Stoked

Preamble:

This is a surfing-themed tender, teasing mother-son love story written in ornate literary language, in languid, brooding mood, with parts dark. It has lite herbal infusions of Philosophy, Music, Art and Literature. The lovemaking scenes are described in sensual, erotic rendition, with savage high moments.

If this style of calibrated narrative is not your thing, if you much prefer wailing and flailing action by sex triathletes, skip along.

***

Wave. Surfing. Surfer.

A storm out at sea churns the surface. Creates a chop. Smaller, then larger wavelets. These amalgamate, with enough wind, into heavy seas. What surfers are waiting for on distant coasts is the energy that escapes from the storm. It radiates outwards into calmer waters in the form of wave trains. Groups of waves, increasingly organised, that travel together. Each wave sets off a column of orbiting water, most of it below the surface. The wave train produced by a storm are what surfers call a swell. A swell can travel thousands of miles. The more powerful the storm, the farther the swell travels.

As it travels, the swell becomes more organised. The distance between each wave in a train, known as the interval, becomes uniform. In a long-interval train, the orbiting water may extend more than a thousand feet beneath the ocean surface. Such a train can pass easily through surface resistance like a chop or other smaller swells, that it crosses or overtakes.

As waves from a swell approach the shoreline, they begin to feel the sea bottom. Wave trains become sets. Groups of waves that are larger, and longer-interval than their locally generated cousins. The approaching waves bend in response to the shape of the sea bottom. The visible part of the wave grows. The resistance from the sea bottom increases as the water gets shallower. It slows the progress of the water. Finally, it becomes unstable. It prepares to topple forward, to break. The rule of thumb is that it breaks when its height reaches 80% of the water's depth. An 8-feet wave breaks in 10-feet deep water. But, many subtle factors conspire to determine exactly where and how the wave breaks: wind, bottom contour, swell angle, current.

So a surf ride was set off a thousand miles away. Just for you. And you'll know it's for you, when you see it. It kinda has your name on it.

Surfing.

A surfer just hopes that the wave has a catchable moment, a take-off point, a rideable face. That it doesn't break all at once. But instead, breaks gradually, successively, allowing the surfer the privilege to coast parallel to the shore, riding the face, for a glorious while, in that spot, in that moment, just before it breaks.

Surfing has a far horizon. A fear line, that makes it different from other sports. You can surf with your bros. But, when the waves get big, or you get into a foam of shit, there never seems to be anyone around. Everything out there is tangled with everything else in random unity.

Waves are the playing field. The goal. The object of your deepest desire and adoration. At the same time, waves are your adversary. Your nemesis. Even your mortal enemy.

The surf is your refuge. Your hiding place. Your watery bolt hole. But, it's also a hostile wilderness. A dynamic, indifferent world.

Surfer.

The ocean is a power beyond measure. But, as a surfer in its shifting embrace, you need to take its measure, as a matter of survival. You need to know your limits. Physical and emotional.

But, you don't know your limits unless you test them. And if you fail your test, you're to stay cool if things go awry. Panic is the first step to drowning.

And when you prevail, in that fleeting moment, composed by an unconscious conspiracy of body, mind and ocean, everything so totally comes together, the wave and you are a single state of nature. The universe is you, and you, the universe, if only for a moment. And that moment is forever. Nobody can take that from you. Ever.

Surfers have a word for this unique experience: stoke.

What other human activity has a unique word for the unique high it gives? Only two, orgasm and Nirvana. Stoke doesn't mean just a high, but the unique, peculiar high that nothing but surfing can give. To say that the joy of surfing is simply one joy among many others is like saying that the earth is merely one planet among others.

***

The morning is breath and hush, the tide's rhythmic pull lapping at the cove's edge. Mist hangs low over the cliffs, silvered by the dawn, soft as whispered secrets. The world beyond feels distant, unreal. Only the sea is real. Salt-stung air. Hush of wind over water.

Eleanor stands barefoot on the sand. She feels the grains shift beneath her toes, cool and damp. She loves this hour. This stillness. The world caught between sleeping and waking.

A woman in the ocean's quiet gaze. Forty-five, though the years have settled into her like sunlight in deep water. She is beautiful, with daring eyes. Faint lines kiss her skin. Strength laces her limbs. Body sculpted by a lifetime of moving with the waves.

Beside her, Jude stretches. Arms lifting over his head. The long lines of his body, golden from the sun, echo hers. Broad shoulders. Lean muscles. A frame made for the ocean's embrace. He is eighteen today, though she still sees the boy in him, the child who had once clung to her hand, his voice bright with laughter.

Now, he stands in silence. Gaze drifting toward the horizon. Something thoughtful in the way he holds himself. Like a weight behind his eyes.

She reaches for her board, fingers running absently over the waxed surface.

"You're quiet today," she murmurs.

He glances at her, the flicker of a smile at the corner of his mouth.

"You always say that."

"Because it's always true."

A chuckle, low and warm. Then, after a moment, he turns toward her, reaches out. Tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear. His fingers, salt-coarse and careful, linger for the briefest second against her temple. An old habit from childhood, when she would kneel before him, smoothing his windswept curls with the same gentle touch.

Smiling at him, her eyes searching his. "Ready?"

Nods. Together, they wade into the sea.

The water cradles them. Lifts them. Pulls them into its slow, rolling breath. They move in silence, paddling side by side, the rhythm second nature. He keeps close, his presence a steady warmth beside her.

She remembers teaching him to surf. The way he had clung to her at first, his small hands gripping her arms as she guided him onto his board. The way he had looked at her, wide-eyed, trusting, as she whispered, "It's just water, love. Let it carry you."

Now, he is fluid, effortless, moving with a grace that rivals her own. And still, he lingers at her side, watching her in that quiet, searching way of his.

Then, the wave.

A perfect arc, rising like a breath held between heartbeats.

She moves first, body igniting, paddling hard, then rising. A moment of flight. Of weightlessness. The world narrowing to nothing but speed and sea and wind. She cuts across the wave's face, arms outstretched, spray trailing behind her in silvered ribbons. She can feel him behind her. Hear the familiar whoosh of his board slicing water. The quiet hum of their shared motion.

For a moment, they are weightless together. Carving across the ocean's skin. Two shadows moving as one.

When you dance, you just fall into the music. You forget yourself. In surfing, the wave is the music.

Then, the wave gives way beneath them, spilling into froth. They let themselves fall. She tumbles into the water, surfacing with laughter tangled in her breath. He emerges beside her, shaking his head, his grin lazy and lopsided.

She reaches for him. Brushes the droplets from his cheek. Her touch light, familiar.

"Not bad," she teases.

He catches her hand before she can pull it away. Holds it there against his face for a lingering second. The warmth of him, the salt on his skin, the way he leans into her touch just slightly, it sends something deep and bittersweet through her. Something unspoken. Something heavy with time.

"You cheated. You let me win." he murmurs.

Arching a brow, "Did I?"

He doesn't answer. Only smiles. The slow kind. The kind that makes her heart ache in ways she cannot name.

For a long moment they float, letting the water carry them. The tide rocks them closer. Shoulders brushing. Fingers drifting near each other in the current.

Then, he exhales, slow and quiet. "I think I might leave soon."

She stills.

She had known it coming. She had seen it in his silences. The way his gaze had started to stray beyond the horizon.

Eighteen. A threshold year. The edge of something new.

She reaches out. Cups his face in her palm. Thumb brushing the curve of his cheek. He closes his eyes for a moment. Leans into her touch like he used to when he was small, when comfort then was as simple as her hands, her mere presence, her breath against his skin.

"You'll always come back to the sea," she whispers.

He opens his eyes. Something dark and unreadable in them.

Slowly, he nods. "Yeah," he says softly. "I will."

The tide pulls them gently a little apart. Salt in their hair. Wind on their skin. Sky above them pale, spacious, endless. In the hush between the waves, they drift, held together by water.

***

She looks him in the eye. Cocks her head in the direction of the outcrop of rocks at the far end of the bay.

"I've something to show you."

They paddle to the shore. She leads the way, rounding the outcrop of rocks.

"What about our boards?"

"Let them go."

"What?"

"Yes"

Their boards float away to the waves, embarking on a journey of their own. Where will they beach? Mavericks? Waimea? Padang Padang? More likely, the next bay.

They swim in from the black inkwell of shadow under the cliff.

Beneath the liquid mirror of the sea, where light fractures into trembling shards and time forgets its linear march, they swim down into the hush of the deep, their breaths borrowed from the world above. Their bodies suspended between gravity and dream. The water pressed close, intimate and cool, wrapping around them like a silken whisper.

Then, as if summoned by some silent, ancient signal, they come. An effusion of silver lives, a murmur of fin and shimmer. A school of fish, numberless and precise, bloom around them in sudden, flawless choreography. The fish move not as many, but as one. An embodied thought. A living current. A ripple of instinct encoded in motion. Eleanor and Jude as intruder and witness, drift within their orbit, hearts stilled by the sheer eloquence of their being. The fish do not scatter, nor fear, but receive them with an indifferent grace, as though they are no more than another eddy in their fluid world. In that moment, they are neither above nor apart, but within, folded into the secret language of the sea, where silence sings and the self is gently unmade. It is not discovery, but initiation, into beauty that asks for nothing, and belonging that requires no name.

And then, suddenly, school's out.

They tread water, searching. Their feet sense sand. They swim right in, under the cliff, and surface.

They are standing at the back of a shallow cave, looking out under a low arch at the open sea. The water comes up to their armpits. The roof of the cave is barely two feet above their heads. The air is warm enough. Smells salty. In contrast to the brilliant light outside, the place is full of echoing gaps of blackness. There is a sense of the looming weight of the cliff above. Will the roof cave in?

There is something primordial about sea caves. Fascinating and forbidding all at once. Cosy and menacing. Secret hollows carved into the bones of the coastline, where water and stone have waltzed in slow violence for centuries. They beckon like forgotten doorways into the earth's memory. Half-drowned. Half-dreamt. Only accessible by slipping through the glinting skin of the sea. To reach them, you must surrender to the sea's mood, swimming beneath the sun's indifferent gaze, past rock and reef, where salt bites the lips and time loses its edges.

Within, the light falters. Shadows stretch long and liquid across cathedral walls of dripping stone. The cave becomes a cradle of echo, where even the smallest splash or breath blooms into music. And yet, though it may shelter you from the lash of the wind and the blaze of the sky, there is menace beneath the lull. The cave is a mouth that does not close. A womb that may not birth you back. It is both sanctuary and snare.

To enter a sea cave is to flirt with forgetting. And perhaps that is why we seek them. Not for safety. But, for the thrill of being on the edge of vanishing.

And this cave, the outer arch barely clears the surface of the water. It will be filled by any kind of swell.

They look at the seabed. Flecks of sunlight drop toward them from some light source somewhere. She puts her head down, flexes her knees to push off in a shallow dive toward the light source. He follows.

They swim underwater for half a minute. He wonders whether his breath will hold. This is the longest he has held his breath. What is this baptism of water that his mother is putting him through? An eighteen year old coming of age rite of watery passage?

They surface. An inner cave. Its roof has an opening to the sky. A one foot diameter opening. A natural skylight. Like in the movies. A temple, and then, an inner temple. A dramatic shaft of light, of biblical radiance and intensity, piercing the darkness. He admires the colour and the quality of the light.

They clamber up to the cave floor.

"What's with this shadowy Plato's cave thing?"

"Your late dad, my bro Cole and me. Our hidey-hole when we were young. Our little nook of the universe. We once spent a day holed up here living the noble savage thing. This was eons ago before global warming raised the tide to the level you see now. Your dad's idea. He was always having ideas like this. Rousseau's romantic idea of man enjoying a natural and noble existence until civilisation made him a slave to unnatural wants and corrupted him."

Continuing, "I just wanted to reminisce a bit with you here."

Things bittersweet. Beautiful roses and sharp thorns are part of the same plant.

***

Pensive, "Let's sit at the back of the cave for awhile."

She leans against the back wall. He does the same, next to her.

They are at a loss for words. Immersed in an aura that is a hazy unity of fantasy and reality.

He looks at his mother. In the darkness, and the radiance of the skylight, she presents a surreal vision of loveliness. She is cast in a noir and a biblical movie in the same cinematic scene.

The back of the cave is cold as damp rock would be. She shunts over, sits in front of him. Pauses momentarily as if serving him notice of her next move. Reclines gently. After a minute of snuggling down to fuzzy comfort, she cocks her head to look at him, and then twinkles a kittenish knowing smile. The beginning is always a delicate time.

They remain this way for a long while.

He thinks of the novels he had read, the movies he had watched, that featured caves.

Here, in the hush of tide and shadow, he feels the old myths of the earth return. These are places where gods might have slept. Or monsters wept. Or lovers disappeared forever. He could stay, curled within the rock's slow heart, lulled by the sea's wet breathing, wrapped in the illusion of safety. But comfort here is not freedom. It is the seductive kind that softens the will, that tempts him to forget the way back out.

"What are you thinking?"

He doesn't say anything at first. Nuzzles her neck.

"How did you spend the time when you were in this cave with dad and Uncle Cole all day?"

The memory comes back to her. But only fleetingly. Like a lighted window seen from an express train, it flickers for an instant in the distance and disappears. She is relieved, but is unsure why.

"We were a close trio. It was Cole who introduced me to your dad. We did many things together. I just want to reminisce, relive that a bit, with you here."

She has a far wistful look. Like she is mulling a question that may never be answered.

He is unsure of her meaning. But he has a sense that something is going on.

***

Hesitantly, "I want to look at you."

She turns her head back to look at him.

"Properly..."

This cave, being an inner sanctum of a cave, is quiet. Through the skylight opening, the sky is a canvas of soft blue, untouched, unsullied.

She stands with her back to the cave wall, facing him. Wafts of wind from the skylight opening teasing the loose tendrils of her dark hair.

Forty-five. Though time has been kind. Her body still strong, sculpted from years of movement, of swimming, of riding the sea's crest with effortless grace. She has always felt at home in the ocean's embrace. Yet now, here, standing before his discerning gaze, she feels something foreign creeping along her skin. Nervousness.

He dips into his surf shorts pocket, takes out his cellphone encased in a waterproof jacket.

"Can I?"

She doesn't answer.

He kneels, cellphone camera poised in his hands. Expression unreadable.

Eighteen now, a man. And yet, she still remembers him as a boy, wide-eyed, small hands clutching hers as he learned the pull of the tide, the art of balance, the language of water. How different he has become. Taller, leaner, features sharpened by time, by experience. And those hands, once small, once clumsy, now hold a camera with quiet confidence.

He had hesitantly asked her to pose for him six months ago, for his art college assignment, "The Human Form in Nature". He had explained it carefully, formally, like he was speaking to a stranger. Yet behind his words, there had been something else. Something raw. Something yearning. She had agreed.

But, they never got around to the photoshoot. Jude's father, a foreign correspondent, was killed the following day, while on assignment covering a conflict in South East Asia. The family took a turn into a tailspin with the sudden loss.

But now, standing before him in nothing but a two-piece bikini, her pulse quivers unsteadily beneath her skin.

"You don't have to do this if you're uncomfortable," he murmurs, voice low, almost cautious.

Exhaling, slow, measured. "I'm OK. I owe you that photoshoot, even if your assignment is over."

Still, she hesitates.

"But, the light is low for a proper shoot."

"Perfect for chiaroscuro."

"What?"

"A light play technique. Light and dark, representing strongly contrasting tones, such as darkened shadows and vivid shafts of light, heightening emotional tension in the imagery."

He watches her. His gaze gentle, patient. Not a boy's admiration anymore. A man's. An artist's. And, a son's.

She closes her eyes for a moment. Listening to the sea, letting it steady her. Then, her fingers move. Slow, deliberate. The ties at her hips come undone first. Fabric sliding down the curve of her thighs, pooling at her feet. She steps out of it.

He sees a faint brown bush. He can't tell if she is closely trimmed, or she is just that way. Shaped in a delicate wedge. It affords scant cover to hide the thin lips dangling sweetly between her parted legs. Is the fleeting glisten on her bush sweat or seawater, or something else? Does he notice this detail?

"You like what you see?"

Nods.

Click.

"I like it lite natural. Not pristine mown."

"Why?"

"I find bald inauthentic and plasticky. I particularly abhor a landing strip. So contrived."

"What do you think of my hirsute maintenance? Should I lighten up some?"

"I've this thing that if Nature provides natural foliage, a woman should retain at least a feminine modicum of it. So, it's a matter of calibrated rendition. You're just right."