The Beach, revisited

I can still feel him, smell him. The sea air, the sand, the moon and stars. The cigarettes on his breath, a deep smell, powerful and oddly erotic. The combination is heady, and doubtlessly addictive. It’s the reason why I go out of my way to pass his jacket, hanging on a hook by the door and bearing the purple and gold lettering of his school, a “brotherhood”, as he called it. Catching the scent, which clings to it in the way that the smoke clung to us that night, I get lightheaded and my heart starts racing.



“Let’s go to the beach.” Sure. The L train takes us there and the moon greets us brightly when we get off. We cross the Great Highway at a run, deserted at this time of night, and sprint lightly across the sand, stopping just short of the crashing waves. We watch the tide come in, backing away slowly, and then turn and clamber up a nearby dune, my purse swinging stupidly from my wrist, to find a comfortable spot near the top. The moon is bright, and nearly full, and the seascape looks ethereal, lit up by a silvery glow. The raw power of the ocean beckons to me, and I consider the view critically, with a photographer’s eye, moving the moon to different spots with my mind for the ultimate shot. For some reason, I think of death. But I’m too scared to mention my morbid fantasies, fearing he’s think me strange. I hide away my thoughts.

We sit next to each other, as close as possible without our bodies actually overlapping or merging together like two pieces of softened clay. There is an intimacy to the moment that needs no touch, no words. He puts his arm around me and I sigh, thinking about the perfection of this moment and how minute our lives are compared to the ocean.

The picture shatters as I hear voices. Damn. Turning quickly, I spy a quarter of dozen people climbing our dune on their way to somewhere else. Oh great, now we’re about to become a spectacle. The leader, sporting dreads and a beanie, leers at us. “Having a good time?” he grins knowingly, as if our – or at least my – discomfort is not obvious enough. Something unpleasant stirs in my mind and I turn away, instead fixating on the sea, which I had previously found so calming. I stare hard, ignoring the searing of humiliation on my skin, feeling uncomfortably exposed in my moment of vulnerability, as if I had been caught with my pants down and had frozen in an attempt to become invisible, and ignore the people laughing and pointing at me. Eventually the trio dissolves into the distance, but the stale feeling of awkwardness that they brought with them lingers. I’m gazing unseeingly at the sky when I see it: a star, it’s light, bright and crisp like that of a diamond chip, is sparkling, winking at me. A comforting thought and I no longer feel alone in my shame. Look, I say, there, look at that star. He leans in close, presumably to see what I am pointing at better. His gaze follows my finger and I catch a whiff of the cigarette he smoked some time ago. “Wow, you’re right.” Then he points at the moon, his arm back around my waist as if our pleasant silence had not been interrupted. “Look, do you see that? The man? The man on the moon?” I look closely, squinting against the intensity of the light and I do, I do see the man on the moon. But the face looks worn and tired, not like the cheerful countenance I remember from my youth. He has aged, the man on the moon, creases and wrinkles have replaced the craters, and he looks tired, like a man nearing the end of his weary life, pock-marked and scarred. I feel disquiet, and a kind of kinship to him. Searching within me, I try to come up with a way to state my feelings, but cannot, and they go unsaid, evaporating into the warm midnight air like cigarette smoke. I go back to hiding my thoughts.