Clara

I went out to Riis Beach yesterday, and during the subway part of the journey, Gabriel, Bob, and I reading Roberto Bolano's "Clara" to each other, alternating reading aloud each paragraph. We never finished the story before we got to Rockaway. At that point, we biked the rest of the way to the beach, tracing the outline of Jamaica Bay, biking past marshes, over bridges, past the ruins of Floyd Bennett Airport, and over another bridge, arriving among a sea of gay black men for Black Pride.

There, we set up our blanket next to some friends we ran into. We went down to the edge of the beach, sat on some rocks, and smoked a joint. Straight after that, I rushed into the ocean, the Atlantic again after time spent in the Pacific, and the cold was shocking after those warm beaches of Mexico. In the water, I soon started wrestling with Carlo, this boy I had hooked up with several months ago - the two of us each trying to dunk the other into the water. This, of course, was desire repressing itself, horsing around as a way of touching each other. The repressed desire didn't last too long. Soon we were making out in the water, wading further into it so that our bodies could be more hidden, so that we could touch each other more.

To be making out and rubbing dicks with some boy in the Atlantic while quite stoned and slightly drunk on tequila, to be doing so while the ocean is filled with the bobbing torsos of lots of sexy gay men of color, to be doing so while the sky is so blue and the weather so nice and this just after a nice bike ride to this place, and to be alive and touching some other person, also alive, it was quite magical.

Later on, after warming a bit in the sun, we went back into the water, continued the games, took off our swimsuits and rubbed against each other's skin, the slickness provided by the Atlantic making these sensations felt fairly often feel so new, so amazing. This time I came and my jizz floated up between the two of our bodies, milky white drops, a different consistency than the ocean and so staying distinct, oil in water.

I stayed there for a few more hours, not wanting the day to end, in love with the beach, the people there, and the sun on my skin, the sun on all the skin around me. I made to leave with Bob, but found my bike with a flat front tire. I got a ride back with Richard, the sun beginning its descent behind low hanging clouds and the effect caused by that so beautiful, causing the packed car of us to constantly remark upon it, to comment on the beauty, to try to verbalize it, a sad attempt to declare the feelings stirred in us by such a sight, language again proving its inadequacies.

I got home and read the last paragraphs of the Bolano story, finished it.