Loss of Innocence in the Lighthouse

I called it the ‘lighthouse.’ Down the years he had held my hand, ‘handled me with care’ and helped me inside the loft of his mansion with sloping red tin roofs. I had never hesitated in my step for he was known to be the big neighbourly brother, my safety mantle ever since I was six and he twenty. Anyone would think it was threaded in consanguinity but our association was not lineal.

Today he was supporting me from the hindquarters, pushing me up the spiral stairway like a racquet serving a tennis ball. He was leaving that night for his duty station, but before that he had to give me the Shrewsbury biscuit tin he had saved in that dramatic sensual free space he called his studio. Turruttttt!!! The wooden stool slipped as he lunged to fetch the biscuit tin from the veneer bamboo cabinet. He fell in a heap, his outstretched arms around me and his head a pendant to my bosom. I was crushed under the weight of this Atlantic bear and as we rolled on the floor, I felt frissons. Crushed in body and heart, the warrior in me fought with reason in the battlefield of passion. No! No! No! This is out of plan! He buys me Barbies and candies! I can’t be his belle! Meanwhile he engaged his fingers in a circular band around my silken strands and released them in sweeps of tenderness. His fingers now lay caved over my heart and slid deeper, wiping away all boundaries in seconds. That was the loss of my innocence, my emotions in floss. His olive green uniform’s reflection was a luminous filigree on the oriel window glass. “You are in uniform!” I managed in racing urgency. “Holy Cow!” I heard him mumble, “Yes! Respect for the uniform!” The steam dampened and the vapours cooled off. He got up sobered in his sopping uniform, extending a hand, grafting his lover presence forever in my heart. We were Minivets, leaders of a bird wave flying liberally across the blue tent, him in red and me sunshine yellow. Love doesn’t follow convention and is a therapy all by itself, even if the price is losing innocence. Skewed relationships carrying new meanings, who’s to comment acceptable or not!? I know somewhere in his wallet, in the plastic separators, I stayed as a frayed out photograph for a long time and who knows maybe even today!? I just know that the hands that lovingly pulled a moppet’s ribbon braids, held the strings to her heart; as it flew out of the loft window that night to rise like a light balloon higher and higher.

Did it matter that later down the years a male ‘boner’ in an arrow piercing thrust, entered to explore eve’s garden of fertility!? The sensation was not original if not stale. I did get filled up as a woman. Yet, the loss of innocence on my page was a vulnerable drop in the vast expanse of the ocean, where one leaps and loses to the unknown.