Boy Beach

thoughts from a clothes-optional beach

the beach is hot

the beach is hot but the boys prepare, of course, they have cabanas and speakers and coolers full of canned margaritas, they have lugged them down the muddy path winding through the salt marshes from the bike rack off the sandy road

many of the boys are naked which is exciting, it is sexy and fun and summery, but the thrill dissipates quickly, we are animals and it’s never more apparent than on a nude beach, the boys hairy and pudgy and bony and sweaty, sprawled out in the sun like sea lions, barking and braying and grunting and chirping

we should take creationists to the nude beach

padam, padam, i hear it and i know sings kylie minogue because she is legally required to on any beach like this, there is an R&B song from the 90s you don’t know but probably should and it’s competing with miss minogue, somehow not unpleasantly

the boys are sunscreening each other, they will get burned of course but hopefully not too badly, they are moaning in harry-met-sally performative ecstasy as their hookups-turned-friends-turned-partners-turned-friends-turned-family rub sunscreen into their backs, queening out in that shrill timbre only bottoms have access to, as if they purchased ariel’s voice at ursula’s thrift store but age curdled the sound ever so slightly, but at least the vibrato still works, thank goodness

so some of the boys are loud, yes, but there are others who are nearly silent, scrawled all over with line tattoos, lying on their towels with books, honest-to-god books, paperbacks with the covers folded back held up to block out the sun, performative of course but have you ever seen so many books on a beach, you haven’t, the gays are often tacky but usually literate, thank goodness

can one be shy while fully nude in public

there is a man faggoting down the beach with a rainbow kite, and it won’t take off, it’s not very windy, he doesn’t mind, he is forty-fiveish and giggling, giggling like it doesn’t cost anything, like it has cost everything, like he bought this giggle with everything and it was worth it

you walk down the beach, birds overhead, michael has told you they’re cormorants, you window shop, you gaze, through sunglasses so there’s plausible deniability but they all know, of course, they gaze back

you talk to a boy with sea green eyes and his friend, tote bags, new york, you walk away and a moment later he runs after you, yells “wait” and you turn, you wait, and he kisses you, and that’s the whole point of all of it, everything, probably

you had just found a huge snail shell, so big, ludicrously large, you were going to show it to your friends but you’ve just been kissed, kissed on a beach like music videos promised, you show the boy the shell and he says “wow” kindly, really, he seems impressed, but he didn’t yell “wait” to see the shell, and he beckons, and you can’t bring the shell with you as you follow the boy, like a toddler carrying a plate out of a restaurant, what would you do with it anyway, and so you place the shell gently back onto the sand, you choose the boy, obviously, which is the right choice, right

right

the beach is hot

so later on you wade into the sea which is cold, well not that cold, it’s lovely, actually, but you’re a prissy little faggot so any cold is undignified, the nerve of the ocean, but massachussetts is humid, the nerve of massachussetts, and your body is crying out for homeostasis, the sea will average you out, we are animals

there’s a horseshoe crab somewhere under robby, and he points to it, giddy, but you don’t wade over go to see it, to be suspended legs-kicking over a horseshoe crab, have you seen a horseshoe crab, xenomorphic nonsense, spawn of echidna, is that how straight people see us, you’d think that would make you more sympathetic and perhaps it does in theory but in practice you do not wade over to see it, they really are terrifying, heebie jeebies, biology clobbering psychology, we are animals

you are waist deep and you and michael both know that you should just dive in but it is so very daunting, until michael says that the sea water will make your hair look cute, which is a great point, and so we squat, we do not dive, too scared, we squat quickly and our heads go under

outdoorsy spiritual types love to talk about the cleansing power of the ocean but it doesn’t feel like that, sorry, it mostly just feels like water in your ears

robby tells you to hop up and down on one leg with your head cocked to the side to flush out the water and that works, thank goodness for outdoorsy types, the release is wondrous, perhaps spiritual enlightenment is best found through hopping on one foot with your head cocked, maybe that’s what this whole vacation is, faggoting up and down and side to side until you shake the seawater from your skull

the boys skip stones, and robby and michael get 4-5 skips which is pretty good, great even, you have many gifts but stone-skipping is not one of them, so you comb the beach, you know there’s something republican-coded about searching for the smoothest, loveliest ones, but you don’t want to find the freakos today, you want to find perfect, oval, smooth, sorry

rocks are amazing

says michael, holding up a handful of pebbles, he’s right, you are thirty two but when you find the translucent white ones, quartz, you think, your first instinct is to look around for someone, to show them, to put them in a little sack to take to the bank because they should be worth something, they’re basically diamonds, aren’t they, precious, but once you put them in a little dry pile they just look like rocks

you build a rainbow out of stones, the boys assist, you wouldn’t think purples would be the easiest to find but here you are, overflowing with purples, blue is trickiest but gray is an okay substitute, don’t look for a metaphor there

you search for your snail shell, well not search, you wander down the beach in that direction, and you try to triangulate, you comb, perhaps it is a search, technically, if we’re splitting hairs, we’re not

the snail shell is nowhere to be found, that’s okay, what would you do with it anyway, you certainly wouldn’t bring it home to languish in a bathroom cabinet, what an awful fate for a shell, there is beauty in the ephemeral, right

right

you walk back down the beach, a man waves from an anchored boat, an invitation you’re pretty sure, you’re tempted, really only for the plot, and you’re trying to do more for you and less for the plot these days, though it is becoming harder to discern the difference

you are back on your towel, reading an honest-to-god book on the beach, jacob elordi would be so proud, a ladybug flies and hits you on the cheek and you look down at it, you’re both flummoxed, pleasantly so, whereas when a fly, a fly, bites you on the leg, the nerve

there are rainbows everywhere, parasols and canopies and towels and refractions, happy pride month, and perhaps it is the heat but you aren’t rolling your eyes, we have rainbows, rainbows, and they are ours, ours, they are trying to take everything else away but they will never make those straight because rainbows are exuberant and they don’t do exuberance, they won’t do exuberance, they can’t do exuberance

in a rich man’s world, sings abba, which is not legally required but heartily encouraged

you are leaving soon, and so you look for your snail shell again, it was bigger than your palm and calico-colored, you picked a long thin strand of seaweed off of it, lovingly, but it’s okay, you didn’t even want to take it home, you just wanted to watch your friends marvel at it, hopefully, but ultimately the point is not palm-sized snail shells but rather the moments that feel important enough for you to abandon your palm-sized snail shell

you walk back to your bikes, the walk is ludicrously long and marshy, but there are footprints to follow, footprints that the tide erodes and the rain erases but that always reappear the next time there is sun, because the boys love the beach, there have always been footprints, there will always be footprints, a run on sentence delivered by lispy lips, passed through kisses and giggles and songs sung too loudly in voices too shrill, and the snail shell

could be there

the next time

you visit