Good Vibrations Magazine

Some people travel to exotic island getaways during their time off, but I don’t have to. I live in paradise. On my two-week vacation, I hang out in my back yard: Santa Monica Beach. From my favorite location, a time-worn wooden bench beneath a palm tree, I keep track of the skaters going upside-down over nothing but concrete and the surfers slicing through the waves. It thrills me, watching the kings of the beach kick ass on their respective slats. I am drawn to the way they flip up in the air, pulled in by their tricks, their gravity-defying moves. If they fall down, they get back the fuck up again, and do it over. And over. Scars decorate their slim bodies from accidents past. Tattoos, like colorful birthmarks, wrap around their arms, legs, embellishing their skin like splashes of paint on tautly stretched canvases.

The young sun gods all live together, crashed out in a big house by the ocean, seven or eight surfers sharing one phone, mattresses on the floors and in the hallways. How do I know? I have found myself in an arched-back position on more than one of those mattresses, watching my reflection in a window at the end of the long, narrow hallway. No sheet beneath me, just the blue-and-white striped ticking of an old navy bedroll. None of the niceties you’d find in the apartments of the businessmen I work with. No bedside table displaying a fashionable artsy lamp. No signed and framed Nagel over the leather sofa in the living room.

I don’t like those things, don’t need them.

What I need is some 19-year-old, golden-skinned boy behind me, a twisted, faded friendship band around his wrist and nothing else on his perfect body. In the window-mirror, I see that his eyes are closed, but I watch. I like the way his rough hands feel on my skin, like the way his tanned body looks against my pale figure. He holds onto my hips, moves me to a beat he can hear in his head. I try to hear that same beat, rocking my body forward and back, but I can’t hear the music that he hears, because he’s young and in the groove of summertime and skate rat dreams. And to him, I’m just this little blonde chick he met on the beach that he wanted to go upside-down with.

But I’m a grownup, a voice says in my head, and I can’t lose myself in the moves anymore. I am present while we make love. I feel his fingers digging into my skin, hear his breath coming in a rush. Trying to rein himself in, he moves back, turning me on the mattress so that I’m on my side and he’s in me from behind, spooning. Those calloused fingertips find my clit and rub, getting me up to his speed, helping me to forget myself and learn the rhythm of his choosing. I am dizzy from his touch. I lean back against his chest and shut my eyes.

In my mind, I can picture our bodies together, like a painting; his dark burnished skin to my pale body, his short, scruffy goatee framing an impish smile, his glowing eyes an oasis shimmering in the heat. We could be a graffiti mural on the outside of one of the warehouses near the beach, a sprawling vision by some barrio artist, combining colors and lights and shadows.

He moves me again, his mouth pressed against my ear, saying, “How do you like it, baby?”

I roll onto my back and look at him, memorizing the lines of his face. I smile at him when he opens his eyes, green-gray eyes that seem glazed as he stares back at me. He asks it again, “How do you like it?” Then, “How do you need it?” Stressing that word. Need.

I can’t tell him, so I say, “Just like this,” as he climbs on top of me, starts doing push-ups over my body, the muscles in his fine arms bulging. He teases me with his cock, pulling out all the way out so that I’m stretching, straining to reach him, and then he gives me a shy sort of naughty grin and slips back in again. I squeeze him, try to drain him with the power of my body. He’s good, though. He makes the most of the ride, whatever the ride may be, whether he’s doing those death-defying moves on a skate ramp with no safety net, or going upside-down with me on his mattress.

He says, “Talk to me, baby. Tell me what you like.”

Could I tell him? I don’t think so. I would sound old, trying to capture a bit of his youth and make it my own. But what I like is the way his hair smells of wind and sea spray and his skin actually tastes of summertime, of golden light, of heat.

He croons, “Tell me, baby, talk to me.”

Finally, I turn it around, saying, “I like it like this. Just like this. But tell me. You tell me what you like.”

He’s got his answer ready, was waiting the whole time. Without missing a beat in the rhythm, he says, “It sends me when a girl says my name as she comes.” Then he bends and starts to kiss the underside of my jaw line, the hollow of my neck. He tickles me with the tip of his tongue and I almost laugh. He takes hold of my wrists and pins them over my head, then moves down my body to kiss my breasts, licking and sucking with his ravenous mouth. I strain to see if he’ll hold me down, and he does, grinning. And then I confess, “I don’t know your name.”

“My name’s on my body,” he tells me, unconcerned. “It’s like a treasure hunt. See if you can find it.” Then he lets go of my wrists and stands up, leaning against the wall, regarding me with a look of total satisfaction.

He’s like a statue, absolutely still. His eyes, half-closed, let me know he has all the time we need. I look up the line of his body, seeing the different tattoos, the different marks and scars. Sitting up on my heels, I begin tracing the designs with my tongue. He turns, slowly, his face to the wall now, and I see the black-inked word on his lower back: Eden. I start to say it, but he moves around again quickly, shaking his head at me, kneeling back down on the mattress.

“When you come,” he says, his voice hoarse, letting me know how it’s going to be. “Say it when you come.”

He positions us so that I am over him, my body split at the middle, my legs pumping, keeping him deep inside me. I ride him hard, holding him down with my will alone, my body easy and light astride his. But he’s not in it to be overpowered. He’s in it for the experience, for that heart-stopping feeling of reaching your peak and looking down from the sky above. Making love to him lets me see what it would be like to ride the waves, to feel the board beneath my feet and duck through a tunnel of blue-green sun-drenched water.

He trails his fingers over my cheekbones. He presses his thumb against my bottom lip. I lick it, draw it into my mouth, suck on it hard to make him groan. His body shifts beneath me, my still-pumping legs, my sweat-slicked thighs. He grabs hold of my waist and moves me so that we are on our sides, facing each other, staring into each other’s eyes.

And then I lift my head, look over his shoulder, and see his roommates in the other room, there the whole time. I’m startled by their presence, but they smile at me, grinning to show how easygoing they are. The five of them drink lemonade and inhale clove cigarettes, blowing wispy breaths of fragrant smoke toward the ceiling and watching us as if we’re a movie. They view us in the same manner that they observe other athletes at the beach, genuinely impressed with the show. Letting someone else entertain them. I come from seeing them there, from the audience. It brings me down for just a moment, holds me under for just long enough to get off.

Eden feels those vibrations, and he starts to move his hands on my body, up my slender waist toward my breasts, stroking me all over, coming with me and playing me to make it last. I have seen him carry his surfboard with that same amount of gentleness, or roughness, or some combination of the two that shows how much he appreciates it. I collapse against him, the warmth of our bodies complimentary, the warmth in the room and in the eyes of our audience a small fire of purity.

I’m underwater.

His touch brings me back to the surface.

I’m not sure how much I like being up above, able to breathe free again, to see the crescent moon through the window, to see the hazy smoke clouds the skate rats exhale with each breath. I’d rather be under, held down, his body on mine, topsy-turvy in a slick sixty-nine, the sweet, sweat-salt taste of his skin a mixture of hard work and a bath in the sea after a long day’s ramping. Yearning for the feel of him pushing me back down under the waves, I trail my fingers along the tribal design of a blue-inked tattoo that is a part of him, the ink like veins pounding under his skin.

I say, “I forgot…” but he just looks at me. I tilt my head back, arch my body on the mattress, wanting his tongue down there, and he nods as he turns his body so that his face is between my thighs and his sex is poised just over my lips. Knowing that others are watching makes me shiver inside. I open my mouth and his cock slides inside. I suck on him, drink from him, roll my tongue around and around. I’m gone again, deep under his body, pressed down into the mattress, loving him with my mouth while he plays in-and-out games with his tongue in my pussy.

I hear the waves outside, crashing against the sand. He hears the ocean, too, and uses the rhythm of the surf in the way he kisses me, finding my clit between his lips and sucking on it to that beat, hard and then soft, lapping for a moment, and then suckling again. He knows how to do it, how to give the most pleasure, taking me up until I have a view of the very top, before sliding me back down again. I break and crest. I ride the peaks and valleys. I forget who I am, what I do, what language I speak. I know only one thing, his name. “Eden,” I say, “Eden, I’m going to…” The words are jumbled, but he understands.

“Say it as you come,” he hisses, his voice lost against my skin, but clear so I can hear him.

I’ve had many different lovers taking me over the edge, but my mind never truly goes on hold unless I’m with one of the boys of summer. Someone like Eden, with the scars he wears like badges of honor, with the tattoos saved hard for and paid for in cash. He’ll never grow up. Maybe that’s what I like most about him. He’ll get older, but his heart will always be alert and alive, doing back flips off a homemade ramp without any fear of the ground rushing up from below.

Just before I come, I hear his voice asking me, quizzing me, “What turns you on, baby, what makes your hair stand on end?” He does. His body and his lack of fear and his fingers gripping into my skin.

“Eden,” I whisper, just as he asked me to, just as he told me to, dragging out his name, making it last. I’m underwater when I reach it. I hold my breath, hear my heart pounding in my ears. I feel faint, dizzy, spreading my legs wide apart, my head tossed back, my hips thrusting forward. Shaking with the climax, I let out my air, finally, taking a deep, shuddering breath in, finding the surface and breaking free.