Seashell Servitude

Miami International's Concourse E for overseas arrivals is thrumming on Friday afternoon at four. A kaleidoscopic melange of humanity. Did I just see chickens and goats? I had raced to the airport from a morning of looking at condos in Miami Beach and downtown on Brickell Avenue. Buyer's market doesn't begin to describe it. GPS guided me and my rented Sebring convertible without a hitch and I had plenty of time to indulge my passion for waiting. Waiting for She who visits me.

I found a little gift for her in one of the cookie cutter concourse shops and took up watch just where she would walk out. Security guards kept shooing me away as people toting luggage swarmed out and long snaking lines of shiny metal pushcart carriers were guided back toward baggage claim. I bobbed and weaved like a nervous flyweight stretching on the turnbuckle for a first glimpse of her.

My ringtone, the Ramones "I Wanna Be Sedated", sounds and I'm on it like a quick little bird dog.

"Just cleared customs", she announces cheerily.

"Walk straight out, no turns and you'll run right into me." I chirp hopefully.

Of course I see her first. She's wearing a light blue, short sleeved cotton blouse and a pleated white skirt. Her shoes are pointy toed little flat beige numbers with gold hasps on the vamps. Straight from the office to the plane.

She spots me, veers my way quickly and gives me the sweetest hug ever.

I had snuck upstairs minutes before and gotten her little gift. This rendez-vous had been like giving birth. I'd picked one of those plastic tags the size and heft of a light switch cover that distinquish your bag from all the other black, ballistic-nylon ones. Hers was lime green and it said - "Are We There Yet?". I presented it.

"Awww ... you couldn't get it in pink?"

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Our very sexy, hip hotel on Ocean Drive in SoBe had all sorts of intimate little nooks and crannys to it. A veritable canoodlers heaven. Despite my 1-800-HOTELS cheapskate booking, Marisol the very lovely concierge had upgraded me my first night to a deluxe, ocean view room. Trouble was, I was right next to the AC which made an awful and erratic grinding noise all night long. "She" has problems with insomnia and I knew it wouldn't work. So the next morning, a day before her arrival, I begged to be moved.

"My wife, who I haven't seen in months will kill me if she has to bear that noise."

Voila! I am given a suite for no extra charge!

She and I arrive from the airport and I am told to draw her bath. In the marble spa-like wing of our opulent weekend abode is a massive, overflow jacuzzi tub with a view of the beach.

"Get naked and make my bath hot!", she commands as she strips off her innocent little office uniform.

I fiddle with the temperature as she slips in. I'm on day fifteen of on-my-honor chastity. It fills with an oft corrected blend - a perfect mix of hot and cold.

"Okay, you can come in if you take up only a tiny, little corner of my bath."

We spend what seems like hours talking and laughing until the room is lit only by street light.

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The next morning we leave early, top down. Sanibel Island, She's holy grail of a shrimp-shaped shelling atoll, is 3 hours from South Beach. I really couldn't quite get why she was so fixated on making a day trip there. I'd been before and liked it okay, but it isn't sexy, sultry Miami.

The ride is a veritable straight shot from the Atlantic to the Gulf of Mexico across the entire state on the ribbon of I-75. It's just so easy and fun spending time together. I'm a contented chauffeur. Once there we drive across the Sanibel Causeway which connects the island to the subprime decimated Fort Myers sprawl. We hit the visitors center then go directly on to the beach.

Sporting her red flower bikini and toting two sets of masks and snorkels but only one set of her serious diver fins, She initiates me into seashell servitude. I'm a pasty white New Yorker and She is a sun hardened island girl. Feigning resentment, she slathers my back with Banana Boat 30 sunblock. Into the water we go. It's been years since I've been in the sea. I grew up a Philly boy and summered at the Jersey shore. I love the ocean but I've never been a great swimmer. As She fins powerfully out toward a buoy in the distance, I gamely follow.

Sanibel Island draws vistors the world over for the large amount of shells washed up on its shores. It's a barrier island which acts like a shelf for masses of clustering seacritter carcasses. For six straight hours She single handedly attempts to substantially deplete the shell population of the island. Okay, I helped a bit too. But, it's a wonder just to watch her. She's a master diver. Her fins point straight to the sky as she dives down 20 - 30 feet. She has amazing breath control and is gone from the surface for huge chunks of time. While I doggy paddle in the kiddie pool shallows, She retrieves from the deep one amazing huge conch shell, after perfect colorful lightening welk, after delicate white sand dollar.

Again and again I hyperventilate and hold, struggle mightly to the sandy floor and desperately grab a shell. After I collect an offering I find her. We meet suspended under water and I open my hands. She inspects each shell and either accepts it into her large lingerie bag or summarily rejects it back to the bottom. It thrills me when She keeps my briny little submissions.

We do this all day, Mistress Frogperson and me.

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Our drive back to Miami in the pitch black night is punctuated by fierce lightening storms in the distance. Our talk fits with the comfortable and natural ease of old friends.

SoBe in it's Saturday night, throbbing, house music glory. We make it past the first velvet rope at the entrance to our hotel, but the guy at the second checkpoint inside stops us until one of the workers recognizes me as a guest. We are immediately motioned through. The catwalk for the hot fashion show ends right in front of the elevator. Two models dressed like futuristic dommes strut their fetishy stuff.

"Are we in the right place or what?" I burst.

"Upstairs with you, shell boy!" she leers.

She takes up in the glass encased shower stall and cleans thirty pounds of multi-hued shells. I'm told to put towels on the floor of the adjacent toilet and bidet paddock.

"Lay out the shells to dry but leave me a pathway." she says as she compulsively scrubs clean her haul.

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The next morning as she sits and blow drys her hair in front of the enormous mirror, I furiously worship her sand chaffed red toes and her well tanned feet while I lay prone, grinding my aching cock on the cool marble floor.

"Give me your hand!"

She squirts out a huge dollop of sunblock which splats heavily onto my palm.

"You'll never think of Banana Boat in the same way again," she laughs, as I greedily end my streak at sixteen in a frenzied and grateful hand humping pathos of pure pleasure.

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I drop her curbside at the Caribbean departure concourse and lift her heavy shell bag from the car trunk. As taxis and travelers whirl around us we hold each other and she kisses me lightly.

"You know I sort of love you too." she whispers confessionally.

Abruptly she walks off purposefully into the skycaps and the outdoor check-in stands. Her pink and lime green bag heavily laden with her treasures is slung effortlessly from her shoulder. My gift, attached to one of its straps, swings easily as she walks. We were there. There indeed.

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With Lil' Wayne blaring his extraterrestrial brand of hip-hop, I gun the rental Sebring up I-95 to Fort Lauderdale, to my JetBlue return, to the sorrow and sadness of my disintegrating marriage.