Khalil asked her if she was a sensual person. The question seemed odd; she had never contemplated her sexuality in such a way. She thought of herself as sexy, at times, or solid, as many men would call her, but never sensual. Sensual was something she pictured of a woman that expressed a confidence and elegance about her sexuality and manifested that in both public and private spaces; a woman that would intimidate and allure all at the same time; a woman whose sexuality was spiritual and sacred, yet untamed and passionate. That wasn’t her.
Her sexuality was enthusiastic, even peppery, but overridingly coy. Despite her sultry energy and supposed proficiency, there were so many things she didn’t know about her sexuality, and even more things she didn’t even know she didn’t know.
She thought the world had become very unimaginative and inhibited when it came to sexuality and intimacy, and it was rubbing off on her. She remembered something she read in a book once that said: “Although we didn’t take our clothes off and I didn’t come inside you, or even touch you, we just made love.” That was fiction. She wondered what that kind of love making looked like in real life.
We sat together at the end of the wooden dock, stretching about 50-meters from the shore into the harbour. The moon wasn’t quite full, but it sat in the middle of a group of cumulonimbus clouds gathered like a manger to cradle that planet. There was a soft bluish glow radiating about the circumference of the moon that increased its allure and captivated our stare. Since the clouds had not dispersed from earlier in the day, the stars that night were not visible, even though it could have been a perfect night for star gazing, with the large breath of sky clearly visible, unobstructed, staring at us and its reflection in the ocean’s surface.
I wondered how we ended up here. It was quite uncharacteristic of me to acquiesce to the advances of strangers. And that day I considered his introduction quite abysmal, since it was obviously his intention to see me again. I was sitting on the sidewalk at the pubic library waiting on my brother to pick me up. I heard a shout from across the street: “When God made you he took his time. He used the most special ingredients, and bam, bam, bam, just like that, he made you.” I smiled. I suppose I was flattered, surprisingly, and thought to myself, thank God he didn’t gesticulate when he said ‘bam, bam, bam’.
I figured this was not the worse of all the comments I had received that day. I wasn’t even sure what to call them: complements, invitations, sexual harassment, observations. Earlier, when I walked to the library a number of men commented at me.
“Lemmie park up and join you for that walk,” said this one guy in a white Toyota Corolla, who slowed down to observe me walking.
“You are a dream come true and a miracle all in one,” said another, sitting on the back of a red pickup truck.
When I was crossing the entrance to the ‘top of the hill’ food store, I approached a man waiting in his car for the oncoming drivers to give him a ‘bly’. He said to me: “Wow. I stopped right here just to look at you. You look good nah.”
I was happy these men had added a little colour to my walk, but completely uninterested in them, had their intentions been more developed. Khalil had crossed the road to introduce himself to me, as ‘Captain’ Khalil: Trinidadian chemist/geologist living in the Bahamas on a five-year contract working for Shell. He assured me that his ragged appearance was because he was taking the day off to work on his car at the mechanic located across the street. I must say I was pleasantly relieved and sufficiently intrigued to accept his email address: captain_khalil@hotmail.com.