The Beach Diaries #4

Previous: #1, #2, #3

* A hot girl wears an “I love nerds!” t-shirt. So I guess I can stroll over right now in the Superman shirt I have on and talk to you about my favourite films and the adventures I’ve had on World of Warcraft, and you’ll be totally into it? Pfft. Those shirts should say “I love hot guys who pander to that nerdish look by being moderately offbeat, but in a non-threatening way that doesn’t encroach on their by-the-book hotness. Say, Dr. Who, or Ryan Reynolds in that film where he wore glasses.” But that probably wouldn’t fit on a shirt.

* BSR walks by. Should the weather permit enough entries this summer, I suspect he will become the Omar Little/Papa Lazarou poster character for the Beach Diaries. Oh, what material will you give me today, you sun-broiled lothario?

* Later. BSR passes, and gives me a lengthy stink-eye. He knows, I think, somehow, he knows that I’ve turned him into a public grotesque for the benefit of my blog. Maybe this is how it ends. Not with a whimper, but with me being battered behind the Crazy Golf, my final screams drowned by the shrieks of children on the Elephant-go-round.

He does not reappear. Presumably he’s penning a blog entry for ShirtlessRon.com about SWHF*, one of the oddball characters from his local beach.

*Shirt-wearing Hipster Faggot.

* A ten-year-old boy rollerblades up the pier, accompanied by an elderly man (seventies, obviously his grandfather). The grandfather wears a pair of old-fashioned roller skates, with spanking-new heavy duty safety pads on his knees and elbows. How awesome, I think, that he’d volunteer to go skating with his grandson, equipping up and giving it his best, keeping pace even though his hips are probably creaking with each clack of the wheels.

They get to the lighthouse, and the grandfather does an effortlessly graceful backwards pirouette around the boy, like a world class figure skater.

* There’s a beautiful girl I’ve been seeing around all day, on my meandering travels. Blonde hair, floaty, carefree air, a dog on a lead, and a collection of yarn bracelets around her wrist; the exact kind of surf-hippie chic aesthetic I’ve come to find that I really dig. Her presence haunts my day like the ghost from an unlived life.

Later, and the day is winding down. Surf Hippie Girl appears again, approaching and talking to a guy sat nearby. They don’t know each other, but she introduces herself, and then it’s all smiles and flirty pleasantries. I sit and wonder what it’s like to be one of those guys that gets approached like that. Someone just inserting themselves into your day, pulling you into their world for a moment. I find this thought quite depressing. So much so, that as Surf Hippie Girl talks and laughs with the other dude, the whole thing pushes me into calling it a day and heading home, and I get up to leave. I’m thinking about it as I strap my bag on my back, while she talks to the guy about the bangles on her wrist, and the bohemian necklace around her neck that he’s complimenting, and as I walk away, I’m thinking that it’s more like something from a movie than from real life. Strangers don’t speak, or want to know you a little, especially not beautiful ones.

A voice calls after me, and I turn around.

A man so drunk that he can barely stand asks if I have a light.

~ by Stuart on April 21, 2011.