Nike of the Salish Sea

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Eros Salvatore

__________

Kay had the look of a faerie princess found under a mushroom in the forest—a seemingly innocent, adorable young woman searching for love as she metamorphosed into adulthood. But like the famous Nike of Samothrace, Kay had lost her wings and could no longer fly. Instead, she spent her days wandering the cedar forests by the Salish Sea, letting the mist and drizzle cleanse her soul. What from? I cannot yet tell, for she would be mad at me if I revealed her inner turmoil.

But then again, Kay had her own mythology that you should know. She dreamed of a man who would rescue her. A man her mother would not approve of. A man whose profession was love, yet was afraid of loving her. A faerie tale made true by grace and circumstance.

I had always dreamt of such a girl, an antidote to my shame and low self-esteem. Someone I could fix, as much as they fixed me. A Manic Panic Dream Girl whose shared sorrow would make me whole. Would she love me? I didn’t know. But I couldn’t stand to be alone. Besides, her family was just like mine: a pantheon of gods less than divine.

I met Kay in the cold, dark world of Poetry Madness—a world we entered with fear and wonder. An empire of words we hoped would redeem us for the sins we had yet to commit. Our group found sanctuary in a former church—its sermons long since passed away, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Like Ring-Around-The-Rosie, they all fell down—parishioners in pews given way to slackers on sofas. In a later incarnation, it had become a center for martial arts: The School of elf Defense—the “S” long since knocked off or stolen. Accordingly, impish anarchists had transformed it into a dilapidated library and underground music venue that struggled to right itself through hard work, community building and nocturnal emissions—the echoes of loneliness, friendship and heavy petting sweating it out on hot summer nights underneath the crooning of our city’s miscreant musicians.

A flamboyant man in hot pants and halter tops ran the group—a hodgepodge of broken hearts and wandering minstrels pining for forgotten dreams. Trading the rationale for the absurd, our poems delved into topics ranging from lost causes to sordid sexuality. I, with my poetic novel-film-play Gods, Girls and Monsters. They, with their personal reminiscences filled with pantomime and rage.

Each week my faerie princess and I eloped for brief specks of time, when we would whisper half-truths to each other amid the dust motes and sleepy books. I wondered about her sanity as I watched her eyes dart back and forth while we conversed—was she crazy or was she just trying to hide her thoughts from me? I espoused my literary creations; she espoused her adoration. From meekness, I grew brave.

“How old are you?” I asked her one day.

“Eighteen,” she replied.

“Oh, my god,” I said. “I thought you were twenty-one.”

“Yeeeeeah,” she acknowledged in a long, drawn-out voice—her eyes wide with the awareness of the attraction between us.

Yet, I was still naive: our positions reversed from normalcy—me a nervous schoolboy, and her, a seductive Eve.

May passed with flirtations I could scarce believe. She really wanted me!

June brought the Naked Bike Ride—the seditious young peoples’ annual anti-establishment extravaganza and parade. I skipped the main event, but as I was walking by the after-party, a topless Kay leapt up to greet me. We embraced. Heaven.

I joined the festivities and watched Kay with fascination as she raced back and forth between conversing with her friends and clinging on to me. Her joy was my joy. I needed nothing else, the moment was complete.

Then she was gone, disappeared without a trace. I grew desperate. I hadn’t gotten her number. She stopped going to Poetry Madness. I walked the streets hoping to run into her. I searched social media.

Nothing.

A month went by, and then, on the corner of Forest and Holly (where else would faeries dwell?), as I crossed the street, our eyes met. Me in a city wood of paving stones and thoroughfares; her seated at a sidewalk table outside an organic bakery. 

She jumped up and ran towards me—flinging her loving arms around my body as I lifted her off her feet. For a brief moment, I could feel her heart next to mine.

I set her down.

“Are you single?” I asked.

“Yes,” she answered.

“Do you believe in what’s meant to be?”

“Yes.”

“Will you accompany me to the theater tonight?”

“Yes.”

“Predestined destiny!”

Kay laughed, and off we went to our city-state’s lovely Greek theater with its park-like setting and stone-cut seats.

Under a twilight sky, Homer preached The Iliad. Stage props: table, treasure chest and a fresh breeze. Backdrop: jib and genoa flying free. The story: Briseis had been enslaved by Achilles, who had won her as a war prize. Stolen by Agamemnon, she prayed for her release and was eventually returned to the mortal god of the Greeks. But soon Achilles died, and Briseis was traded off again to that comrade-in-arms called Fate. She ended up so traumatized it took over a thousand years and a teacher as great as Ovid before she relearned how to speak.

Curtain drawn. Quick applause. Back to my place. 

Play with kitty. Safe space.

We listened to a talk about enlightenment—Kay, full of love and excitement.

Outside the sky grew dark, and in a tender moment I watched her half-asleep—serenaded by Rumi, a guitar and peace. Her eyes opened, and she gazed up at me—a smile upon her face. She didn’t see me as a creep! Spiritual release.

“What do you think?” I asked.

“I dissolved into nothingness!” she replied.

My infatuation was complete.

Next Poetry Madness featured poets on the stage, or as some would say: egos on parade.

My muse engaged me during intermission.

“I want to explore my sexuality,” she breathed, before vanishing into the night—leaving me with tendrils of half-imagined ecstasy.

A week passed by while Kay went to The Oregon Country Fair. The same place I had pilgrimaged to in past years. She came back eager for a date. I suggested Pixie Falls. I’d never been, but she agreed. It was urgent. We couldn’t wait to meet.

I drove my station wagon, Kay used her feet. I found her sitting on a blanket beneath a tree. She ran to me at first sight, jumped into my arms and wrapped her legs about my waist. I spun her around with glee.

She reminded me of another faerie girl I had known long ago when I was a college freshman in a redwood kingdom by the sea. A watercolor of a girl full of pastel blues and illicit kisses who lasted less than a semester before she left to study painting in Provence. She never came back, more in love with Van Gogh’s ghost than me.

Those mournful memories brought a line from an ancient Buddhist poem to mind: ‘A single night of love is worth a thousand years of meditation.’

Intentions set, I planned a metaphysical delight—starting with the mystery of tantric life.

We began by repeating a series of mantras until we each found the one that felt right.

‘You’re so safe with me,’ she selected.

“You’re so safe with me,” I whispered over and over into her ears like a prayer to the gods, as I caressed as much of her body as I dared to.

When I finished, she started reciting the mantras, and I started laughing. I had waited all my life for this. I chose ‘You’re so sexy to me,’ which she chanted like a genie to her master. I’d never been idolized like that before. I felt beautiful for the first time—like a frog prince. A lifetime of ugliness removed before we even kissed.

In gratitude, I offered her a massage. She acquiesced and melted under the pressure—floating between the here, the now and the pleasure.

Then it was her turn to play masseuse. She sat on my back and bled all over my shirt—the mauve cotton-linen blend of perpetual coolness ruined. A bad sign. She’s marked me as her property despite her embarrassed apology.

“I don’t know what happened,” she said. “I’m not leaking anywhere.”

A supernatural menstruation that defies the laws of physics. What can one do? Off we went to Pixie Falls—bloodied shirt and all.

The falls were a hidden gem—not marked on any map and sans trail. Kay led me through the forest to a narrow ravine that housed a creek. We climbed down its sandy walls—dust crumbling beneath our feet.

The cascades dropped fifteen feet from top ledge to pool. The latter home to a raucous party of Dionysus and his retinue. The top home to Kay and me. We leaned against the trunk of an uprooted tree resting firmly in the stream. Kay pressed her cheek against my chest and tilted her face up ever so slightly to invite a kiss. We touched lips.

Her mouth, ears and neck were my delight. I held her close as Dionysus entertained his nymphs nearby. But all I noticed in the ethereal commotion was that Kay’s love was mine.

When the sun gave up playing hide and seek with the trees, we left our sacred space. On the way back to my carriage-car, we held hands and I entered the sublime—Kay’s admiration filling me with the euphoria of an opium-infused Midsummer Night’s Dream.

At my kingdom’s palatial apartment, I made her coconut-milk couscous and broccoli covered in vegan faerie dust—a dinner made for saints. She said she wasn’t hungry, but when she tried my masterpiece her eyes lit up, and I thanked God for grace.

In between our intimate carousing, Kay made plans to spend the night, and I made plans for future dates. Then her phone chimed. Kay grew frightened as she read the message.

“It’s my mom,” she said. “I have to go home. She’s coming to pick me up.” The first foreboding that love would force the Fates. She was going back to mother’s place—her real home, I realized too late.

At the door to my apartment building, I made Rapunzel go out to mother’s car alone. Her mom scared me as much as my own. The first time I brought a girlfriend over, my mother called her a slut. She was a virgin. I never introduced Medusa to a girlfriend again.

Two days later we were back in faerie land. I brought figs, goat cheese and grapes. Mother Earth brought us escape.

I found Kay sitting on the grass concatenating daisies into pixie crowns and bracelets.

“Oh my god!” I repeated over and over in astonishment as I laughed.

“What?” she kept imploring me, with an embarrassed smile upon her face.

“I can’t believe I’m dating someone who passes time by making daisy chains,” I answered before we kissed.

I had gone to Poetry Madness with the timid hope that someone would love me for who I was, and I found her. She had gone to Poetry Madness to attract love, and I appeared.

“I found you!” I would say.

“You appeared!” she would reply.

And we would laugh like children during wartime—unaware of darker days to come.

Kay took my hand and led me to a hidden hideaway—a bed-sized flat rock covered by a blanket of moss and seemingly floating atop the water in the middle of a creek. It was perfect for our pleasure. Steep banks to keep it private. Ferns and cedars to keep us safe.

Eventually, the weather waned, and our bodies began to cool as the sun bid farewell. Kay stood up and clambered through the water, iPhone in hand—an unfortunate mistake. Phone fell deep and faerie princess panicked, quaking on her feet.

I searched the waters, staining my clothes with mud instead of blood. 

“How will I contact my friends without a phone?” she blurted out, frozen with fear.

“You can have my old iPhone if I can’t find yours,” I told her.

Kay was shocked.

“I can’t believe someone would love me that much,” she said, with such astonishment that I felt uneasy. Had no one ever helped her out before?

Earlier I told her I could handle anything she did.

“We’ll see how you handle it when I have a panic attack,” she replied.

I thought I did pretty well.

Eventually, I found the phone—still working and unaffected by the tumbling creek.

Back home a recliner replaced the rocks, and our ecstasy became an altar. Afterward, I stroked her belly with my fingers.

“You touch me like no one ever has,” she said. “Why don’t other guys do these things?”

“Because they’re self-centered,” I replied. “They haven’t slowed down enough to listen to what their partner wants.”

Feeling safe, Kay inched closer to tell me about her family. Her mother was an evangelical Christian who tried to control every aspect of her daughter’s life—a born-again Demeter obsessed with her own personalized Persephone. She had looked me up on social media and pinned me down as Hades, ruler of the Underworld, here to take her only child away.

“He looks like he takes advantage of naive girls like you,” her mother said.

Kay never told her we were dating. She wasn’t even supposed to be having sex.

Kay hates her dad. He gets angry, she gets small. Becomes invisible. Knows not to speak. Home was a temple for the tumultuous. But now Zeus is gone from the Pantheon. Kicked out for infidelity.

The guys she’s been with are hardly better. Her first love ghosted her. Her second one was worse. He already had a girlfriend, but she was desperate for his attention. He used her. Wouldn’t even introduce her to his friends. One night she stole her mother’s car to go see him. What he did to her, Kay does not want me to tell. That’s when she took to wandering the woods, hoping the spirits of the forest would take away the pain. And they did, on a misty November day. Whispering the words she wished her mom and dad would say: “We’ll always love you no matter what.”

Her third love found her at a cafe last winter and seduced her with music, weed and roses. He even introduced her to his friends. She was elated! They began to date. Her perfect Valentine! But then, he told her he wanted someone else—a polyamorous relationship was all he promised now. She stuck around regardless—too afraid to lose the love she never had from him. Eventually, he dumped her. I had met her in May, just after they had broken up. Even so, she still dreamed of him.

“I would follow him to the ends of the Earth,” she said.

“He won’t be there for you when you need him,” I warned her.

“I love him more than I love you!” she yelled back.

I had made a mistake—encroaching on what little hope she had left that he would take her back. More importantly, I had been unable to accept that I came in second place. So I shut my mouth, the odd one out.

Talk of former beaus behind us, we went out to dance. It was the night I had been waiting for. I was taking my own faerie princess to the ball! But it was all for nothing—like the Velveteen Rabbit left at a burn pile while the boy he loved went to the beach.

Couples twirled this way and that. Kay danced with whomever she wanted—seeking to spite me for my transgressions. With every step and twist, she ground me into the floor. Soon I could barely walk. I was dating a toxic buttercup.

Afterward, we went back to my house and retired to bed—our bodies barely touching. Like an innocent child, I was being punished for my sins. What was she thinking? She wouldn’t tell. As she had said before: ‘Personal growth’s too much for me.’

Sleep softened Kay, and in the morning she fawned over me, grooming me like mother to child. My faith renewed, I returned the favor—moisturizing her skin with cocoa butter.

“That feels so good,” she said, with a sigh. “Nobody’s ever done that for me.”

I told her she had a famous Helen’s body. Not the one whose face launched a thousand ships, but a silent picture princess from French Indochina, a character from the semi-autobiographical novel The Lover—a book so cherished by both of us, that even the heat and humidity of Saigon’s suffering couldn’t dampen the spark of its forbidden love.

She swooned at my proclamation.

“Has anyone ever taken nude photos of you?” I asked.

“No,” she answered.

“Do you want to start now?” With a smile, she acquiesced, and posed on my bed like Marilyn Monroe in a Playboy centerfold. I, the artist, she, the muse. I daydreamed of famous nudes while she lay at an angle or on her side covering what’s meant to be: sometimes her breasts, sometimes everything, sometimes leaving all for all to see. She blossomed like the Venetian courtesan in Titian’s Venus of Urbino, and for a short while all was perfect in the sultry summer’s heat.

Then it was over, and my Galatea’s heart turned to stone.

“I danced with other guys last night just to make you jealous,” she said, in the early afternoon while we lounged in bed. “I wanted to rub your face in it.”

I didn’t know how to respond. My anger stifled, my trust all gone.

Then she panicked and breathed the words I wished I had never heard: “I feel trapped!” before getting up to leave and running down the stairs to get away from me.

She called me that evening to apologize.

“I’m sorry I ran away this afternoon,” she said. “I just feel uncomfortable around you and I don’t know why.”

I thought back to our conversation about her exes.

“Maybe you’re used to being treated badly,” I said.

Silence.

Maybe I was used to it as well.

“We both want what we can’t have,” I said. “I want your love, while you want your ex-boyfriend.”  I heard her thinking in the background, but I couldn’t decipher her telepathic sounds. So I told her about my life. The psychotic mother who I worshiped like the Virgin Mary. The childhood days I spent locked up at home. The fear I’d always be alone. I barely knew my dad. He left when I was seven. Then I became my mother’s substitute boyfriend. When I turned eighteen I finally ran away. And even when I became homeless, I refused her offer to come back home and stay. I’d rather sleep in my car then go back to being a slave.

I stopped talking and it became so quiet, I could hear an imaginary breeze.

“What are you thinking?” I asked.

“I’m not, I’m crying,” she answered.

“Why?”

“Because your story makes me sad.”

No one else had ever cried for me before. I didn’t think I was good enough for that.

“I’m afraid you’ll abandon me,” I told her.

“I’ll sing you a song instead,” she said. “Honey, just put your sweet lips on my lips. We should just kiss like real people do.”

Kay loves tap, swing and blues dancing. She is a natural performer and dreams of being a famous musician. Led Zeppelin is her favorite band. Mine too. My new favorite Zeppelin tune—the one that made me cry every time I heard it until I met Kay: “Thank You.” Hers: “Heartbreaker.” Thank you for breaking my heart. The Doors were our close second. And…I thought I was the guy, to make the queen of the angels sigh!

A few days later Kay brought her guitar over. I took photos of her playing, but she was embarrassed. She’s more comfortable nude than dressed.

I suggested we go to church and have sex in a confessional booth.

She laughed. I was serious.

Shortened make-out session today. It started out well. In between the fondling and kisses, we talked about sex. She’s stopped having orgasms. She doesn’t know why. I was perplexed. Then things went south. She dissociated like Ketamine after sex. She had that far-away look in her eyes and spoke with an anesthetized mouth.

“I’m thinking about breaking up with you.”

I froze.

“My friends say you’re a threat to my emotional safety.”

Her exes’ friends. The ones she never arranged for me to meet. I couldn’t speak. She trusted them more than me, just like her second boyfriend.

“And my mother says you’re a threat to my soul.”

Mommy dearest all over again.

I recalled a slice of conversation we had when we first met.

“You’re a nice girl,” I said.

“I can be mean,” she warned me.

She was right.

Eventually, Kay calmed down, and we made up. Or so I thought. Just before she left, we played our usual game. She would meow loudly like my cat. I would tickle her. Then she would stop. Except this time she didn’t. This time she kicked me. Hard.

I was shocked. So I yelled at her in dismay. That seemed to do the trick. But what other miseries lay ahead of us? The both of us were sick.

The next day I called her, ready to break up.

“Can you give me an orgasm?” she asked.

How could I say no?

Two days later we rendezvoused at our normal fae-inspired spot. She was basking in the shade, hot from a long walk. I joined her but found I couldn’t talk. So, we headed to my house for diplomatic sex, both sides trying to get along. Our relationship had devolved into physical graffiti, and I felt like my apartment was a brothel. However, I couldn’t figure out who was the prostitute and who was the john.

Upon arrival, I led Kay through the motions of ecstatic sex. Tantric eye gaze. Sensual massage. Pawing her every desire. Nuzzling her every dream. Pleasing her, pleasing me. Orgasms come. Eighties love songs fill my mind: Sheets soaking wet. Freight train running through the middle of my head.

She’s freedom without love, using her body to escape. I’m love without freedom, just trying to take and take. Neither of us can ever get enough. Her, a wingless butterfly. I, her hapless mate. By now I had grown disgusted with my metaphors, but I couldn’t stop. They haunted me incessantly, making a mockery of thought.

Afterward, Kay fell asleep in my arms, and I stared out the window as the sun traveled through the bright side of the zodiac. I felt dependent upon my obsession like a transient lily to rain. But unlike Anais’s blossom, the risk of blooming felt far more terrifying than to remain. I had been stifled by a mother who couldn’t let go. Now here I was with Kay—too afraid to grow.

Kay woke as the sun dropped below the horizon, and I made dinner, while waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Appetites satiated, we cuddled in the recliner as acoustic blues drifted through the air—the Mississippi Delta bringing Blind Willie Johnson to our ears. Later, Ry Cooder took us to Paris, Texas, where we listened as two estranged lovers healed their past.

We had planned to go to the dance.

“No,” Kay said. “Let’s stay here. I want to dance alone with you.”

I was touched. We swayed in close embrace. Paradise found!

Then mother texted, and daughter panicked. Footfall.

“I told her I’d be at the dance. What if she’s already there? We have to leave now!”

I should have let her go by herself, but I still thought I was Prince Charming and my Cinderella just needed to get home before curfew for all to end well.

As we walked, Kay gave me worried looks. Then she grabbed my hand and dragged me across the street—hoping mother wouldn’t drive by and see us together.

“Let’s go up the alleyway,” she cried, desperate for darkness to cover our supposed sins.

We should have taken my chariot.

Then, as we entered the narrow lane, she wrenched her hand from mine and left me like a leper.

“I don’t even know if I want to be with you anymore!” she yelled across the asphalt.

I winced at the ever-widening ocean that churned between us. Maybe I couldn’t handle her after all.

The next time I saw Kay I knew it was time to end things. It was a Sunday evening and the last remnants of the weekend swirled about the atmosphere as the light faded. Kay found herself stranded by the sea. I went to pick her up.

Half an hour later I found her on the boardwalk and said we needed to talk. An appropriate bench made itself available to us. From there we could look out over the water. It was twilight—the bridge between love and fear.

As we sat, Kay stared off into the horizon, avoiding conversation.

“Look at me!” I commanded.

“I’m watching the sunset,” she replied.

The sun was well past gone.

“I’m just trying to help you,” I said.

“You’re just trying to manipulate me,” she answered.

I couldn’t take it anymore.

“I’m breaking up with you,” I yelled.

Kay turned and looked at me in shock.

“Blah, blah, blah…!” My anger seeped out loud with grievances until it stopped.

Relieved, I drove her home.

But it wasn’t to end. A week later she came over to my house to hold me while I cried. I’d never done that with anyone. But first the news. She had gotten back together with her ex. That was quick. He was taking her to California like she had always dreamed.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever come back,” she murmured, as quiet as a mouse, afraid of the pain she knew I felt.

“Good for you,” I replied, lying as I stood frozen.

Then we laid down on my bed, and I let the tears for what would never be, come.

Grief gratified, I took Kay to watch Miyazaki animate Kiki’s Delivery Service at a local movie theater. I fidgeted with loneliness. Then I put my arm around Kay, and we snuggled. Loneliness left.

“Good clean wholesome fun,” she said when the movie ended.

Like Kiki, Kay dreamed of leaving home as a new witch. Only, she substituted boyfriends for broomsticks.

The weeks went by with birthdays bumbled. Kay was forced to spend hers with family up in Canada, while I spent mine alone.

When she came back I called her. We had an argument and hurled insults at each other—mine borne of despair, hers stemming from veiled fear.

“You’ll become depressed and suicidal again!” I said.

“Stop assuming things!” she replied.

“You use sex to validate your self-worth!”

“You’re not a mind reader!”

“You’re afraid of love!”

“I’m not some ‘thing’ for you to idolize. I’m not your savior!”

I realized it was my responsibility to turn this around. She was depending on me.

“Don’t you understand?” I said. “I didn’t know how to love myself until I met you.”

“Really?” she replied, her tenderness my ally.

“Of course,” I said. “I felt worthless until I met you. You made me feel beautiful for the first time.”

Her heart melted.

“I didn’t realize I could make anyone feel good,” she said.

“I didn’t mean any of those things I said to you,” I offered.

“I know,” she replied.

“I’ll always love you,” I told her.

“You know how I feel about you,” she said.

I messaged Kay a few days later.

“It’s my novel Gods, Girls and Monsters,” I said. “I want to change the character Kiera’s name to Nike. I want you to be her.”

Kiera was a homeless teenage faerie who guided the main character, Psyche, as she traversed a world full of magic.

“That makes sense. I always thought she was just like me,” Kay replied. “Guess what my nickname was when I was a child?”

“What?”

“Kiera!”

I saw her one last time, down by the quarry, where a wayward circus of lost souls was marking the end of summer love by performing Romeo and Juliet. Kay was crying. I stopped to ask what was wrong.

“He dumped me,” was all she could muster through the tears. “We were supposed to be headed to California today.”

I tried to hug her, but she resisted. Then she fled. Our love was dead.

I watched as she disappeared into the woods, going back to the only beings she trusted. My sorrow swelled, but instead of running after her, I decided to do both of us a favor. I got in my hearse and drove to her mother’s house. There I told Demeter about Kay and I’s relationship. She didn’t like it, but I didn’t care. I was no longer afraid.

This time, Mommy Dearest was the one who was desperate. She asked me if I knew where her daughter was. Kay had left a note that read: I’m going to the place where I’ll be loved forever.

“She needs me,” her mother implored.

“No, she doesn’t!” I said. “Your daughter’s with the spirits of the forest. They’re the only ones who ever made her feel safe, and that’s all she ever wanted.”

With that, I left the matriarch to fallow the fields, while I held the wings of a goddess who had all but disappeared from her heavenly pose. It wasn’t until many months later that I realized what had torn Kay and I apart. It was simple: we were both too scared to love. And when I think about her now, I just remember the faerie tales we lived by and how we almost made our dreams come true in the mist and rain of the Salish Sea.

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Eros Salvatore is a writer and filmmaker living in Bellingham, Washington. They have been published in the journals Anti-Heroin Chic and The Blue Nib among others, and have shown two short films in festivals. They have a BA from Humboldt State University. Their work can be seen, heard and read at https://erossalvatore.com/

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