Letters To DOMAI

I was house sitting for a pal on Cape Cod, in April—not the warmest month in Massachusetts, and a month before Memorial Day kicked off the summer. “Nothing much to do there in April,” said my friend, but he knew I was a loner, and I liked the arrangement just fine.

I brought a deck chair down to the beach every morning that wasn’t too chilly, sat with a novel, and had the day and the beach to myself. (The locals, it appeared, never bothered with the beach.)

So, it was a bit of a surprise to see a towel and some clothes sitting by themselves on the beach, one morning, and with no one in sight. After all, no one swims off of Cape Cod in April; still, the owner was missing. I plunked myself down, respectfully distant from the towel (because I liked my privacy and probably would not want to chat) and opened my “Spenser” novel (about the tough-guy detective and set in nearby Boston) and read for a while. When my eyes began to blur (a sure sign I was about to doze off), I tipped my head back and watched the sea.

There, perhaps fifty yards off shore, was a flash of white. Not the bright white of a seagull—also, something that broke the surface and sunk again. This was New England. It could be a porpoise or a shark or something I had never seen (coming from Chicago as I do), and so I watched closely.

It was no shark or marine mammal; it was a woman. She broke the surface, spit water, and plunged into the water again. She broke the surface again, lay on her back, smoothed auburn hair backward and spit water upward, like a whale, and floated for a while. She was perfectly nude, her gum-drop-shaped nipples absolutely erect for the frigid water, her thatch (it did not appear she trimmed it) a deeper auburn than her hair. She floated for perhaps another thirty seconds, before she rolled over and plunged again, presenting her bottom before she drove herself under with a kick.

This was no nude beach; there are no nude beaches in Massachusetts, nor is it Mexico or the Riviera where a young woman walks with bare breasts but a bikini bottom. Nudity was illegal. That did not bother the auburn-haired woman, as best I could tell. She did not stand still, and probably could not, because the water off the Cape is so bone chilling (I couldn’t bear to even wade in it). Still, she dipped, swam under the water, emerged with auburn hair plastered on her face, and plunged again, all cheeks and toes before emerging some seconds later.

After a while, she had had enough. She did an Australian crawl into the shore, until her feet found the sand, and she stood, immersed to the waist. She covered her breasts and peered about her; she had the distinct squint of the near-sighted. She was not far from her towel, but apparently could not find it. After several seconds, I hollered, “Looking for your towel?”

“Yes,” she called back.

“You’re near it,” I called.

She waded into shore, walking with strong legs through the whirl of the surf, slapping with chilled white feet up the wet sand and onto the dry. She still squinted. I walked up to meet her.

“Do you need my help?” I asked.

“Just point,” she said (a little impatiently, I thought). She kept her breasts covered, but she did not cover the thick auburn thatch of her crotch. She had a full, fleshy mouth, freckled shoulders and goose-pimpled arms. I did, and she followed my finger.

I returned to my book, making it a point not to watch her; she apparently did not want my company.

Within a few minutes, a shadow fell across the pages of my book and I looked up.

It was her; she stood before me, fairly dry, but the simple white T-shirt she wore looked like it had been tossed over a pitchfork. (I kept my eyes above her chest, as my mother had taught me to do.) She wore cut-off blue-jean shorts and a ball cap, and very thick glasses which made her blue irises appear enormous. She smiled.

“I was abrupt,” she said. “Thank you for helping me.”

“Sorry to have invaded your privacy,” I said.

“Did I invade yours?” she asked. “This is the first time I’ve swum at this beach.”

“I do come here daily,” I told her. We talked about what we were doing on the Cape; she was Naomi, a visitor as well, from Wyoming. She was here for two weeks to act as a nanny for a friend who was on vacation in Africa. (Her little charges were in school during the day.)

“You know this isn’t a nude beach, don’t you?”

She laughed. “I do—but, I figured I could claim innocence. Besides, my friend told me I wouldn’t run into anyone on the beach in April. So you surprised me as well.” She spread her towel beside me. “May I?” she asked.

She was a PhD student, writing her dissertation. She loved the cold mountain streams and watering holes of Wyoming, had never been in the Atlantic Ocean and wasn’t about to visit Cape Cod without jumping into it. She did not have her nights free, else, I would have loved to have romanced her; but she was not one to shirk her duty.

But in the two weeks to come, we met on the beach every morning, promptly at 8:30 (once the kids had been packed off to school). I brought a thermos of coffee, for when she emerged shivering from the water. She spread her towel beside me, and dropped trou, and as gentlemanly as I attempted to be when she emerged from the water, I had tremendous pleasure watching her walk dry-bottomed and with her curly red hair to the water. I’m a real creampuff about cold water; you could not force me into that water. But she did not hesitate as the soles of her feet hit it, as it climbed her calves and thighs and touched her white bottom, and at last she would dive.

She would swim for a half hour at least, sometimes an hour, and I would guide her to shore when she was tired, and we had lunch a few times (but not love) and became very dear friends.

D. Antoni

Letter contest, prize of value $110

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