“Likōkkālọk, Likōkkālọk. Come in, cousin. Our Pako is here with his mast between my legs! Come see!” Joḷọk said with sarcastic parody.
Kōkkālọk intruded defiantly into the house with a white kilt under one arm and holding her little girl, who was just past her keemem, in the other.
“Lijoḷọk, I didn’t expect to find you here. Are you aware it is my responsibility to welcome newcomers? Where’s your sister?”
“She has to sleep in Papa’s house one last night, so she gave me her shark to play with.”
With arresting casualness, Kōkkālọk sat down gracefully in front of them. She spread the beautiful kilt on the mat before them, her little girl sleepily crawling into her lap.
“Poor thing, she’s usually asleep by now. The tide held us up.”
“Oh sorry, I didn’t know you were coming,” Joḷọk said sarcastically. “I’m afraid you’re too late. His little eel has already spit at me twice. Ḷōpako, where are you hiding my pet eel?” she asked. She rested her head on her left forearm and reached her right hand between the slit of her skirts to privately handle his manhood. Caressed by her bare rear, it had popped out between the fibers of his kilt and begun to straighten. He tried everything he could imagine to stop it — except, of course, moving away and exposing himself to their visitor.
“I can’t seem to find it,” she lied. “Must be all shriveled up again. You know how they are, just like a baby. First they sit up, then they get angry, then they spurt a flood of tears, and then they go back to sleep again.”
“Funny girl. I came to welcome him with this kilt, not to sit on him!” Kōkkālọk said. “It is his first night on shore, and the man must be tired after all those days and nights at sea — and after saving everyone in that storm. The storm frightened me, and I was safe at home. I expected the roof would blow away as that first gust hit shore. It took me all day to clean up the mess that blew down on us.”
She spoke intelligently, in a soft and friendly manner, despite Joḷọk’s forward and sarcastic comments to her. In the dim flicker of the burning oil, she appeared to be a voluptuous woman of much beauty, with high cheekbones and immaculate tattoos of a different pattern from those of Liṃanṃan and her sister. But like theirs, hers ended in triangular designs in a straight line above her ample breasts, which had large, elongated nipples. She appeared taller and slightly plumper than the thinner island women he had met earlier at the kaṃōḷo. She wore small coils of plain pandanus-leaf earrings in her earlobes and sat straight backed, with an aura of dignity. Her complexion was very light, which accentuated her tattoos, and she had no scars or blemishes that he could see. Her Pohnpeian man had obviously never hit her. Ḷainjin knew these men well, understood the cultural differences, and was unsurprised by the story he had heard. Kōkkālọk sat for some time in silence, as though waiting respectfully for him to address her.
“Ḷōpako, I missed your kaṃōḷo, but I wanted to bring you this gift that I made for such an occasion. I am the irooj’s eldest niece. Please accept this, and wherever you wear it, think of me,” she said, sliding her sleeping child onto the mat and bending over her to drape the kilt over Joḷọk’s shoulder and back. She stared him in the eyes inquisitively. To him, she seemed pleasant, kind, and polite, not the man-eater Taknaṃ had described. He thanked her with his eyes.
Joḷọk, he would later learn, was worried that Kōkkālọk, wanting to be alone with him, was about to ask her to take the sleeping child to her father’s house — a request that, by custom, she could not refuse. As instructed by her sister, she pretended to fall asleep, making her body an obstacle between them. On his part, Ḷainjin was still trying, yet failing, to ignore the silent attack of her ticklish fingers and was still unable to move one way or the other.
The attractive woman continued to talk, even as Ḷainjin found it difficult to concentrate on what she was saying. “I live on the next islet. A current from the ocean separates us at the highest tide, so I was slow at getting word of your arrival. I got my skirts all wet crossing,” she said, as though she was about to take them off. Instead, she just sat there seductively, tempting his attention by very slowly pulling aside the slit of her wet woven skirts as though looking for something and exposing a little of the light skin of her thigh to his view. She looked at him again in silence after her last sentence, this time as though to probe the idea that there might not be an additional need for talk. He realized at that moment that she had caught his gaze and noticed that it had settled exactly where she wanted it. This, he realized, would only encourage her to proceed with her seduction, especially now that Joḷọk had abruptly dropped out of their duel. Of course, he was not as in control of the mind behind his gaze as she assumed, and she, of course, was not aware of what he was desperately attempting to keep inside himself that was about to burst out. For what she couldn’t see was exactly what Joḷọk was doing to him behind her skirts — caressing him with the light touch of her fingers, coaxing from him what she hoped would dampen any fire kindled by the woman sitting there before them with lust in her throat. It was the product of countless sun-stricken days and stormy, lonely nights fighting the elements with no thoughts other than to survive and no dreams other than those forgotten in deep, exhausted sleep.
Kōkkālọk slowly relaxed her head back and untied the bun of her long, black hair, causing it to fall with a gentle slap on the mat under her and release the pleasant, intoxicating fragrance of flower-scented coconut oil. She stared into his eyes and then slowly, purposefully drew back her skirts a little more. He watched her run her single middle fingers slowly up and then slowly down the part of her thigh she was exposing to him. His mind was out of control, watching what his eyes longed to see yet jumping from one vision to the next, struggling to concentrate on anything that might distract him from what Joḷọk was secretly and tenderly trying to accomplish. Perhaps interpreting the distracted, tortured expression on his face as intense desire for her, Kōkkālọk decided to go all out and lay her story before him first so he would have no excuse for refusing her bidding later.
“Ḷōpako, I have a feeling my cousins have already warned you about my problem. I live with a man who was a bad choice. Though he is the father of my daughter, I want him out of my life — dead, chased off… I do not care. Dead is better, I suppose, but only because I would otherwise forever live in fear that he would one day return. I loathe the mat he sleeps on. My problem is that, though many men on this island desire me and though I have given myself to too many of them already, none will stand up to him. They allow me to pleasure them beyond their wildest dreams, and once they reach ecstasy, they only talk of me, but they never look me in the eyes again. I have come to think of the men of this island as cowards. Every day they rub themselves with coconut oil, bun up their hair, and peer into reflections of their ear piercings. Now you come to us, and you are a different sort of man — a seafarer, a man every woman has been waiting for, a man who can choose among us all. Yet who is the first to appear at your door? The most desperate. I know. I have no shame. If I had any pride left, I would have waited till you had already taken the best of them and then offered myself as a humble dessert after you had already eaten your fill. Ḷōpako, it shall be thus if you wish!
“Oh look, your little plaything there has fallen asleep. Young girls always fall asleep before their men reach their full potential to be pleasured.”
He lay there listening intently with his mind racing, hearing but not comprehending. His gaze fixated on her finger as she looked into his eyes, assuming she had him hooked as she slowly tickled the inside of her thigh, back and forth, each cycle getting closer, each cycle exposing more of the lighter and lighter skin to him. Finally, the moment came when she lifted one knee into the air, slid her hand down between her legs, and — he imagined — began to pleasure herself, believing she had him totally captivated. What she did not know was that his body, at that moment, was shuddering in complete surrender to Joḷọk�
��s expert encouragement. How many seasons of built-up pressure had come rushing out the eye of her fist as she squeezed gently again and again and again? His eyes rolled back and closed. At that moment, Kōkkālọk must have decided he was ripe to pick, and so she stood up and extended her hand to him.
“Come, Ḷōpako. Follow me into the garden while she sleeps. I’ll show you everything you long to see and cause you to feel everything you long to feel.”
That was when Joḷọk extended her hand instead, still warm and wet with his seed, and jerked herself up at Kōkkālọk’s expense. Ḷainjin sat up and covered himself with his new kilt. Then, standing there between them, Joḷọk announced triumphantly, “The little ṃaj just spit on me for the third time, imagine that! He must be exhausted now. Why don’t you come back tomorrow and we’ll talk some more?”
“Lijoḷọk, you are a very funny girl. Thank you, I will be back. I promise.” Then, as predicted, she said, “Can you carry my daughter to your father’s house now and put her to sleep? We will stay there tonight.”
As soon as Joḷọk left, Kōkkālọk sat down on the mat next to him, spread her legs, and surprised him by wiping his seed from his sleeping mat with the selfsame fingers she had used to intrigue him. Then, lying back, knees up and tawny thighs exposed, she turned her face to his, puckered her ample lips, and implanted it. Seductively maintaining his attention, she resumed pleasuring herself. “It’s a shame young girls are so wasteful!” she said softly, stroking herself and twisting her hips back and forth as if to work his seed deep down into herself. “She teased it out of you, but you meant it for me, didn’t you?” She was somewhat distracted, as she appeared to be concentrating on what she was doing to herself. He didn’t answer and, in fact, had not said a single word to her since thanking her for the kilt with his eyes. For all she knew, he was a gawking imbecile, but she had him totally captivated as she closed her eyes momentarily and then, apparently satisfied, smiled with unfeigned embarrassment.
As she sat up, she said, “Do I love men? I do. But do they love me? No!” Lowering her voice to a whisper, she said, “Don’t be ashamed by our little affair. I promise to keep any news of the secret soup we blended together strictly to myself. Ḷōpako, please do not think poorly of me. I’m just a desperate woman who snatches pleasure into her unhappy life as best she can.”
They were sharing a few moments of silence when they heard a bit of footfall outside. Soon thereafter, Joḷọk reentered and Kōkkālọk stood up to present her parting words. “I know you desire Liṃanṃan, and Joḷọk offers” — she turned to her — “additional enticements. But don’t be afraid to think of me if you ever wiggle from their embrace. After all, you know what they say,” she said, glancing at the spot on the mat where his seed had spilled. “Ṃōṃaan ṃaj.”
As she left, Joḷọk put a furrow into her brow for an extended period to show disdain for her cousin’s actions. “She’ll climb over everything to sit on top of you! Just because she admitted what she is up to does not mean she can be trusted! Do you trust your sharks? I do not think so! She is a man-eater! Ask anyone and they’ll confirm it.
“Here, take this out.” She turned her back to him. He saw that someone had slid a small, double-edged rajraj down her skirts in the middle of her back. “Don’t scratch me!” she said, sucking in her little tummy and making room for him to pull back on her skirts and carefully remove the short, sharp weapon. He ran his finger across the many small shark teeth lashed on both sides above the shank of the ripper’s edges.
“What am I supposed to do with this?”
She turned, her big eyes smiling. “Cut her throat if she comes back!” she joked.
He frowned in disagreement.
“Liṃanṃan sent that to you. Likōkkālọk’s Pohnpeian man followed her here and watched from the far side of the path. He is crazy with jealousy and might kill you while you sleep. My brother and his friends are guarding outside.”
Ḷainjin snickered at the thought.
“True, they are no match for him, but they will keep fires burning in the front and at the back. I’m to snuff out all the light inside,” Joḷọk continued, going from shell to shell and covering each one with another to quench the lights. Then all was dark inside save for the light of the fires burning outside and seeping sharply, here and there, into the darkened room. She sat next to him in the dim light, took the rajraj, and placed it under the edge of his sleeping mat. “There, that’s ready for you. You can sleep now. I will sit and watch, and if he comes in, I will wake you, and you must defend yourself before his eyes adjust to the dark.
“It’s a good plan, don’t you think?”
Ḷainjin — or at least the ocean creature part of him — was still struggling to adjust to the pretentious drama of island life sprouting around him. He had flopped over onto his back, part of him about to laugh and the other to cry. The freedom he had once felt had begun slowly fading from the moment his feet stepped ashore.
“Liṃanṃan says Father has agreed to bring her to you tomorrow, so that means tonight will be our last night together.” Joḷọk’s darkened silhouette whispered to him as she ran her hand over his bicep and then squeezed it as she had before. “Of course, once she gets pregnant — which shouldn’t take long, right? — she will need me to watch over you again. Already she treats me with great importance! Everyone will be talking about us, Ḷōpako. Your arrival has raised my stature! Now let me know when ḷōṃaj is ready to stand and get angry again! Those things are so much fun; I cannot think of anything I would rather play with! This time, let me know if he wants me to do it fast or slow. Grandma says every ṃaj wants it different, and some want it different each time. So don’t be reluctant to guide me. I am sure Liṃanṃan can’t wait to get at that thing, but tonight I have ḷōṃaj all to myself.”
He turned away from her, too mentally exhausted to comment on her girlish gibberish. He was ashamed of himself for allowing the flirtatious prattler to dominate him so completely — and for letting the ripe, provocative one swipe his seed as he watched, captivated and unwilling to stop her. He had a mind to launch his canoe out into the peaceful lagoon nightscape, and it would not have been the first time he abandoned an entrapment his manhood had led him into.
Joḷọk left him lying there and began to quietly pace the room, probably wondering how her sister expected her to stay awake and wondering why this newcomer was different from all the boys who could not get enough of her. He, still lying there, began to wonder how much time it would take for a man’s eyes to adjust to the dim, reflected light in the room. An attacker would come through the garden and pause there until his eyes adjusted. “Their plan would only work if someone outside called out,” he thought. Then, as he fondled the pendants on the necklace around his neck, he thought, “Surely, as the irooj told me, I am under his protection so this madman Paratak will not attack me under this roof.” Although he didn’t expect to need their help, he was amused that fate had led him into a circumstance where this temptress and the very men he had punished so harshly that afternoon were now in charge of protecting him. Again he slept, but this time, his sleep was lighter, perhaps due to the threat of attack in the dark. He woke often, sometimes hearing Joḷọk laughing with the men outside, sometimes feeling her presence in the dark next to him.
Finally, toward morning, he slept much more soundly as he sweated through his usual nightmares and then, as he was wont to do, grew hard redreaming his often-dreamt tryst with Wisina on the island of Satawan. He was not sure what that name meant; unfortunately, he had never bothered to ask her father. They had been friends, and Ḷainjin found his daughter to be most intriguing. The grandmothers of that place had a tradition of enlarging young women’s clitorises by repeatedly funneling a kallep into the hole of an empty coconut water-shell and placing the mouth of the shell on the spot they wanted to enlarge. Because he and the grandmothers did not understand each other’s tongues, the only explanation he interpreted was “h
urt bad but make feel good.” Hurt bad indeed. Like every other person among the islands, he had been bitten by these aggravating creatures and could not imagine encouraging one to attack, let alone in a sensitive place like that. But then he had learned from experience that each island group had found its own curious way to satisfy the lustful cravings of its men, though not always so its women.
One afternoon, Wisina had led him to a secluded spot near the ocean side of the atoll that she seemed well familiar with. He would never forget the boastful grin on her innocent face as she dropped her skirts onto a natural seat in the stone formation. Then she lay back, spread her legs, and parted herself to expose her proudly developed treasure to his view. He remembered her looking down at it, and then looking up into his eyes and then down and up again, raising her eyebrows in consent and nodding her head rapidly to indicate what she wanted him to do. As usual, he dreamt he was kneeling before her, touching the knuckle of his index finger to the moist pink gap between her dark brown lips, gently massaging the enlarged tissue between. It was their way. Every man talked about it and encouraged him to try. Every little boy jokingly pressed his knuckle into the arm or back of his playmate.
She was wet from the moment she spread her lips. As he touched her, he always wondered whether she was able, with a thing like that, to get wet just walking with a man. Though Ḷainjin was well versed in this art, this was the one and only time he had the opportunity to perform the task, and as always, he started out with a very gentle up and down motion, careful to keep his knuckle moist by wetting it on his downward strokes and applying the increasing pressure she seemed to want with his upward strokes against the swollen tissue that was obviously the center of her pleasure. Wisana eventually put her hand on his wrist to make him aware that she wanted even more and even faster pressure. As he recalled, this was not a short task by any means, and one he might have been tempted to give up on except for the intriguing expression of pleasure on her face. He heard again the curious, rapid, and enticing sounds of her sucking air between her tongue and the roof of her mouth, and anticipated the expected finale, when she would burst into intimate urination.
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