Bananas warned me about the horny male dolphin. Anyone hanging on the surfboard floating in the middle of the lagoon might get poked in the back of their knees with his rigid purple male appendage.
“The female is too young to mate.” She explained.
“Why doesn’t someone ‘do something’ about it? ” I asked innocently. I thought Dr. Lilly had done some sex research with dolphins back in the mid sixties. I was just back from a grueling snow covered tour in Wayne, Michigan. What did I know?
“You can try it. If you want to” she said to me flatly. I didn’t think so.
I was glad to see the Grove again. The Miami skyline actually looked good. It was a typical clear beautiful day on Key Biscayne. We walked out onto the wooden pier that had been nicely made from the lumber we had hauled down in the Asylum truck. The new male and new female came up to the end of the pier to greet us. They seemed happy, opening their mouths to chatter with us. I gently placed my hand in their mouths and tickled their tongues. They liked that- careful not to slice my fingers with their sharp little teeth.
The female and I got along well; too well from the male’s point of view. Later that afternoon, he slammed me three times. Six hundred pounds of horny dolphin landed on top of me after I had spent several glorious hours being pulled around and being embraced by the female. We had sort of fallen in love.
It had started off harmlessly at first. She pulled me around in a circle out in the middle of the lagoon. I held on to her dorsal fin as she dove to the bottom of the lagoon about twenty feet down, turned in a circle then shot straight up and into the air with me hanging on as best I could. I was skinny and mostly hair so she did pretty well getting us both up and mostly out of the water. This went on for a long time. She didn’t get tired keeping me afloat. At one point we came up to the surface slowly, belly to belly and she looked into my eyes. I looked into her eyes; deep, dark, mysterious and loving. She pulled me to her with her pectoral fins and hugged me close. I hugged her back. Belly to belly, we looked into each others eyes for a long time. Then she pushed me away. “This could never work.” I felt her say.
I swam into the dock and stood chest deep in the warm water talking to Suzanne up on the pier. Florida swam around me in a tight circle. I lightly touched her side and belly as she circled me. She slowed down. She stopped moving and stayed in front of me as I talked to Suzanne while stroking her side and belly. She stopped moving and just floated there. My fingers moved on their own, to where her tail flukes joined, thumb on top of the paper thin skin and fingers underneath. Occupied with talking to Suzanne, my left hand was rubbing Florida’s tail flukes and my right hand was rubbing her belly. Suddenly, she began to quiver all over. That took me by surprise. I could feel her vibrating. Suzanne was amazed and took a picture. The loud click of the old Pentax shutter woke Florida out of her reverie. With a self conscious start, she splashed away from me back out into the lagoon. Suzanne said she’d never seen that before in a dolphin. She went over to the far seawall to talk with Bananas about it. I swam back out into the lagoon.
The male intercepted me. He stopped in front of me in the middle of the lagoon. I did not have flippers or mask or snorkel. With no warning, he launched himself into the air and landed on top of me. It felt like a freight train hit me. I was suddenly underwater and drowning. I sputtered and came to the surface, yelling at him. “What are you doing!!!!” He didn’t like that tone and backed off, but then he came at me again, air-born. Wham! Right on top of me again. Suddenly I was scared. This was serious. I was filling up with water. I got back to the surface. I waved and hollared but no one was looking, no one heard me. He could have killed me but he knew exactly how far to go. He launched again, and I could not move fast enough. He landed on top of me the third time and I figured I was going to be trying to explain this to St. Peter shortly. I gurgled up to the surface and saw the surfboard floating about twenty yards away. I swam for it with the last energy I had. He casually cruised over to the surfboard, put his nose under the board and flipped it. It shot across the water and jammed under the pier like a pool shark’s billiard ball in a corner pocket. He turned on me and looked me square in the eye. She got in between us. She stayed there facing him. Getting back to the pier was the longest fifty yards I will ever swim.
Bananas, Suzanne and the others finally looked, saw the slamming and came to help. I finally got to the pier in one piece. They helped me out of the water. I laid on the dock, out of breath. I had no fear of the male dolphin. I understood.
We sat there and watched. She took him over to the far side of the lagoon and they stayed there floating next to each other. Then they were belly to belly. Then intermittently they rolled back and forth. First she was on top for a while then they would rotate and he would be on top of a while, then she would roll back over on top. They did this for a long time.
Bananas said later that when they opened the sea gate, the male left but Florida stayed behind. Finally the biggest dolphin Bobby had ever seen swam right up to the gate and jumped. Florida went for him like a shot and they disappeared out into Key Biscayne. Fred, of course, knew all about this sort of thing. He wrote the Dolphin Song years earlier. I ended up recording the Dolphin Song with Tim Buckley later. My love song to Florida.
“…Searchin for the dolphin in the Sea. Sometimes I wonder, do you ever think of me?”
I still think of her. On a good day I can imagine that I might have been a godfather to a baby dolphin.