Simon Sheppard - In Deep

There's something about the shock of first hitting the water that never becomes routine. It's the feeling that your equipment, so heavy on land, has become effortlessly light. The sudden submersion, the bubbles rising from the regulator, the commitment to enter a whole other world for a while.

We made the "OK" sign to one another and let the air out of our vests, sinking down into blue space. Everything was beautiful down below. The choppiness of the surface subsided into a deep, wet calm. We swam side by side, Aaron and I. Schools of fish swam this way and that, reversing direction en masse. The reef was alive, all around us. There was nothing to break the silence but the bubbling sound of my own breath. Everything was beautiful. Everything.

I looked over at Aaron, made the "OK" sign again and got one in return. He gestured to go deeper down. With every exhalation I sank a little further, till we hovered over a patch of sandy bottom. The usual feelings of diving-being far beneath normal existence, somehow free of gravity, totally in my body yet really nowhere at all. I looked at my depth gauge: ninety feet.

He gestured me to sit on the bottom. I couldn't see a reason not to, so I knelt on the sea floor, stirring up a little sandstorm. He came over and knelt in front of me, so close that our knees were touching. He laid a hand on my shoulder and we stared at one another through our masks. I could feel my dick getting hard inside my wetsuit.

Then Aaron grabbed my air hose. I took a big gulp of air. He tugged at the mouthpiece. I let him. I let him pull it out of my mouth. I held my breath.

/ could die right now, I thought. // would take so little. Just allowing my mouth to open, letting the ocean rush in.

Why was I doing this, trusting him, letting myself believe he'd give the regulator back to me and let me suck in life again?

Letting go. Right here, right now, my last moment. The end.

My lungs began to ache for air.

Relief. The salty water, salty as my blood, bringing an end, a darkness, maybe peace.

I thought of the moment when he'd put his hands around my neck and squeezed. The girl with the big tits was right. Aaron was bad news.

His face would be the last thing I'd see. He would watch me shoot upward into blue shafts of sunlight, only to thrash, relax, and come to floating rest.

I looked upward. The surface was so far above. It might as well have been as far as the stars.

I should do it, I thought. It would be so easy.

My body was rebelling. I needed air. Fuck this shit, fuck Aaron and the places he took me and my hard dick and Kate and my life. Fuck it all. I needed air.

/ could die right now.

I grabbed for his hand. He let go of the regulator, which floated upward, out of reach. Through the glass of our faceplates, our eyes conveyed some primal, elemental message. Older than civilization: animal trust and betrayal. I made the "Out of Air" sign, fingers slashing across my windpipe. I was going to die. He would never let me breathe.

It would be so easy.

He blinked once and reached down for his spare mouthpiece, the "octopus." Gently, he held the back of my head with one hand and guided the octopus toward my mouth with the other. I opened my lips, he placed it between my teeth, I clamped down, greedy, breathing again.

He gestured to rise. I could have grabbed at my regulator hose, replaced my own mouthpiece. Instead, I remained breathing through his spare, the two of us sharing the same air as he put his arm around me and, locked in a wet embrace, we rose slowly toward the surface. When it came time for our decompression stop, he put both arms around me and hugged. Then he reached for his mouthpiece and his octopus, gently pulled the regulators from both our mouths, and kissed me, parting my lips with his tongue just enough for a trickle of salt water to rush in.

The he replaced his mouthpiece, I got my own regulator into my mouth, and we rose toward the surface, toward life.

I needed to go for a walk. I'd come to Utila to escape. To escape my life, but my life had followed me, hitched a ride with me on that Russian plane. If I'd come to Utila to simplify my existence, I'd come to the wrong place. Somewhere out in the middle of the sea, I was walking down the same small street again and again, wanting there to be somewhere to get lost.

I figured I'd finally hike out to Pumpkin Hill. I never got there. The Scandinavian girl was coming up the street, a bag of groceries in one hand, She placed herself in my path.

"The supply boat has come in, and the grocery store has now more food again. Look." She held the grocery bag toward me.

Jesus, I thought, is this woman everywhere? And then I realized it wasn't just her; since I got to Utila, I'd been seeing the same faces again and again. Only Aaron was hard to find, always disappearing.

"So what," the girl asked, "have you learned?"

What a fucking weird question. Or maybe she'd been reading my mind.

"Huh?" I asked.

"About Aaron. Have you found out?"

"Found out what?" I didn't want to talk about it. I didn't want to think about it, about Aaron, about me. I wanted to relax, let the currents carry me, watch my thoughts swim off like a school of bright, mindless fish.

"How do you think someone gets that way?" she asked, an odd look in her very blue eyes.

Fuck you, I wanted to say.

Instead I said, "Excuse me. I've got to go." And I turned around and headed back to the hotel, before she could catch up. Maybe Aaron would be there.

When he fucked me that afternoon, he didn't use a condom.

"I'm okay," he said.

"Trust me," he said.

I did.

It didn't feel quite like I expected. A little pain at first, which was to be expected, and then just a funny, full feeling. Once he got going, though, once I relaxed, once he was all the way in, it all changed to pleasure. Sweat was glistening on his chest, dripping off the hairs of his belly.

I wanted him to choke me again, but I didn't dare ask him. I lost my hard-on, from all the new sensations, but that didn't matter much. His pleasure was all that counted. I wanted to be nothing. When he shot off inside me, I hoped I could have been anyone. Even the girl from Scandinavia.

"Stay inside me," I gasped. "Please stay inside me." And I jacked off, getting hard fast, feeling an intense longing, a need to spew salty cum everywhere. It didn't take long for me to shoot. Jism arced all the way up to my face.

We showered. There wasn't much to say. I went off to find us a snack. In the heat of the late afternoon. Utila's main street was nearly empty. Walking felt strange; I could still feel him in my ass. It was as if my body was carrying some barely concealed secret, something about being looser, more open. I was glad there were so few people out; discovery would be less likely.

When I returned to the room, every trace of Aaron was gone. No note, nothing. I felt resigned, then curious. I ran from the hotel, heading for the airstrip. As I got there, the last plane of the day was warming up on the runway, pointed toward the mainland. As it taxied down the field, I thought I saw Aaron's face at a window, looking toward me, but I couldn't be sure. I stood there, stupidly, until the sputtering roar of the plane faded away over the deep blue sea.

When I got back to the hotel, there was a boy with a backpack at the front desk, kind of scrawny, but cute. His neck was thin.

"You look exhausted," I said to him.

"Know of anyplace to stay?" he asked. "Every hotel seems to be full up."

"There's a second bed in my room," I told him. "You'd be welcome to spend the night."