The persistence of wind

On a wild West Auckland beach, sand stained black by volcanic ash, the wind is howling in my ears. Hair flies about my head, Medusa like. I can barely walk the gusts are so strong. Four of us hold hands and laugh and tilt forward, held in the hands of the wind. The waves

exploding against the shoreline match the intensity. The ocean has always enticed and repelled me with equal measure. Its power terrifying, its peace intoxicating.

On a different day, in a different year, the wind is calm. With my best friend Celia in tow I’m making my way from the bush clad hills of Titirangi into Auckland city. This is the days before Britomart so the train deposits us 20 minutes from the city centre. We venture first to McDonalds to fuel ourselves for the journey. At 14 we are teetering on the edge of adolescence. Perhaps sensing the demise of our childhood, we visit the giant indoor ball pit.

Celia is tiny, looking more 12 than 14, and my chubby adolescent legs covet her slim limbs. At some point we both notice that a man is watching us.

“You girls are a bit old to be playing in the ball pit aren’t you” he jokes.

Words injected with a sinister humour. An invisible link instantly forms between Celia and myself. Without speaking we both know to leave. Out in the fresh air we feel we are free. We do not notice that we are being followed.

But then he is there on the footpath, the man from McDonalds, beady eyes staring at us from his pudgy face. His van is idling on the side of the road. He has the audacity to look sheepish. As though he were a boy in some shitty teen rom-com about to ask the love interest to the dance. But he is no boy.

Excited, yet nervous, like a lab rat seeking a treat, he puts forth a proposal.

“I think you’re both really beautiful. And if you want, I’d like to offer you $500 to come spend some time in a hotel room with me.”

We’re standing on the edge of a busy two lane highway, but the sound has been sucked out, like an ocean on the verge of a tsunami. An instant to react or be swept away. Yet I stand paralysed. I will forever be grateful to Celia in that moment.

“Uh thank you” she says (politely!) and in the same breath says, “I’m sorry” (as though we were the ones to transgress).

“My mother is waiting for us” she lies and points vaguely at some parked cars.

Hit with a warning zap of electricity, the rat scurries away.

*

The rain in Bougainville is the kind only found in tropical places. Standing on my second-floor balcony I watch the skies turn purple, like the belly of an aubergine. The humidity is unbearable but a slight breeze blows up from the ocean, just out sight beyond the coconut trees. This is no gentle pitter patter of tiny rain feet. It arrives as a fully formed storm hurtling through a vortex and unleashed upon the earth. All sound is swallowed up beneath the white noise of water as the ground becomes a paddling pool for the village children. If you are ever to be caught in a downpour this is the kind you want. The drops are fat and juicy and deliciously warm, like an el fresco shower. It leaves as swiftly as it comes leaving only the smell of petrichor in its wake.

A man they claim is long long or ‘scratched’ has been following me home lately. His family owns the mechanics that is directly on my path to and from work. He can see me coming and will walk ahead, to hide in the bushes and watch me. His chubby belly dangles over the edge of his jeans. His eyes are bloodshot and his hair unkempt. I never hear him speak.

The day I see him staring at me from the dense bush on the side of the road, with his pants around his ankles is the day I scream at him to “Fuck off.”

I feel so afraid that one time as, in a somewhat ridiculous move, I carry a knife in my bag as I walk to the corner store. The day has faded past dusk. Two men with torches escort me home after they spy the scratched man ambling his way into the bushes to wait. For me.

He eventually stops the stalking but I still have to pass him each day. As I walk the road to work his eyes burn a hole in my body. The intensity of his gaze far greater than the sun that beats down on me.

*

I’m cruising through Halong Bay, limestone cliffs sticking up from the water like broken teeth. Hundreds of boats disturb the peace of the water, the low hum of their motors creating a discordant chorus. They churn through the water, determined sperm ready to impregnate an egg, or, in this case, converge en masse at the “Amazing cave”. This brobdingnagian wonder stretches far back into the cliff, but its beauty is hard to appreciate with conveyer belt tourism in full effect. The tour includes a swim in the waters of Halong Bay. Its surface is a rainbow sheen of spilled petrol and I long for the wild waves of home.

Later, on a night train that is snaking its way from Hanoi to Sapa, the landscape outside remains hidden. My sleeper cabin is occupied by an incredibly friendly, albeit rambunctious Vietnam version of the Von Trapp Family singers. They’re on their way to a singing competition and our cabin is their new practice space. I’m the odd one out on the top bunk. But their enthusiasm makes up for the non-stop music.

Close to midnight and the songs still strong, I excuse myself and head to the bathroom. The passage way is narrow and a young man passes by in the opposite direction. We turn our bodies parallel, the small space forcing intimacy. That’s when it happens.

This is not a light, opportunistic clutch. His fingers are jammed up hard inside my crotch. Ifeel each digit. The fabric of my jeans becomes the only barrier between us. Its over in a second. I doubt he had time to blink. But the feeling of his fat, greedy fingers will never dissipate. He is about to pass into the next carriage. Only then am I able to force out “Hey!”

It’s a struggle to shout, like trying to scream inside a nightmare.

He does not look back.

*

Until I moved to Wellington I didn’t think I could resent the wind. But some days it can be exhausting. It wears me down. Fills my ears with an endless vacuum till they ache. I stumble from a violent push. My eyes are wet from its constant barrage. Sometimes I wish the wind would move on from this place and leave me in peace. With a mirror ocean to look out on and sink beneath. Where it would be quiet and still. Empty. A liquid armour.

But the wind is persistent.

I’ve left my friends and make my way down Courtney Place, food on my mind. Mr Circle, a tiny kiosk tucked away at the end of the street, reminds me of Taiwan and I place my order. A man is lurking in my peripheral vision, perhaps he too is struck by the midnight munchies. But the persistence of his focus forces me to fix my eyes firmly ahead on the woma preparing my order.

He starts to talk.

“How’s it going? God you’re beautiful.”

A stranger at midnight telling you how beautiful you are is never the compliment they make it out to be. At first he is an annoyance to ignore. But he persists.

“You really are so beautiful”

You stare straight ahead.

“Why don’t you just take a walk down to the waterfront with me?” he suggests.

“No thanks” I refuse.

“Don’t worry” he jests, “I’m not going to rape you.”

Words which reveal that he knows this is a possibility. (But hey he’s not that kind of guy, wink, wink, nudge, nudge). He’s smirking, under the delusion that he has said something infinitely clever.

In that moment I can’t find my voice. My food comes, and he leaves but I fear he hasn’t really gone. Huddled in a doorway, watching laughing bodies pass by in a blur, my hands shake so much I can’t eat. In the taxi home fear transforms to rage. My voice returns and I think of all the things I wanted to say but couldn’t.

In the safety of my mind I yell at him. Scream how inappropriate it is to joke to a woman, who is alone, that you won’t rape her. As though this is something she should be grateful for. As though calling a woman beautiful is all she needs to follow you into the darkness.

Internally I shout a stream of expletives, my ire ignited. The man of my imagination is admonished.

In reality he has probably moved on to someone else.

*

It doesn’t surprise me that nature and women are often conflated. That the Earth has been feminised and called mother. Women’s bodies too have been violated. Possessed. Desecrated. Just as humans feel a false sense of entitlement to the Earth and all its resources so too do men feel entitled to our flesh. I feel all the wrath of an Earth that has been taken for granted for too long.

I don’t believe this is men’s true nature.

But some days the wind is just too strong.