I Kind of Hate the Beach Anyway

Leah Fisher

Word Count 1325

My eyes are squeezed tight. Bluish-silver sprinkles dance across my internal vision. Will it hurt when I open them? 

Everything hurts. 

I slip my toes deeper into the sand in front of me.  The grainy blanket feels cooler where half my foot now resides and somehow, this soothes me, and so, this feels like a good decision. 

I need a pedicure. 

I brush my hand across my chest and feel the telltale sting of an ever-blossoming sunburn. I’d need to rejoin the conscious to apply more sunscreen, so I’ll just scorch. 

I imagine a melanoma diagnosis and the resulting surgeries and likely disfigurement.

I reluctantly open my eyes a sliver. I’m preparing. I have to prepare. I don’t have any confirmation if he’s still sitting next to me, but I anticipate the worst. Best case, he’s down by the water cooling off. Maybe he’s up by the snack bar securing chicken fingers or some other revolting food item favored by small children and wildly immature adult men. 

I need a sip of water, also, maybe the grapes I packed in the cooler, I think.

What? He asks.

I open my right eye fully and roll my head to the right.

Oh, I say, hey. I didn’t know if you were here.

He laughs. It’s an unpleasant laugh. A you’re dumb laugh.

Well, he says, where else would I be?

Gone, I say. And then, I smile, as if I’m joking, when I know I’m not.

Dead, I think. 

I could tell him that I had hoped he went swimming and drowned. 

I don’t say anything though. I don’t trust my voice. It won’t be angry. It will be wobbly. An expression of fear and discomfort.

I sit up a little straighter in the chair and lean down to grab sunscreen and my water bottle.

Hey, he says, make sure you do that away from here, so it doesn’t blow on me, okay?

I want to push. To push and get punished for it. I’m itching for confrontation so monstrous that it ends the misery. That kind of courage is just out of reach, and so, I’m left with a distended belly filled with piles and piles of discarded words. 

Sure, I say, getting up and brushing the small bits of sand from my jiggly bits. I can feel his gaze on me. I try to remember what it was like when he gazed at me adoringly, but the memory is too distant. It feels that way, anyway.

I remember the first time we went to the beach. He had just ended his engagement and there was this energy. This aura. We were careful not to do too much, say too much. And still, he found reasons to touch me, brushing his bronzed and sun-sticky arm against my upper thigh or pressing the soles of his feet against my sand-buried toes. We didn’t talk much that day, I don’t think, but his eyes caught mine, countless times. I think I smiled incessantly. Endlessly. I think so, anyway.

I walk back near the rusted wire trash bin and begin spraying sunscreen everywhere I feel the bite of overdone skin. When I’m done, the artificial coconut scented mist still swirling around me, I place my hand above my eyes for shade and look around.

I’ve been coming here for as long as I can remember, and still, it guts me every time. The beauty. The grayish blue waves with white foamy tips crashing on the shore, the bright sun hiding amongst bulbous clouds. Families and young people and elderly couples. There are peeling signs, and wayward pieces of litter here and there, but I barely see them. 

Long Beach is closer, and Robert Moses is quieter, but Jones Beach is home. In the packed sand of Jones Beach, I’ve built sandcastles and traced my name. Here, I’ve begrudgingly peed in the Atlantic Ocean and read at least fifty paperback novels. Here, I’ve sat as a willing and captivated witness to lovers and fighters and loungers and every other version of human. 

Mom brought me here, often. I remember her holding my hand tight as I dipped my toes into the frigid water, shrieking with delight. I remember eating browned apple slices and buttery Ritz crackers with sandy fingers. I remember memorizing the legs around me, long, lean muscle and a patchwork of indigo-colored veins, and soft, downy hair. I remember my curls stiff with salt and warmed cheeks and all the smells. I remember the man who dragged a large blue, soft cooler around the beach: Fudgie-wudgie bars, get your fudgie-wudgie bars hereeee. I remember feeling like I would never find a better place, ever. 

And now, there is still Tupperware filled with watermelon and grease-stained paper bags wrapped around what I know to be buttered bagels. Twentysomethings sipping on iced coffee from the telltale Styrofoam cups still favored by local delis who refuse to bow to the threat of climate change. There are also the others, who have moved on to their preferred version of spiked seltzer.

Wrinkles and beauty marks and scraped knees. Shiny bulging muscles and soft rolls of skin.  Shaved heads and tangled extensions and messy buns and every hat. Every single one.

The sound of laughter and yelling and pop music floating on the thick, humid air.

I love it.

All of it.

I look over at him, sitting in the rainbow-striped chair, rich colors that belie his sour disposition. He is frowning, furrow lines between his pale eyebrows. The corners of his mouth are cartoonishly turned down. He usually walks around looking displeased. And then, he flashes that smile. The mayoral smile, I call it. We were in Sephora months ago and the girl behind the register was so flustered in the face of his severity that she neglected to properly ring my order. I think I laughed, and now, I’m ill thinking of it. 

There is a thought that starts like teeny bubbles in my stomach. A spot of demented laughter that’s unwillingly suppressed. It goes like this: I want to turn around and run. I look down at my feet. I’m not wearing shoes, and still, I want to escape. I want the panic to carry me far, further. 

My phone is still in my bag on the blanket, and so, I entertain wild imaginings. I will ask a stranger to use their phone. I will jog to the nearest safe space, my bare feet raw and blistered from the scalding asphalt. Open, bleeding sores would be better. Those wounds could be treated with salves and bandages. I would be away from him. I will be done. He couldn’t hurt me anymore. 

He turns then to look back at me. I shiver in the oppressive heat, thinking he can read my mind. I smile and wave and he shrugs his shoulders impatiently as if to ask what is taking me so long. Evaporate, please, I think, as I walk/jog back to the blanket.

You starting a sunscreen business for beachgoers back there? he asks.

He is smiling but that smile he wears with ease when he wants to destroy me.

No, I reply.  Just being thorough.

I try to smile. He wants me to apologize. I’m not apologizing. I’m not sorry.

Sorry, I say. I didn’t mean to take so long. 

Don’t apologize to me, he says. This is your day, fuck off all you like. Either way, we are leaving in an hour.

Oh, I say.  Thank you.

Thank you?

I sit down, sinking my toes back into the sand, and lean my head back, allowing my eyes to flutter closed. My hands are unwittingly clenched into fists. Rage and grief claw at the back of my throat.

I open my eyes and sit up.

Let’s just go now, I say.

Yeah? He asks.

Yeah, I say. Let’s just leave now. I kind of hate the beach anyway.

Leah was born and raised in New York. When not working her day job in real estate finance, you can find her drinking copious amounts of coffee, reading, writing, teaching yoga, and engaging in relentless social activism. She has been published in The Taoist blog, The Inclusion Solution blog, Call Me [Brackets], Dear Diary Zine Collective and Lady + the Smut magazine.