John Barth - Letters

Mm hm. My sentiments exactly, despite my local fame as a coat-and-tie-skipper in the spring and fall. The fact was, I told her, it was Arrow shirts or nothing, and after half a century of watching our rivers get yearly more crowded, I still found swimsuits unnecessary more often than not when at anchor on our side of the Chesapeake. That ice broken, we dinghied through the nettles to what we now christened Skinny-Dip Cove, where, as we’d hoped, we saw fewer of them; and wary as I was of medusa stings on my privates, at her challenge and example I Took a Chance.

I report to you, Dad, that at age near-70 it is still a pleasure to feel one’s male equipment floating free in the amniotic waters of the Chesapeake, so warm by August that they don’t even tighten the scrotum, and to splash about with a long-legged, suntanned, gold-haired (but, one observed with interest, brown-fleeced), not-at-all-bad-looking woman half one’s age. I had first done Dun Cove in the buff (we called it “buckbathing” back then), crewing for friends, when a woman of 35 was twice my age, and had I looked with awe upon a naked and unattainably mature 21-year-old, the skipper’s girl friend. I had skinny-dipped there in the 1920’s and ’30’s and ’40’s and ’50’s and ’60’s, with friends coeval to each decade. How old Polly, as late as last August, used to love to peel out of her Playtex and leap with a whoop from O.J.‘s bowsprit, nettles be damned! And beautiful Jane, modest Jane, who would strip only at night lest someone see her from the woods alongshore — how she loved the sparkle on us of Dun Cove’s phosphorescing algae, her nipples twinkling before me in Franklin Roosevelt’s second term! My itinerary for the rest of the cruise did not call for another visit to this first of my Favorite Anchorages; I was immensely happy to have a Naked Lady-Friend to swim with on my last stop in Dun Cove.

I told Jeannine so, and some of the above, as she ably rowed us back (there’s a pretty sight, Dad: conjure it, from my perspective in the stern-seat). She wanted to know Had I ever swum there with her mom? I said Sure, and no more. She swapped me some skinny-dipping memories of her own, tending toward the orgiastic and Caribbean but not excluding dear Dun Cove or the innocent pleasure of mere untrammeled wetness. As we toweled off (in the cabin: the fleet was piling in now from Annapolis, Washington, everywhere), we agreed that while solitary anchorages were delicious, the weekend party thing was fun too: rafting together for cocktails, boat-hopping to compare hors d’oeuvres and layouts and rigs both nautical and human. We also inspected each other less surreptitiously, Jeannine supposing, correctly, that her mother had been in better shape at 35, pointing out small striations on her own breasts and thighs and backside, complimenting politely my not-bad-physique-for-a-man-my-age (from the neck down), observing with interest that below the waist I wasn’t gray-haired yet. She liked my invocation of Boccaccio’s leek, white-headed but green-tailed; said she’d known plenty of the opposite kind; wondered if we could stay stripped on deck till the air cooled down, just covering ourselves with beach towels when boats passed close.

Sure.

And could she ask me a question? she wondered a bit later. We were stretched out now with light rum and tonics on the cockpit cushions, port and starboard, our backs propped against the cabin bulkhead, a plate of ripe olives and Caprice-des-Dieux-on-matzo, my favorite canapé, between us. The mosquitoes and no-see-ums were under control; the sunset over Tilghman’s Island was a showpiece; blue herons duly squawked as if being throttled; anchor lights were rigged for the night; from a nearby Concordia yawl the inevitable folk guitarist softened welcomely the transistor rock from elsewhere in the cove; there were splashes, ouches, laughter; and the last Harris Creek lighted daybeacon (Fl 4 sec “7”) blinked obediently every time we counted to four hippopotami. Got the picture, Dad? In short, I was relishing the dusk of Day 1 and wondering mildly why in the world a man of your age would hang himself, even in February 1930, for simple lack of cash, when it was so abundantly evident that Everything Has Intrinsic Value.

Sure, honey.

It was half past eight, dusk enough now to ignore our neighbors (though with a good pair of 7x50’s one can recognize faces from 100 feet at midnight). Jeannine swung her legs off the seat, reached across the cockpit, laid light hold of my penis with a hand cold from her drink — the old fellow shrank back as he had not when we swam — and said she’d ask it later. This had been her happiest day in years. Could we please go below now for a while?

Since August 13, 1932, Dad (8 L), I have not easily been taken by surprise. Jeannine surprised me. If you saw “incest” in the offing pages since, it’s because I did too, this time around, recording her visit from log notes and memory. But at the time, though I’d certainly and clearly enjoyed Jeannine’s nudity, my pleasure was half impersonal and half the finally innocent admiration of a father for his mature and seasoned, still-attractive daughter. The sight of her, and our frisking about, had unquestionably reminded me of the pleasures of sex; but those were memories, not anticipations or desires. Or, if there was after all a mild touch of the latter, it was the wistful wish that she were not probably my daughter, possibly an adversary in the upcoming will dispute, and surely not interested in sex with a 70-year-old friend of the family. I was surprised.

But not out of my wits. Jeannine was sober; I too. Her possible motives, the possible ill consequences and other objections to our “going below” I believe I saw clearly, along with the great So What (and all the lesser Why Nots) in the pan. A lawyer is a lawyer; an old one even more so. Now Jeannine, I said, as neutrally as possible: that old chap there is semiretired.

She moved her fingers. Let’s un-retire him, Toddy. I’m feeling happy and horny. No obligations. No problems. Feel.

Well. We went below, took turns going down, managed a fairly routine coupling in the missionary position, but with her legs over my arms. No special frisson. We cooled down awhile then in our sweat, and later made omelettes for dinner with the last of the Caprice des Dieux and a cold Moselle. Not much talking. The Trout Quintet, agreeably, on the FM. Both of us, in modest reaction, wearing shorts and tops now. After cleanup and bed-making we finished the Moselle out in the dew-soaked cockpit, regarding Andromeda and her friends, wishing we could take a final swim but not caring to be stung in the dark. The air was balmy, the forecast fine; even so, Jeannine prudently queried me about our anchor-scope before we went back below. We changed chastely into our nightclothes, brushed our teeth, washed up, and with a friendly good-night kiss turned in, me to the double berth forward, she to a settee-berth in the main cabin.

When the lights were out and we’d soaked in for a few minutes the sweet creaks and chuckles of a boat swinging gently at anchor, Jeannine asked, mildly, Should she come sleep up there with me? Had she said Could she, I’d’ve said Sure. As was, it seemed both more prudent and more comfortable to say Too sticky. Then I added, only partly lest she feel rejected: But we could visit in the morning. She’d like that, said my daughter.

I reminded her she’d forgot to ask her question. The one back there in the cockpit?

Oh, that. Her voice was sleepy and amused. She’d only wondered, when she saw for the first time her mother’s old lover’s cock and balls, whether she herself had sprung from there in — let’s see — January of 1933?

Perfectly likely, I acknowledged at once. And just as likely you didn’t. Does it matter a great deal to you?