The secret of eternal youth is arrested development. —Alice Roosevelt Longworth
Under Washed-up Stars
I’m in a wilderness, near death, parched and exhausted. Around me lie remnants of scattered skeletons. I’m desperate to find shelter.
I hear distant thunder and watch as sand devils cross the desert, twisting into human forms.
Suddenly, there’s an eerie rattling sound followed by a snapping noise, and one by one the skeletons about me come together, bone to bone.
I wake up, heart pounding and drenched with sweat. I reach out, grab the plastic water bottle on my night table and drain the contents.
Three a.m.—another dark night of the soul.
It's time for me to make my escape again.
Two days later I'm in the waiting lounge of Toronto International Airport nervously awaiting my flight boarding call.
But then I hear a dreaded announcement and my heart begins racing anew.
Paging Professor Converse—Professor Edward Converse. Please come to the Baggage Registration desk.
My body is trembling, poised for fight or flight. I’ve forged so many documents and changed identities so often that I always dread being caught.
I approach the desk cautiously, noting the absence of any police or airline security personnel.
“I’m Professor Converse,” I say brightly, trying to project confidence, smiling at the pretty young girl.
“You left your overnight bag in the lounge, Professor. One of the wait staff brought it to the desk.”
I breathe a huge sigh of relief. “Thank you so much,” I grin, “It’s my carry-on bag.”
“No problem, “ she chirps.
I hate that expression—“no problem”—it both dates me and draws a line between us, though apparently not to her. She’s gushing a little—forgivable for a girl in her mid twenties who probably figures I’m in my mid thirties, but she’s off by eighty years.
My mind flashes back to 1964. I was working in a secret research project at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute answerable only to Hughes himself.
The project I was heading had one stated goal—to utilize the science of microbiology to understand the genesis of life itself.
Hughes, of course, had personal motives to fund the research, as he was obsessed with the possibility of stopping or reversing the aging process.
In a year when the Nobel Prize in medicine was awarded for something as mundane as research on the mechanism and regulation of cholesterol and fatty-acid metabolism, I was learning how to use proteins and molecules to turn off and on the genes that governed aging.
Unfortunately, Hughes became reclusive and erratic and never benefitted from my findings. Since I reported directly to him and nobody else, I retained all records of the research and experimental results.
The program was terminated in 1966 as Hughes’ emotional health began to decline, and he succumbed to severe obsessive-compulsive symptoms. I took all my research data and quietly departed.
I began a new life with a new identity and continued my reverse aging study using myself as guinea pig.
I went from being a sixty-year old man with mild hypertension and arthritis to having the body and appearance of a thirty-five old, and then had to deal with the subsequent social adjustments which were not always pleasant.
I found I could stay in one locale using the same identity for a decade, but then it became necessary to move on before people began questioning my apparent ability, ‘to sip at the fountain of youth’ as one of my colleagues so aptly described it.
And now, here I am again, boarding a jet to Florida to begin another new life as a university professor, this time teaching Literature.
I’m a modern Faust who longs to embrace everything, but I’ve become a Midas who can’t grasp hold of things.
The truth is, I’ve become a ghost.
My Anna Maria Island cottage works wonders for my mood though, as do the white sandy beaches and sea oats and the vast expanse of sky.
I feel reborn here and want to lose myself in long walks in the sand and the ebb and flow of tides.
But then I see her. She’s a loner like me, sitting on a sand dune at dusk with a glass of wine and staring out to sea.
The wind off the Gulf combs her long hair. She closes her eyes and lets it wantonly flutter and play with her blouse, and wrap its arms about her, claiming her for itself.
I go back to my cottage and dream of her, while lying in the dark, watching the lone wolf Moon slowly circle the chamber alone.
And then it happens quite by accident. She lives two cottages down and that same wind that took liberties with her the day before, steals her laundry left out to dry and drops it off in my yard.
I’m coming out of the shed where the surfboards, umbrellas and water toys are stored and she’s bending over gathering up silky unmentionables and shaking off sand.
“Do the laws of trespass still apply in Florida?” I smile.
She straightens up, pushing back wind-teased tresses while squinting at me in the noonday sun.
“Trespass laws are trumped by panty thefts,” she grins.
“Then, I guess the wind is my friend. I’m Edward Converse,” I say extending my hand.
“Kate Willett,” she says, shaking hands while trying to wipe away stray strands of hair from her lips.
She is incredibly beautiful.
The wind buffets us, thundering in our ears and drowning out conversation.
I cup my hand to shout in her ear, “Would you like to come inside for tea?”
She shakes her head and my hopes sink.
She leans in close and I inhale the scent of sunshine lotion, “I prefer wine.”
She’s a writer—a poetess. She owns the cottage and stays here six months out of the year. The rest of the time she spends in New York—less solitary and less friendless.
“I need to get away and be by the sea. Don’t get me wrong—I’m not a misanthrope—I’m more Anne Lindbergh or May Sarton, if you know what I mean.”
“I do,” I smile. “I love The Gift of the Sea and The Rewards of a Solitary Life is one of my favourite Sarton essays.”
Her face lights up. “Oh, you do know what I’m talking about!”
I feel a profound moan inside me as if some deep and remote chambers of my being are calling out to be filled—as if sea caverns empty and desolate all my life are now longing for a sea-maid to come and inhabit them.
She senses an affinity too. We sit and talk the long afternoon and when night falls, we take our wine outside and fall asleep in each other’s arms under wind-blown stars.
I tell her the secret of my life.
“You can’t keep running Edward. You’re like a gypsy roaming from place to place.”
I nod. “I’m tired. It’s not what I envisioned it would be. Everyone I once knew is dead. Immortality is so overrated.”
She frowned. “What will happen if you discontinue the therapy?”
“I don’t know. I’m the guinea pig, but based on the lab results with mice, I’ll just revert to the normal aging process and in twenty-five years be back to where I began.”
“How would that make you feel?”
I shrug, “Normal—mortal, I guess. Lately, I’ve been restive—discontent. I’m at a standstill in my life. Face it—a feast isn’t a feast if you’re the only one eating.”
“Can you bear growing old with me?” she asks and her vulnerability disarms me.
I wrap my arms around her, owning her like the wind.
I find myself telling her the truth—totally open and with no mask—the way I feel now.
“I couldn’t bear living life without you—a lifetime with you would be more than an eternity alone.”
We lie out on the sand that night under washed-up stars and fall asleep to the rush of wind and the thunder of the surf.
And we sleep the brevity of fleshly wishes.
Let time hold me green and dying... I'll sing in my chains like the sea.
© 2025, John J Geddes. All rights reserved