The universe is as our oceans in its ever–flowing nature. You stand at the edge of a beach and look out into a never ending blue or you stand with an eye at the tip of a telescope and look out into a never ending black.
Among an indefinite end as far as the eyes can see, there too from the Atlantic Ocean outside the monotonous corridors of my father’s apartment building I see limitless darkness. The heavy swell, blustery winds, and showers from the clouds this past week have forced light to vacate the shoreline. The once still ambiance on the edge of this beachfront property has become an eerie force cheapening the getaway experience for its inhabitants.
I draw my surfboard underneath me, pulling it forward through my legs. I smoothly sit up on my board as mellow waves roll past me. A white building sways in my line of sight. This, the only building on Sebastian Inlet—Tunglo Tower.
Each movement of the water rocks my body back and forth from side to side with the tower following my gaze upon the hills of sand. It’s the shape of a buffalo’s horn. A curved cone fourteen stories high where the bottom end narrows to a point and the top end broadens to a disc. The very top supplies its resident with an entire story full of glass walls marred by frost deposition—the opulent penthouse.
There’s not a body I can point to on the beach. What’s better is I’ve all these waves to myself as no one seems to be out in the ocean either. If there’s something I can look to for entertainment, it’s the shadowy figure up in the penthouse currently skipping out onto the balcony. The hedonistic existence of embracing a female’s nude body comes to mind.
A peach–colored, small–waisted woman with long, shaggy warm brown hair skips to the brink of the balcony unclothed. She stands over the glass rail with glazed eyes lost in the perfect blue of the ocean. Her hands reach out in front of her, suspended for a moment as she amusingly overlooks what I presume to be a pretty manicure, then drop like a feather onto the rim.
Her substantial breasts are impossibly perky with the peach pink areolae as delightful to look at as cherry blossoms. Her nipples, softly flushed and pert, are erect from exposure to the cold and misty salted air. She does a quick twirl with a quiet look of euphoria. I see a hippie in her, placing that first paper tab of LSD on the tip of their tongue, embraced by sunlight in an open field of daffodils.
The weather has failed to thwart my activities. I’m out in the ocean during daytime, surfing through an irremovable fog or lying on the beach at night, staring out into space with the blear eyes of a bat. Both sites are covered by the grayness that this months–long category 3 hurricane has brought. Defying meteorological norms, it started in April and is said to keep going strong till the fourth week of May, roving to and fro between the equator and the Caribbean. This past Sunday it surged into Florida for the first time. Today it travels back.
It shrouds my favorite sites in gelid, inky mystery.
Can anyone hear a silent scream? About every forty seconds there’s one. The fall of an unknown personality. Another one of mother earth’s living creatures is lost. I watch unfazed as the naked woman jumps from the balcony and plunges into her most disturbing death. Her head twists to the back of her neck once the body breaks motion with contact to some hard–packed sand. Her skull cracks open like a coconut but instead of the clear, slightly sweet, and refreshing liquid of young green coconuts, a retail business owner’s display of burgundy liquid eyeliners topples from its top shelf and shatters, soaking the sand.
This is what I witnessed as a kid and recurrently see when I surf this beach’s waters in a gathering gloom. Ten years ago, was it? The penthouse is now ours. Father bought it after that sad episode of a suicide. I’m past bearing the sorrow of another unknown life.
I’ve seen women get beaten. I didn’t do anything. Children getting abused. I didn’t do anything. Rioters pummeling a man to the point of no return—a death sentence brought down upon a simple bystander. And I didn’t do anything. I’m just afraid that when I’m the one in need of saving, no one else will do anything.
I’m haunted by regret, but I couldn’t save her, and I haven’t been able to save anyone since I saw her after the fall. A mangled body on Sebastian Inlet. Once gorgeous head to toe. The damage irreparable though god knows how long she was broken. Poor shattered beauty and lost soul. I’d like to believe she’s in a better place now. As am I.
I ride a wave back to shore on my six–foot black onyx quad fin surfboard. I only bring this baby out when there’s no sun. It would attract too much heat in any other weather condition. The wave dies out before I can make it back onto land. I’m dropped off at a sand bar and roll off my board, sinking below it.
I take a moment to feel the lack of air constrain my throat and water muffle my hearing. My surfboard lightly floats above me, eclipsing the sky. I dig my feet into the sand momentarily before the ocean current unveils them. The mineral salt scatters between my toes as the water tugs on me, signaling me to follow it into the deep. Guiltlessly, as does every child to get their guardian to follow them into the toy aisle.
I rise, squinting at a red bulldog tearing into the hills. A firecracker red Jeep Wrangler zooms through the beach without its hybrid soft top, sending up clouds of dust in the air. I take my raspberry surf leash from my ankle, pulling back on the strap attached to it via Velcro. The bulk of the surf leash is the cord. I begin to coil it up around one of the surfboard’s rainbow–colored honeycomb patterned fins. I carry the surfboard on my side as I walk the rest of the way through the shallow ocean water onto the beach. Moments later I’m home.