Mirror-Neuron Autoeroticism

After breakfast, we laced up our shoes. No roads, no cars, no rush. Just a few sandy paths that traced lines across the small island. An overgrown animal track led through juniper bushes into a long-abandoned garden with overgrown beds, a ruined wooden bench, the remains of a rabbit hutch, and a wind-leaning cottage.

On the door hung a sign:

“Trespassers will be reported. But maybe not today.”

The wood holding the latch was so rotten it crumbled under the slightest touch. We entered a room that had been used as an office at least half a century ago. I blew the dust off a folder full of letters, written by Seamus Ó Cearbhaill.

One letter began with the verse:

“You think I am gone. But I have only grown quiet. You no longer hear me because the world is too loud.”

The folder contained topographical sketches. One point marked a “wave shaft,” another “old radio station.” Between the pages lay a key – and a photograph. It showed two men, grim-faced, in front of an antenna, beneath in pencil: “Summer 1944 – Dúnmara is listening.”

We discovered a trapdoor, hidden under a rug, animalishly mangled. We opened it carefully. A narrow staircase led down into darkness. The air that hit us from below smelled of salt, metal, and mildew. I did not hesitate; my hand closed around the key. You trained the flashlight into the cellar blackness. The steps were uneven, wet, sprouted with roots.

The corridor opened into a rock chamber. Rusted military equipment lined the walls; in a corner stood the frame of a metal bunk. Then there was a door.

The key fit.

A click. The old lamps on the ceiling flickered on. At the center of the room stood a tape recorder. I recognized it immediately: a Magnetophon K7, developed by AEG and BASF for the Wehrmacht. Twenty years ahead of its time. The British had only wire recorders.

Apparently, Germans had been here during World War II, and their traces had never been removed.

I pressed play. A crackling sound filled the room… Suddenly, a second device activated, showing activity sums. An antique oscilloscope came to life. A line began to flicker and dance in response to a signal. Where could it be coming from?

The signal pulsed irregularly.

You pulled me from the vault. In the office, I reflexively grabbed the folder. I wanted to write an article about the mysterious “island office” for a microhistory journal.

*

A peacock butterfly fluttered in the fern. The air smelled of seaweed, peat, and earth. We wandered down to Shell Beach. The sand was chalk-white, flecked with tiny shells. The water was crystal clear—turquoise in the coves, emerald green against the rocks.

The beach was ours alone. We embraced in the water. It was too cold for more in the sea. You kissed me passionately with trembling lips while I clung to you, unanchored. The goosebumps caused by the cold were indistinguishable from goosebumps of desire. That surprised me. The indistinguishability of pleasure and pain—of course it comes from our most primal programming. We are survival machines. Within us live routines millions of years old.

You untied the bow of my bikini top. We were standing only knee-deep now; the cold was losing its grip. I wondered whether someone was watching us. In my imagination, Goya was watching. I saw him as a storm-battered god of vengeance. He was angrier with you than with me. In truth, he was not angry with me at all. He felt only love for me—though with the intensity of a wrecking ball.

We maneuvered through our landscapes of desire and agreed, in our private language of intimacy, to come in a youthful way. Mirror-neuron masturbation. We reached into our swimsuits. I enjoyed the aristocratic privilege of effortless fulfillment. The wave rolled in quickly.

“I love you so much. I feel so gifted by you.”

That was what you said. I said nothing. We kissed and rubbed against each other, and in an unexpected evocation I remembered how I had once inched my way forward along this same petting course.