Prologue

 

The ground rumbled. There she stood, looking for her bags and simultaneously looking for me. I saw her first. Her vision was breathless. My heart was beating fast and wildly, my mouth was dry, and for a moment, I was speechless. There before my eyes stood a voluptuous young woman. Her baby fat had vanished, leaving behind the chiseled body of a Greek goddess. I am not sure what a Greek goddess is supposed to look like, but Jessie was beauty personified. Everyone in the airport, adults and children alike, were taking the opportunity to check her out.

She had grown to be tall, about five foot eleven or more. Jessie had blond hair that fell below her shoulders. Her amazing, deep blue-green eyes were hypnotic, and everyone who looked at them was transfixed. Here square jaw and the feminine lines of her face gave the impression of wisdom and worldliness. Jessie was an athlete, and her shoulders, arms, and legs gave testimony to her physical condition. There is something about a woman with square shoulders, a flat belly, and strong legs that turns me on more than anything else. Jessie had it all.

And then I focused on her breasts. When I last saw her, she was small breasted and wearing a training bra. The Jessie I saw before my eyes was fully developed, with nipples protruding from her cotton blouse. No training bra. In fact, no bra at all. I called to her.

When I left, she was thirteen. When she got off the plane at the Saint Francis International Airport-one east-west runway, an old Korean War relic Quonset hut substituting as a terminal, a two-lane potholed road leading in and out of the airport-she had turned twenty-one a week earlier. Her visit was a birthday present from her parents, I assumed. She turned in search of my voice amid the din of the arrival area. When she saw me, she ran to me and threw herself into my arms and began to cry. Before I could ask her why she was crying, she looked into my eyes and kissed me hard on the lips. "The flight was so bumpy," she said. "I was frightened. I don't want to sound like a child, but it was really horrendous!"

Unfortunately for travelers during the summer months, huge cumulonimbus clouds roam the Caribbean like bull elephants on the African savanna. Big jets flying on low fuel from long distances often have no other choice but to slice through the angry cloud's fat with moisture and violent wind drafts. Jessie rode the big iron bird tossing and turning to Saint Francis. Then I held her tightly again, and I kissed her on the lips. Jessie's soft breast pressed against my chest. What shocked me pleasantly, I might add was the way she pressed her pelvis into my midsection. Spike became aroused.

This is as good a time as any to introduce Spike. Spike is the affectionate name by which I refer to my penis. All men have, at least once in their lives, named this most rapacious of organs. Spike has no conscience to speak of. It has no morals. Spike has no prejudices regarding race, nationality, or religion. His only dislikes are women with poor hygiene, and if I am intoxicated, then all bets are off. I have invested much time in overpowering Spike's embarrassing displays of uncontrolled erections.

Since coming to Saint Francis, I have achieved a modicum of success as a tour guide. You see, Saint Francis is the home to several optionally nude beaches and one extraordinarily successful swingers' resort. Many of the tourists soon get into the habit of staying completely nude all day at the club and being scantily clad while tooling around the rest of the island at night.

Spike and I have an uneasy truce. He will do his best to be as calm as possible, and I will try not to put him into many situations that require his total restraint. This is necessary, given that I occasionally take tourists on short boat excursions around the island for an obscene fee. This little enterprise provides me with a little spending money and, occasionally, one or two sexual dalliances with willing passengers.

When I am indulging in meaningless sex with women that I will most likely never see again, I let Spike do his thing with reckless abandon. I do not love them; I fuck them with every primitive animal instinct I can muster. That is the way they want it. If they wanted tender lovemaking, they would have stayed home or stayed with the man they came with. After all, he was probably fucking some strange woman with no concern for commitment or tenderness. As Tina Turner put it, "what's love got to do with it?"

I am always surprised at how many women want to be dominated, hair pulled, spanked, fucked hard, long and repeatedly. No man can adequately compete with the sexual appetite and endurance of women. The only way for women to get wildly aroused and thoroughly satisfied is to be on vacation in a place like Saint Francis.

The sexual feast normally starts with the official rhythm of the Caribbean, reggae. The drumbeat is perfectly timed to motivate smooth but sensuous gyrations of one's hips. The constant beat of the drums forces your body to move, and for women, it works on the hips and ass like magic. Some call it fucking while standing. Add an ample amount of alcoholic libation, generously sprinkled with ganja, and the night becomes whatever one is heretofore most craved secretes desire.

The local men make a national sport of giving female tourists, nicknamed snowbirds, what they want. Now that times have changed, previously closeted bisexual and homosexual men and women are also provided a full-service sexual holiday experience. When European missionaries first arrived in Africa, they looked down upon the locals being topless or totally nude. Christian missionaries, over time, convinced them to cover their nakedness, as the biblical Adam and Eve were commanded to do, and to repent for their sins. Now, Africans and African descendants in the Caribbean seldom wear revealing clothing and are never totally nude in public. In a strange twist of fate, Europeans take every opportunity to wear as little clothing as possible and every chance to be naked.

I now know what the female objectives were when the primordial bacteria created from themselves males and how they programmed every living species to surrender to female seduction. Males are seduced and driven to the point of madness to complete their ejaculation, to propagate the species, to force life into life. Males are unwittingly slaves and ponds programmed to think that they are sexually dominant. Think about it. What if the virgin birth of Christ were true? Then just as the primordial ooze that created males billions of years ago out of herself to save life on Earth by sexually diversifying, then once again the epic repeats itself in the birth of Christ, who emanated from a virgin female to save sinful humans. I have participated in and watched the mating ritual between women and men who come here on my beautiful island. The males will play the role of aggressor, while the women feign varying degrees of weakness and helplessness. All the while, it is the female who has control over what happens during and after the mating. She is the hunter, and he is the hunted. She can copulate several times a day with different men if she wants. He is spent after one, maybe two times.

Since I have been aware of the real relationship, sexually speaking, between male and female, I have promised myself never to become enslaved by female sexuality and the female gamesmanship. I will keep total control over my emotions and my body. As in the poem "Invictus," "I am the master of fate, the captain of my soul."

 

The Garden of Eden

 

This story takes place on Saint Francis "the patron saint of small animals," West Indies. Saint Francis is, in my opinion, the most beautiful of the Lesser Antilles. Its position relative to the trade winds is perfect. The island rests perpendicular to the trade winds most of the year. During hurricane season, it appears as if the island turns ever so slightly to present more of its windward side to the storms. Fortunately, my humble abode, as always, during the heavy storms is located on the leeward side of paradise.

Most of the Caribbean islands, as is in much of nature, are an alchemy of opposites. They are slowly dying mountaintops of ancient volcanoes. Born of fire and horrific violence, the islands are now a glorious cornucopia of vegetation, numerous varieties of birds, and colorful insects. "Sin Fran," as the locals pronounce Saint Francis, their home, also has a few small relatively insignificant but stunning waterfalls.

I have always been fascinated by the physical and human history of the Caribbean. It is the birthplace of modern Western Hemispheric culture and history. It is where indigenous, African, and European cultures clashed much like the cataclysmic violence that gave birth to the islands. The Caribbean is where the tropical depressions that originate in Africa gain strength from the warm equatorial and Caribbean waters on their way to North or Central America, often becoming hurricanes. When I look at my island, I am reminded of how pain and pleasure, horror and beauty, birth and death are but mirror images of symbiotic relationships.

Yet the hurricanes purify the air and wash the dust and sand from the plants and replenish the underground freshwater aquifers, leaving behind a renewed sense of hope for the future. The shards of warm Caribbean water flowing northeasterly up the North Atlantic coast before turning due east and beyond, the Gulf Stream, has a significant impact on North America, the British Isles, and Western Europe, giving birth, for example, to the British Isles' infamous fog.

I, like many other humans who share this island with the plants and animals, rally behind the diminutive gecko. This ubiquitous little lizard-like monster's favorite dish is the bloodsucking mosquito. One of my favorite pastimes is to lie in my hammock and watch the predatory small remnant of long-ago prehistoric reptiles stalk its prey and, with what appears to be the speed of light, strike and digest the flying pest. It is only the female mosquito that bites and sucks the blood out of its prey while, at the same time, inserting its highly irritable fluid that causes itching and disease.

I said, I live on the leeward side of the island. For you landlubbers, that is the side with its back to the prevailing winds. OK, so it is hotter and I don't have many neighbors. Both are just fine with me on both counts. My house is more of a tricked-out shack than anyone would consider a real house. It is open on three sides, with a single-sided concrete-reinforced wall providing what little privacy I need for my commode, books, electronics, kitchen, and closet.

My shower and other freshwater needs are supplied by the rainwater that falls on my roof and runs down into a cistern beneath the house. Before you begin to think all is perfect, if I am not careful, my cistern will be depleted in the winter months during the dry season. Imagine flushing and showering with seawater. Ugh.

But my little piece of paradise is to die for. At the end of a tropical-flower-lined path leading from my house is a lagoon. The lagoon is, among other things, a hatchery for hundreds of species of marine life. They allow me to enter their world when I swim and move aside to give me all the space, I need to flail my arms and legs in what must look like, to those who glide seamlessly through the water, a clown show.

These once-mighty volcanic, mostly underwater mountains are slowly being eroded by wind, rain, fauna, and flora. Yet they are still one of nature's wonders to behold. The greenery on the windward side is like a lush carpet of emeralds. The sun provides, thanks to the absence of any airborne pollutants, a bright spotlight on this island paradise. The combined effects provide a very sensual atmosphere. The warm Caribbean breezes and the azure, blue-green water engulfs the tourists who visit Saint Francis in a consistent message of plea-sure, anticipation, excitement, and sexual arousal.

In the summer months, witnessing the parade of the majestic cumulonimbus clouds pregnant with rain is awe-inspiring. But all things must end. Global climate change is causing sea levels to rise. Many atolls and smaller islands have already vanished.

Little did those of us on Saint Francis know that in the heart of our island paradise, deep below the sea level, existed a giant cavern formed by ancient lava flows rising from the tectonic plates on which the sea and land rest. The cavern, or bobble, as I like to call it, is the remains of lava retreating from its upward march, leaving behind the cooler walls that have maintained their shape for millions of years. The rising sea waters of climate change have advanced upon weak spots along the subterranean cavern and began the erosion process that would hasten the cavern's demise and thus the death of the island. It was like a tumor lying and waiting to metastasize and kill its host. The death of beauty.

 

The Family

 

He only family that I have ever called my own as my long-time military buddy, his wife, and his children. There was one child that was special to me. His eldest daughter, Jessie, had inquisitive and piercing blue eyes and a rapacious appetite for facts about life in general and my private life. She wanted to know my feelings and desires and every detail of my life on Saint Francis, especially my home. Her piercing eyes focusing on me, combined with her incessantly touching my hands, was often embarrassing. Simple handholding became gentle stroking on the back of my hands and arms.

When she was little, she would always jump into my lap and talk nonstop for what seemed like hours but were just excruciatingly long minutes interrupted only by her parents' injunction to "let your uncle rest, Jessie." As an adolescent, Jessie would give me little baby kisses on my forehead and, occasionally, a soft, non-descript peck on my lips. When young girls are coming into their womanhood, it is nothing short of an unpredictable, fast-moving summer storm of body, mind, and spirit. It is an awakening of powerful forces that have been cultivated since the cradle.

Who has not witnessed the influence a young daughter has over her dad? The plaintiff looks of woe that appropriates from her dad whatever her mom has denied. Or the battle of teen and mom to determine who would be the alpha female, with Dad fanning to sup-port Mom but most likely wanting to defend his baby girl. My niece Jessie was all the above and more.

Jessie's dad and I served in the military together for ten years. I had always been an adopted member of the family. Jessie was the eldest of three children. I had no children and planned never to have any. I saw my parents battle each other all my childhood, and I swore never to bring into this world any human that might endure what I had experienced as a child. I could never understand why couples stayed together when their relationship was a battlefield.

When I visited Jessie's home throughout the years and witnessed firsthand the madness of hyperactive children, the barking dog, the screaming cat trying to escape the barking dog, the endless yelling and scuffles, it confirmed my commitment to permanent bachelorhood. Jessie, however, was unlike any other member of her family and the kid's schoolmates who all but lived in Jessie's house; she was calm and serene, the placid eye of the storm. Even as a toddler, she was most indifferent to the tumult that invaded her surroundings.

When she began to make that metamorphosis into womanhood, it was incredible. I say incredible because I, and most certainly others, could not keep my attention away from her for long. Maybe it was because I paid so much attention to her ever since she was born, more than her siblings, that she began to seek my company exclusively. At first, it was cute. Her uncle spoiling her and getting in return her earnest attention and adoration. When the little girl matured into an adolescent and then a teenager, however, she became a spider closing in on its prey. How could she not be concerned that her parents would not be suspicious about her burgeoning emotional attachment to me?

I had to get away.

That is me being the very first to confess that Jessie had awakened something very primitive and carnal in me. I did not want that feeling, nor did I like the way I could not get her off my mind.

I took the little inheritance I had from my grandparents' estate and my military retirement and moved to Saint Francis. Yes, I would be safely away from Jessie and her hold over me.