Sandbags in the Archipelago

03.15.03 | 9:54 PM ET

Two weeks ago, I was next to him on the lumpy double bed of my rented South Pacific island bungalow. Outside, an afternoon rain fell, dogs fought, scooters buzzed down the road. Under the shadowy light of the mosquito netting, I was on my belly reading Jeannette Winterson, in a cami and bikini, as he snored softly beside me. I had given him Tums—he was ill from too much beer and fatty food—and in his boxers he slept off his heartburn. I wiped his forehead with a damp cloth. A man I’d known for 24 hours. If the air were cool and dry instead of warm and moist, if the smoke of the mosquito coil, irritating my sinuses, were not drifting around us, we could be in my California apartment, napping after a Sunday morning of brunch and languid afternoon sex. Now, I am alone in my California apartment, typing at my laptop, drinking tea, a Massive Attack CD on repeat, writing of him.

On what was meant to be my last morning before heading back to the main island of the archipelago, I had just opened Winterson’s “Written on the Body” when a shadow fell across me. I looked up. It was a man.

“Hi,” he said, “I’m Derek.”

I introduced myself. I had seen him earlier that day walking across the yard, and thought then that he was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen—shoulder-length dreadlocks, arched eyebrows, wide smile, wearing a Fubu shirt and board shorts. He said, “We’re doing renovations on the bathrooms. Is it okay if I check yours out?”

“Sure,” I said, and he gave the bathroom a perfunctory inspection. I’d heard worse opening lines from men.

This is a fantasy of travel. Not an actual fantasy, because it happened to me, but a fantasy of a relationship that might have been, realized through the movement of my body to an alternate space. I crossed the Equator, I crossed the International Dateline, and found myself in bed with a man. I had found myself in bed with a number of men in the past eighteen months, since the relationship I’d wanted to last forever painfully and caustically ended. I had coped with the anguish by taking a six-month break from sex, and then by having as much as I could get. Other men’s bodies became sandbags, forming a protective barrier between myself and my past. On the first page of my travel journal, I had written, stay away from boys.

After inspecting my bathroom, Derek returned to the foyer. As he lounged in my doorway and began to chat, I found myself liking his self-confident ease, his awareness of his body, his casual knowledge of the pleasure of looking at him. The polite, distanced formality I’d experienced with other locals was less apparent. Where was I from? He had been to California; his sister lived in Los Angeles, and his parents, who owned the bungalows, were there now for medical care. He and his brothers helped their father build the bungalows and were looking after things in their parents’ absence. He finished high school in New Zealand, played semi-professional rugby, was injured, did a chef’s course, lived in South Africa for a year, worked as yacht crew between San Francisco and Honolulu. He traveled through Europe, staying with people who had visited the bungalows throughout his childhood. We were the same age.

He asked me what I was doing there.

“Just hanging out,” I responded, “I’m a teacher and a writer. I’m interested in local art.”

I didn’t say, I’m on the run from sleeping around after having my heart broken by a man who valued his habit more than he valued me.

What did I think of his island?

“It’s great,” I said, “But I’m meant to head back to the main island on this afternoon’s flight.”

“You’re going back today? That’s too bad. I’m taking a boat out to a friend’s motu tomorrow. I’d be glad to take you along.”

I knew about motus, the small deserted islands that flanked larger inhabited ones, but I had never thought about them belonging to anyone.

“Your friend’s motu?”

“He leased it from the government. He’s building a house, and he wants me to supervise the crew. He hired some men from the village to clear the bush.” He paused a moment. “I’m going to watch the rugby match up the road. I’ll be back before you leave for the airport.”

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.

Derek and I returned to the bungalow. His stomach was upset, and thinking of the accumulating beer bottles, the fatty pork, I dispensed Tums and Tylenol. I made him drink lots of water, filling my Nalgene bottle from the spigot at the rainwater cistern. We spent the afternoon and evening drifting in and out of sleep and sex. Later, I took peanut butter,  crackers, oranges, and my Swiss army knife from my rucksack, and spread out my sarong on the bed like a tablecloth. We picnicked under the mosquito net, to the sound of insects buzzing, chirping geckos, the occasional grunting pig outside. We compared tattoos. He liked the Celtic design on my leg; like the local tattoo work, it was flat, black, symmetrical. Derek had a turtle on his left breast, and his name was tattooed on his bicep in cursive. I placed my mouth over it, tracing it with my tongue, repeating his multisyllabic surname in my mind: its many vowels, its soft consonants.

“If I lived in the States, would you date me?”

The question startled me into imagining Derek in my world, in my California beach town, playing volleyball by the pier, shopping with me at the farmer’s market, at a cookout with my friends, eating guacamole. There was an unexpected fit with him that I didn’t normally experience with travel relationships. Usually I didn’t even attempt to imagine the possibility of a future beyond the immediate present. Perhaps because he was a traveler too, because he navigated with ease in and through multiple worlds. Perhaps because, with his smarts, his beauty, his sureness of himself and his sense of cool, he could have had anyone, and as I had made the choice to not stay away from boys, I felt that he had also chosen me. “Definitely,” I told him. In the dark, warm room, under the mosquito net, his fingers curled around mine, calloused and strong.

The next morning, I packed quickly for the trip to the motu. I bought bread, two pineapples, and some bananas from a woman at the market beside the wharf, and Derek purchased a basket of taro. We climbed into Simon’s motorboat, tied to the dock, and Derek took his position at the wheel. He was self-assured as he piloted the boat, even through a shallow bit, avoiding sandbars and hunks of coral reef.  He told me the names of the coastal villages we passed, and pointed out a sea cave opening onto the water that was the home of a rare bird.

The motu looked like Gilligan’s Island: small, flat, with coconut trees, palmettos, and tangles of vines. The workmen waved at us from the beach as we anchored the boat and waded to shore. Derek and I put our rucksacks, the basket of taro, and bottles of rainwater under an open-sided shelter. I tied the plastic bags containing the loaves of bread and the fruit to the roof with string, to keep the ants out. Several dome tents had been pitched along the beach. Derek and I chose one and moved it away from the others, for us to sleep in. He began cutting up the taro to make a stew for the workmen.

Leaving him to his work, I took my camera and wandered along the beach. The waves crashed beyond the reef, about 50 feet out, but within the reef the pools of water were warm and shallow. Wading barefoot,  holding up my sarong, I found sapphire-blue starfish, a dead purple jellyfish, avoided urchins. Triggerfish dove at my toes. I dipped my fingers into the water and sucked the saltiness from them.

Later, in the darkness of the new moon, Derek and I wandered nude from our tent into the cool shallow water just outside, lying on our bellies, supporting ourselves on our elbows. The constellations were different, disorienting me. Derek pointed out the Southern Cross,  and I gained my bearings, also remembering the direction the sun had set. The lights from the main town on the island glowed to the north. The nighttime water was illuminated by phosphorescent creatures, like glitter,  which sparkled when we splashed.

We returned to the tent. In a moment he was on top of me, teasing me with his mouth in the darkness, moving quickly from nipple to thigh. I giggled, enjoying the joke, the tiny unexpected nips from his lovely teeth.  Was this a rugby strategy, darting across a field? Feeling the heavy dampness of the sand beneath my sarong and the tarp bottom, his hands confidently massaging my breasts, never doubting his abilities, or mine. Afterwards, I rinsed in the sea, washing the fluids from my thighs. We slept curled up together, in a world silent but for the sounds of the water lapping the shore just a few feet from the tent.

When I woke up the sun was streaming into the tent and Derek had already gone out to check on the fishing nets. I’d heard the workmen jeering at him when he’d crawled naked from the tent, teasing him as he’d scrambled into his board shorts. There was sand in my underwear,  in my scalp, sticking to all my possessions. Derek returned with a report: the nets were empty. I emerged from the tent, wrapping myself in my sarong, which Derek had used as a sheet, and washed myself in the sea. I made peanut butter and banana sandwiches for myself, Derek, and the workmen, arranging them on a large fresh leaf. Derek peeled and sliced the pineapple with his bush knife. The workmen first protested that they couldn’t possibly take advantage of my generosity, as I would starve if they were to eat my food, but when I insisted that they eat, that I wouldn’t be needing the food, I was leaving that day, it would only be wasted otherwise, they marveled at the ingeniousness of the peanut butter and banana sandwiches, and seemed to enjoy them.

After breakfast, Derek rushed me into the boat, to get me back to town before the tides changed again. He anchored the boat to a dock opposite the bungalows and accompanied me up the steep pathway. I had imagined a Casablanca ending, an extraordinary conclusion to an extraordinary few days, but I didn’t get one. After a few awkward moments, Simon arrived in the SUV, and Derek “had to go.” He pulled me into the main house and kissed me, asked if I could send him some AA batteries,  and then was gone. I waited in the bar with Emma for the driver to take me to the airport.

“Where’s Derek?” she asked, bringing me a beer.       

I shrugged, “Gone.”

I caught the plane back to the main island, caught my plane to California. I returned to work, where people remarked on my tan. I broke things off with the current guy back home, deciding to stay away from boys after all, for the meantime at least. I sent Derek a care package with batteries, condoms, and a bottle of Aqualube, marked “religious materials” so hopefully it wouldn’t get opened in customs. I included the photos I took on the island: him kneeling in the tidepools, gathering shellfish, smiling at the camera and me. Sometimes I let myself travel into the fantasy of something more than a sandbag, something more than a quick fix,  something more than dinner and a DVD. Sometimes I let myself imagine that Derek will call me from his sister’s place in Los Angeles, that I’ll drive south on the freeway to pick him up, or that he’ll appear at my apartment with his cute smile, his speargun, and his rucksack. He slipped in and out of my life like a triggerfish, gloriously beautiful and bold.

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