Illicit Island Secret
“If you want to keep a secret, you must first hide it from yourself.”
No one knew about us. I use the term “us” loosely. Whatever “us” was, it was an under wraps, hush hush kind of rendezvous. It’s amusing to know you have a secret to keep, isn’t it? It’s even more amusing, more fun, having a secret to keep that resembles an off-the-record entanglement.
We were stealthy teenagers out past curfew, looking over our shoulders, parking cars in inconspicuous places. When you live on a small island, there’s a certain paranoia that comes along with island gossip. The wrong person getting a hold of some dirt or insider info about a discreet connection can have people giving you the eyebrow at Foodland within an hour. Coconut wireless travels fast. This was a classic case of self-preservation. We didn’t need our names on the tips of unwarranted tongues. In turn, it remained a secret held tightly between pursed lips. A secret link of palpable intrigue, with secret interactions on secret beaches. Secret seconds of eye contact held in public spaces— lingering a second longer than what I’d consider platonic. But hush hush. No one can know. We are just friends.
His mystery was magnetic, slightly intoxicating. It drew me in, a curious attraction that stayed lodged in my throat. Blocking airways, never a full breath, shallow-- just enough sustenance of oxygen, moving in and out in an erratic, pining rhythm. Whenever his name rolled off my tongue, I would impulsively gulp the trouble along with it, as if it was more sweet than sour. I was aware that it was the latter, but I’d drink it in by the spoonful. Gulp gulp! My face would contort with the tart and bitter, the sensations from swallowing the truth of what I knew, but still convincing myself there was honey there.
He had a dark side that was more exposed than hidden. The kind that was a cryptic forcefield, something attractive about the fact that he inexplicably stewed in his pain. Removed. A recluse. A puzzle I wanted to solve. Unavailability I wanted to coerce. A problem I wanted to fix. Oh, it’s always the problem I want to fix. His shut-off faucet of being available in a way I deep-down- desired left my mouth dry like sandpaper. A dry, course thirst to never be quenched. I’d want to wrap my hands around his torso and force him to look me in my eyes, but I kept my hands in my pockets. He was uncomfortable with hugs and affection. Like a feral cat, if you get too close too soon—he will bolt in the other direction. Still, I laid out my traps.
Timing was impeccable when we frequently started communicating. I had just left the blue-eyed man and I was in a fragile, grasping sort of crumbled state, unhinged in anguish, and he held the shiny promise in the palms of his hands that gave the possibility of distraction. Shiny things can have this inescapable appeal when you’re not in the right state of mind. He temporarily provided the fleeting guarantee of feeling desired or wanted or chosen that had been absent from the man who came before him. In my not-so-conscious mind he had the potential to fill the gaping hole and fix the wrongs of yet another one who decidedly couldn’t love me. The irony wasn’t lost on me. He was another digression. Another repeated pattern. The cycle continued.
But listen. I’m no victim here. He and I, we are more alike than I’d like to admit—attraction is all a silly game we play.
Sometimes you’re the cat.
Sometimes you’re the mouse.
A sweet, fiery, passionate, Brazilian man briefly enters the picture, coming at me like a tiger, full pounce, and says preposterous things like “I like you”. He feels me shift uncomfortably; the air becomes dense with a long pause and no reciprocation. “Why you so closed off?” he says in a thick Portuguese accent, the kind that can’t be taken seriously.
My mind quickly flashes to the sweet of his skin touching mine on the nights I should have left. The nights I should have left before I’d hold the regret for days and weeks and maybe forever in my body. But his skin—the only tender, soft thing about him. I still long to touch it.