Tobie's Secret
I awoke in the middle of the night to the sound of her voice calling my name. The wound long buried now began to unravel my emotions; she invaded my senses just as she had twenty years ago. I tossed the drenched pillow aside and grabbed my journal to capture her haunting hesterium.
I was in my mid twenties then and had been at sea for the past year, working as an apprentice mechanic for a container ship that had as many ports as containers. I earned my able bodied seaman’s card the year prior, giving me safe passage on ships as a member of the merchant marines. We limped into a port in French Guiana needing parts for an engine that should have been retired years ago, and I had to go into Cayenne to find them. I spent a few days getting the parts in a town where few spoke English, and most looked you over for signs of weakness or opportunity. I returned to the ship with more than just engine parts; apparently I stopped at the wrong roadside Inn and came down with food poisoning or something worse. I don’t remember much after that, other than waking up in a clinic in Cayenne a few days later so weak that I couldn’t even sit up, and learning that my ship had parted leaving me with their manifest, a check and a bag of my belongings.
It was there at the clinic that I met Tobie who worked as an assistant, fussing over me as if I were kin. She was a tall dark skinned woman with bright eye’s and a smile that could melt a sailors hart at ten paces. Why she doted on me with five star service was beyond me, but I was in no condition to argue, and looked forward to her visits. She spoke English with a French accent that was only one aspect of her diverse heritage, for I heard her speak Spanish and one other language that I was not familiar with, but figured it to be something Caribbean. Tobie had a passion for life that made even the most mundane seem new, a true optimist who made it a pleasure to be around her contagious zealousness.
After being released from the clinic, still to weak to walk more than a few yards. Tobie insisted that I stay at her place until I recovered. Upon arriving at her small studio apartment above a market I saw right off there was only one bed and the bath tub was in the middle of the room. The powder room in the hall was shared with another tenan; a large Creole woman who looked at me as if I were the anti Christ. I don’t know how I slept through the constant noise of the market, but a couple days later I awoke to Tobie’s humming as she bathed in a tub over spilling with suds. Her long wavy black hair hung over the rim touching the floor as she lathered a pointed leg.
I stared in earnest feeling a little stronger with each stroke of those well formed long extremities. She now felt my gaze upon her and giggled without yielding, then sitting on the edge of the tub in full view she worked the soapy bar up and down the slope of her breasts methodically, her chin tucked in, slightly askew as she tried to read my reactions from the corner of her eyes as she began lathering their underside. (A sight that has remained her finest moment) Then raising her tantalizing bounty towards her cheeks with a mock swipe of her tongue. She now stood and turned her backside toward me as she gathered up suds and positioned them on the small of her back adding water that caused them to slowly slide down her heart shaped bottom and thigh, again peering at me from over her shoulder with one eyebrow raised and a lusty smirk. Her medicine was working wonders and the thin sheets did nothing to hide my approval as she drank the rest of the wine in her glass, using it to rinse herself, using every concievable advantage to raise my circulation amongst circumspection.
After her sensual performance she slid back into the tub giggling like a mischievous school girl. She bounced back out and was now ripping the sheets off along with the hospital clothing while dripping all over me. She led me to the tub by the only muscle that showed no sign of weakness, pressing me into the warm water that reeked of sandalwood, lathering me up like a flea ridden dog, using her mouth to serve wine with each kiss before dragging me to her bedside without a towel in sight; laying me back and straddling then dragging her long wet hair over me before repeating the process with her breasts, dragging them across my face yet pulling them away as I tried to latch on like a starved puppy. She now ravaged my mouth with such force it caused our teeth to grind, gripping my tongue with her lips with a suction that made me fear its loss, before commencing an erotic gesture with it that set my loins on fire. That mouth, those lips, that tongue left few spots unheeded before firmly gripping the thick base of a long neglected love root, wrapping those succulent lips over the scarlet ridges in a voyeurs game of hide and seek, making me beg her to ease her grip as pressure began to mount. She finally quenched my desire, with a fisting fervor and an untamed suction that it literally had every muscle in my body locked in a spasm while I pumped her head so full that she began to gag before it ran out her nose. But this only caused a momentary pause; she was far from done and brought me back to life with that insatiable sensual orifice that seemed to consume more of me with each nod while re-training her gag reflex until reaching the sensitive base and taking long draws up and down with a firmness and depth that soon had the room spinning. I had never had such an experience, nor has it been equaled. I saw stars as I grabbed her hair for fear that she would stop. As my heart vented an expression of gestation equivalent only to the cosmic big bang. Her precious mouth; my pulsating unit, momentarily united us with an intimacy so rare I was sure I felt our souls ascend as time and space stood still. She drained me of all strength, all inhibition and all desire. Raising her pretty head and giggling as she kissed her way back up, planting her tainted tongue in my mouth as if to share her victory, then squeezing my limp body and resting her head on my chest.
Tobie got up and poured more of her favorite French wine, but I didn’t have the strength to even hold a glass, as she showered me with more kisses; I passed out!
However the next day my strength returned and I was only to eager to return the favor; this time she let me do all the lathering of that well formed figure, as I brought her skin to erupt in gooseflesh before rinsing it down with a wine glass, then washing her long beautiful mane. I could hardly talk after the tongue lashing I gave her; holding her quaking hips in a death grip as the tried to squirm away when it got to sensitive to bare, yet I managed to send her arching back in spasms three times. The last had her screaming at me in French, bringing a concerned neighbor to her door that caused Tobie to giggle and yell something that made the lady wail with laughter. She now kicked at me warning me to stay back with a bony finger.
We spent six weeks together in the summer heat. I never knew a woman could have such a voracious apatite, she was the T-Rex of sex and although she believed that the mouth was the best vehicle for love, when we did practice traditionally it was mare akin to the Karma Sutra than mere conventionality.
She showed me her favorite haunts in the rain forest, her favorite beaches; but it was on Devil’s Island where she said that she had been waiting a long time for me, and that the moment she gazed upon my feverish body laying there in the hospital bed she knew I was the one.
“You are my soul mate, and I love you so much it hurts!” she said as tears began to flow, I just hugged her not knowing what else to say. I never had been in a love considered genuine, nor was I sure how to confirm it. But if it meant not wanting to take your eyes from theirs, and going stir crazy whenever they were gone I guess I was a prime candidate. I told her my funds were running out and expressed the need to board another ship for a month or two; promising to return with enough money to get her to the states so she could take that long cross country motorcycle trip we had talked about. But she didn’t like the idea, claiming that she would never see me again. After convincing her it would only be thirty days, she consented hesitantly.
Within a week I found an oil tanker that was in need of another hand. A ship I despised, for the stench, the cramped quarters and the captains that would charge on through the worst seas imaginable. The last picture in my mind was of Tobie wailing on the dock, warning me not to board the ship because of a bad feeling she had and freaking out the crew. The harder I tried to convince her I would return, the more hysterical she became. The dock workers had to actually hold her back so I could board.
After thirty days at sea I found myself getting further and further away from Guyane and my heart, and now felt more for her than at any time prior. In fact I could hardly do my work as thoughts of her invaded me day and night. In Yemen I boarded a freighter for the Caribbean hoping to get close enough to find a way back to Tobie. Six weeks had passed and hurricane Emile was brewing in the Atlantic, the freightercaptain tried to outrun it; big mistake! The only thing that saved us was the fact that it had not reached full strength yet, but you would have never guessed it by the way we were flopping aroundin our own puke as the huge waves promised to tear the ship apart, swallowing part of it’s cargo. We ended up in the Gulf of Mexico.
I tried to find a ships manifest that had French Guiana but because it was such a small place it seemed hopeless. I wrote Tobie telling her that if I didn’t find a ship soon I would fly back, not realizing at the time that I had no passport, nor were my funds in good enough shape to get her a visa and a plane ticket. I boarded another oil tanker bound for Puerto Rico but the captain changed his plan holding out for a better rate of return. It seemed no matter how hard I tried I hit road blocks. After three months I found myself on a container ship in Bristol that had Tobie on its list of stops, but it took over a month to get there.
I arrived In French Guiana in early November and was greeted by strangers in her apartment who spoke no English, so I made a B-line for the clinic where she worked. When I asked about her whereabouts at the counter the staff went silent. One of the women got on the phone and called up a friend of hers who brought me to a waiting room to give me the news. A solitary tear rolled down her cheek as she spoke through a constrained throat.
“Tobie die sir, Tobie get very sick, Tobie die! Me very sorry. She call for you over an over, but you never come, nobody come.”
I learned later from the doctor that she had stomach cancer and had known about it before she even met me, yet kept it from me the whole time. The doctor left me with a letter, the only thing she left behind. It was addressed to me.
Why! I thought; for what reason under heaven would she keep something of this magnitude from me, it just didn’t make any sense! Anger now began to overcome the numbing pain as I opened the letter.
“I’m sorry; I just couldn’t bring myself to tell you. I thought it would ruin our time together, they didn’t know how long I had and thought it might be beaten. God I love you. Please forgive me.”
Tobie
The year after her death was a blur. Many ports and bottles later I returned to the states and bought that bike, taking an endless trip across the country, but soon found myself drifting from one town to another. From one aimless job to another, from one senseless relationship to another. After a few years the memory of Tobie faded. I went back to school In Colorado and began a career in construction management.
They say a star burns brightest just before it dies out and this can’t begin to explain Tobie. I realize now that I never gave her those most precious words, and it has only just recently occurred to me how much I loved the woman, hoping that she hears these words leaving me in peace once more.
H.J. Cruz
6/30/07
