memorial

Finally, summer has arrived. I sat on a beach yesterday, Jacob Riis Beach, and dipped my legs into the Atlantic Ocean. The water was still freezing cold, too cold for me to go all the way in, but the weather was warm. The sun was shining. I was on a beach drinking vodka drinks surrounded by friends. I smoked a lot of weed and the day took on a glorious haze that the best summer beach days will take on.

Various tabloid covers were screaming about Virgin Rampages and Homocidal Virgins. I passed these papers in subway kiosks, in a bodega where I bought chips, in a bodega where I bought a Straw-ber-ita. Whatever that is. It tastes like the syrup from a Shirley Temple.

It was cool and refreshing and it is what I was drinking while I was on the subway platform at Broad Channel waiting for the A train. It was what I was drinking when I got a ticket for an open container.

I didn't want the day to end. I spilled out of the subway into Metropolitan. I drank beer and talked to various people and at some point, my desire for food, led me down Grand Street, toward my burrito spot.

I lay in bed eating a pulled pork burrito. I lay in bed still covered in sunscreen and sand, too tired to shower it off. I thought of skin and human beings and boys I wanted to have sex with, boys I have had sex with. I wanted to be on the sand again under the sun next to the ocean. I wanted that clarity brought on by that haze, everything eliminated from your scope of concern except for the things on that beach. These days are here now, these days of summer that are why I live in New York, that make all those cold and miserable months worth it. It is for this release, this sense of freedom.