The Nude Beach

Black's Beach in the 70's...was much more hoppin' than it was in the 90's.

***No disapproving old farts may read this***

Long, long ago, when I was finishing college in California...1996 to be precise...I had a very free-spirited Mexican boyfriend (who is now becoming a very successful cinematic director*,) and I felt pretty liberally expressive around him cause he'd do things like pull down his pants on the street and chase me as I ran away screaming....He always loved shocking people - still does. Wouldn't hesitate to wear a wig to a fancy restaurant, all that kind of pranksterism. I was thrilled and contented by his bravery. (It was actually quite a match, though we had our issues, and since 23 is no time to get married anyway, it's a time to explore, we wound up going our separate ways. Believe me, there has been much mutual woe over this.)

Anyway, I will call him Isaac. Isaac and I went to Black's Beach a few times. It was and is a nude beach, except now most of the people wear clothes...and it's quite empty.

He lived in San Diego, which is a surfer's delight, and I don't like big waves. (Though when I was a girl on vacation in Hawaii, I'd "boogie-board" in the hugest of them and wasn't scared a bit...age 11...I don't know when or why I learned fear.) But Black's Beach had tiny waves so he took me there.

Black's beach looks like it used to be all the rage, right after the sexual revolution. (I don't know how evolved a man has to be to tame his erection like that.) But now, it is all but abandoned. Frankly, I liked it that way. I like an empty beach. A crowded beach is pure human misery to me.

This might look fun to you, but to me it looks miserable.

I like solcitude on the beach.

I'm just realizing that this story is anti-climactic. I don't mean to disappoint you.

But at Black's Beach, most of the people who were nude were mothers from hold-out communes and old men with long dongs and long beards, looking around them wondering where all the excitement went. (And yes, your worst fear is confirmed men - some day, your balls will droop and sag, just like our boobs will, so get ready!)

And not being terribly impressed in any direction by anything I was seeing, I decided that I would be open-minded and take off my top. Now in many places in the world, this is not a big deal. But in many places, it is a VERY big deal. In Latin America, for example, this is a very big deal. In fact, once in Central America this German lady and her daughter were bathing nude on a beach in quite the Evangelical small town (where the girls bath in men's t-shirts) and a crowd pretty much gathered to gawk. I don't know how these people were enjoying themsleves, being so culturally insensitive, but Germans are like that - once a German tourist went to a Honduran vegetable market wearing a thong and all of the children ran home to tell their mothers about the crazy "gringo" - but anyway -

When I made the choice to free myself of constraints and bear my breasts to the Sun God, the Mexicanos came walking by, I mean guys that were newly arrived in the States...guys who weren't used to this kind of thing...and I had to close my eyes because I knew they were gawking and it was painful.

Liberal, crazy Isaac began to squirm and actually covered me up with his arm. No matter how evolved, a man has his limits.

That's really the end of the story. I didn't go nude again. I don't really plan on it. That was it. Curiosity satiated. And when I see those Euro-bathers, I see it with a combination of envy (at the lack of shame) and disappointment (at how intimate parts of our bodies could be treated so casually and impersonally.) I mean, are men supposed to look, or not look? And vice-versa - how much looking is a person allowed to do without having empty bottles of tanning lotion thrown at them?

*We made his undergrad thesis together...co-wrote it... yours truly designed the costumes/set...it was terrible...a man has a dream that masked people are smearing fruit all over him...now when I see it, I can't stop laughing...but at the time, we thought it was very deep....we won an honorable mention at the Director's Guild of America Latino Film Festival...which puzzles me today...