Geoff Dyer - Out of Sheer Rage - Wrestling With D.H. Lawrence

‘I am so wound up in myself I am not even a man,’ I said to Laura, suddenly on the brink of tears.

‘Yes you are, hombre ,’ said Laura.

It would have been okay, I thought, if I had been here six or seven years ago when I was pumping iron, but now my nudity seemed to reveal the narrow shoulders which my swimming trunks contrived somehow to conceal. My swimming trunks padded out my shoulders. If I felt uncomfortable with no clothes on, however, I felt even more uncomfortable in my swimming trunks because they chafed somewhat so that I was actually more comfortable with no clothes on. Lying down was okay but when I stood up on my Bambi legs, naked, the idea of wearing chafing swimming trunks, even swimming trunks that chafed my skinny legs terribly, seemed preferable to standing there naked, skinny shoulders revealed for all the world to see. It was like this, being stoned at Zipolite: it was very good grass but you could easily find yourself drawn into a whirlpool of anxiety. To avoid being sucked under, engulfed by anxiety, I moved around in front of Laura who was dozing, one knee raised up, legs slightly apart so that I could see her cunt. After a few moments I became lost in the pleasure of looking at her breasts, her legs, her stomach, her cunt. My prick stirred into life. I thought of lying between her legs and licking her clitoris while she pissed, her piss running over my chin and immediately sizzling into the sand and disappearing. My prick became hard. I spat in my hand and rubbed saliva over the head of my prick — stopping abruptly when I realised that I was sitting on the beach at Zipolite with a semi-hard-on, right on the brink of masturbating, an activity which, to put it mildly, emphasised my nakedness and, therefore, my narrow-shoulderedness which was exactly what I had hoped to take my mind off by gazing at Laura’s cunt. Besides, grains of sand were stuck in the palm of my hand and, even allowing for the lubricating effects of saliva, what I would have been doing would have been subjecting my prick to a form of highly animated chafing: mastur-chafing, as it were. I turned around, away from Laura, and stared at the ocean, letting my prick soften.

The ocean. Now that I was facing it I became conscious again of the motorway roar and crash of tide. Big thoughts were in order. The waves were huge: blue-white walls rearing up and pounding the beach. A couple of perfect Germans walked along the damp sand at the water’s edge, a man and woman, naked, both with the same broad-shoulder-length hair, holding hands, taking it in turns to pull on a joint. It was paradise in a way, Zipolite: Anarcho-Eden-on-sea. You could probably fuck here, on the beach, in blazing daylight, and no one would bat an eyelid. The only thing you couldn’t do, if you came across people doing that, was what you most wanted to do: watch.

There were pelicans flying over the sea, a few people swimming. I stood up and walked towards the sea. The sand burned my feet and I ran towards the damp sand at the water’s edge where the footprints of the perfect Germans were already disappearing. The sea was spiteful as fat in a pan: I went in up to my knees and was almost bowled over by the waves. The undertow wrenched the sand from beneath my feet like someone tugging a rug. The sea was trying to tear everything back into itself, making a bid for Zipolite itself, trying to haul it back into the sea grain by grain.

Out where the Berlin Wall waves were crashing in, two people were swimming. However you chose to look at it they were having a huge dose of ocean. They were emphatically not paddling. Toppling over the crest of one of those waves was like falling off a cliff — and then having the cliff come crashing over on top of you.

They started coming back in, swimming together. I could see them more clearly now: a man and a woman. A wave crashed over them and he held her up above the waves. I was the only other person around, in the water up to my thighs, surrounded by the hiss and foam, the roar. They had their arms around each other but as they came nearer I saw that she was out on her feet, head lolling. Not only that but she was pale green. As I watched, her knees buckled and she collapsed. The guy picked her up in his arms: a classic example of broad-shouldered behaviour. Someone else came splashing out beside me, the waves thumping into us. It was a French guy Laura and I had spoken to the day before — and the woman, I realised now, was his girlfriend.

We waded out a little further. Then the guy who’d saved her — evidently — and the French boyfriend walked back into the shallows with the woman sagging between them. There was nothing for me to do except watch as the French boyfriend and some other Europeans led the woman back up the beach. After that, I walked with the guy who’d saved her back along the beach, puppy waves snapping at our ankles.

‘I saw you out there. I thought you were messing around,’ I said, wanting to hear all about it, wanting the full story.

He’d been standing some way off — he was Australian — trying to figure out the rips. Ocean people do this, they figure out the rips. He’d seen her get hit by a wave, seen her go under. As soon as she came up she got hit by another. She didn’t know where she was. Waves kept smacking into her and she was getting pulled out to sea. He swam out to her but it looked like he’d got there too late. He thought she was dead but as soon as he touched her she pulled him under. He wrestled himself free, kept hold of her, rode the waves in. Saved her.

‘You must be a good swimmer,’ I said.

In the circumstances it was a stupid remark but he nodded and said, ‘I grew up by the ocean.’ The fact that we were walking, naked, by the edge of the ocean helped imbue this reply with an elemental appropriateness, yes, but wherever we were I would have liked the suggestion of dues paid, of a long apprenticeship of the waves. I would also have liked the way that he didn’t specify which ocean, as if there was only one ocean. Also, the romanticism of growing up by something: the railroad tracks, the gasworks, the North Circular even.

The Australian walked back to the bar. ‘I need a drink after that,’ he said.

‘You deserve one,’ I said and hurried back to wake Laura, to tell her I’d seen someone plucked from death’s watery embrace. She was still sleepy, disoriented. Some way over to our right a group was forming round the French couple. I put on my chafing trunks. The French couple’s friends were trying to administer some kind of first aid but they didn’t really know what they were doing. The boyfriend tried the kiss of life, a muscular German manipulated her arms as if she were a rowing machine. A bald guy said she should sit up; an Italian tried to manoeuvre her into the coma position. From where I was standing it looked more like a gang-rape than an attempt to save her life. No one knew what to do.

No one except the Australian, who touched me on the elbow and walked over. He too had put on some swimming trunks. He walked slowly over the hot sand and took control of the situation. That’s exactly what a situation is, I thought to myself, something someone will take control of. Implicit in the idea of a situation is someone taking control of it. Quickly he made her puke up a lot of water, reassured her, told someone to get a doctor.

I went back to where Laura was lying, sitting up now. She put on her bikini bottom and we walked over to the bar. After a while the Australian came over with his group of friends. They ordered beers and he told the story again. I chipped in from time to time.

‘She OD’d on the ocean, man,’ said a guy from California who had seen everything many times before.

‘The waves were too much for her,’ said the Australian, shaking his head. I realised we both had towels round our necks. I was only a witness but the gravity of the situation had invested me with a certain authority in everyone’s eyes.