We’re out of our heads. On cocaine and beach sand. The smell of the sea, sunscreen on her skin and the cold fried dough sitting next to me.
We bought it earlier that day. The sun was out and oddly, there were few people on the boardwalk. Or on the beach for that matter. During the season, if it was anything under 80 nobody showed. All the better. Fuck ‘em.
We would walk up and down the boardwalk. We liked it better than the beach. Or rather I did. I secretly didn’t care what she wanted, but she’d indulged me. Up and down, up and down. Up. And down we’d walk. I loved people watching. The beach is one of the only places in the world where all walks of life meet in one place. Poor inner city kids. Living in the projects and the shunned sections and blocks of suburban cities, towns and shitholes alike. Even at their schools they were segregated. They were avoided at banks and especially the fast food joints. They never went to restaurants so the rest of the world felt safe there. But at the beach, no one was safe from their anger.
They’d pile into their parents beater. 6 or 7 at a time and somehow make it to the beach. 10 bucks between them and they’d stretch it all night somehow. It was magic. Burgers, fries, photo booths, beach tees, caricatures, and the arcade. And boy were they pros. They could stretch 50 cents all night. They were aces at all the games this way. They couldn’t lose or the night was done.
Then the rich fuckers. Boat shoes, lame shades and pink shorts. Those pink fucking shorts. Perfect hair, teeth, clothes they spent all their money on and expensive watches. At the beach. Getting there in 3 separate cars with all their women. Two each. Perfect women too. Wearing tight t shirts, tight pants, tight asses and tight tans. Their hair perfect. The most beautiful women you’d ever lay your eyes on. Most times leaving little to the imagination. Some whores, some not. Some unfortunates. Some fake. Some true. All these boat shoe-wearing boys with these women who walked ahead of the boys chasing them. Pulling them along on invisible leashes, googly-eyed, staring at the asses they’ll never score. Sometimes there’d be a one-off couple. You’d never see them with their lips apart.
Kissing on the railing, kissing in the sand, kissing on the boardwalk, kissing in his car, her car. Kissing on the bench, kissing standing up, lying down, walking, sometimes a poor little dog on the end of the real leash. He’s eyeing the female dogs too. Like father like son. Animals the both of them. Sometimes they’d stop right in front of the fucking pizza place while everyone walks around them. Once, right in front of me at one of the many beach bars. No one can touch these people. They spend most of their time on the sand with their backs to the sky as if it’s their most important side. Jumping into the water only to cool off. Beach balls, boogie boards, and always a damn football being thrown over everybody on the beach. Everybody.
Then there are people who don’t belong in either camp. Who show up and watch these two drastically different groups. We don’t belong anywhere. We don’t belong on either side, don’t belong in their cars, with their women, in their circles or lives or minds and we certainly don’t belong on their beach.
It sure is fun though watching both interact with each other. Like oil and water. They’re forced to. Stand in lines, share the beach, share parking, share the boardwalk, seats in the pizza place, and the water. It’s magic.
But this day was different. A rare occurrence when I was alone, with a woman. Why the beach? Well that’s where you went when it was warm. Where dirt meets water. I just wanted to make fun of the yuppies and avoid being beaten by the tough kids. It was a fun game to play. I didn’t want to play ski ball or whack-a-mole or that stupid fucking game where you drop the coin in and it slides down and you have to get it into a spinning slot and if it misses it bouncing off into oblivion and you waste a fucking quarter and it’s so fucking stupid but if you get it in a slot you’ll win 10 tickets that’ll get you 80 tootsie rolls or a spider ring or half an airhead. Stupid. No, I wanted to play this game.
We walked up to the orange shack where no one was standing in line. As it turns out, there are about 47 different styles of fried dough. All disgusting except the one where you simply get powdered sugar on it. Novel idea these days. She wolfed her, “apple cinnamon crisp twist fried dough”down in minutes. She was torn between that and the “chicken parmesan salsa fried dough” and the “apple cinnamon crisp twist fried dough.” I made a failed attempt at convincing her both were equally disgusting and gross and if she got anything but plain old powdered sugar that I’d split with her on the spot right there at the empty orange shack known as the fried dough place (that had a forgettable name) and walk away, drive home without her and never see her again, hoping she’d get taken out by a riptide, a lightning bolt on the sand, or perhaps a football hitting her in the temple by one of the yuppies who would not apologize but quickly complain to park rangers and life guards that she was in the way. But I was unsuccessful. She got her “apple cinnamon crisp twist fried dough” and we walked across the empty street, the empty parking lot, the perfectly empty benches and to the sand.
We walked up and down the beach. Up and down, up and down, up and down. I looked up across the empty road and empty benches and empty parking lot. “We could’ve been doing the same thing up there.”I said.
“Shhh! This is so much fun!” She ran ahead and spun around with her arms out in the warm sun. I squinted after her, my hand to my forehead to block the sun. What a crock of shit. She stopped and stared at the ground, pointing. “Look! Brine candy!”
I walked up. “What’d you call it?” “Brine candy! You know, when the salt foams up and sits on the beach like that. Brine candy! It’s beautiful!” She walked on, grabbing my arm. “If you say so.” I shook my head and took a breath. What next?
We walked a while and she picked a seemingly random spot to sit and lie down on. We had no towel, we had no beach chairs. I didn’t even have a damn bathing suit on and knew the minute I sat, I’d still be brushing sand out of my bed 3 weeks from now. But I sat. She was pretty and had those eyes. Those big eyes of hers. They could melt the ice on the lakes where fishermen, trucks and 4-wheelers never belonged. They could burn down the sand sculptures that kids would destroy on the beach. They burned right through your soul. They spoke to me.
They also said, “I might have sex with you at some point in the future if you keep buying me tequila sunrises and haddock fillets.” So I sat. She sat indian style. The setting sun perfectly shining on the beach. The golden light and salty wind blowing her hair in her face. Truly a beautiful human being. Why she kept me around as long as she did I do not know. She lied down. I lied on my side with a hand propping my head up. This was it. I thought. But as I watched her next move, she fell asleep. Right there. She fell asleep. I hadn’t even finished my cold fried dough. I wasn’t hungry anymore.
I got angry. No one was around. It was perfect out. Fucking perfect. The warm air and the sound of the ocean and no one around and no footballs or cops or empty pockets or stupid seagulls or nagging children or adults or ice cream stains or surfers or shells or beer cans or beach vomit or anything. No one. This was our chance and she fell asleep.
I got up, brushing the sand off my shirt. I walked down to the tide, right where it nearly comes up to your feet. I still had my shoes on. I looked out, took in the scene. There were a few bouys off in the distance, an island. A sailboat way way out. Not much else other than where it met the wispy orange sky. I looked left and right, and back at her, still passed out. Her chest rising and falling intensely. She was in a deep sleep. What a gal. I turned around, unzipped, and let out that whole can of moxy I had earlier.
Right before we bumped our first hit in the pizza place bathroom, she dared me to order it. So I did.
You’d think we would’ve bought it off the inner city kids. But we didn’t. The guy who ran the pizza place offered it to me. So I bought some. Well, I bought a lot. Too much, one might say. But was there such a thing? I continued pissing. I turned around, she was still passed out. What a fucking gal. She was beautiful but god damn. I had been bending over backwards all day. Hell, all month. Ever since we met. She hadn’t paid for a thing. I pissed.
It felt great. Like going home. The piss was, that is. Like I was delivering it straight back to the source. I was bypassing all the middle men. I was being economical one would say, green. I pissed. I pissed and pissed and pissed and pissed. All that Moxy. I began to GET pissed. I looked back as I kept going. What a fucking asshole. MOXY! Who the fuck gets Moxy? I’ve sold my soul. I’ve let this person control me, my life. Who the hell was she to tell me what to do? Who was I now? Letting some leach push me around? She doesn’t OWN me!
I zipped up. I walked back. I went through her purse and found it. I opened it up and stuck my nose in. Half of it went on the beach. But it didn’t matter. There was much left. I spent the next 20 minutes getting jacked. I got pissed.
Moxy?!? Who the fuck drinks that shit? I do, that’s who. What a fucking asshole. She’s made me into an asshole. One of them. I wasn’t different. I was more of the same. What a shithead I am. A total and utter shithead.
I shoved more up my nose and got angry. I threw the bag.
Right into her fucking face.
It.
Went.
Everywhere.
It went in her hair, in her closed eyes, down her shirt, on her shorts, on the sand in front of her. And in her agape mouth. She woke. “What the hell!?!”
I said nothing.
“What the FUCK?!” She began to sit up. I shoved her head into the sand and before I knew it, I was kneeling above her with both of my hands in her hair pushing it as hard as I humanly could into the naked sand. She made not a sound. No one was around. My hands, my arms, and face were beat red, my veins popping from places I didn’t know they could. I pushed her head deeper and deeper into the soft earth until she stopped moving and still I pushed some more. I shook.
I fell back, lying there. Both my elbows in the sand. I sat there staring out at the ocean, and down the beach occasionally as the sun went down. No one was around. Not on the boardwalk or the parking lot or the empty benches or the condos or the tow place or the beach bars or the arcades or the guy who sold us coke at the pizza place or the lifeguards or the rangers or dog walkers or metal detector fuckers or the inner city kids or the yuppies and their footballs and tanned bodies or sailors or even a flying fucking seagull. Not a god damned thing.
I was out of my head. On cocaine and beach sand. The smell of the sea, sunscreen on her skin and that paper plate of cold, sugar powdered fried dough sitting next to me. Her “apple cinnamon crisp twist fried dough” in her stomach. Her last meal. I stared out as the tide came in around us. I sat there and sat there and didn’t move. Fucking moxy. Who drinks that shit? Why do they still sell it?
Her body lie there in the setting sun.
Brine candy,
foaming up around her skin.