Chapter 35: Deeply Moving Stories

My Tuesday evening with Pauline was cruisy, at least at first. We ate at the rib place again, and then after a shower with the usual thorough bum washing, repaired to Pauline’s bed. Snuggling with glasses of port was becoming a habit, and we did that for a while, but didn’t turn on. Pauline had another agenda.

“If you tell me about deep diving, I’ll make it worth your while.” She gave me a wicked leer.

“I don’t need much incentive to rave about that, and you always make our sex worth my while anyway.” Pauline began to fondle and stroke me lazily, but her intention was sensual rather than urgently sexual.

“So what’s dangerous?”

“As you dive deeper, the pressure increases and your wet suit compresses so you lose buoyancy. That’s why you need to keep putting air in your BCD to stay neutrally buoyant as you go deeper.”

“Yeah – got that from my course.”

“As you dive deeper, you use more air.”

“Yeah – got that too.”

“As you dive deeper, your body absorbs nitrogen from the air you are breathing at a faster rate, and as you go deeper it absorbs more in total. If you are too deep for too long you absorb so much nitrogen that it will bubble out of your blood if you come up and the surrounding pressure is reduced too fast. Then you will get ‘the bends’. In the worst case, imagine popping a champagne cork. That’s what happened to your blood!”

“Yeah yeah yeah.” Pauline began to sound quite impatient and stopped touching me. “Look, I’ve done the course. I know about Decompression Sickness and ‘no decompression’ diving limits with depth and time. I can do the calculations and I have a dive computer anyway.” The hag was hovering, and when I started to sit up and pull away from her, that persona took full control. “I don’t need another fucking lecture!” I was offended.

“Jesus Woman! Make up your fucking mind!” I pulled away from Pauline completely and got out of the bed. I wasn’t exactly sure what was bothering me about the situation and Pauline’s response, but something sure as hell was, ‘cos I was agitated and touchy. I paced around her spacious and comfortable bedroom. My shoulders and neck were tight, and there was a developing knot in my gut. Pauline doubled down.

“What the fuck is going on with you?” She was snarling and her face contorted. I felt badly treated, and had long ago learned that this feeling was a very good signal to stop whatever interaction was going on. I knew that if it continued, I was probably not going to display my ‘best self’.

“We can continue this conversation some other time. Right now, I think I should go home!” I picked up my trousers and started to put them on, but one leg was inside out and my attention was subsumed by my outrage, so for a moment I struggled to keep my balance, and nearly toppled over.

“Careful!” Pauline’s tone was quite different.

I looked closely at her face. The hag was still there, but it was overlain by a new look. I had seen her concentrate before. She would get really focussed when she was learning about fishing or boating, but this was concentration on a whole new level. Pauline was concentrating on what I was saying bigtime, but she was also paying very close attention to my emotional state. There was a wariness and intensity, mixed with concern.

Somehow, that look changed my internal equilibrium. I connected with Pauline’s process as her very obvious caring for me overcame her impatience, and the tightness of my shoulders and the knot in my gut were replaced with a feeling of relief. I stopped trying to put on my pants, and sat down on the bed to eyeball her.

“I’m upset because this is serious! People died! I got bent! My arm sometimes still hurts! You know lotsa stuff, but you only know what your instructors told you, and you said yourself that they were just like the nuns – know all the dangers and want to warn you off – but they’ve never done it.” I took a breath, moved a little closer to Pauline, and carried on. “I have done it. Lots!! And I’ve got the avascular necrosis in my fucken arm to prove it!” Pauline looked quite sad.

“We’re having a fight – aren’t we?”

“I guess we are. It’s a very long time since I’ve felt the need to boast about having a diving injury!” I felt slightly ashamed of myself at the realisation.

“I know what avascular necrosis is, and I’ve nursed people with bedsores, but what’s that got to do with Decompression Sickness?”

“If nitrogen bubbles out of the blood, the bubbles can block blood vessels supplying particular tissues, and the tissue stops functioning and will die if the blood vessel stays blocked long enuff. I had a small bubble in my brain, and that resorbed before any permanent damage was done, but I also had a bubble in one of the blood vessels supplying the bone in my left humerus, and the X-Ray showed a bit of bone had died.” I paused. “I know I’m giving you a lecture, but I don’t know how to do it any other way.”

“I guess that means it has to be a lecture. I won’t take notes, but I’ll pay close attention.” She grinned. “And maybe I can find a way to persuade the lecturer to give me a passing grade!” She reached out and I lay down again and snuggled in beside her.

But I wasn’t quite ready to start the lecture. Over the years, I have learned that upsets like the one we seemed to have just got through are valuable learning opportunities.

“Just give me a moment. I’d like to explore what was going on for me when we both got shitty just then.”

“I was impatient, but when I accused you of lecturing, that seemed to set you off.” I thought for a moment.

“Bingo! - same old shit! Seventy years ago it was Mum saying ‘Don’t get too smart lad!’, and for the last forty years it has been various people reminding me of my tendency to be a pompous prick, and sometimes an arrogant one too. The ‘lecturer’ thing got me.” Pauline began to stroke me again.

“Being a lecturer has its advantages. Dozens of nubile young freshers – all looking to explore at least some of the things they have fantasised about.” She produced a squeeze bottle, and soon had two oily hands working their magic on my junk. It wasn’t too difficult to put away my distress and concentrate on the sensations that her ministrations were producing. I quickly got hard, and Pauline backed off a bit.

“So tell me about the dangers. I’ll come to you for some private coaching after the lecture.” Who could refuse?

“In the early days, there were no BCDs. That didn’t matter too much because almost all recreational diving was on the coast, and poor visibility and general underwater topography on the coast meant that fifty feet was a ‘deepish’ dive. So people went to fifty feet and felt (and were) overweight. They had to swim hard to get back up to where they were neutrally buoyant.” Pauline nodded.

“But then a few people started to dive the offshore islands, Moturangis, Motuheiheis, Motukoromatua etc. The visibility is good, and the underwater topography is very steep with cliffs and drop-offs. It is very easy to go very deep, and people did.” Pauline nodded again.

“They got to seventy or eighty or a hundred feet and found themselves massively overweight. Usually, they were able to pull themselves back up the underwater cliffs hand over hand, but some went deeper. Their efforts to get back up involved lots of exertion and produced lots of CO2, which potentiated the intoxicating effect of the nitrogen they were breathing, and by the time they got to 120 or 130 feet, they were totally off their faces and some drifted even deeper.”