Tuesday, August 9, 2005
Timmy the Beach Monologuer continued. “Yeah we went by the house last night and the lady had all this trash piled up out on the driveway like paint cans and newspapers and a dead mower and there’s no way we’re moving in there with all that crap I’m gonna call the realtor we got plenty of work to do already got the window people coming in we’re gonna do all the windows well all the windows except two which are kind of shaped funny and would take too long but anyway we’re getting the kind with the cranks and the first thing I want to do is paint the garage Harry wants to move everything into the garage but I said there’s no way I’m gonna move stuff in to the garage and then try and paint it later, take down all those shelves and paint it no I said let’s paint it first when it’s empty then we can move everything into the garage all the storage boxes and stuff and they can stay in there while we finish up on the house and…”
He went on like that for awhile. I gazed past his head, at the sky. A plane glided by, trailing a banner: “Party 2Nite at D’Jais!! Ladies free B4 Ten!!!” All day long planes flew by trailing banners, most of them the cheap kind with red letters, but occasionally you’d get full-color movie or television banners: “Beach Girls with Rob Lowe and Julia Ormond!”
It was my first time at the Jersey Shore. I’d come with friends, a couple from Staten Island, regulars who had formed a ragtag community on the Belmar beach of queers and the occasional enlightened heteros, like James and Helen, the retired couple. James kissed all his gay friends on the cheek. Helen, a broad-built woman with flaming red hair, was like a cross between a Chelsea boy and Lucille Ball.
“What’s that?” she asked, pointing at the fruit my friends had picked up at the farmer’s market.
“Plums.”
“Why are they yellow? Are they gay plums?” She burst out laughing. “Gay plums!”
She quieted when James pulled out the blueprints for a house they were building in Delaware.
“I don’t know what she’s gonna do without the beach,” my friend told me later.
To reach the water we had to cross through a formidable circle of mature lesbians who sat cackling under their umbrellas. “Look,” said one, as the three of us passed. “They brought some boy with them today.”
I was actually sponsoring one of them in sobriety, but I appreciated their sexier first impression. Later, in the water, a north Jersey native named Craig told me that when he first saw me with the couple he thought that, well…
“I was the meat in the sandwich?” I asked.
“Something like that.” he said. “Where you from?”
“Originally? Minneapolis,” I said.
“Oh yeah? I go there on business sometimes. Nice place. Could never live there though. I don’t like white boys.”
His Puerto Rican boyfriend bobbed past us.
“I hear ya,” I said.
“Yeah? You like men of the Latin, uh, persuasion?”
“Depends on the Latin.”
The water was warm but filled with strange objects: round pale squishy balls. Rumor had it they were baby jellyfish - too young to sting - or bluefish eggs. Helen had another idea.
“Look!” she cried, wading toward us. Dozens of the white orbs were cupped in her hands. “It’s sperm!” She chased after Craig. “Yoo-hoo! It’s sperm!” They splashed away.
For a few minutes I watched a beefy specimen of manhood, packed into a pair of knee-length jams, wade towards me. Huge chest, ripped abs, buzz cut. Straight out of Colt Studios.
He got closer.
“Shit,” I muttered. “He plucks his eyebrows.”
“Yeah, and he dyes his mustache,” my friend said, surfacing beside me.
“How can you tell?”
“I dated a hairdresser once. I can spot a rug from two hundred yards.”
Having successfully taken the specimen’s physical inventory, I glanced down at my own body. My skin, having seen more of the library and subways than sun this summer, had been coated twice in 30 spf spray, which seemed to be holding up a little too well. My chest hair was flattened wet against my skin, and if the sun hit me at just the right angle one could even see the barest hint of my upper six pack gleaming above the surface of the water. Since the lower six pack was still in hiding, I stood at such a level that the waves lapped below my shoulders and pecs, which were, I had to ad-
A wave smacked me in the back of the head, snatching me from my reverie. Salt water went up my nose. I swiped a handful of eggs or sperm from my chest hair and sank down into the murk, where I pondered more serious matters, for a moment or two.
