a fine day (to be hit on)
the journal of Michael Werneburg
twenty-seven years and one million words
Today, the weather was simply awesome. Clear blue skies, a high of around 20C, not much wind... By 14:00 I was on the subway, and heading for centre island.
There were quite a few people on the ferry, maybe playing hooky from jobs (or job searches, ahem). I cut across to the long outer island (not sure of its name) and hit the beach. This I followed to its western end, where I rejoined the path and trekked the rest of the way to the island's western extremity. There, one usually finds long sweeps of sand.
I guess it was a tough winter, because the entire beach had been swept away, right up to but strangely enough not including, the 'clothing optional' portion of the beach next to the island airport. There were a dozen or so mostly or entirely naked people sprinkled along its 600m length, soaking in the almost hot weather (it was sheltered from the wind and was maybe 25-30C).
So I wandered around the snow-fence that marks the edge of the 'clothing optional' beach, stripped to my waste and sat down with my book (a Keane publication on project management). After ten minutes or so, I decided to call up Tracey and see how the day was. I reported my whereabouts, and added that the beach seemed to include a few women, much to my surprise.
She told me that it wasn't just a hangout for gay men (which was what I'd expected, having lived in Vancouver and Sydney). We chatted for a bit, and I lay down for a while. Deciding that my jeans were way too hot for the environment and that a mixed environment was a suitable place for it, I peeled off my jeans.
In brief, let me summarise that Tracey was, in fact, wrong. No sooner had I taken off my jeans than a couple of guys got up (one by one) to have a stroll past me (only ten metres from the edge of the beach). The third one walked right up and started chatting.
He was a fiftyish fellow, and from PEI. He was also trembling slightly, and was sweating quite a bit. He told me it was his first time on a nude beach, and that it was 'tempting'. When he got to the point of asking if I was married, I told him "I'm not gay, if that's what you're asking?"
He assured me (three times) that it wasn't, and hastened off into the bushes. Perhaps to take a decade to approach another younger man, poor bugger.
Anyway, I eventually started to burn despite the 30 SPF (I'm slowly learning - I now remember sunscreen at the beginning of the warm weather). So I dressed and hurried to the ferry dock at Hanlon's Point. Only to find that I'd missed the last regular ferry, and that the next one wouldn't be there for over two hours. Three fellows from Vancouver happened to be there, and one of them called a water taxi. $10 later I was back on concrete.
When Ken called to talk about Jeremy.