Seb tends a bonfire of driftwood, meticulously assembled into a pyramid form. It is getting chilly.

I watch the dance of flames intently.

I squeeze Seb's hand, "We drifted into uncharted terrain today, didn't we? Not where a mum and son would normally traipse."

Seb pensively, "We did."

I wonder aloud, "Tell me, when you see the shapes that the bonfire makes, do you feel kinda strange?"

"How so?"

"I don't know, Seb. It's like all of a sudden, I get very clear about things. Watching the fire now, I get this deep, quiet kind of feeling."

Seb the budding creative writer, "You know, a fire can be any shape it wants to be. It is free. So, it can look like anything at all depending on what is inside you. If you get this deep, quiet kind of feeling when you look at a fire, that is because it is showing you the deep, quiet kind of feeling you have inside yourself. You know what I mean?"

His words are like night air.

"I guess so..."

"But, it doesn't happen with just any fire. It won't happen with a gas stove, or a cigarette lighter fire. It won't even happen with an ordinary bonfire. For a fire to be free, you've to make it in the right kind of place. Which isn't easy."

His voice comes out in the cool smooth tones of a late-night jazz radio DJ.

"But, you can do it?"

"Sometimes I can, sometimes I can't. Most of the time, I can. If I really put my mind to it. Freedom is a bonfire. Try toasting marshmallows on a gas stove. And then on a bonfire. There is something going on. In you."

"And this bonfire, Seb?"

"There are degrees of fire. Gas stove fire. Placid beauty in symmetry. Order and discipline. This fire is functional, purposeful, useful. Boils your water. Cooks your food. Predictably well-behaved too. Best of all, you get to control it. Cut the fuel, and you conveniently snuff it out."

Seb pauses.

"At the other end of the firelight latitude, there are houses on fire, forest fires. Wild, combustive, raging, ranging firestorms. Poetry gone rogue."

Seb tosses a twig into the bonfire. It crackles.

"And then, there is the bonfire at the campsite, or by the beach. You are moved by kindling captivation in watching its dancing flames. It warms you even on a balmy night. That you do not experience from a gas stove fire. And when you douse the bonfire at the first light of dawn, its embers have a lingering stubborn persistence that defy the new light of day."

***

We talk no more, enjoying the hush that is just short of silence. The quality of a conversation is in its comfortable quietude.

***

Dusk is dimming. Assuming if you just rise from a fairy tale long deep slumber, there is this moment in time when it is impossible to tell if it is dusk or dawn. And then, you know.

A downpouring of darkness. Nothing it seems, can resist the flood of darkness. It creeps past the clouds, over the far horizon, through the valley, seeps through keyholes and crevices, and devours entire landscapes.

The night has come. The way is dark. The moon is the only light we see.

I lift my chin and hum a hushed Clair de Lune to the moon as we make our way back. Light of the moon. Light and airy. Yet mysterious. Darker, more complex chords move underneath the basic melody. Sad, yet also triumphant. Soothing and calming. But, can also be turbulent and emotional. A tune that can dance me away.

Some songs, you have to close your eyes, to listen. I hum Clair de Lune with my eyes closed, as I listen to myself. I link my arm to Seb's, for him to lead me. I steal a peek at him just to be sure his eyes are open. I don't want us to fall off the cliff path. But, oh, what a beautiful place and moment to die!

The most compelling art captures the most accurate ambivalence.

Mother, wife, woman. Son, man.

***

It has been a long day's journey into night. We go to bed.

I reach over and pull open the bedside table's Bible drawer. I draw out an erotic novella.

The moon is now full of itself. It is enormous. A comforting vision. Some greater force is watching over me, and stoically approving.

Time passes.

Am I asleep now? I can never really be sure if what I think is sleep is actually sleep. Sometimes, it is just another level of consciousness.

***

Chapter 13

Nocturne

For the longest time, caves were the abodes. Humans are made for the light of a cave. And thus, for twilight.

Twilight is the time we sense best. When light is dim, and the pupil opens. Feeling comes out of the eye like touch. Then you really can feel colour, and experience it.

4am.

Summer twilight.

She ascertains him for a time. She slowly comes toward him, holding herself erect as always. She is barefoot. The floorboards creak faintly as she walks.

Silently she sits down on the edge of the bed. She remains still for a time. Her flowing white silk dress reaches to her knees. There is something carved and still about her face.

She reaches out and touches his head. Fingers groping through his hair.

She stands up again. In the faint light shining through the bay window, she begins to undress, like it is the most natural thing to do. She is in no hurry. But, she doesn't hesitate either. In a smooth natural motion, she lifts off her dress. It falls to the floor. The soft fabric making no sound.

She has a dreamlike look. Her eyes are open. But it is like she is sleepwalking.

Naked, she crawls into the narrow bed. She wraps her pale arms around him. Her warm breath grazes his neck. Her pubic area pushing up, pressing against his thigh. Electric.

She takes off his t-shirt. Pulls off his boxers.

He is aware, but not awake. After a while, he spoons her. His groin right on top of her orb cheeks. He swivels his hips and massages her bare thigh almost unconsciously. It feels heavenly being connected to her in this way.

He nestles right between the gap in her thighs. He is not fully aware, but it is rubbing her petals.

He continues to stroke her bare thigh, adoring the smooth, muscled contours of the limb. She purrs. His hand rides up her leg and wraps around her waist to possess her. She presses her bottom into his groin. She feels the hard, erect penis press more firmly against her labia.

She bites her lip to quieten any illicit sounds she may emit in her bliss. He feels like a steel pole between her legs. She imagines what it looks like for she still has her head and eyes facing forward toward the window. She feels him from the base of her buttocks, across her labia, and forward to her mound. She speculates on his length of rise. She bites her lip again. Her eyes roll back in her head.

She kisses his neck over and over. Then, reaches out to hold his penis, which is cast in bone china by now. Firm and yet so fragile. Gently, she wraps her hands around his sac. She wordlessly guides his fingers to her most intimate. Warm and wet. She kisses his chest. His fingers are slowly sucked inside her.

Is this dream or reality? She doesn't really want to know.

He struggles to place himself. To find where he really is. He is trying to find the direction of the flow. Struggling to hold on to the axis of time. But, he cannot locate the line separating dream and reality. Or, even the boundary between what is real and what is possible. Some sort of time passes.

He faces up. She twitches her lips to an arc, which never quite make it to a full smile.

She gets on top of him. She guides his hard arousal inside her. He is quite helpless. She is the one in charge. His breath sounds like the wind in a cave. She bends and twists her waist as if tracing a picture with her body. Her straight hair falls on his shoulders and billows noiselessly, like the branches of a willow. Little by little, he is sucked down to the warm mud. The whole world turns warm, wet, indistinct. All that exists is his rigid glistening penis. He is the extension of his penis.

He closes his eyes. His own dream begins. Is it even possible to dream a dream in a dream? It is hard to tell how much time is passing. The tide comes in. The moon rises. Everything arrives that single moment. And so, he comes.

There is nothing he can do to prolong it a little longer, to stop it. He comes over and over inside her. He wants to savour one orgasm at a time, but they arrive all at once. The warm walls inside her contract, gathering in his semen.

A long time passes. He cannot move. Every part of him is paralysed. Paralysed, or else he does not feel like trying to move.

She lies down beside him. They hold each other. They listen to time passing.

She stirs. She buries her face in his chest. He feels her breath against his bare skin. She traces his muscles, one by one.

Finally, she licks his swollen penis, gently, as if healing it. He comes again, in her mouth. She swallows it down as if every drop is precious.

He kisses her petals, touching every soft, warm spot with his tongue. She shudders.

After a while, she gets up, slips into her white silk dress. He cannot decide if she is ghostly or angelic. She gently reaches out again, brushes his hair. All this takes place without a word passing between them. She hasn't said a thing since she entered the room. The only sounds are the creak of the floorboards, the sea wind blowing ceaselessly outside. The room breathing out, the window pane shivering. That is the chorus behind him.

She crosses the room. The door opens just a crack. He watches from the bed as she makes her exit, still unable to move. She slips out like a delicate, dreamy fish with a flick twist of her body. Silently the door closes. It is that moment that her soul excuses itself from time and place, and merges with the infinite.

He can't even raise a finger. His lips are tightly sealed. Words are asleep in a corner of time. He lies awake for awhile, just so that he can relish the rest of his dream. This dream is for a night and no more.

***

Chapter 14

Playback

Seb's cell phone chimes.

"That was Rick. It's in the mail."

"Let's view it on the widescreen high-definition monitor in the cottage tonight. We'll bring every pixel to bear."

"Let's go stock up on the popcorn!"

***

We have a lovely dinner at our usual village restaurant. The evening is just beginning to hang the night with stars.

I am thoroughly charmed by the place. Perched precariously on the cliffside, as if daring the sea to tumble it down. Tables out front. Bright conversations humming. Ivy and wistful wisteria growing all over the front façade, a warm homey glow coming through the windows.

The assembled clientele is interesting. Across our table looks like a professor of something utterly important. His partner appears really wealthy, with plenty of everything. But, these are mere speculations. In this place, the shopkeepers look like professors. The barmen, tenors. The street sweepers, jazz musicians. What a highly evolved society. There is never a people more rationally ordered.

Enthralling places and fascinating people render us aware of our inadequacies in our language. We are at a despairing loss of words to describe certain orders of beauty and wonder. We conveniently and unjustly classify them under the sublime as if the word means anything.

We are served a rare off-menu treat. A basted wild boar which was tragically run over accidentally by the farmer's tractor just this morning. The Lord provides in mysterious ways. We stare up the heavens in unison and murmur silent thanks.

The wine is dutifully poured, admired and sipped in that classical order. All good moments finish around a glass of wine. Wine has that charm to cajole us to just be.

Mid-meal, the proprietor, who is also the cook, comes chat with us.

"Everything OK?"

"Lovely, just lovely! Especially your asparagus spears. Do you grow them yourself?"

He replies in a troubled tone, "Everything I plant grows wildly. A thicket of vines. Fine but high grass. Obscenely swollen gourds. The tomatoes are too ripe. Cucumbers, erotica artifacts. Roses flowering vulgarly, petals opening up more than they should, on dainty stalks. Some even menacing. I don't know if it's me or the garden."

We enjoy the rest of the dinner. Oh, the fine nuances of eating the right food, at the right time of the year, in the right place.

As we leave the restaurant, the proprietor bids us goodbye. He presses a slip of paper on Seb's palm. It looks cryptic. Oh, it's a website address.

"You must go to my mother's restaurant when you visit the next village. Eat her stew of intestines of newborn lamb. If you didn't eat it when you are there, lie to me the next time you see me, and tell me you did."

***

Seb plays the combined solo-then-couple video.

I shiver a little from the gusts of sea wind. "It's getting a wee chilly."

I scoot over to Seb. I sit in front of him, pausing momentarily, as if giving him notice of my next move. I then laze in front of him like he is a lounge chair. We make some fine body adjustments, moulding into a unified whole.

He wraps his arms around my waist as if he is buckling me down in a seatbelt. He tightens his arms, pauses, and then relaxes them as if I am now secured.

Relishing his bakery warmth, I coo, "Thanks Seb, lovely..."

The mood is candlelit boudoir.

My nightie has crept up wayward a bit. Seb places his right hand just above my mound. His forefinger doodles on my silken skin in an algorithmic motion. A sort of hieroglyphics. So cuddled, we enjoy mutual warmth. I feel his spirited lower muscles jump and flutter a little, like a moth trapped beneath his skin.

Rick has done an excellent job stitching up the footages from the disparate vantage points to render them a coherent and whole stream. I don't know about Seb. I feel like I am at the café viewing window all over again, only this time, viewing myself. I am my own spectator sport.

"What do you think of your venerable mum?"

He doesn't answer. He cocks his head, and plants an affectionate lingering kiss on my lower cheek. And then I feel something else. A reptilian jerkiness.

I feel a little validated by his nuanced response. Show, not tell. He will make a great creative writer yet. The most important words are not those on the page, but those left out for the reader to fill in.

Next up on the widescreen, Seb joins me. His manhood is artfully rendered in the imagery. Seen, but not really. A teasing ambivalence. Is this his custom dignified formality? Or, is he in flourish? The charm is in not knowing for sure.

I cannot tell if Rick has done any inventive editing. Seb and I are so coalesced as one water being, burrowing through the pastel blue in surreal unity.

"Seb, we were quite close in the couple dive. Can you see any detail of our... proximity?"

"Only one way to find out."

Seb replays the couple segment slo-mo. Yes, there is that fleeting moment. I remember that vividly, all too well.

Photographs and videos are useful. But, they somehow always confirm the memory rather than liberate it. I decide to let this slide, lest it is awkward for Seb. We have a choice to classify this moment as incidental or defining.

The video ends. We are silent for awhile. Unpacking, processing. Not your custom mum/son holiday video for family night viewing.

***

Chapter 15

Singularity

He says, not exactly in an undertone, but sort of quietly, yet firmly, "I want to see you."

I am a little surprised by his forwardness. His baldness appears an assertion of power rather than age.

"But, you have. The changing room. The pool. The video."

"I want to take you in properly."

"Take me in?"

Chuckling, "Admire you properly, for admiration sake. Unrushed. Tranquil contemplation."

A giddy onrush of guilty pleasure. I might as well enjoy this a little. I stand before Seb.

I enquire with a flirtation tilt of face, "What would you like to see first?"

"Everything. To begin with."

"Hmmm... so, I am to give all my gifts at once."

Will I be the gift that keeps on giving? I wonder.

I turn around, lift my nightie off. Before I can turn back, Seb nudges me to the full length mirror.

"Look at you. Look how beautiful you are. Every line is a curve."

"What about my caesarean cut line?"

He ignores me, "You've the simultaneous air of a chapel and a bazaar. You wear your sexuality with an older woman's ease."

Seb kneels before me. He looks at me there in a way that makes his attentions and desires plain. He places his nose at my womanhood. He breathes my feminine air, and then appears duly inspired.

This is what I love about my son. I can never tell if he is playful or profound, dramatic or authentic. I can never tell whether the bruising jock or the thoughtful humanist will show up next.

Gazing up, "You've to breathe the air, to really know a place."

"So, is that chapel or bazaar?"

He gets up, leans over, tucks my hair behind my ears, "I'm still ascertaining..."

I have never been adored like this by anyone. Never with such pleasure and single-minded concentration. But, then again, I have never been so revealed.

"You do fit the body I've imagined for you all these years. I'm glad for that."

"All these years?"

"Since I was old enough to contemplate mother nature."

"Hmmm..."

Whispering, "Pose for me..."

I arch my body. Thrust my bosom. I am growing a little nervous. And yet, I instinctively tilt my casual hips for emphasis, to add a little asymmetry colour to the imagery.

Seb looks grave, "You're a naughty mum."

I discern that Seb is viewing the scenery with the eyes of persons accustomed to drawing, deciding on its capability of being formed into pictures.

He observes, "All arranged according to the laws of pictorial sensual art."

"What do you think of your mommie dearest's mammaries?"

"A limited edition of a form and substance which nature makes no more. Your arc sag provides the essence of my satisfaction. They quiver a little when you breathe. A pair of ornate genuine articles."

Relishing this erotic opera, and emboldened, "Please let me..."

His hands mould my full swell, apparently loving the feel of its heft and balance in his palm. He methodically weighs each in his hands with an air of preoccupation, finally concluding,"They are heavier than they look."

I am lifted by proprietorial pride, even though it is a strange way for a son to take his mother's measure. My breasts have not felt so full in a long time. Not since Seb suckled them as a baby. Seb seems to enjoy my sharp intake of breath.

"My breasts are too white. Despite my spending so much time in watersports and tanning whenever I can."

"Your breasts are a lovely pristine bridal white. I much prefer white to tan. Breasts that are white from being covered are way sexier. They make a muted statement. That they are private. And secret. They make the admirer feel privileged. And that's what I'm feeling now."

"Privileged? You should be. Only your dad has seen them."

"Thanks mum, for saving yourself for me."

I smack his groin in mock indignation.

"What do you think of your mommie dearest's posterior?"