Pride at the Beach

As has become something of a tradition for my fiancé and me, we spent the final Sunday of Pride month not at the big corporate parade in Manhattan. There, we’d be surrounded by pomp and circumstance and spectacle that feels more like a show of how fun it is to be queer to the straight people hoping to touch some of our culture than an authentic celebration. Instead, we loaded up our car with snacks and chairs and a cooler full of seltzers and sandwiches, and headed south to Jacob Riis beach. 

There are two distinct sides to this beach. The section of the beach to the right of the bathhouse, which resembles an early 20th century factory where young immigrant women would have been exploited for labor, is the family section. On that side, thousands of heterosexual families frolic like they would on any number of beaches along the Atlantic Coast. 

To the left is where the party is. And by party, I mean the gays. 

Every flavor of body is on display on this side of the beach. Skin colors, body types, body hair, tattoos and piercings. Women with shaved heads and leg hair play topless in the surf. People with beards and bikini tops lounge under striped umbrellas while mascs in boxers spread lotion on their shoulders. Top surgery scars on lean or chubby chests as far as the eye can see. Tiny thongs on men and women. Stomach rolls and sagging tits and thick thighs and stretch marks enjoying the sea air and sunshine. 

As my fiancé said, everyone is hot and everyone is happy.

I have never felt less concerned about my round stomach and flat ass, the way my thighs rub together when I walk than when I’m at this beach. No one bats an eye at my dark thatch of armpit hair or the goat-like hair on my thighs. No one ogles the topless women as they swim or read or snack on the sand, feed their children or build sandcastles with them. The joy and freedom is palpable the minute you set foot on the burning sand. 

Thousands of us flocked to the beach this past Sunday. When I turned back to the shore after riding a wave, I saw a wall of humanity in the water or wading in the surfline hundreds thick and stretching out the whole length of the beach. There was not an inch of sand unoccupied by a towel or tent or blanket. 

On one of my trips to the water, my fiancé and I were standing in the shallows, arms linked around each other’s bare backs. I made brief eye contact with a girl who looked around ten or eleven. She was filling up her pail in the surf in her swim shirt and full coverage hat, eyes eagerly eating up the view of bodies around her, inspecting. I smiled at her when our gazes collided and she glanced shyly away. I wondered what was going through her mind as she watched us, children in adult bodies playing in the water, loose limbed. Our self- consciousness and fear shed like our t-shirts and cover ups leaving us beautifully bared to each other. No one was sucking in their stomachs or trying to look too cool. 

I hope that the impression of women and femmes’ real bodies unleashed and unlatched and loved in their totality will linger with her as her own body begins to develop. That she never feels the need to choose the one piece over the bikini because she’s insecure about her stomach. That she never feels the need to push down her spark of attraction to that cute girl in her math class because it makes her different. 

When I think of Pride, it’s not fit as hell gay men shirtless and decked in feathers dancing on a Chase bank float. It’s women running into the ocean shrieking with girlish laughter. It’s a little girl and her mothers at the beach building a drip castle. It’s kissing my love in the waves, tasting of salt and sandy joy.

It’s for once fully inhabiting my body without wondering what it looks like from the outside.