#01 Saltwater
San Vito Lo Capo and Trapani 07.05.24
This essay + some of these images were published in the 42nd (and final) issue of Silly Gal Mag in September 2024. I did a reading of it at the launch party at Pretty Garden Club on the 12th. Thank you, Lucia!
Saltwater is particularly sexual and immediate. Not just because it tastes like blood and sweat and semen—it tastes like our vitality. Not just because we taste saltwater and think of pasta and fish and things that drip down our chins and now our mouths are watering. Not just because being by and in saltwater often means being naked or near naked with people who are dear—and strangers. Knees, arms, feet, hair, half a nipple, seen one-way through sunglasses. And in Italy, women of any age and size in bikinis. Not just because of the cooling, biting sensation of swimming in cool water and the way it makes your breath short and loud.
There is something nurturing and touching about the way saltwater buoys you up, holds you, despite the fact that you are so small and can see so far. There is a euphoria to seeing as far as the eye can see, which is not common unless looking at the ocean. In San Vito, you have the vastness of the sea and the immenseness of the rocky mountain that make you stand, in the water, with your mouth hanging open in genuine awe, trying to catch your breath.
I see bras and underwear and beer bottles among the rubbish at the end of the dirt road that leads to the salt flats in Trapani. We go with Salvatore, whose family has owned these flats for generations. He has eyes that are so light blue they feel like saltwater eyes, bleached by the sun like the buildings in his city. We do not understand everything he says, which he finds funny, and we must fill in the gaps with our own imaginations. Salt flats mean physical labour in August, which we cannot conceive of in the May wind. We cannot conceive of this labour partly because the way Salvatore describes it, “fatto a mano,” gives no indication of what that labour looks like. In any case, salt flats mean touching pools of pink crystals with a mano that is already salty with sweat. They mean gingerly eating a some of this pink salt from Salvatore’s dark hand. In my head, I see these discarded undergarments and bottles as evidence of someone who knows this is a place where people do not go at night. I imagine a 15-year-old, maybe he is from a small town on the way to San Vito and he has come to Trapani to make money to send home to his mother and large family or maybe he is a Salvatore-like young son of the salt flat family. He knows this is a place where people do not go at night, he also knows his way around the maze of the flats, and balances well as he jumps from cement block to driftwood piece and maybe across the canal. In my mind, he had his first sexual experience here. He leads the girl by the hand. I say some of this to Jonathan and he says the words “hot salt flat fuck” in a specific way. I cannot assign that descriptor to our 15-year-old’s first time, which was probably awkward, scared, and maybe tender, but it might be appropriate for his other times or for other fucks by other people that happened here.
I wonder if, on those hot August days, our boy lies in the shallow salt flats and feels buoyant in that heavily concentrated water. Or perhaps by then the salt is so concentrated that it is unswimmable or unlieable. I’m sure he would get in trouble if someone saw him. I wonder if he goes there at night time alone, lies on the ground and smells the air and looks at the stars.
When I got some black shit on my leg, Salvatore gave me a piece of tissue to wipe it and insisted on throwing this in the canal with the assertion that it would dissolve. He knows what he can and cannot get away with here. He tells us we cannot get dirty because we will get his car dirty. On the way back into town, there are four of us squished in the back seat, touching.
Last summer, in Ocean Grove, late at night, friends tried to skinny dip. I felt so small, so cold, so, so afraid in that water. I couldn’t go in. The seawater splashed harshly into my eyes. When we walked back I cried salt tears, bare feet between pavement cracks. I felt like I had gone up against something so terrifying, the ocean was telling me something that I didn’t want to hear. I felt, truly, like some universal force was against me. I thought of a dear family member and convinced myself that something horrible had happened to her.
Last night in San Vito, while running from dinner to the sea to skinny dip, Olivia cut her foot badly on a rock and we had to go home dry and fully clothed.
This morning, while out far enough that the water was deep, Ruby, Olivia, and I took off our swim suits and floated together. We felt very free and laughed. Beck and Jonathan faced away, gentlemanly denying our nakedness. Their wet bare backs, nevertheless, a part of our saltwater experience.
