Ferry Crossing

I caught the ferry from Copenhagen over a section of the North Sea on my way to Berlin, where I was to stay for nearly a week. I recall finding myself rather fond of such excursions over bodies of water, always rocking passengers back and forth atop the surf as the morning sun illuminates its own sparkling reflection. I always seemed to learn something about myself.

On this occasion, as I sat with an apple Danish and a steaming cup of coffee on the outer deck, where the wind skimmed the steam off the cream-brown liquid surface in lateral gusts, I took notice of a girl (about my age, but no younger than 20), who was balancing herself quite precariously on the railing that separated tentative ferry-goers from the white turbulence beneath the ship. She poised herself on two palms as her feet steadied any compromising force of wind or wave, baring the flesh of her face to the spray of the North Sea.

Quite intrigued, I admit I stared rather conspicuously at the intrepid young female as her Danish blonde hair danced about her face like a banner of courage. She wore black tights that clung to shapely thighs beneath a black skirt, which also waved dramatically in the breath of the ocean, and a loosely fitting azure blouse, eerily similar to the color of the water as it looked as a backdrop to her feat. Following a particularly heavy gust, which nearly blew the pastry from my hand, her blouse came untucked from the skirt, revealing a sliver of her lower back.

From between undulations of the fabric in the wind, I noticed quite an elaborate illustration forming from her slender hips, but branching into what must have covered her entire posterior. At this time, a concerned citizen (female, aging ungraciously) approached her and expressed her discomfort with the girl’s brazen disregard for the potential of harm. In a way that both worried and excited me, she grinned quite disrespectfully in the face of this woman and returned immediately to her post.

She smiled into the breath of the ocean, squinting her eyes ever so slightly, and breathing deep life’s most potent elixir. She was as a goddess of the ocean: calm, quiet amidst the storm of societal coercion, which seemed to be gaining steam amongst the crowd on deck – but not from me. No, I sat rather serenely, occasionally sipping my now lukewarm coffee, watching, waiting.

A moment later, or what seemed it, we passed under a dark cloud that swirled the air more voraciously than before. It tugged at the girl’s loose-fitting blouse, as if it wanted stubbornly to return it to the place where it looked to have originated (with the wind, it did almost perfectly resemble the surface of the water). It spun around her torso, lifted almost to her breasts, which were thrust towards the emanating presence of the North Sea, then sank just as suddenly, covering the tapestry at her back. Glimpses were all I could garner of the masterpiece, frustrating as it was.

Suddenly I was filled with a verve, an intense desire to gaze upon the intricate ink painting that seductively graced the camber of her shoulders down to the curve of her buttocks. I stood, leaving my now cold cup of coffee, and strolled with as great a level of nonchalance as I could produce towards the ship’s exquisitely organic figurehead, who remained locked in her trance with the sea. I took a step and the wind brushed the fabric from her back. I stepped and the wind threw it back down. Another step, I could see the strap of her brazier covering a section of the landscape. Another step, her skirt heaved from beneath and obscured the image.

Surely she wouldn’t mind if I held back the fabric for a moment. Would she even notice? Even if she did, would it really matter? Everyone watched as the air undressed and redressed her. She seemed to pay no attention, and besides, my curiosity burned within the pit of my solar plexus. I reached out my hand, attempting to hold up the ocean blue cloth long enough to get a look at the part of the girl’s soul she wanted every lover to be able to see. My hand grazed the fabric when a man in uniform arrived and shot me a look of approval before stepping in between us.

The attendant informed her that it was not permissible to be on the railing, that she must return her feet to the deck. She did so begrudgingly before smoothing out her blouse over her torso and glancing at me with remarkable unfamiliarity, then walked briskly, as if just waking from a lingering dream, back into the ferry.

I returned to my seat defeated, finished the cold cup of coffee in one gulp, and tried frantically to learn something about myself.