Jen and I shared the small stretch of Chang’s beach, in Makena, Maui, with just one other person: a young, beautiful man. He was the kind of man I would have seduced had I been traveling solo, but I wasn’t. Instead I stole glances of his lean, tanned body and recalled, with some nostalgia, those simple days of careless love affairs.

But tonight, my last night in Hawaii, I was content to have the warm air and sweet light swirl a cocoon around Jen and I. We sat on sarongs as we ate a finale Hawaiiana dinner of taro green-swaddled pork “lau lau” and kalua pork. We decided it was decent farewell fare, if not uncharacteristic for health-conscious us. then, disregarding the twenty-minute wait rule after eating, and the clothed young man nearby, we stripped off all our clothes and walked into the cool ocean waters.

Waist-deep in, I felt grains of sand in the tidewaters brushing past the skin of my pelvic area and butt, and my pubic hair tussled by the current. These were novel sensations, subtle, but nothing like I'd ever felt before. My first nude ocean swim, I smiled inwardly. As we waded in deeper, and the ocean swallowed more of me, the barrier of skin that defines my body from other matter loosened. The communion of bare skin, water, and sand made me feel, blessedly, a bit less me and a bit more everything else.

I swam out a bit, turned to face Jen and smiling wildly, I’m sure, I told her I’d never been skinny dipping in the ocean before. “How could you live in Santa Cruz and never have gone skinny-dipping in the ocean?” she asked incredulously. "The water's really cold there?" And though that's true, I offered up this reply more as a feeble excuse than a good reason. She smiled, and I could tell she was pleased to be with me for this "first."

After a short while, a large wave broke right on us, and quite literally, through us. When we re-surfaced, we both decided that ass-kicking was enough. We walked back to our sarongs, dried off, and laid down to warm in the dying sun. For the next 20 minutes or so, we giggled as our sinuses drained of their own volition, catapulting us from prone sun bathers to sitting up to either spit out salty water that had flowed into our throats or blowing it out our noses.

The lovely man laying a shout away was now naked, lying propped on one elbow, facing away from us, toward the setting sun. I smiled. He must have taken off his shorts after noticing us walk naked into the water.

“Look, your friend is naked,” Jen indicated, as though I had failed to notice his curving hip bone, the smooth, rolling hill of his backside.

The sun was low in the sky now, but still warm on our skin. Clouds flanked its golden descent, and the sea scattered the sun into glittery chunks on its surface.

“Ok, we’re going to sing a song now," Jen said suddenly. "It’s a total Jewish summer camp song, but it’s sung whenever something happens for the first time. And we’ll sing it for your first nude ocean-swimming experience.”

Jen sings in a completely wonderful, lilting voice. She dotes on notes just long enough to make them shine, and I wondered if my day could get any better.

She patiently tried to teach me the words, but I was a poor student, and so I mostly sang the three bar “Amen” at the end, and there was nowhere else I wanted to be than on that beach, on this island, with this wonderful woman, singing.

As the sun began it’s final dip, Jen and I snapped photos of it and ourselves, laughing for some reason or none, then sat in silence for a few minutes as the vibrant orange orb disappeared on the horizon, pulling an arc of yellows, oranges, and reds down below the cloudline. It was a perfect ten sunset, and a sweet thing to watch in my last hours on Maui.

Finally, I found a reason to disturb the attractive man, who had, to my slight dismay, pulled his shorts on: a picture, please, of my friend and I. Of course, he said with this painfully wonderful smile, and a maddeningly clichéd sexy French accent. Guillome took some good photos of us, and then the three of us talked fellow traveler talk. Again, I felt that twinge of fondness for what could have been, if I were a solo traveler and still sleeping around. But I ended the conversation fairly quickly; these last moments were Jen and me time.

Now, here on this plane chasing dawn, the salt on my skin just a lick away and sand still falling from my hair, I think about redemption. The day had started out with disappointment. Plans to snorkel with sea turtles in West Maui were scrapped due to rain, which muddies the waters, so we spent a few early afternoon hours at a cookie-cutter resort spa. Relaxing? Wonderfully so. Fabulous? Not exactly. As we drove back into Kihei for Jen’s doctor appointment, I felt a twinge of sadness that this, and maybe a good dinner would round out my last hours here. Later, it was Jen’s idea to get food to go and drive on down to Makena. How easily even a not altogether bad day can be transformed into the spectacular by the simple confluence of details: a dazzling sunset, tasty food, a skinny dip, laughter, song, and love shared good and well. A whole entire day, redeemed just like that into perfection!

Imagine that.

I couldn’t have planned a better last day in Maui if I had tried. Goodbye, Island; goodbye, Jen, darling. So, so much love.