A Fable

It was late, but not dark, and the sun was setting on the Mediterranean. I was telling Catherine a story, so my tenses will change to bring her and my reader into that particular moment. Earlier, we had been in the harbour in Sete, where they make the vermouth that has given its name to the drink, the martini. We sat, holding hands in front of a large, long wooden boat whose green and white paint is peeling. The windows are old, the frames are old, the boat is old, but it will last for dozens more years.

It is easy to imagine her as the bowsprit, if the boat had a bowsprit.

Yes, this is how the myth would go, I say: she is a luscious figure, lashed to the bowsprit, yes, lashed of course. Sailors in many boats observe her carved form extending from the front of the boat; she becomes legendary, the story springs up that if you touch her it will bring luck. Her breasts are full and firm and announcing themselves like hanging fruit, hair streaming back in long, loose curls, hips flaring and then diminishing to shapely thighs and legs, covered with the most diaphanous fabric. One day, finally, in a state of mad possession, drunk or drugged, a group of rugged sailors, enraged with the vision of her, board the boat and cut off the bowsprit, the carefully carved figure. They drag her on board their own boat, then fade into a drunken sleep. The night deepens, and one of them awakens. By a miracle – perhaps the spell of their exotic spices and tobacco smoke and primitive oaths, she has come to life. Her eyes blink, her chest heaves, and the sailors are transfixed. Her eyes don’t comprehend them, or the world she has found herself in. They start touching her, gingerly at first, wondering what magic is in her. She has never felt fingers before, never felt anything. Her responses are natural, primal, shameless. Her body is pulsing and ripe, molten with decades of virginity. They leave her bound to the post, arms back, ankles tied on either side of it, and they fuck her, again and again. They take her any way they wish, in her cunt, her ass, her mouth. Her body quakes and explodes again and again, greedy, absorbing, knowing nothing else. They keep her, and use her like this, for years. At some point they realize that while they are growing old, she is not. They are so covetous of this creature they brought to life, she has wound herself so deeply around their hearts and souls that they will not share her. Finally, only one of them is left alive. He has a dream, and knows what he must do. Secretly, he takes her down to the harbour, finds a solid old boat, and fixes her to the bowsprit. She returns to her former state, a carved figurine. One day, another group of sailors will see her, and it will start over again.

Our hotel room is full of Catherine's smell now. While I tell her this story, I am slowly fingering her cunt. She loves the story, she is very wet, imagining being fucked like that, helpless and knowing nothing else, a life of orgasms and endless youth. She cums when I tell her about the first time she is fucked; she cums again when I tell her they are fucking her, all of them, in her cunt and ass and mouth simultaneously; she cums again when I tell her she is sucking five of them off one after the other; she cums again when I tell her she is being re-attached to the boat, lashed there, helpless and on display for weeks, months, years, while the yearning builds inside some secret part of her.