Genie's Wish

TAGS: Magic, pickup, nightclub, party, lonely, milf, fling, affair, younger man, seduction

PART ONE

I met Gigi in Ibiza.

My marriage had fallen apart right around our 20th anniversary. No, not to Gigi. She comes later. I was 50. Did that trigger a midlife crisis? Call it that, I don't care - we weren't compatible and she got half my shit, so I took the other half and fucked off to go sailing.

I wasn't bitter. Just really wistful, and imagining the clock turning back to before the ex and I had ever met. I had been faithful, and I didn't know how to date or have a fuckbuddy anymore. Oh well. There's time to re-learn.

Unfortunately, "half my shit" meant that the consulting business we operated together couldn't survive, so besides our staff, I too was unemployed for the meantime as well. Hell with it, let me pretend to be retired for a while before sweating it, I figured. I was still young enough to rebuild the nest egg for the real thing, maybe twenty years off. I found myself indulging more thoughts about turning the clock back.

In Greece there was an incredible deal on a good quality blue-water sailboat. It seemed perfect and the sellers were getting divorced themselves, it turned out - after crossing the Atlantic in it and cruising up the Med. I guess four months together in forty-two feet of space did them in. Happens, eh? They needed to turn the boat into cash as fast as they could, in order to split it up, so it was offered at a disaster-sale price.

Given her recent passages, the boat must have been more or less shipshape and ready to go, so I flew out, did the obligatory survey and other due diligence, and decided to pull the trigger. I didn't want to singlehand it, sailing it "home" - a funny word, as I didn't actually have one now, other than the boat itself. So, in Sardinia I took on a 22 year old Swiss kid, Matts, as crew. We got along and I approved of his seamanship, but we prudently decided to look for another, after my several days putting the boat and the new crew through the paces, sailing back westward from Greece. They were both capable and ready for the return back across the Atlantic, where Matts had some very vague plans about getting himself to Costa Rica. And Ibiza was on the way.

During the week and a half we were there, provisioning for the twenty to thirty day crossing and completing a couple of maintenance projects at a boatyard, I asked around a few watering-holes near the yacht clubs and marinas. It wasn't the ideal season, as many cruising boats had left for the hurricane belt and wouldn't be back until the risky months came, but bartenders and marina staff directed me to the likeliest places to find young people seeking passage to somewhere else.

Having heard my life story, especially a lot about its most recent disruption, Matts convinced me to go out where there would be girls, so he picked a particular nightclub because I had liked electronica back in my thirties, and he insisted the newer shit was dope as fuck. I quote. Imagine hearing that in a Swiss-Italian accent! Well what the fuck did I care, never too old to check out some new music and some skirts. Indeed, I was by far the oldest person I saw there, and my ears hand't rung like that in decades, but Matts got us invited to an afterparty which he said some Spanish college students who were in a Barcelona sailing club would be at. It seemed like a good lead, so even though it was late as hell, I steeled myself for an all-nighter and took him up on it.

I hadn't been to this kind of a party in years. About thirty under-thirty people were there, in a condo right near the clubs. I have a 50-year-old body but it's not that bad, soft but not pudgy, solid but not toned, and I didn't give a shit whether people thought I should put my shirt back on. I was hot as fuck after the nightclub, and needed to cool off and dry my sweat in the Mediterranean night out on the balcony. This turned out to be the ideal spot to hang at for the other pragmatic reason, that I could converse with people at a reasonable volume. This was not a chillout scene and, inside, the trip-hop or whatever they were calling it this decade was almost as deafening as the club had been. Good grooves though, and I bounced on my feet as I met various people, drank Portuguese beers, answered questions about the very fresh thirty-two-point compass-rose tattoo swelling on my left pec, and let people know I would be sailing soon and would appreciate another hand.

"Gigi just graduated, maybe she's free!" was the idea that at least three different people gave me. I had heard this name mentioned at a yacht club too, and was becoming more and more eager to figure out where and how to meet her. Apparently she was a talented sailor, and was planning to travel after graduation anyway. The most intriguing thing I had heard about her, from more than one of these folks, was the oddly specific phrase that if I did locate her, she would, quote, make my wish come true.

Huh.

I got some cell numbers and over the next couple of days, checked in again with the boat-club students and really pressed them to help me make contact with this Gigi. While I was waiting for the boatyards to get their work on my new-to-me boat done, I had time to visit some places which were said to be Gigi's hangouts. I hiked, I shopped, I drank beers and ate tapas at numerous places and my temporary friends didn't spot her anywhere for three days. She was known for just utterly ignoring social media, email, and voicemails, so, this effort felt like the 20th century again.

I didn't stop asking other people if they could get free for a month and help out. A large and oddly outfitted yacht showed up in the next marina over from mine, after the yard put my boat back in the water. A marine biologist was concluding a research trip to the North Atlantic gyre. Yes, the Pacific isn't the only ocean with a great garbage patch. His three aides-slash-crew were going to be at loose ends until the next semester began. It would be close - that was only five weeks away.

Two of these students had developed feelings for each other on their 60 days at sea, and were unavailable as they were planning what to do now that they were "together". The third really thought about it but finally said he couldn't make the timing work, since I couldn't abso-fucking-lutely guarantee that our passage would be done before thirty days. Weather, you know?

A chummer from one of the yacht clubs wanted me to take his 18 year old son with me, but it was clear this was sort of Daddy's sail-across-an-ocean fantasy and the kid wasn't going to be into it. A perpetually stubbly, long-haired American surfer-looking dude of 35 years who I kept running into in bars badgered me for days. He insisted he was experienced, easy to get along with, and available, but a perfunctory background check informed me that he had quit another boat two years earlier due to "personality differences", left the skipper solo in the Canaries, and probably caused a handheld VHF radio unit, an unopened bottle of very special Portuguese wine from Porto, and a backup outboard motor for the yacht's dinghy tender go missing. No thanks.

Meanwhile Matts and I continued partying, what else was there to do. Exploring what Ibiza had to offer took just a few days. The final provisioning couldn't happen until we were ready to set off, and we agreed we really wanted the third person so we wouldn't be on watch twelve hours each every day. I was starting to feel a bit desperate, and frankly was also itching to get away from a lizard-like American woman who was four times divorced, thirteen years older than me, and kept turning up on my dock when the boat she was living on was on the other side of the marina. Her age wasn't any problem, it was the desperation, the decades of excessive sun damage to her face and chest, and the entitled Long Island pushiness that violently turned me off. This wasn't how I wanted to get back in the saddle, no matter how casual and easy.

And want it, I did. There had been years of frustrated faithfulness before the final showdowns that incinerated my marriage. There had been opportunities aplenty for me to have strayed, but I couldn't do that. I suppose I was just glad that she hadn't, either. We had failed for other reasons.

Matts and I went to a rave-like festival event. Again I sweated my balls off and was glad it was outdoors, and lost my shirt somehow after taking it off and tucking it into the belt of my shorts. The insistent, body-penetrating electronic music was trance-inducing as midnight approached. I was dehydrated from a day wasting time on the beach and I was ruminating about maybe just taking off now anyway, even though it would be really taxing and challenging crossing the Atlantic with only two sailors aboard. I found myself standing still, eyes closed, just swaying in space as lasers and strobes out on the other side of my eyelids started making me trip out mildly.

I felt some sadness creeping in. I was a little out of place, the earsplitting music was exhausting me, and there seemed like no chance at all of scoring if I had even had the confidence to hit on some youthful woman-child like those in the barely-drinking-age crowd. Well, this was Europe, so I suppose they were way past drinking age, but that didn't make them grownups, to me! I thought about where I could possibly meet a population of available women closer to my age, once I got back to the States. I didn't know anything about the Tinder or however people were supposed to be meeting these days. I got a little spun out thinking about how lovely it would be to just make someone happy for once.

I don't know how long it was, but I felt a hand on my arm after some time. I opened my eyes, feeling headachy and sad, and collected my wits and looked to regard a diminutive yet fit young woman in - I don't even know how to describe the rave clothes she had on. Wild colors, net-like sections revealing skin in interesting places, a little makeup that fluoresced around her dark eyes in carefully drawn points, and a ton of bangles on one wrist, the other bearing a broad black leather thingy with rings and studs.

I blinked, and screamed at her, "Eh?"

She mouthed back, "I'm - " something. I could only see her tap herself on the collarbone, mouth something that ended in M, and then open it again to emit two more syllables but I'm no lip reader so damn if I could tell which ones. So I just nodded silently and smiled.

I'm six feet tall, and she showed me a beckon which invited me to scooch down, which I did, plugging one ear and giving her my other. Bringing her mouth really close, she said into it in a loud-enough voice but not hollering, "I'm Gigi!"

I couldn't believe it. I looked at her, and nodded my understanding, and suddenly felt the weariness drop away and the warmth of the evening swirl around me. On the stage, the performer cued up some crushingly percussive blast-beats and the myriad lights showered bursts into the crowd in time with these, and the beat suddenly dropped and the bass swooped way down into subsonic frequencies. Somehow it made me feel lifted up, as if all the rave energy had been plunged deep into the ground for an instant and the ground rebounded up to propel me into a new mood. I grinned enthusiastically to Gigi, and said into the brief relative hush before the beats started slamming through the air again, "I'm the skipper! Jack!"

She nodded knowingly and grabbed my hand. I straightened up and let her lead me out of the fringes of the crowd and past the porta-johns to a pop-up wet bar where the sound pressure level was halfway reasonable. She ordered two of something without asking me, and held her plastic disposable cup for a clink, which I obliged. "So glad to finally meet you!" I effused.

"Drink it ahp, you look a leetle bit bad," she said in an accent I assumed was Spanish, but could have been something else. I didn't take it personally. I was surprised to find the drink alcohol-free, and quaffed it gratefully. I think it had tonic in it, and one of the citruses but I couldn't quite put my finger on which, and something piquant like maybe a brand of bitters I wasn't familiar with. It had plenty of H2O in it too. It hit the spot and was gone in no time, and picked me up even further.

Feeling quite fortunate all of a sudden, I gushed thanks to Gigi and complimented her on the choice of drink. I asked her what it was called, and she changed the subject. "When do you plan to leave the islahnd?"

I thought out loud over the necessary tasks and procedures before I and my vessel would be clear to leave Spanish waters and commit to the crossing. She seemed familiar with these needs and I knew by reputation that she could surely sail a boat. I was sold. I came up with, "Two days, not counting - " I checked my watch and confirmed it was after midnight. "Today. So - on the Fourth?"

Gigi nodded agreeably and promised she would call me the next day, on the late side to give me time to recover from the partying. Matts found us right about then, saying, "Oh good, you found each other!" He had finally located her and pointed me out, but left it to Gigi to initiate things with me, as I gathered that Matts had been this close to closing the deal with some other girl right that minute. Apparently not close enough, because here he was, by himself, and we pouted in sympathy for him as he bellyached about striking out.

Gigi peered up at Matts, then behind his shoulder. "She's right there," she nodded subtly. Matts looked, and a dusky, long-haired girl -- woman, I really ought to say, but I'm old -- of about 28 years literally clapped her hands with glee as Matts turned around. She slinked up to him with a shy act for me and Gigi, but snaked her hand up behind Matts' head to bring his ear down to her mouth. Matts' eyes twinkled as he listened, and when she was done, he gave her his full attention and I imagined I'd just catch up with him for lunch or dinner, much later.

Gigi looked like an imp, just tickled with herself as if she had made it happen herself. She smiled cheerfully watching Matts pick up where he had left off, promising this and that to the young woman while looking into her eyes. Nodding as if satisfied, Gigi regarded me again. When she opened her mouth I expected he to resume our conversation, when I realized all of a sudden I was feeling very light headed and when her mouth moved, what I heard wasn't her voice, wasn't the rave, wasn't the crowd, but was the night. I can't explain it.

I heard the night. Dark energy swirled in my ears. Not dark like demonic or anything, just the pure indigo-black nature which fills the world after midnight. Yeah, I was hearing that color and the night's powerful, impossibly ancient song. Damn. And Gigi's words were manifesting as luminous gold thunderbolts trimmed in pure-white feathers, flying past my head in a cone with me at the center. The brightness in my eyes of Gigi's lightning words and the darkness in my ears of the night's shadow were mixing and marbling together into sensations of life and death, and my body vibrated at a frequency only gods can hear.

Some more trippy shit happened too, but it's gone now like a dream. Really, all I know after that is that I woke up in my usual berth on my boat at noon, feeling healthy and chipper but just a touch confused. "Hell of a night, I guess," I muttered out loud, and got up, yawned hugely and pissed in the heads. As the coffee perkled in the Italian-style moka pot on the alcohol stove in the galley, my cell rang, the screen saying, "Gigi."

Huh.

Well, I answered it and she said, "I have my visa, I'll be ready when you are!"

I didn't really remember adding her number, or precisely what we had agreed to, if anything, or how she got a visa so fast, but I just said the first thing that came in to my head. "Hell, that's great! Be down here in forty eight hours!"

"Of course!" came back, and the phone disconnected.

I stood dumbly, trying to figure shit out, but just knew it was on. We were going sailing, and sailing for home, America-the-Beautiful, at long last.

Somehow I just trusted it, and took care over the next day and a half of all the little preparations needed to clear out of the country, secure all the items I now lived with on board but weren't essential for the passage, rearrange the food storage so the items which would be easy to prepare at sea were easily accessible, and make the last purchases of fluids and spares in case the most likely or critical rigging and systems breakages were to occur out there.

After Breaking-Out-Another-Thousand (B.O.A.T., get it?) at the chandlery, I thought some more about the money. It would run out, and not in Charles Foster Kane time. I was determined to enjoy at least a year off, maybe two, but didn't quite know what I'd do when it was time to work again. When the thoughts came up again about how good it would be to be starting over before the breakup, I realized I was fantasizing and willed the unproductive ideation to just stop for god's sake. Sigh.

Gigi did make it to the marina roughly forty-eight hours later. I welcomed her aboard and showed her a big drawer and a section of a hanging locker where she could park her gear and effects for the passage. She didn't seem to have a lot, and was now much more practically dressed in athletic gear, not a bad choice for moving about a rocking boat underway. I would have liked to have had deck shoes like hers myself. All I had were non-skid rubber boots.

She and Matts stood by for a departure briefing. We wanted to leave after nightfall in order to catch favorable winds which had been forecasted. For about three hours, among many other details, I reviewed the operation of the VHF radio console set and navigation electronics, the sail handling procedures of this particular boat (for Gigi's sake, as Matts had already sailed with me for more than a week), the location and deployment of the liferaft and ditch bag full of practical essentials in case the unimaginable were to happen out there, and discussed the watch schedule. I'd take the first, so the other two wouldn't have to stand their first watch in the dark. We made it on time to the port's customs and immigration offices to clear out of the country, ate hot food from a restaurant for the last time in what would be probably a month, and waited for the wind to back around as predicted.

An ocean passage exists in a timeline of its own. We spent twenty-four days at sea with a hypnotizing motion over the swell and no landmarks in sight. There was surprisingly little interaction among the crew, unbelievably dark skies at night spangled with the Milky Way and uncontable stars, and a stunning sameness to the days other than minor variations in the weather of the tradewind zone. It adds up to an experience almost outside of regular reality. At all times, one person sleeps, while one person stands watch, and the third most often cocoons with books, a movie or music in their headphones, resting from the demands of their last watch and for anticipation of the next. We would cross paths at the galley, sharing food with whoever was awake, or in the cockpit as the watchstander reported on vessel encounters, conditions and position and handed the watch off to someone else, and there was not too much other interaction. The experience creates bonding among those who share it, but I was surprised at how largely non-verbal that was. Even though it was my own first ocean crossing too, in addition to Gigi's and Matts'. Socially it was a bit of an anticlimax after all the energy I had put into locating and meeting Gigi. I still didn't know anything much about her other than what I've already retold. But I had my wish, and the three of us crossed the Atlantic with no drama.