Day after Dyke March

a work in progress about the beach, getting too high, and writing whatever you want

*photo used is by photographer Chris Bernstein*

Hello everyone. It’s taken me a moment to get this post going. Something interesting happened to me, and I think it’s something that must happen to everyone. I got hooked on this one idea for the Substack because I had decided in my head that that was the thing I would write about. I played with it in my head for a few days and started doing some research. When I got inspired, I started writing. But when I started writing, I really didn’t like the things I wrote. So I thought, “Well, one for the trash can!” But then I couldn’t get going again, because I had been telling myself that I had to pick up the same piece and keep chipping away at it. But then I had this realization that I could write whatever I wanted. Writing something might be better than writing nothing, after all. This is my gymnasium! I’m here to strengthen some of my muscles! So let’s pick up those dumbbells baby!

I wanted to write about Pride and Riis Beach. I met this beautiful woman with piercing blue eyes. It was so bright. I got too stoned by accident. That actually happens to me every time I get high. I should probably stop getting so high, but I don’t want to. I’m actually high right now and there’s thunder rumbling outside my window. There’s lightning too. It’s giving me this deep comfort in my body; it’s making my heart feel so soft and heavy.

At Jacob Riis Beach, all the beautiful bodies stood at the shore where the white water crashed over their giggling jubilant bodies. Everyone had to shout over the sound of the waves. I felt incredibly overwhelmed and embarrassed about something I’d said. I thought to myself that I had ruined such a perfect day, a perfect moment—not for anyone but myself. I felt like I had never been anywhere brighter in my life and if I took my sunglasses off, my eyeballs would explode.

All the people at Riis Beach who have been doing this for years seem to sit furthest from the shore. It’s kind of like, “yeah, I come here every year.” I’m constantly having these moments where I re-realize that people are used to the way that New York is absolutely just bonkers insane magic. It’s so much better and so much cooler and so much more special and heart-tingling and mind-blowing than I could have ever imagined. I hate saying that because I feel like it's so cliche and corny. I also wanted to write about the bruised clouds that inched slowly toward us with threatening certainty. And then I was going to tell you all about how it started pouring the second we got in the car, and my friend was crying because she was on mushrooms and somebody hurt her feelings, and my other friend put their arm around her. In the front seat, I was thinking about how every day that week my life felt like it was changing so fast and so hard and my heart was exploding. And how the rain made my heart so soft and heavy.

But it wasn’t coming out right. I have been meditating on why it feels so hard for me to write cultural non-fiction. Like, a thing about Riis Beach. I had a prompt in a creative writing class once to write about something or someone other than myself; the idea was to write a story or essay that wasn’t personal or about you and your life. I was alarmed and worried that maybe I was a narcissist because I couldn’t think of anything to write about. But that wasn’t the case (thankfully). I could think of things to write about, but I was overwhelmed by the concern that if I wrote about another subject I had no way of knowing if I had done it justice or given it enough credit. I was preoccupied with covering all the bases. That unfortunately has not gone away yet. I was also worried that everything I had to say about something had been said before and with much more elegance, wit, whatever. I ALSO felt like I would never be able to acknowledge all the social factors that are implicated in everything. I thought that writing about music meant I had to write about race; I thought writing about work meant writing about class; I thought writing about relationships was about writing about being gay. Sometimes it feels impossible for me to tease it all apart, but I actually wrote this last paragraph like a week ago and now that I’m re-reading it I’m realizing it’s just another reflection of how much I over-think things—ha ha ha.

It seems that the magic of Riis Beach is to be experienced at the place itself or reflected upon in early lesbian poems with eponymous titles, back when a gay beach was truly novel. Like me, the people closest to the shore seem the most dazzled by the experience. They also seem the horniest.

Lesbian Memories 1: Riis Park (from A Restricted Country)

“And then my deepest joy, when the hot weekends came, sometimes as early as May but surely by June. I would leave East Ninth Street early on Saturday morning, wearing my bathing suit under my shorts, and head for the BMT, the start of a two-hour subway and bus trip that would take me to Riis Park—my Riviera, my Fire Island, my gay beach—where I could spread my blanket and watch strong butches challenge each other by weightlifting filled garbage cans, where I could see tattoos bulge with womanly effort and hear the shouts of the softball game come floating over the fence.”

— Joan Nestle

Jacob Riis Memorial Beach

Two good poems in a three day fuck
is a decent ratio, so I’m not trying
to go too hard here, but I thought
I’d be stupid to so to speak “waste”
a day at the beach. Lots to talk
about with water, and the cops
and my nerves and your friends. I walked
a lot around a little patch of sand.
I almost don’t want to say anything,
but it feels so good. I keep going
and everything keeps walking around
interrupting me, including you—not
in like, a bad way, just like how
Chartreuse showed up on the corner,
or the woman walking the gay beach
calling how she’s selling rum punch,
or you trying to pick my stuck door
with my lace needles, or me writing
in the middle of the night because
I’m too turned on to sleep because
you kiss in your sleep, and you’re
sleeping—or anything like that,
like, anything suddenly there.

— Stephen Ira