the seaside
What is it about a day at the seaside that sets the scene for tgi? Is it the baldly Swinburnian experience of being knocked about in the surf, flogged by the wild sea, half-drowned and scraped to bleeding by breakers? Is it the sensuousness of full-body exercise in the water coupled with languid sunbathing, the salt baking into your skin, your hair drying as it will, in twisty, windblown curls? Is it sunburn, the dog’s bite of sunbathing? Or is it simply the lack of clothing?
I can’t remember the last day I spent at the beach. Today – 80 degrees, low humidity, steady breeze, cloudless sky – was the Arcadia of summer sea days. You might not think we have beaches here in Gotham, but they can be found. The beach today reminded me of my seventeenth summer. We had just moved to Gotham, and I was enraptured with Stalky & Co, in particular the descriptions of (nude) bathing off the Pebble Ridge. I longed to swim to exhaustion like those boys, to feel my skin salt-encrusted, to succumb to torpor during afternoon-school, and to suffer the consequences of falling asleep on the wrong master. I had not yet discovered Swinburne, but once I did, my ocean fantasies broadened to include the flagellating sea, and the desperate bravery of one captivated by the wild, living water.
Being fair-skinned, the risk of sunburn pervaded my childhood. My mother was always slathering me in sunscreen and berating me when I got burned. She never did more than scold, but managed to make it sound as though I’d recklessly contracted cancer. I prefer in my mind a more detached approach; as in, little girls who get sunburned can be put across someone’s knee until their bottoms match the offending shade, ha ha.
Today I swam a long time in huge surf, and in struggling to exit found myself knocked upside down and dragged along the shell-studded sand, leaving me with bloody scrapes on my shins and bottom. I felt butch. I felt like Bertie in Lesbia Brandon, the salt water stinging the scrapes in a way that felt salutary. Later, at home, my body ached from the unfamiliar exercise, and I felt dopey in a sun-drunk or post-massage way.
Stretching across my towel after the first swim, rashly allowing the mid-day sun to dry my back and limbs, made me yearn rather for the birch. Not to have just then, but later, perhaps, after returning home, to atone for skiving off to the sea, or getting sunburned, or swimming out too far. Something of that order.
And in the surf I remembered the first time M and I went summer camping in the Virgin Islands. We arrived at Cinnamon Bay (St. John) late one night after a day of travel. The campground was dark. A note had been left directing us to our site. Sweaty and fatigued, we pitched the tent and went down to the beach. The moon hid behind some clouds. We stripped and went into the water. It was mouth warm, clear, calm, and full of phosphorescence. We’d never swum naked together before. We kissed in the water and held each other. The surprise of this beautiful, empty, sparkling water and the primal, sensual pleasure of floating in it together – I’ll never forget it.
I miss him in so many ways. Today, his touch, his mouth, his cock, and the company of his imagination on a made-to-order seaside day.
