Kona Days

 

April and I zoomed away from the Sheraton Kona Resort in a Jeep she had rented, top-down, with a rack of two colorful sit-on-top kayaks for our adventure in Kealakekua Bay. Stopping only for bowls of acai berries, yogurt, and granola at a food truck for our breakfast, we were at the bay less than an hour after sunrise. The air was warm and wonderfully humid, fresh, as only the sea seasoned air of Hawaii can be. We unloaded the kayaks near Napo'o'opo Park and were on the water well ahead of the hoard of people who would be launching later in the morning.

Our lunches, bottles of water and juice, towels, and sunscreen were stashed in waterproof sacks the kayak rental shop had loaned to us. Hoping to impress April, I wore the most revealing bikini I owned. As skinny and flat-chested as I was at 15, I got a thrill out of showing off, wearing as little as I could at the beach. April wore a high cut one piece that emphasized the muscles in her thighs, exposed her sculpted pelvis, and displayed a little of her abdomen. She said she was 40, but her body wasn't a day over 30. I was envious. Someday I thought, I want to look like April. But for that exciting morning, I was happy with my Kate Hudson boobs and no hips to speak of.

Crossing the bay, paddling side by side, we talked as if we had been besties for years. April had the knack of speaking my language, that of a Hollywood teen brat, without seeming condescending or phony. I think I tried to behave older than I was at times, but April would spot that instantly and say something that brought me back, kept me honest. What did we talk about? Hawaii, spa products, clothes, my school, cars, music, boys, the conversation flowed easily like water around rocks, naturally, running a course that needed no specific destination.

Before we knew it, we had arrived at the Captain Cook Monument. A few snorkelers who had arrived by motorboat tours were already exploring the water near it. We stopped briefly to see the monument, hopped back in our kayaks, then April led us towards the north to Cook Point where she had discovered days before a sheltered patch of sand among the lava that afforded a shady picnic spot. It was a perfect, private, and personal place where I would come to know April. And she would know me.

It seemed a natural progression of events. The privacy of our little piece of sand allowed us to sunbathe nude, something I did in California with girlfriends, so it wasn't new except for the fact I was doing so now with a beautiful goddess with a perfect tan on a perfect body. It's a clichè, but applying sunscreen was inevitable. I tentatively applied some lotion to her back before laying on my tummy for her to return the favor. She leaned over me, adding the warm lotion to my shoulders, and whispered, "You need to tell me if this in any way makes you uncomfortable." With that, she began massaging the sunscreen into my skin. When I think of that moment, I think of The Beatles song, "Here, There and Everywhere."

As she touched me, and I tentatively began touching her, we talked about our age difference, how what we were beginning might be considered perverse, would be unlawful. I told April I had been with girls at school, that I had, deliberately, given up my virginity three years before, that I felt like I was far ahead of my girlfriends at school.

She looked wistful and a little sad as she said, "No one can ever know."

To say April opened my mind and body to a vast and verdant universe of physical love would be a hopeless understatement. That day, and the two that followed, were, like another Beatles tune, "Magical Mystery Tour." I have never felt guilty about nor regretted the forbidden tryst we shared. I hope she doesn't.

I never saw nor heard from April again. We agreed that the perfection of our Kona days should stand alone, apart from our days, nights, and years ahead.

And if anyone ever seriously asked me about this? It never happened.