Truth
Just Another Day in Paradise
Snorkeling the Wreck of the Rhone
The air is tangibly soft here! So warm and humid and fragrant, I thought, inhaling sweet tropical perfumes. I descended the stairs from the wobbly little aircraft that had hiccupped its way across the Caribbean from San Juan, Puerto Rico. Something forbidden came over me when I touched the ground.
Why do I want to take off all my clothes and drink rum?
Little more than an outcropping of volcanic rock, St. Thomas pokes out of the sea at one end of the Sir Francis Drake Channel that runs the length of the Virgin Islands. Steel bands beat on every corner, hordes of sunburned tourists scoop up gold jewelry, Rasta men slam dominoes at tiny tables in the square, and both humans and street dogs amble about ver-r-ry slowly.
The air intoxicates.
Ancient rhythms take command of the body. Sailboat riggings sing hypnotic melodies in the warm breeze. Stress melts away and flows into the sea, nourishing one-celled organisms at the base of the island food chain. Time stands still.
I soon learned there wasn’t much to do but get tan and get drunk, and once good and intoxicated, play backgammon at the “Bilge,” the bar at the end of the C-dock in Charlotte Amalie. Truth? It’s real name was “The Bridge.”
Stacks of clear plastic drink glasses stood ready for the popular saloon game “Cucaracha caught ya!” I didn’t have to wait long to see a substantial Caribbean cockroach skitter across the bar, replacing the din of the dice with the slamming of plastic cups in drunken attempts to imprison the hapless cucaracha. When it was finally captured, game on! as players slapped their bills on the bar, betting big bucks on how long it would take the cockroach to push the cup off the edge in his bid for freedom.
Oh yes, another shitty day in paradise, she thought. Tropical climes are decidedly brain-damaging. Someone should do a study on this effect.
Immediately upon arriving in the islands, I felt the tension dropping away, followed too quickly by my clothes, my sobriety, my morals, and ultimately my will to get up in the morning. Most of the folks there had been in the islands too long and were incurably brain-dead. I imagined colorful tropical vines growing out of their ears.
The days passed. The mañana syndrome crept over my body-mind and took command.
My Greek late husband Dimitri had been in the Navy most of his adult life and had a passion for the open sea. I was a skilled SCUBA diver with a shiny new PhD in Organic Chemistry but couldn’t imagine life without a mailbox planted in solid ground. Yet here I was, living aboard a Morgan 51' sailboat, drinking yet another Mount Gay and OJ, listening to Dimitri putter in the engine room below decks.
The Dive
What a perfect spot for a snorkel, I thought. Dimitri was busy with boat maintenance (a 24/7 endeavor), and the sunken wreck of the Rhone, where The Deep was filmed, was right under our sailboat. Disregarding the cardinal rule of buddy diving*, I jumped over the side equipped only with mask, fins, and snorkel, took three deep breaths at the surface and sank to the bottom.
Underwater Ecstasy
Oh, heaven. I’m weightless. Free. My spirit merges with sea life. An angelfish keeps me company, curious, biting my silvery bubbles. Eerie sounds of whale songs and creaking coffin lids hypnotize me. I am floating in amniotic waters, immersed in ecstasy, adrift in the beauty and serenity of the sea. I sense sand-covered treasures buried all around me.
I explore the ship, enter a jagged hole in the side, finding only corals and encrustations of alien life forms inside. I am at one with the Universal Consciousness. Time floats. On a bronze plaque attached to a coral head on the sea floor, I read a description of the events surrounding the shipwreck.
I learn that this portion of the wreck is in (oh my!) 55 feet of water.
I calmly calculate that there are approximately three oxygen molecules left in my lungs. I look through silvery light lasers descending from the surface, an impossible distance away. I will die here. Happily. At peace. My spirit-self dissolves, spreading out into soft warm waters, merging with sparkling waves, luminescing with night-plankton, singing Circean love songs, eternal…
Wait! What’s this? A torrent of noisy SCUBA divers approaches, blowing bubbles, kicking up clouds of silt, disrupting my tranquil environment. They want to rescue me!
How dare they!
They have entered my dreamscape uninvited. Waving them away, I revel in their astonishment at finding a human loitering at this depth with no visible means of life support. I carefully ascend, following their bubbles to the surface (I have no air left for making bubbles), leaving them with a richness of material for their post-dive bar chatter about the Mermaid of the Rhone.
I break the surface. I awaken from the dream. I breathe. I mourn the paradise I have left behind.
As I clamored back aboard, Dimitri, oblivious, was still working on the engine.
Author’s note: The subtext of this piece is actually the story of my entire life of relationships with men, i.e., if they’re not having sex with me, I don’t enter into their awareness.
Is it me? Or is it them? At this stage of life, I no longer care, and I no longer allow them to enter into my awareness either, unless I need something from them.
NOTE: *The official “cardinal rule of SCUBA diving is to never ever go down alone. The corollary to this rule is to always dive with a knife strapped to your leg, so that when you see a shark you can stab your buddy, distracting the shark, and escape. Truth.
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