Genie's Wish Ch. 00

Saint Augustine, Florida turned out to be the easiest landfall, given our course and track. The Bahamas or the Windward Islands were quite a bit farther to the east, and would have made a much shorter passage after which I could have island-hopped the rest of the way to the mainland, but the crew only had visas for the USA, and I was impatient to deliver my boat to a proper stateside boatyard for the refit I had begun to plan out on the passage. Nothing like being stuck on a boat to highlight what you wanted to change or what systems required upgrades. She would still seem like somebody else's boat until I reorganized her my way.

Matts got a plane ticket right away. He was really fired up to go meet his older ladyfriend again. He had marveled at length many times about the fickle fortune of meeting a dream girl who seemed crazy about him too, just a couple of days before the passage he had committed to commenced. He may not have a girl in every port, as the sailor's cliche goes, but he sure has one in Ibiza.

Gigi was tickled to explore the Spanish colonial history of the oldest city in the USA, and left the boat with a goodbye hug for me almost before I realized what was happening. I thanked her profusely for helping me deliver my new boat across the pond, and she nodded knowingly. "You deserve your weesh to come true," I remember she said.

Out for food and drinks on the third night back on land, his last before leaving, Matts asked me something quite odd when Gigi's name was mentioned in chit-chat. "What about that bottle, eh, mano?" he asked me, shaking his head incredulously.

I felt like I had missed something. "What? What bottle do you mean?"

"You didn't know she slept in a bottle?"

I stared across my tapas at Matts. "I know English isn't your first language, but are you high?" Something occurred to me, and I added, "Did she dose you with some of whatever it was she put in my drink that time at the rave?"

Matts made a face. "You must be joking, she's completely sober. Not even alcohol!" But a look crossed his face, and he mused thoughtfully "Besides, drugs wouldn't have lasted all the way across the ocean."

He looked a little doubtful now. "Mano, she slept in a bottle. You never saw her turn in? She'd take the top off this antique looking bottle, and like poof, she'd go in it till her watch!" He shrugged helplessly. "I saw it. I don't know what to say."

I told him I had never seen her turn in because my watch was right after hers. I was always at the helm when she went to sleep, and always asleep myself when she got up. Or out, I don't fucking know. "Heh. Good story, Matts."

It was awkward, so we dropped the subject. Matts flew out the next morning.

I was alone with my boat now. There would be weeks of do-it-yourself boat work ahead before she was in the kind of cruising shape I wanted her to be in. After all, I wasn't made of money. Besides, I wouldn't go off to cruise the Carribean islands until after hurricane season anyway, so, might as well make hay in the boatyard.

I didn't know what I would do. I didn't have a bunch of mental shit to process, regarding the divorce. I didn't need to spend two years alone on a boat, "finding myself," before getting involved with women again. I had a ton of ideas about how to bootstrap a new career once the funds got too low to keep cruising, but I wasn't too confident and they flitted through my mind too rapidly to settle on a plan any time soon. I was once again acutely aware that whatever it was, I would have to work my ass off to make up for the twenty years of lost time which had made half of the retirement funds vanish from my accounts. And I catastrophized about women who were likely to be in my league, imagining jaded, bitter divorcees as desperate as the biddy from the Ibiza marina.

It was starting to get to me. I didn't want to break down, but I didn't want to drink alone either. So I stared into the darkness in the skipper's cabin, and talked out loud to myself, releasing the feelings that way. "I just wish I was twenty again!"

And I was.

I didn't understand it. I just knew that something was very different right then. My guts felt free, like bands of tension had been cut away and I could belly-breathe in a way I hadn't done for years. I felt the area with my hands, and found springy, smooth skin and firm, toned flesh. The stretched, loose softness my skin had acquired over the decades was gone.

I felt my face, and my stubble was thin. Places which hadn't been bare for years and years were hair-free, and I remembered the patches I used to hate in my late teens.

My arms felt strong, and my legs too. I stood up and cracked my neck vigorously in a way I hadn't dared to since college. It felt damn good and my vertebrae were supple enough to take it.

I retreated into my mind, puzzling out what was going on. I was twenty years old. I knew it, the fact plain as day in my mind, but I had been fifty just moments earlier. It didn't make sense but I had never been so sure of anything in my life. I mentally checked my own birthday: Nineteen seventy something, yeah, but this was twenty twenty something and I was twenty years old. I mentally stepped backwards, bringing to mind the most recent events and those before, confirming that I had just sailed across an ocean, moved out of a house I had loved before that, and spent years there before that with a woman I hadn't. Not for quite a while anyway. And I remembered the years before that, when the love was still there. The wedding, the families, the friends who had seen our vows, our joy. Before that, the years of job-hopping while I tried to figure out how to profit from the schooling which had been supposed to guarantee it.

Ah, school - I remembered the young women at college in the early nineteen nineties who had let me test my powers of pickup. The woman-child scene where virginities were lost left and right, including my own, despite the global fears of deadly AIDS which were so fresh at that time. Before that? My high school, which for all these years, whenever I thought about that, the most vivid memories were always of the thrills I could score from girls when they decided to let me.

But wait, this was a lifetime ago, and I'm only twenty! I stopped trying to reconcile the impossible knowledge of my age with the decades of memories I possessed. I had to see, so I felt my way to the heads and turned on the light.

I was utterly unsurprised to see my twenty-year-old face in the mirror. It was exactly what I had been expecting to see, full black wavy hair and all. I gave myself a thumbs-up and just went to bed, unwilling to bother myself any further over any of this.

I had a dream that in the big drawer, second from the bottom next to the settee, light flickered through the gap around the drawer face. I tried to look at the light but it was dark. And light. They mixed together in a familiar way - where had I experienced this? I opened the drawer and its inside looked completely normal, no unearthly glow or swirl of shadow, just an ordinary drawer in ordinary light. An antique bottle was in there. I knew it was the one Matts had described. I lifted it out, and spontaneously felt moved to hug it. A wave of cheer emanated from it, penetrating me with warmth and generosity. The end, or something. You know how dreams are. If anything else happened, I didn't remember it.

My sleep was really great. I woke with a wild erection, and laughed at its vigor, remembering what it had been like to have a fifty-year-old pecker. I laid back and experimentally stroked it off, which only took a minute and messed up the bulkhead behind me as I totally underestimated how far the shots would fly.

I didn't make coffee. I didn't need it. I was lucid, full of beans, and instead opened the sliding hatch and surveyed the cockpit full of materials for the first stages of the boat refit. Nodding confidently, I got to work.

After a productive day of boat-project work and pillaging of my stores for breakfast, lunch, second lunch, and dinner, I started taking my situation seriously. I confirmed that I still knew the passwords and had access to my financial accounts. I compared my driver license and passport pictures to the young man in the mirror. I figured I had better report them stolen and have new pictures taken.

PART TWO

A couple of days later, I was doing just that. At a local pharmacy-slash-essentials store which offered passport photo service, I realized abruptly that the thirty-five or forty year old clerk working the camera was snapping the shutter without me being in position before the blank screen yet. Looking at her and listening as she gave me instructions about where to stand and how to position my face so the picture would satisfy the State Department's requirements, I noted a certain eagerness, an energy to her smile which I was sure I wouldn't have noticed the last time I was twenty and wouldn't have gotten when I was fifty.

Wheels started turning in my head. I saw a wedding ring on her hand. I sensed a wistfulness, and when I nonchalantly smiled into her eyes briefly when the shots had been taken, I could see her peripherally after I casually looked away. She was touching her hair, and still looking at me, side-eyes. I would have been completely oblivious to this thirty years ago, but I decided to see what she would do if I "caught" her and reacted with attention of my own.

She seemed cute to me. I liked the cut of her straight, ash-blonde hair, and it looked well-kept. Her skin was tanned and would have been a smooth golden if she were younger, but was a pleasant, even tawny color. Waiting for her to work the digital print machine, I looked at her feet, in practical sneakers, and idly traced her dark-colored work slacks with my eyes, up to hips which were pleasantly mature looking, more ripe than any college girl's. Her chain-store uniform vest was unbuttoned and hanging open in front, but concealed her waist. But based on her posture and what I could see of her belly, it seemed to me her midriff would likely be fairly fit, upright and open below her ribs. I could see her chest swelling behind the vest, nice medium-sized globes pushing out a light coral tee, and I looked at the lines her bra cups made. Her shoulders slouched just a little when she focused on the machine, but I saw them straighten, improving the health of her posture, when she would look my way amidst her tasks.

Which she was doing now. I had been caught checking her out, and I let her see me abruptly lift my gaze from her chest, ready to act mortified and silently apologetic. I could see her own act - she was pretending not to have noticed, even though we were looking right into each other's faces now, but I could sense the undercurrent of surprise from the slight parting of her mouth as our eyes met. At the same time, her eyes seemed to get deeper while I decided how to handle myself, and I realized she was drinking in my attention. When I made a sheepish face and looked down slightly, I could tell her eyes were smiling even though I was looking at her chin and opening my mouth in fluster.

The whole while my mind was spinning over, "How would a twenty year old be?" I was sensing the possibilities which having a fifty year old's mind and experience could bring to the table, in my twenty year old body and barely-legal baby face.

I looked away, letting her finish cutting out the photo prints while I regarded something ninety degrees away. So when she was ready to hand them over to me and discuss payment, I rotated back and looked right in her face again. She smiled enigmatically at that, the perfect blend of plausible customer-service routine and coy, wouldn't-you-like-to-know-what-I'm-thinking consideration. When I smiled back at her as if her attention were the biggest thrill I had had all week, her cheeks pinkened visibly under her tan, and she, almost certainly unconsciously, touched her lower lip with her tongue before asking me, "Card or cash?"

I fished my wallet out. While getting my credit card, I also took the time to look through the various pockets and compartments of it, and mentally gave myself a "Yess!" fist-pump when I found a business card which had my current cell number on it. The business was history, but she wouldn't have business in mind if she used it. I tucked it under the credit card and handed both over. I looked in her face and made a wide-eyed, unsure sort of expression, as if mentally performing the biggest gamble I had ever dared in my life. I looked at the countertop before she could separate the paper card from the plastic, and I heard her exhale when she realized what I had done.

She rang me up, handed over a receipt which I tucked into my photo envelope, and said, "Thank you, goodbye," the standard retail-service farewell but with a barely-detectable note of marvel in her voice. She was looking at me with an open intensity, and I waved goodbye with a sudden subtle erectness of my posture, as if my heart had leaped into my throat. I gave a boyishly enthusiastic smile back, and turned and hurried away toward the door as if my hormones were propelling me, which was actually not far from the truth. My twenty-year-old body was responding as if the encounter had not been a calculated act on my part, but a genuine spontaneous thrill of mutual attraction.

Which I suppose it had been that, too, sincerely. There had just been this extra layer of deliberation, teasing, crafting an act which would give her the signals she would expect from a callow youth with the brass to hit on her, not a divorcee ten or fifteen years her senior. I knew I had made her day, probably her month. I didn't know if she would call but that was frankly beside the point. I was discovering what I would have regarded as a super-power when I had been twenty the first time: Reading a woman's signals, having the empathy to sense what it was like to be in her shoes, having a clue about what signals to send back, crafting and planning a come-on with confidence. Having the maturity to dare to act, without fearing a possible sting of failure or rejection. I knew if it rolled that way, I could take it without it seeming deeply personal.

The implications were continuing to dawn on me. I had thirty years experience flirting, but actually scoring and lovemaking, too! Pursuing, being pursued, talking candidly with women about sex and relationships, mine, theirs, other people's. Finding out what pleased women, what was different among them, how to learn a new lover's needs. Imagine what a good time I could show a woman knowing what I know now, in the body I had thirty years ago! In the parking lot, I was erect as I got to my rented car, apparently having the hair trigger of twenty year old physiology. I don't think I had ever even thought about going down on a beautiful vulva when I was twenty the first time! This is what it would have done to me then, and was doing to me now. I laughed at myself and settled into the driver seat, rearranging the front of my shorts to accommodate the stiff organ comfortably.

On the drive back to the boatyard, I thought about how to handle it if she did call. Mostly because of the wedding ring I had seen. I thought homewrecking was absolutely heinous, but I also thought that the cheating spouse was the one with the power to determine whether or not it came to pass as such. As well as having the right to decide whether to put themselves out there in the first place. It wouldn't be because of me if her fling were to be discovered. I don't live at her house. I still didn't want to contribute to the wreckage though, if she were the type to get caught. I decided I'd turtle up, play dumb a little, and let her talk before I decided whether to pursue a fling with her or not - and experiment with my "powers."

I had to collect some shit from storage in Virginia. The documents I needed for the passport replacement were up there, and my own car too, so, the next day I locked up the boat and did the road trip, one-way-dropping off the rental and driving back in mine.

That's when she called. Bluetoothed to the car, I answered the phone. "Hello?"

"Jack?" she asked.

"Yeah! Who's this?"

She took her time answering, and I guess she decided to go with, "Uh, yeah, you left your card at the photo counter yesterday."

I waited a beat, and stated, plainly but with a subtle waver of uncertainty, "I know."

I heard her exhale, and she went "Oh." It was a little on the long side - it sounded like she was thinking over the implication, as if she hadn't already. Probably repeatedly.

I started to say something on the naive and simplistic side like "I wanted you to have it!", but just as I began, she started speaking too.

"Are you really a senior consultant!?" she blurted.

"Oh, right, my... Company. That's, uhh... That's just something my friend thought would impress girls." Of course I was lying, but the confessional tone I offered sounded genuine, and the truth would have been just nuts.

The car laughed brightly at me. I liked the sound of it. This was the first time in years and years I had had this kind of delicate, first-try conversation with a woman I had a chance and opportunity with. There had been flirtations during my marriage, but I had refused to take any of them seriously and go down that path. This was thrilling me in a way I remembered from when I was twenty the first time. How much of it was due to the twenty-year-old physiology, and how much to the gulf of time since I had pursued someone? I couldn't say.

She said into the phone, and the car filled with it, "Well I am impressed. What if I was looking for a consultation?" She let that hang for a moment, and added, "Would I be disappointed?" I think she was caught up in the boldness of what she was doing and saying, because that last bit sounded just a little breathy, and a bit rushed. She was unwinding with me, so I got vulnerable too.

"Ahh. Heh, well..." I stammered as if I didn't have the confidence to think quickly enough to keep up with her. But then I rallied. "No! No. I could never do that. Bad for business!" I blurted, laughing at the hamminess of it. Deliberate, of course.

She tittered and said, "Well, let me think it over. Can I call you again?"

I wanted to suggest calling her myself, but not knowing who might be around, I thought better of it. "Oh, yeah, of course you can! Like when, do you think?" Disappointed but eager.

Her voice got low. "Probably tonight." And she hung up.

I grinned the rest of the way back to Saint Augustine. She wasn't going to be my girlfriend or anything, but I hadn't had even one satisfying encounter in a very, very long time. I still wasn't sure if we'd even have one, still had to get her talking. I wanted to have an idea about her reasons for pursuing this, and make the decision later.

Later turned out to be soon. I was still driving when she called at around eight. "Jack?"

"Heyy!"

"Hi."

I realized something. "I don't know your name!"

She said she was Nina and hadn't I seen it on her name badge?

"Oh my god, you're right! I'm so dumb!"

She laughed at that, and it was punctuated by an involuntary snort. She was really amused. I shut up, she might think I was self conscious about the oversight. She said, "My God, you're cute. Listen..."

After a second, "Yeah?"

"Do you want to really meet?"

I said enthusiastically, "That would be great! Like when?"

She said, "Now?" and I mentally swore. I was still about an hour away.

I admitted I was in the car. "I know!" she laughed. "I can hear it! Do you need more time? Where are you?"

I looked for a highway sign and told her what it said, and she said, "Let me meet you half way, we can be there in half an hour. There's a bar called The Mission - " and she told me where it was, so we met in the middle on my way back to Saint Augustine.