What would be the normal reaction to a soft sandy beach, clear blue sky and glorious sunshine? My heart sank when we walked up to this scene.
The playing field was wide open. People on every stretch of sand. I hated it. Yet I loathe myself for having such thoughts. A roller coaster, trying to enjoy it but underneath feeling completely depressed, shifting from jokes in a conversation to the happy bare skin around me. It’s why I stay away from sun+people=misery. I don’t want to feel self-conscious, yet this is exactly where people go to do just that. It’s the casual strutting, the playing field. Everyone wants a piece of paradise, some winter day dream, some scene from a film with a happy ending.
We went to another beach (pebble) last year in early autumn. A deserted, flat and gloriously bleak one with only a massive power station, a small compound of battered wooden huts and a few boats. There was not one soul to be seen. Maybe that’s what I wanted then, but it was stupid to expect that on a day like this.
The sun was getting to me so a friend lent me a spare pair of shades. Good thing too, otherwise it would have been really obvious I was pissed. I hate talking to people wearing these things, because you can’t read their eyes, like they’re not being genuine or hiding something. I was trying to hide my loathing. But the sun…was too much in our exposed stationary spot.
No doubt, this is pure envy. More than that, it’s the feeling of absolute freedom from your body, completely uninhibited, that I will never know. Without a care or thought. How I envy that. The joke is, I’m no prude at all. God, if I had it, I would flaunt it. My strutting is without a future, it’s all I have, there’s no first base on my field.
