The Beach Share

On Coffee With Cream And Honey

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It was 2007. I had a beach share. It was called a share, but it was the opposite of sharing. Once, I wandered into someone’s house and ate an orange from their kitchen counter. Later my friend told me I had to apologize — the people were sort of famous, and they felt intruded upon. Unsafe, she said. I said sorry. Later, I cried.

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People put post-its on their fruit. There were ants in the Rice Krispies. My friend got herpes from a guy named Rick. You should always set a horror movie in paradise.

The beach was a performance. Commedia dell’arte in SPF 8. There was a guy named Ken. There was a guy named Jake. I rode the Jitney with a contestant from The Bachelor. In the morning, we did Mysore Yoga at Jake’s uncle’s house. An editor from Marie Claire had just interviewed Bill Clinton. Everyone's towels came from Turkey. Gossip Girl. On the off-weekends I stayed at Ken’s house and gave him handjobs instead of money. I thought that was funny at the time. I don’t think it’s funny now.

Rihanna’s Umbrella on loop. Amy Winehouse unraveling in real time, Paris in jail and the Sopranos going dark mid-song. The iPhone had just dropped — small enough to fit in your pocket, big enough to ruin your brain. Obama was gaining heat, Bush was bleeding approval, and Facebook crept from dorm rooms into the ether. Harry Potter ended, Mad Men began, and somewhere in the static—celebrity rehab, YouTube confessions, the Virginia Tech grief spiral — America started scrolling and never stopped.

That was the era. Downtown. Models. You hooked up with photographers. You hoped they’d put you on their blog. I slept with one whose penis was so big it felt like a punishment. He slapped me, called me princess and threw my belly ring out the window. I think. I was very drunk. I’d gotten a Commes Des Garcon tote bag for free at work and he hung it off his hard dick. I thought this was hilarious. Then he tried to feed my kitten to his dog. This happened very early in the morning, in the bright light of day. Before eight am.

Later, Rick was found dead in his East Village apartment, a needle in his arm. There was no funeral. Or maybe there was. I probably blocked it out because I chose to stay home with the baby. When you have a baby, you can always stay home.

That was the first summer I talked to The Director. He said something about getting up at six every morning. About drinking coffee with cream and honey. Something about lifting weights and his father. His eyes met mine and I thought: He’s not a clown. He’s just playing one.

This was before he was taken down. Shortly afterwards I met my husband and I never went back. The beach still happened, but not to me. I thought: I will never again have to beg for love. I read that the editor bought a brownstone and named her daughter after a root vegetable.

It was also before phones had cameras. Back when the person holding the Point-and-Shoot held all the power. If you had the shine, you hoped he’d catch it. Capture it. The line between virgin and whore, child and woman. Beehive and shell.

A few years later I read something about the Taj Mahal Palace in Mumbai that reminded me of the beach. Anyone off the street can walk into the lobby, stay as long as they want. But not everyone does. Only the ones who believe they belong.

The beach was like that. If you didn’t speak the language, they’d smell it on you. You had to wear the weight. The rot. The polish. I didn’t have it yet. I was still soft. Unmarked. You had to have made it, sold out, broken down, crawled back. You had to be monogrammed by ruin. Someone must have died in your cashmere.

In Shakespeare, playing the king means not playing the king at all. You don’t perform power. You absorb power. In fact, you have no power without other people. Their fear is your power. Your only job is to hold the silence while they tremble.

The Director was the king. Everyone wants to be king.