This is the first version of this story and is included for academic interest. The final version is here.

The Whimpering Beach

A short story by Fletcher Kovich

 

The Philippine island of Samal promises paradise. Its seductive intelligence is carried on the breeze and one sultry day in August, it found its way to me, for I was sat in a bar in Davao when a teenage boy passed by me as though—indeed—being carried on a breeze, and when I looked down I found he had left on my table a glossy flyer advertising the Bluejaz Resort in Samal. It promised crystal clear waters, white sands and an encyclopaedia of beach-side pleasures. I looked up and the boy was gone, as though his fleeting presence in the bar had been merely a flying visit by the ambassador for the simple pleasures of life.

I pocketed the flyer and—though not intending to obey its call—I soon found myself stepping up off the Samal ferry and onto a long stone-built jetty which then ushered me onto those white sands. I sat at a table in the shade overlooking the beach and a warm breeze caressed my face. As I sat there, enjoying its touch, I felt a profound calmness releasing from somewhere inside me and spreading to fill my whole body, as though this warm Samal air had recognised its long-lost other half buried deep inside me, and it were calling to it, caressing it, welcoming it home—at long, long last. And, indeed, I felt at home. It was strange, but I believe I also felt loved. As I sat there looking out over that beach, there was something about the spot that made it feel as much a part of me as my own breathing did.

I noticed a group of Filipino friends playing volleyball on the white sands and as I watched them, one of the men looked over and, as he saw me watching him, he froze momentarily, as though recalling a long-lost memory. Then the moment passed and he resumed his play. I watched him jumping for the ball and—I guess he could not help himself either—he kept glancing back at me. He was in his late twenties, of athletic build and perhaps slightly taller than the average Filipino. He wore a white sun visor and sun glasses but this did not in any way disguise his focus on me, as though the force that were passing between us were so fundamental that it did not need mere vision to guide it. He struck the ball again and as his friends cheered, he glanced back at me as a child might seek the approval of a parent—Look what I did; are you proud of me?

It was then that I heard it for the first time. As the man then looked away from me, I heard a distant whimper carried on the breeze, as though coming from somewhere nearby, though I could not tell where. There was something about the quality of this whimper that made me wonder, for one moment, whether the beach might be haunted. I could still hear the group of friends playing volleyball and also the sound of a nearby water fountain and also the call of seabirds and the voices of other beach-goers. But the quality of that whimper had seemed different from all the other sounds, for it seemed to me that I had heard the sound inside my own head, rather than it travelling to me from outside, though at the same time the sound had seemed to come from somewhere nearby. And it was not like the memory of a sound either; it was much more vivid that a memory. It seemed to me that I had heard the sound through some extra sense that had suddenly switched on within me, some channel that was not usually open but had momentarily opened up to allow me to hear that sound. For some reason I then realized—with absolute certainty—that I had just experienced telepathy. There seemed no other explanation; the experience had been fleeting but vivid, and was like nothing else I had ever known.

I watched the game and thought no more about it—for what else could I have done—shouted out to everyone nearby that I had just experienced telepathy? No, this was one of those one-off miraculous experiences that we each might sometimes have in life but which must remain our own private experience, for we can only communicate common experiences to other people, and this experience was far from common. So, I said nothing, kept it to myself and continued watching the game while feeling the warm breeze kissing my face and while I glowed inside with that deep feeling of calmness and of being loved.

Later, I was waiting at the bar when I noticed that the sound of the volleyball game had ceased. I looked round and found the Filipino man standing beside me. He smiled and held out his hand.

“Hello, I’m Hass,” he said. “I saw you watching our game.”

As I held the palm of his hand in mine, I recalled the sound of that telepathic whimper. Perhaps I now associated it with him, since I had heard it while watching him. But whatever the reason for me recalling it just at that moment, it reinforced in my mind the idea that there truly was something special about this beach, about what I was experiencing there, and perhaps it was this that made me smile so broadly back at Hass, or perhaps it was simply the fact that I found something about his smiling face so captivating. As I looked into his dark eyes, it then seemed that something from within those eyes—perhaps some raw emotion that could contain its tender desires no longer—reached down into my heart and grabbed it—as the beach’s warm breeze had seemed to do, only more vehemently. Ordinarily, this might have made me look away in alarm—so strong was the effect on me—but I kept watching him and smiling, as he did also, for what seemed like half a minute or so, as though we were holding a deep conversation with our eyes alone.

“It was a delight to see,” I told him, recalling the sight of him striking the ball and then looking back to me, as if for my approval.

It seemed that we already knew each other and so it seemed perfectly natural that we were then sat across a table from one another, chatting like two old friends who had been reunited after many years apart.

He told me of his brothers and his mother and his work in Davao, and was eager to hear of my life. From a distance, I had noticed his body, the way he had moved while playing volleyball, the shape of his chest and his flat tummy and—yes—the curve of his bum. And now that he was sat before me, I found myself—to my surprise—captivated by the shape of his fingers. I watched them as he held his glass and then gently gesticulated, using only his fingers, as though demonstrating his innate reserve, his lack of ostentation; and the more gently he expressed himself, the more captivated I became. I looked up and watched the shape of his lips as he spoke, the way his mouth moved, and the glimpses that I caught of his tongue as he told me about his unhappy experiences with his ex-boyfriend, an American whom he had fallen in love with. I could only half hear his words, as the sight of his mouth seemed to bewitch me—as his eyes had already done, only his mouth seemed to be casting its spell by dancing a sensual symphony—for that was how I was experiencing the sight of his lips; they were somehow entering me and affecting me physically, as only the sound of the most sublime music can do in those moments when I am most receptive—and this symphony was drawing me in to its dance the more I watched it. He perhaps noticed my distraction and then broke off and said:

“But I’m over him now. And I don’t want to talk about him, anyway. Tell me more about you. How long are you staying here? Who are you here with? Have you met anyone nice yet——?”

As we were speaking, I again recalled the sound of that telepathic whimper. Hass continued talking and I kept watching his eyes and I could not help smiling, as he was smiling too, and as I watched him, I was listening, in my mind, to the sound of that whimper, and I found myself trying to picture who might have made the sound. I imagined a young boy who was afraid; perhaps he was cowering in the corner of a room, afraid to move, for perhaps an insect or even a snake was blocking his path and it was dangerous for him to move, to cross the floor, but he had no choice; he could not stay there forever, he simply could not, and this sound I could hear was his whimpering as he was taking those first few steps towards that danger that he had no choice but to face.

Hass asked, “Where are you staying? Will you be here long, or will you have to go soon——?”

As he asked this, he looked crestfallen, forlorn, almost desperate not to be left alone—perhaps as terrified of being deserted as that boy in my imagination was of crossing the path of that snake.

“I’m staying here tonight,” I told him. “I’ve booked a room.” And as I watched his face, it was as though the clouds had parted and he was again bathed in sunlight—as though the sun had risen within him—and I could almost feel the glow of that sun beaming from his face as we continued talking, but talking less and less, due, probably, to the repressed excitement that I could tell he was struggling to hold in—that slowing rising tide of desire within him—like the excitement of a boy who’s been told that he has a special gift waiting for him if only he can keep it secret and not mention it. He managed as well as any excited boy could to keep that secret, but I was fully aware of his suppressed joy as we walked across the warm sands towards my room—perhaps I knew that joy so intimately since I was attempting to conceal the same secret myself. We entered the shade of my room and as our eyes met, I again heard that telepathic whimper, and again, though I was hearing it inside my head, it also sounded as though coming from nearby, perhaps just outside the room.

“Did you hear that?” I asked.

“Hear what?” His suppressed excitement now seemed to be making it difficult for him to speak.

We made a drink and sat at the small table in my room and as we talked, there seemed to be something familiar in his dark eyes, as though—from within his eyes—I could see myself looking back out at me, but myself from somewhere back in my childhood; or perhaps it was Hass’s soul from back within his own childhood—and it seemed like an innocent, romantic, simple child who just wanted to be loved and did not care for any other worldly concerns, perhaps a child who had remained locked within him—as it had done within myself—shut inside since that child had never experienced the deep love that is the birthright of all living things.

“I’ve never been here before,” he told me, meaning the beach resort.

“No, me neither,” I said and we both laughed.

“Of course you haven’t,” he told me; “you don’t live here.”

His eyes beamed with a childish joy beneath his expressive eyebrows and forehead which had, just then, wrinkled and drawn my attention to the top of his nose, his cute nose, which I just wanted to reach out and playfully pinch. He smiled again as my eyes drank in the sight of his face. I thought about all the other guys I had met in the past, the English guys who all seemed to be in various stages of combat with their own personality problems, which in most of them, to my eyes, amounted to a mental illness; yes, most of them simply seemed mentally ill to me—as I am sure I did to them, since such personality features are as much a part of the average Westerner as is white skin. In contrast, there were the Asian guys I had met, and particularly the Filipino ones, who all seemed to possess a seductive humility, and also a strong connection with their own romantic desires; they all just wanted to be in love, to have one man and love him for the rest of their life. But the ones I had met in the West had been—ironically—overwhelmed with the problem of their mere survival. They were usually working as nurses or care workers and earning, what was to them, a fortune, but their native work ethic dictated that they should never refuse work and should work during every waking hour, if the work was available, which ethic had sentenced them to a life of slavery in the West, since Westerners were certainly not going to work those hours and those shifts, so the Filipino workers would carry the burden of sustaining the ailing Western health institutions that had desperately import them. Add to this the burden of sending money home to their families in the Philippines, and most such Filipino “slaves” found themselves swamped by the struggle for mere survival and certainly did not have the time for romance. But now here was a beautiful Filipino guy with all his romantic desires still intact and calling out to me to join him, to take that one short step towards him and allow some wondrous flower to blossom between us.

Hass moved his hand to his cup and our hands accidentally touched. Neither of us moved; I could feel his fingers resting against my hand, and I was sure that he was feeling this same sensation that I was—this, our first physical contact, felt like a lifeline that had been thrown to a drowning man, and there was no way that either of us was going to release it; our hands remained in that position as we continued talking, neither of us wanting to take a sip from our drink, lest we were unable to regrasp that lifeline. He then took my hand in his and I placed my other hand over his as we began to lean closer to one another. He was not now smiling; he looked as though he were about to take a leap for his life across some narrow gorge, a leap that he just might not make, but was determined to leap—this was it; he had to take that leap; do or die; he had to take it. And just before our lips met, I heard it again, that telepathic whimpering sound, and for the first time it occurred to me that perhaps I was receiving the sound from Hass himself. Again, the sound seemed to be coming from somewhere nearby, but at the same time, it seemed to be coming from within my own head, and this sensation was unlike any other that I had ever experienced—there was no doubt in my mind that I was experiencing telepathy. And as I felt the softness of Hass’s lips and felt the touch of his tongue on mine, I found myself again picturing in my mind who might have made that whimpering sound. I could see a young boy stranded on a cliff face; he was afraid of falling but needed to edge his way along a thin ledge; his life could not continue unless he took that risk, risked falling, risked a fate that seemed akin to certain death, but he had to do it; some other force within him was urging him on—Go on, take the risk, the reward is worth it, you cannot go on living without the reward, you have to do it, you know you do—and, with his knees trembling, he was edging his way along that narrow ledge above the precipice, afraid, whimpering to himself; and that whimper seemed to be emerging from deep within him, from some animal part of him that was seldom exposed, seldom even acknowledged, but now here it was, as though expressing his fear of some terrifying monster that was driving him on as he edged along that thin ledge.

Before either of us knew it, we were lying entwined on my bed, having undressed each other as we fell—or that was how it had seemed; in one, continuous, expert set of moves, we had each undressed the other while desperately attempting to taste each other’s mouths as a starving man devours a banquet—and before long—neither of us could wait any longer—I was lying on top of him, inside him, and as our deep, animal desires met and united and danced and sang, and as our bodies moved as one and we gripped each other’s hands and the passion carried us to some place that was not of this world—as we both danced that primordial dance, I heard that whimpering sound again, but this time I was hearing it with my ears and not my mind; it was no longer telepathic; I was hearing it for real; I was listing to Hass whimpering, in a way that I had never heard a man whimper while I made love to him, and as we danced, he whimpered louder and started saying, “I love you, I love you,” and I realized that this sound, the sound of Hass whimpering as we made love, was the exact sound that I had been hearing all along; I realized that we had experienced true telepathy, and in that moment, this all seemed to make perfect sense and was as natural as day and as certain as night—yes, there was telepathy between us, which seemed normal; telepathy existed; I now had no doubt about it because here it was; I had experienced it. And it also seemed perfectly natural that I found myself saying back, “I love you too; I love you, my baby.”

Afterwards we lay in each other’s arms and I wondered—with an inward, ironic smile—if this was what the flyer had meant by “paradise”. And I then realized that I needed to enjoy it while it lasted, that—almost with the same desperation that we had just been swept along by—I needed to savour every second, every beat of his heart which I could feel against my chest, every gentle caress of his breath on my neck, every slight movement of his body which I could feel transferring to mine and rocking mine in sympathy with his; I felt myself tasting all these sensations and wanting to drink in their flavour, the delicious, rare flavour—for soon, I knew, this moment would be over. How long, I wondered, could I make this moment last. I started to count his breaths, as if they were coinage that I were pocketing—moments to add to my memory bank. I counted till I fell asleep. I awoke, then fell asleep again. I awoke and continued counting; I somehow knew the exact figure that I had previously ceased counting at and I continued adding to my balance, but by now the darkness outside was fading and shafts of sunlight were starting to probe their way through the blind, as if the daylight were coming for us and the real world were hot on its tail. My counting faded in my mind, like the falling hand of an exhausted man, his hand falling from some lever that had been hopelessly holding back daylight, holding back time, but now here it came; his hand could hold it back no longer; and I watched as the sun’s vibrant rays flooded into the room—vibrant even through the barrier of the blind—as though the real world had, indeed, now come to claim us both back. Its voice was too strong; its “common sense” was too undeniable. Yes—such a flower is not meant to be. The sun’s rays poured over our still-entwined bodies, as if it were lifting us each up with a thousand tiny, golden hands to transport us back out into the real world—No, no, no, stop it, such beauty is not meant to be; I’ve come to reclaim you; you both belong to me.

And under the heat of its rays, I could feel that flower wilting. At that moment, Hass seemed to wake and untangle himself from my arms, as if his unconscious mind had heard the call of the daylight.

 

27 October 2009

 

Read my sketchbook article on writing draft one of this story

And my comments on the second version