I Almost Didn't, Part 1

by Thom

I almost didn’t go to the island the year that I met Laura. I had been going for two decades at least and it was getting too complicated for me. It was still very relaxing and as beautifully unspoiled as ever. Its just that I had started going there with my parents when I was around 5 and kept going after they stopped to get some down time from a grueling graduate program. It really was away time because it was so isolated, nearly impossible to get to, and I could be unknown, alone, be myself for the month that I was there.

It’s not a very large island. There are a small number of fishing families and shop keepers to sell goods. The rest of the year around population is retired. The summer folk are either artists that have been going out there for a long time to work or a handful of people like me that go to vacation and hike and be close to the natural beauty of the place. There are so few places to stay that if you don’t own something there, it’s next to impossible to just turn up. You have to book your accommodations at least a year in advance if you want to come back.

Because I had been going for so long, pretty much saw the same people year after year, and my parents were no longer around to protect my privacy, I wasn’t able to experience the aloneness, the ability to be me that I had once known. I was now part of the community during that month and was expected, felt obligated, to participate in the community goings on. Funds needed to be raised for this or that, trails needed to be maintained, some day tripper (you could ride out on a morning mail boat and go back in the afternoon on an empty cargo boat) had hurt themselves on a rugged trail and had to be ported to the infirmary, coffee with so-and-so, high tea with what’s-her-face, dinner with the Dr. and Mrs. V. Gees, I digress. I’m sure you get the point.

Anyway, it was inertia that got me to sign up again for the rooms in a house keeping cottage that I had been using most of the whole time I had been coming. The cottage had five small apartments and a living space for the owner who was there year around. The apartments were only available in favorable weather from April through October. The other months were very severe and the ocean crossing would be dangerous. I had just earned my PhD and landed a teaching job at a college. I just had enough time to move my stuff into an apartment near the school and head off for the island. I would have the month of August to get settled once I returned and to prepare for classes.

My parents had pulled out of my life around the time I graduated from college, like four years before this particular summer. I think they had become convinced that my queer life style was real and that I wasn’t going to marry a guy and pop out the babies they had been hoping for. I was hoping to pop out a baby or two someday but it would be with a woman as a partner and not a man. Maybe we would take turns having a baby I fantasized. Relationships hadn’t worked out for me yet, though, but the sex has been great. I was sort of hoping that I could start fresh in my new town and a new job at a school where I knew some women taught that were lesbians and out about it.

There was a family at the dock the morning I went over also preparing to cross that I hadn’t seen on the island anytime I had been before. Mom and dad were mid 30’sish (so 10 years or so older than I) and they had two children, a girl that looked to be 8 or 9 (though I am miserable at guessing kids ages between 6 when they start to get gangly and 12 when they start to mature) and an infant that was under a year. Quite a gap between them so I guessed a two career family or maybe a second marriage and that only the infant was ‘theirs’.

As we got settled, I asked them if this were their first time over and how long were they staying? It turns out the mother, Patricia, to be called Trish please, had been out to the island as a kid with her parents but had not been back for years. Just about as long as I had been going, as it turned out. My first guess about the children’s age difference had been correct. Both mom and dad were attorneys and she had the first child, Laura right after school and then went to work. It’s only been the last couple of years that she’s been able to back off her work a bit now that her husband, John, is well established. They too would be on the island for the month and not too surprisingly, they were in one of the other apartments where I was staying. They had hoped to get a house which would be more convenient for them (and their neighbors of course) but couldn’t manage anything. When they learned that I was a long timer, they begged me to introduce them to people who had houses to rent.

I thought they were a beautiful family. Some Mediterranean influence in their genes which really came out in the kids both having golden, olive skin color and large almond brown eyes. The daughter Laura, had tight curls in her almost black hair. The baby, Jessie, had dark hair but it was short, no doubt easier to manage. Both parents were surprisingly small I thought. Mom could have passed for an adolescent herself. Small tits and hips. Dad was maybe just 6 feet and also pencil thin. I was feeling kind of lumbering next to them. I’m tall at 5’ 11” and while not over weight, I have breasts and a butt that you notice and jock legs and arms.

Laura was in desperate need of attention. You could tell on her face that her parents had spent every ounce of energy they had, dotting on the new little kid and she had lost her place at the pinnacle of the mountain top that she had possessed for nearly eight years as their only child. She had all kinds of stories and things to show me which she did while I was trying to carry on a conversation with her parents. So Laura and I didn’t get off to a very good start with one another. Trish did nothing to stop this parallel conversation from occurring and even dad chimed in a couple of times before the other two paused for a breath so I was feeling kind of bombarded before long and beginning to feel an attack on my natural center acquired from years of meditation.

I finally had to take matters into my own hands with Laura so that I could learn what I was interested in from mom and dad but in so doing, I committed myself to some future time with her. I could tell that I was even going to have less isolation on this trip out than I had been expecting and I was really regretting not having made other plans. I told Laura that I really wanted to hear what she had to say and see the things that she wanted to show me but that it would need to wait a bit until I could devote my full attention to her because I was busy with mommy at the moment. That didn’t sit with her very well and she went off to the stern of the boat and sulked, watching the wake as we sped across the ocean. In retrospect, I realize I must have sounded just like her mother who said the same thing to her when she needed to attend to Jessie.

Unlike her mother though, I imagined, I did get back to her and well before the boat trip was over. I asked her mother what kind of snack I could buy Laura from the canteen and bought that for her and a tea for myself and took them to where she was sitting. I told Laura that she now had my undivided attention, probably for the rest of the boat trip unless something happened that I had to attend to. She was very pleased with both that news and the snack and she talked my ear off the rest of the journey.

She was eight, and a ½ in fact. Would be starting the 3rd grade in the fall at a private school. I learned from her that my new apartment and my new job were within a block and half of her school and the house that her parents owned. When we made this connection, Laura ran over to her mother and announced the news and her mother and I did the ‘what a small world’ thing simultaneously. It truly was amazing but I didn’t realize just how amazing at the time.

Before the trip was over, I was smitten with Laura. She had calmed down once she had my attention and, oh my, did she have my attention. She was smart, articulate, and, dare I say, sensuous. Or maybe I was just thinking sensuous and projecting my adult, lesbian gaze on to that little girl. Nevertheless, she was shortly sitting on my lap with an arm around me and we were the best of buddies.

It might have been the ocean voyage or the fact that they were letting down for vacation, but I thought I sensed a relief in Laura’s parents while I occupied her and they were able to attend to Jessie without interruption. Did I make that up as I plotted things we were going to do together so that it would seem like a good idea to everyone that Laura spend time with me? As we got close to the shore and were preparing to dock, she nuzzled her face into my neck and gave me a quick kiss, just below my ear. I managed to return it, chastely to her cheek. Laura surprised my by returning my kiss but on my lips and told me she loved me. Her little bum squirmed on my lap and I had to touch it so that she didn’t’ fall off. That’s right, isn’t it? I had to put my hand on her bum so she didn’t loose her balance and fall off my lap. The moment was electrifying and I had to squeeze my thighs together to relieve the sudden tingle I was experiencing there.

I was startled by both the kiss on my lips, her words and my reaction to it. Was I attracted to a little girl? Did that kiss really just send an electrical current from my lips to my crotch? I quickly processed it and concluded that she was simply being an eight year old and that the meaning of both the kiss and the words were not as powerful as they would have been with an adult. Nevertheless, I was taking away with me an unexpected gift from this little girl that, like a seed, perhaps just fertilized, I would attempt with all of my energy to nurture and grow into something more. At the same time, I was in a panic. What kinds of delusions had I suddenly begun to have?

I had to keep my hand on her bum didn’t I so that she would stay steady until we finished docking because in rough seas at low tide, it can be tricky docking on this island? And probably the best way for her to get off of the boat would be for me to carry her off while her mother took care of Jessie and dad managed their personal belongings. I had her climb on my back and wrap her legs around my middle and her hands around my neck and ride me out like a pony. I continued to hold on tight to her until we got onto shore and I was sure we were safe from the rocking of the boat.

I put Laura down next to her mother while we waited for the crew to unload our gear. We were the only passengers out that morning so our stuff was off pretty quickly and onto one of the two island trucks that carries stuff from the dock to the rest of the island. These two trucks are the only motorized vehicles on the island. They carry everything that needs to be carried to and fro.

Once our luggage was loaded, we had to walk up to the cottage so I found myself reaching down to pick Laura up, again on my back. There wasn’t the least bit of hesitation, I swear this is true, and she clamped her legs around my waist and her arms around my neck and buried her face into the back of my neck. Trish remarked that Laura didn’t usually take to strangers so quickly and I should consider myself lucky that I was chosen. I wanted to tell her that I too was amazed about this turn of events but I didn’t want to jinx anything by agreeing with her and I thought Laura probably needed to make up her own mind about all of it though she seemed to be feeling equally as affection with me as I was or wanted to be with her.

That night I lay in bed reliving the kiss with Laura at one moment because it had been so surprisingly arousing and the next moment trying to convince myself that I shouldn’t pursue this and it meant nothing near to her as it did to me. Was I so needy that I had to pick on a child for my affection and what other ways would I be thinking about her Who was I kidding, I was already thinking about her in other ways beyond the kiss.

What, I asked myself, was my sex life like at 8? I had been masturbating for at least 4 years by then. I recall that my mother told me she believes she caught me one time doing it when I was 3. By 8, I think I knew I liked girls. I had a friend who I used to kiss and we would masturbate together. So, I wondered was Laura’s the same? How did she feel about girls? Was she attracted to girls, to older women, to boys to men? How would I find these things out? Shouldn’t I just deny my feelings here and move on?

I grabbed the pillow next to me, pulled it tightly against my body. I tried my best to recall the feeling of Laura’s kiss on my lips and touched myself to relieve the ache it created until I had come like a dozen times thinking about her being with me and fell asleep.