John Barth - Letters

Aha, she teased: so I did have something going. Nope, sorry, not a sound or syllable. She put a hand on my knee: Had she screwed something up for me, answering my phone in the middle of the night?

No, no, no. I had nothing “going,” more’s the pity. And now I did dismiss the matter from my mind. No question of stopping for a swim or letting O.J. self-steer: we spanked across the wind, taking the seas just forward of our port beam with a satisfying smash of white water. The old hull seemed happy as I was; we sprinted (for us) up the Bay like an elder porpoise bestrode by a fresh sea-nymph, Jeannine and I spelling each other hourly at the wheel. Faster and flashier boats sailed over to have a look, their crews waving and grinning appreciation of O.J. ’s traditional lines, its Old Rake of a Skipper’s white hair, and His Chick’s terrific tits. Bloody Point light, off the southern tip of Kent Island, slid by to starboard at noon; Thomas Point light, off the mouth of South River, to port before 1300; the Bay Bridge overhead as we changed tricks at 1400—a steady five knots under beautiful cumulus clouds in perfect midsummer weather, with Handel’s Water Music piping in from Baltimore!

Off the mouth of the Magothy, sailboat traffic thickened to the point where Jeannine put her T-shirt on, lest among the whistling sailors be clients of mine or old friends of the Macks’ from Gibson Island. We left Pavilion Point to starboard about three o’clock, tacking into the river between bright spinnakers running out; by four we had close-reached up between Dobbins Island and the high wooded banks of Gibson, through Sillery Bay and Gibson Island’s perfect harbor, and dropped our hook in Red House Cove: the only boat there.

That was, perhaps, a pity, as things turned out — the early anchorage after a dandy seven-hour sail, the unexpected privacy and free time in a lovely swimming place relatively free of sea nettles — but it certainly seemed otherwise at the moment. We stripped and dived in fast to cool off, then put a proper harbor-furl in the sails, rigged the awning to shade cockpit and main cabin and a windsail at the forward hatch, and went back in for a long leisurely swim, spotting nettles for each other as best we could in the clouded, bath-warm water. After an hour of paddling and floating with only one minor sting between us, as I hung at the foot of the boarding ladder to rest, Jeannine wound herself smilingly around me, kissed my face several times, and directed my free hand to her clitoris while she fondled me. No erection, to my mild disappointment — I haven’t successfully copulated in the water since my twenties, Dad; have you? — and she couldn’t get it off either; so we scrambled aboard, toweled off on deck, then went below to do things right. Much easier with each other this time, we managed a sitting position, face to face, my favorite, on the port settee. Jeannine had a practiced little hip-action, delicious, and liked to work on herself while I reached ’round and—

Enough pornography, Dad: it wets my pants and compounds my felony to record it. But at my age and in my situation, every erection, penetration, thrust, and ejaculation, every touch of nipple, stroke of cleft — there I go; here I came — has the special extra pleasure of its being very possibly my last. (These were, it turns out, my next-to-last; one more to go, and I’ll make it briefer, which it was.) My “daughter,” sir, is now a Missing Person, and it may well be just here, as I seize her buttocks, press my face between her breasts, and squirt what feels like an entire Chesapeake of semen into her, that I begin to send her down whatever path she’s gone. On the other hand (I must tell myself) she might have taken that path sooner, or some worse one later, but for her pleasure in my company thus far.

Done. We opened more beer at her request and lay sipping happily in our perspiration, letting the slight air current from the windsail play over us. Jeannine spoke quietly of how much the weekend had done for her. She felt a real person again, authentic. No doubt her being on an old boat with an old friend in these old haunts was responsible; she didn’t feel obliged to prove herself. Maybe New York or L.A., where she’d always had to prove herself and had always proved herself inadequate, would be a mistake; maybe she ought to begin a new life right here in Maryland, doing what I’d mentioned with the Tidewater Foundation, perhaps directing shows for the O.F.T. II. She had a knack for directing amateurs, she believed. It had been so restorative, these two days: out of the sexual rat-race, away from the crazies. She hadn’t even been tempted to get drunk. (We opened another: her suggestion — announcement, rather. I began to wonder.) I shouldn’t worry that our little sex thing might be bad for her. It had been as relaxing as the rest: like a nice fatherly pat on the ass, only better. She truly believed that if she could stay with me to the end of my cruise — even for just the first week of it — she’d have a bit of an anchor to windward, a little foundation to start building something new and modest and real upon…

I’d seen this coming. Reading these lubricious pages, Dad, you may imagine that the prospect of nineteen more days of the foregoing would appeal to me, especially with the added sweetening of their being therapeutic for Jeannine. Her visit had been an unexpected little bonus; possible incest or not, I could muster no more guilt about her seducing me than a small salt of extra pleasure. If the past two days had been good for Jeannine, they’d been as good for me: a chance to bid leisurely good-bye to her and to another of life’s delights. At 69, however, I am not imperiously sexed; what’s more (for Jeannine would no doubt be willing to dispense with our copulation), I looked forward already to solitude. There were other last things to think of. The fact was, I’d had about enough.

Then how to set her down gently? I kissed her (on the behind: she’d stood to wipe my leaking semen off her with a Kleenex, and perhaps to not watch my expression as she wound up her plea) and asked her to give me overnight to think about it. I really did have my reasons, I reminded her, for planning a solitary cruise; on the other hand, she was a terrific pleasure and a great convenience to have aboard. Let’s sleep on it.

Through dinner she was subdued (lamb chops barbecued off the taffrail, Caesar salad, and a young Beaujolais, which she put away most of). After cleanup we swam again under the first stars — no nettle stings, but no noctilucae either — while lightning from a distant local thundershower flickered southwest of us. The night was stiff and sticky, the cabin uninviting. We sat up late on deck, stripped to our underpants for comfort and sprayed with Off, sipping gin and tonic and tisking tongues at our unexpected privacy: I’d rigged the anchor light, but it was apparent that no other overnighters were going to join us in Red House Cove. Though it was a touch early and partly cloudy, we looked for Perseid meteors, but saw only two in an hour. Jeannine seemed to be holding her liquor and tactfully did not reraise her proposition; her self-control encouraged me to hope that she might after all “settle down” into a more meaningful life in the plenty of years ahead for her. We spoke little, enjoying the stillness and the dew. When the latter finally chilled us (just as Perseus himself rose out of the Bay), I took her hand and led her below.

In fact, sleepy from alcohol and the long day outdoors, I was simply saying Let’s turn in, but she understandably mistook my gesture: once in the cabin she slipped to her knees and popped Old John into her mouth. I stroked her hair and let her go at it for a while, half wishing the chap would stand lest she feel rejected, half hoping he wouldn’t so she’d get the message, and mainly hankering for sleep. She scolded him playfully, tried a few testicular and rectal accompaniments; neither he nor I could’ve been less interested. I raised her up, chuckled something about old folks needing their sleep. She tensed in my arms, first time since the Dorset lobby, and turned her face away when I said good night.