Sandbags in the Archipelago
Travel Stories: On a remote South Pacific island, Heather Eliot meets a man and explores the fine line between fantasy and reality.
As Derek walked across the yard, I considered the implications of a beautiful man and a deserted island. Stay away from boys. I didn’t doubt that his offer of transport to the island included sex on the island. I had always experienced travel through my body, as a physical and erotic process, my attachments to places mediated through sexual relationships. Through travel the trajectory of meeting, dating, sex, and breaking up became compressed into a few hours, days, perhaps a week, until our journeys took us in separate directions. I experienced a social shift—suddenly, no one would ask me if I was traveling alone, when I would get married, or if I had a man back home. As part of a couple I became safe, I became figured out, I lost some of my mystery. Sharing my narrow guesthouse bed, I also put down some emotional roots, if only temporarily. Places on a map became places where I’d slept with someone. I returned home and developed my photographs and there were always one or two of them, rarely one of us together. On past travels I had woken up next to local men, Peace Corps volunteers, an English medical intern. Sex in hotel swimming pools, on my sarong spread out on the beach, in a stolen moment in a shared hostel room. One summer spent traveling across Europe with the addict, our itinerary defined by where he could get a bag, us either fighting or sleeping together. Wanting him, and wanting just as desperately to leave him.
I went into the bathroom to pee, using the bumpy pink toilet paper found in formerly colonized countries. Afterwards, washing my hands, I considered myself in the small mirror above the sink, and considered the possibility of Derek. When traveling, I am radiant. A few days on the main island’s beaches, swimming in warm saltwater, digging my toes into sand, and my hair and skin were glowing. My leather jacket, stretchy pants and chunky city shoes traded for a sarong and tank, barefoot, a toe ring. Tanned, coconut oiled skin. Hair curled around my shoulders, from humidity and letting it go without washing, coppery sun highlights coming out. I stroked the smooth inside of my arm, let the strap of my cami fall from my shoulder, the curve of my breast visible. I continued to consider Derek, and the airport, as I packed the small rucksack I’d brought along. Stay away from boys. Needing to break a cycle, I had wanted, planned, this time, to have a trip that wasn’t defined by who I’d slept with along the way. I rolled my clothes—a few rayon skirts, a few tanks, a bikini. My silk sleep sheet in its pouch. A flashlight, insect repellant, camera, film. Basic toiletries in a Ziploc bag, sunscreen, lip gloss, shimmery body powder, tampons. A plastic bag with some nonperishable food. My ticket for the local airline, to head back to the main island at 3 p.m. Check-in time, 2:30 p.m. Derek’s powerful shoulders, his engaging smile, his easy manner. A deserted island. A downshifting sensation in my lower belly, my period coming soon. Would he mind?
When Derek returned from the rugby match, I was curled up again on the large chair in the foyer, my bag packed, reading. He was holding an open beer, from the small restaurant and bar opposite the bungalows.
“Still leaving this afternoon?”
“I’m thinking about it. How was the rugby? Did you play?” “I can’t play anymore, since I got injured. But the match was good. Do you want to get a beer while you think about leaving?”
We walked across the verdant yard around which the several bungalows were arranged, passing the friendly black dog who seemed to belong to no one in particular, but received a diet of kitchen scraps and coconut in exchange for watching over things. The grass was damp and fresh-smelling from the rains. I entered the small open-air structure with Derek, the only woman other than Emma behind the bar, whom I’d befriended the day before. Emma was also my age, not married, which was unusual for the islands. We’d spent some time discussing her moa, who worked at the airport. He had a jealous nature; they had been arguing and hadn’t talked for two weeks. She asked if I had a moa back home and said she liked the color of lip gloss I was wearing. She called it, “lip shine.” Today, she was serving up beers to the various men, younger ones in rugby jerseys and shorts, grimy from the match, older men who had watched the match. They ranged from the drunk to the extremely drunk.
Derek and I got a table. He sat across from me, and Emma brought over two opened beers. “Are you going to the motu with Derek?” she asked.
“I’m supposed to leave today. Isn’t it bad if I miss my flight? In the States, if you don’t show up, there’s hell to pay.”
Emma and Derek laughed. “No one here cares if you miss a flight,” Derek said. “You go into the airline office on Monday and pay five dollars. They’ll reschedule you.”
Derek and I toasted beers. His knee was against mine under the table. I hardly ever drank beer at home, usually Cosmopolitans, or bottles of red wine at dinner with dates. They paid with their Visa check cards. I was not sure who was paying for the beers in front of me, which were multiplying. Was I leaving, or not?
Two men arrived on scooters, wearing the uniforms of the local airline, for beers before they had to be at the airport to check in the passengers and baggage for the afternoon flight. I saw Emma bristle, and I realized: her moa. She’d said I’d be sure to recognize him when I got to the airport; he was tall and had a long ponytail. I saw them talking, and she relaxed a bit.
Derek called the airport guys over and asked them to explain the process of missing a local flight. They laughed. Emma’s moa said, “Five dollars. We’ll take care of it for you. We’re going to the airport now. No worries.” I took a breath. For the briefest of moments I questioned allowing myself the pleasure of sleeping with this man, who was so entirely unlike the various engineers, computer programmers, and MBAs I’d been dating for the past 18 months. I knew that Derek and I would not recount our childhoods over Thai food. We would not rent DVDs of romantic comedies, and he would not take me to a sex shop and offer to buy me nipple clamps. “OK. I’ll stay.”
A cheer went up around the bar, and Derek smiled and stroked my leg under the table. I would not, after all, stay away from boys. An extra day, spent on a deserted island with a beautiful man, then back to the main island, to the family at the guesthouse who may or may not be expecting me; everything was so fluid here that they wouldn’t be concerned if I didn’t turn up when I’d said I’d be back.
Flashes of moments under the mosquito net, the light from my travel candle glowing warm across our bodies. The smooth broad expanse of his skin, padded with layers of muscle. His mouth tasting of seawater, of the Australian cigarettes he smoked. The wet slipperiness of our bodies moving together, the sweat from his temples dripping onto me, running down my breasts, pooling on my belly. His dreads in my face, scratchy, as I felt the enormous strength of his body behind his thrusts. I began to bleed, so he showered afterwards. Returning from the bathroom, toweling off, he said, “it’s been five months for me.”
The next morning, Sunday, Derek got up early to help a friend slaughter and roast a suckling pig. He said he would be back by 10:30 a.m., as we had to head out to the island before the tides changed. After he left, I surveyed the bungalow. The sheets resembled a murder scene, so I washed them in the sink, scrubbing the stains with my facecloth, and draped them about the bungalow to dry. Our clothes were scattered on the floor. I picked up the one good bra I’d brought with me, and then Derek’s t-shirt, pressing it to my face, inhaling, his scent moving through me. Folding the t-shirt and his rugby shorts, I left them on the dresser. His return time came and went. The sheets, now nearly dry, I spread out on the bed, leaving them untucked against going sour. On my belly, on their cool dampness, I picked up my book again, soon to fall asleep to the sound of late morning rain.I awoke when Derek returned. Smiling apologetically, he explained that it was too late to go to the island today, that the tide had already changed. He parted the mosquito netting and climbed in. “Stay another day, go to the island with me,” he said, curling up around me. I felt the instant ease of travel relationships with him, my body adjusting comfortably to the presence and shape of his.“I knew there was no way you’d be back in two hours.” I nuzzled into his chest, stroking the smoothness of his arm. The smoke from the pig roast was in his hair, on his skin. His lips brushed my throat as his hand moved under my skirt, his fingers sliding into my panties. I pulled his hand away, sucked his fingers until they were slick, then replaced his hand. I felt him pressing into me, under his shorts.
A car horn honked outside the bungalow. “Let’s go eat,” Derek said, pulling away, adjusting himself, and I followed him out the bungalow, wishing I’d had forewarning, time to comb my hair. A new Isuzu SUV had pulled up. It was his friend Simon, a good-looking man with short curly hair, in his late 30s, wearing Oakley sunglasses. Derek hopped in the front seat and I got in the back. Simon asked me, “Do you like Kid Rock?” and slid a CD into the player. Driving down the bumpy road, music blaring, I looked back into the cargo area and saw some tinfoil-wrapped bundles and the remains of the suckling pig, roasted, headless, on a platter.
Simon lived in a large, Western-style house with a tennis court and a patio overlooking the harbor. The building site that Derek was supervising on the island would be his weekend home, though I was not sure what activities distinguished Simon’s weekends from his weekdays. On the patio, Derek unwrapped the foil bundles: taro roots, taro leaves cooked in coconut milk, and, strangely, turkey and stuffing, like American Thanksgiving. While we ate, the men talked about tides, wind directions, currents, a conversation in which I couldn’t possibly participate.
Afterwards, in the kitchen, I began to do the dishes, but Derek said, “Leave it. The housegirls will do them.” As I stood at the sink, he was behind me, pressing himself into my back, his arms around my waist. I leaned back into him, a drawn-out sensation within me. I was letting him under my skin, in the way I hadn’t let a guy under my skin for two years, since I’d said goodbye to the addict. We’d been living on separate coasts by that time, and the goodbye scene had occurred in an airport parking lot. I hadn’t wanted him to go inside with me. A searing pain throughout my body as I let go of him, aching from days of doubling-up-crying. Dreading the fear of loss spreading through me, a pain so all-consuming it was numbing, from loving deeply the absolutely wrong person. A rupture like an infected wound. Moving back from the space of memory, I felt Derek’s lips on my neck.
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