Beach Vollyball
This is how I take a selfie:
I don’t. I record a video.
I set the camera up at the exact height of my sternum, hit record, and spend 2 or three minutes swaying, leaning, flexing, sneering, laughing, smiling, shifting my weight from side to side, twisting, and tilting my head in all directions.
once I’ve exhausted the range of flattering attitudes and angles my body has to offer, I set the video on pause and scroll through it frame by frame, taking screenshots of the milliseconds where my face and body look most desirable.
From these screenshots, I select a winner.
I import the screenshot into an app to give it a white border. This makes my Instagram feed look classy and elegant. Like an art gallery with white walls.
The photos are subtly adjusted here and there. Mostly to appear as crisp as possible.
I write a very brief caption. My brand is regular degular. Not too smart but smart enough not to take himself too seriously. a little bit goofy.nothing preachy. No inspirational messages.
Unapologetically horny, but in control.
Just. (I actually believe this) Like. Me. Hey
Tag Provincetown. Hit post. Count the likes. Let the boys know.
Ravel is in the Kitchen with his latest asymmetrical situationship, they are piercing each other’s ears. I let them pierce mine too. It’s 11 am and they’re already drunk and aggressively fun and they are going to join a bunch of other tall hot guys down at the beach for volleyball and my presence is demanded.
Every “you can’t sit with us” of my previous life has turned into “you must do everything with us”
I’ve never felt so included in my entire life.
Down at the beach near the pier 15 variations of traditional handsome in board shorts and speedos are settling into teams.
The vibe is super butch, speedos notwithstanding. Everyone is drinking beer and there’s a boom box playing the “Top Gun” soundtrack on cassette tape. Ravel’s BFF Johan, a towering midwestern hunk, is bellowing, boasting, and bullying his team like a storybook frat boy.
Everyone smiles at me and introduces themselves. Handshakes extend. Eyes sparkle. Some of them wink.
Johan and Ravel try to get me to play but won’t. I insist on sitting out and watching. I have to feign an upset stomach to get them away from me.
It’s not a full lie. For a number of reasons, this situation is making me sick.
I wasn’t raised in the realm of the male.
I was four years old and I came home from preschool shooting finger guns into the air and I was spanked and sent to my room for it.
My pacifist father’s commitment to non-violence was so total and pure that toy weapons and soldiers and games of violence and aggression and cowboys and Indians and cops and robbers and ThunderCats and He-Man and GI Joe and Rambo and Rocky and Tom and Jerry and Star Wars and light sabers and water balloons and water guns and Nerf guns and slingshots and bows and arrows and Karate and Jujitsu and Taekwondo and Sega and Atari and Nintendo and Duck Hunter and Final Fantasy and Space Invaders and Street Fighter were forbidden in my house growing up.
Even throwing a snowball was a pretty bold move.
I’m not sure how my father reconciled his hatred of violence with the practice of corporal punishment. But he did.
He’s a man of strange capacities.
Spectator sports were also off the table. There were no Superbowl parties or Sunday afternoons parked in front of the game. No buddies came over for beer and wings. No attempt to pass on his passion for baseball or basketball or tennis or hockey or Jai Alai or Golf. Sport, like religion, was a trick to distract the masses from revolt. Athletes were sinfully overpaid morons and the fans were braindead sheep.
At some point, he decided I was too soft and I was forced to play catch with him in the front yard, but it wasn’t for fun. It was to make me more of a boy and he made no attempt to make it fun. Just an endless critical commentary of my form, or lack thereof.
“I seem to have a whole superstructure with no foundation.”
That’s Marilyn Monroe, talking about herself, and I’m carrying that feeling with me here on the beach, watching these dudes bounce around, physically a perfect man’s man, indistinguishable from them on the outside but, on the inside, thoroughly different.
I'm alienated from the cultural rituals that produced their personalities, the social contracts, the bro codes that facilitate connection between them. The psychological architecture built in their childhood that channels and metabolizes aggression, compartmentalizes emotions, allows them to translate and channel the chaos of feeling into games and friendships and ways of communicating that might not work very well but work better than anything I was given.
Something starts to happen to me inside while i watch these hot guys yelling at each other and face-planting into the sand around me. clouds of golden dust erupting from the ground under their thick tan backs and haunches. their laughing shouts. the crappy 80s cocaine rock soundtrack.
My body shudders with an unexpected shockwave of hate.
I hate all of these guys. I hate them. I hate how easy their lives are. How custom-tailored the world is to their bodies, attitudes, and energies. How their confidence is locked into a self-perpetuating upward cycle of validation masquerading as achievement. A cycle that mirrors a reverse and ever downward spiral of punishment and disdain for feminine men, timid men, emotional men, men of color, men who are poor. Men With unfortunate faces and physical dimensions. men who weren’t adored and praised and coddled as children. Men who have had to work hard and get by on humility and patience, who survived on the crumbs of tolerance while these guys shovel through compliment buffets on a daily basis and think they earned everything they have.
My Hungarian blood boils. I want to rise up from the sand and lay waste to these fools. Rip their heads off and drop-kick their skulls into the Atlantic. Make a necklace of their dicks and fuck their husbands and boyfriends and all of their exes and then kill them too. I want to make a throne of their bones and sit in it howling at the sea, pounding my chest, covered in blood.
This is what happens when you don’t let your little gay son play with guns.
then, somewhere in the background of this cherry red rage fog, a dopey and deep young voice says “Hey!” and my view of the volleyball game is blocked by a too-close, goofy white face connected to two rubber hose arms and a pasty thin chest
“Are you gonna play?”
another way-too-young boy throwing himself at me. It’s the beard. I need a short list of better ways to say “I’m not your Dad”.
“Hell No. This shit is for the birds”, hoping that negativity will confuse and repel him.
Nope.
“Thank GOD! me either. fuck this corny shit, right? All this performative masculinity! argh! it’s so embarrassing. I’m fully embarrassed by this"
he plops himself right down next to me and strikes an absurdly noble pose, elbow on knee, brow furrowed in judgment of the volleyball players like he’s modeling for Rodin. Now that his face is a polite distance from mine I can see that he’s kind of cute. He looks like JFK Jr by way of Pee-Wee Herman.
“do you like to mingle?”
“what?”
“Im getting into being a mingler. Life of the party and such. Just trying it out. Did you ever try it?”
“I dabble. Try not to make it a habit”
He nods solemnly like I’ve given him a real piece of myself to digest.
“same”
then he offers his hand in an earnest old-school way like a boy scout from the 1950s
“Howdy”
“Howdy”
“I mean, thats my name.”
I can’t not smile.
“well…Howdy, Howdy. I’m James”
He smiles back, clearly pleased to have pleased me.
“hey do you think I could bum a cigarette?”
I finally found another smoker.
I’m making an adjustment to the previous massacre fantasy where I spare this one kid, throw him over my shoulder, and carry him back on my longboat to my viking hut.
Too cool for volleyball, we smoke cigarettes and dabble in mingling for the rest of the game. A welcome distraction, even if it means answering all the old questions about OnlyFans, fucking on camera, and being hot.
Howdy is very interested in how I negotiate hotness. Hotness is another new hobby of his, like mingling.
I try to be honest without being honest. I don’t want to scare him. Don’t want to admit that it’s like careening down a slippery sheet of glacial ice in the dark, compliments whacking you in the face all the way down, grabbing at slender branches that break, hoping you eventually land in some warm loving lap before the ground drops beneath you. Then an endless plummet into irrelevance.
Ravel and Johan collide right in front of us. there’s an amazing snapping sound like a tree falling and handsome Johan lets out a piercing, unbutch scream. I’ve never seen a bone break before. It’s pretty gross.
“just try to enjoy it and don't take anything too seriously”
Again, Howdy nods and digests.
“noted”
We both ash our cigarettes.
looks like the game is over.
