The Day Death Brushed Past Me & Lust Won Big
What almost dying underwater taught me about what my body wants
On a scuba dive in 2013, I ran out of air in a ripping current, 80 feet underwater.
There’s a specific shot I’d gone to Costa Rica to get—a school of hammerhead sharks photographed from below, their odd bodies silhouetted against the blue, the school forming a loose pattern within Snell’s window, the cone of light visible when a diver looks up at the sky through the water.
Getting this shot involves diving at a site called Halcyon that always has some current and sometimes has A LOT of current.
For perspective, diving in a strong current feels like being chained on the grill of a freight train plowing through the water, with no option to stop and get off the ride.
I’m used to diving in mild-to-medium currents to get shots of sharks, since that’s when we’re most likely to see them, but today I’m nervous because it’s my first time having to cling to a rope to get down to our dive depth so the raging current doesn’t sweep us away.
My huge camera rig weighs about 25 lbs out of the water. Maybe more, I’ve never weighed it.
The housing contains the camera body and lens, and has two long arms and strobes attached to it, in case the sharks get close enough for me to use artificial light to enhance the shot.
At Halcyon, before doing a back roll to enter the water, I fold the strobe arms over to make my rig as compact as possible. After the crew member hands it down to me, I clench it under my left arm like a football.
I grab the line with my right hand and make my way down to the bottom at 80ft.
The current doesn’t let up when we hit bottom, so we have to manually crawl from rock to rock, searching for the hammerheads, the current practically ripping off my mask if I slightly turn my head to the right or left.
With my rig still clenched under my left arm—no way I’m risking it getting torn out of my hands by this current—I don’t realize how hard I’m breathing as I struggle to get around the site.
My crawling arm eventually turns into a wet noodle. It’s got nothing left.
I realize I might not be able to make it back to the line to ascend and think, “Wow, this is it. Maybe I should let go and let myself be swept away.”
A buff Spaniard pulls up to the rock next to me. I motion to him that I’m in trouble. He motions back to hang onto him and he successfully crawls us back to the line.
I can barely believe it when I see our dive group barnacled on the rope. What a relief!
Immediately, my mask starts acting weird. It’s getting sucked to my face when I inhale.
I don’t understand what’s happening and realize later I must have been “narced”—what we call nitrogen narcosis—which is like being drunk, even delirious, unable to process clearly or make good decisions.
Basically, when a diver’s narced, we do dumb shit that makes no rational sense.
I’m pawing at my mask, confused, when someone grabs my regulator out of my mouth and jams another one in.
I take a breath, my eyes widening. My mask settles down and I turn my head to find the divemaster—let’s call him Luis—looking at me with concern.
I’m now breathing on his octopus—what we call a diver’s spare regulator, which we all carry in case of a buddy’s emergency—because he saw I’d run out of air before my narced brain could process what was happening.
Mind you, we’re still 80 feet down in the strongest current I’ve ever been in in my life.
While every cell of my body is screaming to get the fuck out of there as fast as possible, we go very slowly up the line together, pausing to allow our bodies to acclimate to the ascent to prevent us from getting the bends.
About 30 feet underwater, I have to switch to another buddy’s octopus because Luis is almost out of air and she still has plenty to share.
This was a hell of a dive for everybody, even the pros.
We pause at 15 feet for the three minute safety stop, hanging onto the rope like leaves in a hurricane, the longest three minutes of my life.
Finally, we pile into the dinghy one by one and head back to the main boat.
I’m shaking and crying, and not just from the cold. I chatter my gratitude to Luis and the burly Spaniard for saving my life.
Back on the boat, my lover—let’s call him Juan—enters the cabin as I’m dressing after my hot shower.
I tell him what happened on the dive and that I just want to be held.
When he puts his arms around me and strokes my hair, I soften into being spooned for a few minutes with all of our clothes on.
My hummingbird heart slows and the trembling slowly stops.
You need to know that this boat, like all dive trip operators, fires the crew if they get involved with the guests.
I know this. Juan, a crew member, knows this.
Still, he starts pursuing me on the first night of this 11-day trip.
By day 2, I realize he wants more than to flirt and I’m a total yes, being single and attracted to him, especially when he’s decked out in his white maritime uniform.
His body is strong from working on the boat, he has big brown eyes, and generous, soft lips.
Our first hookup is in the dive deck head after the others have gone to sleep, jammed up against the little sink, giggling with the effort to stay quiet so we don’t get caught.
I’m turned on by sneaking around and surrendering to this feral ache of unencumbered lust after ending my marriage—and the embarrassing rebound—the year before.
Throughout the day, between dives, I delight in an electric thrill when he hands me a post-dive towel or stands close to my shoulder to fill my water glass at a meal.
My Brazilian roommate gets it and doesn’t judge.
Whenever he’s able to get away, she lingers and chats with the other guests after meals, or between dives, to give us space to use the cabin.
As Juan and I cuddle, clothed, after this scary dive, it’s already time to head out for the next one.
A part of me wants to sit this dive out and another part of me knows I have to get back in the water or I could be done forever with being an underwater photographer.
Thankfully, we head to a more chill site. When we back-roll into the water and descend, there’s no current. I trundle around the site enjoying the relative calm.
When the current picks up a bit mid-dive, my heart thunders off to the races again.
I picture myself bolting to the surface to get the fuck away from the current and have to strongly talk myself into staying right where I am.
It’s all I can do to hold onto a rock and count to six on the inhale, six on the exhale, tuning out my lethal thoughts clamoring to head to the surface RIGHT NOW.
I need to prove to myself I can stay clear-headed in a current, with no mishaps, if I want to keep doing this sport, and art, I love so much.
So cling-to-a-rock-and-count-breaths it is, until my heart slows to the point where I can trust myself not to bolt.
I don’t get a single shot on that dive either, rig footballed under my left arm again, but I don’t care. I proved to myself I can trust myself to stay safe.
Back on the boat, I privately celebrate myself for having gotten back in the water and not letting my panic take over when the current picked up.
Juan sneaks into the cabin after the dive to see how I’m doing. I already want him inside me again.
As we fuck, I’m flooded with gratitude that my body can feel something other than panic and do something besides cry shaky tears.
Waves of pleasure roll through me, my hypersensitive nerves unfurling like morning glories in golden light with each kiss, caress, and thrust.
His thickness fills me and pulls my attention out of my head so completely I can’t even make words.
I’m deeply present inside my body, which isn’t always the case for me during sex.
Like many women, sometimes I find myself slightly outside my body, watching it go through the motions as a scene unfolds.
Other times, I can get stuck in my head, thinking about what’s happening, instead of fully embodying the moment.
I sense my brush with death is intensifying this pleasure, like my brain somehow knows I’m lucky AF to even have a body that’s feeling THIS, THIS, and THIS right now.
My mind has sat back and shut up to let me have this ecstatic experience.
According to Freudian psychology—I’m not a fan and still think he was onto something with this—human beings have two primary drives, Eros and Thanatos.
Eros pushes us toward life-preserving behaviors, like connection, sex, creativity, and pleasure.
Thanatos pushes us toward death, like risky and destructive behaviors, burning it all down to start over, stillness, and total annihilation.
Eros and Thanatos push-pull inside of us, dancing a darkly, erotic tango that could end in a beautiful bond being formed or in someone getting knifed to death on the dance floor, depending on which drive leads.
It’s the entrepreneur whose business finally crosses a million dollars in revenue before she implodes and her life falls apart.
It’s why we can tend to pick a fight shortly after an especially intimate and connected time with a loved one.
It’s the rebellious loner headed for an overdose who gets sober and rebuilds her life as she learns to let love in.
With respect to Juan, my Thanatos drive toward the shame of possibly being caught and publicly shamed, as well as potentially causing him to lose his job, runs neck-and-neck with my Eros drive to claim the pleasure I’m so hungry for and give myself over to this life-giving sex.
Whether any given activity is life-giving or death-driven differs from person to person and even day-to-day.
These drives have nothing to do with morality or societal absolutes around right and wrong.
They’re more primal than that.
Whether any given moment is driven by Eros or Thanatos is more of a “what gets you off” kind of thing, which can be different for each of us, despite society’s attempts to control us by imposing moralistic rules.
One person might choose to become a scuba diver for the thrill of pushing his/her body to its limit and cheating death—the Thanatos drive—and another (like me!) might choose to become a scuba diver for the pleasure of experiencing and documenting the underwater beauty unavailable anywhere else on the planet—the Eros drive.
There’s also the blissful part of not having to hear anyone talk while I’m underwater, which is a whole-ass-Eros-drive-experience that makes my little introverted heart sing, since I get to connect more profoundly with nature’s infinite creativity instead of getting pulled into people’s incessant need for attention.
In this (thankfully wordless) post-dive moment before dinner, impaled on Juan’s cock, I feel wildly and gratefully alive.
A couple of days later, we return to Halcyon when it has a more sane amount of current. I steel myself and head down the line, ready to get the shot this time.
As we wait on the ocean floor, as if on cue, a shiver of hammerhead sharks starts to pass overhead about halfway through the dive.
As over 80 hammerheads lazily swish their tails, traveling from left to right in the light blue water directly above me, I fire off several shots, hoping one of them reveals a pleasing formation of silhouettes instead of total chaos.
When our dive time is up, we slowly ascend the line as a group. No one’s out of air and we’re all giddy because we finally got to see the shiver of hammerheads for which Halcyon is famous.
Discovering later that I got the shot feels like the ocean’s knowing wink and nod to both my resilience and my ravenous desire.
