Beach Diary, Part 1
The Picture with the Post is Delaware Rt. 1 on the day described in the Post. The shoulder of the road is where I set up my pop-up margarita stand.
A few notes to help you comprehend this blog.
This story is based on a true story. A church in Texas used blind undocumented people from Mexico to beg for money. The church would take most of the money and leave a small amount with the beggars to keep them happy enough to continue the scam. The police stopped the scam. You cannot make this stuff up. And, of course, we’re talking Texas.
This action takes place in Delaware along the Atlantic shore circa 1997. There were four beach towns with very distinct cultures. The cultures may not be as distinct today as they were back in the day since all America has become homogenized. But circa 1997, Viva la difference!
Going from north to south, the towns are Lewes, Rehoboth Beach, Dewey Beach and Bethany Beach. Delaware Rt 1 connects these towns. It is a flat divided four-lane asphalt highway with very wide shoulders for people to walk and ride bikes between the beach towns. A bridge between Dewey Beach and Bethany Beach is the unofficial dividing line for sex in Delaware. North of the bridge, sex happens. South of the bridge, not so much.
The four Delaware beach towns are so different from each other that you’d think they are in different countries. Lewes, in the far north, is bland, gray, meaningless and nondescript. Other than having a couple of serial murderers active in Lewes, nothing of note goes on there. Directly south of Lewes is Rehoboth Beach, an artsy, trendy, gay town. Fine restaurants, art places, and frozen custard in rainbow flavors. Demographic data indicates that 79.96% of the sex acts that take place in Rehoboth are of the same sex variety.
South of Rehoboth Beach is Dewey Beach, sometimes called “Do me Beach.” Many bars with loud rock bands playing. Think of pizza. The only visible art works are Elvis on black velvet, tattoos and body piercings. The same statistical study just mentioned indicates that 73.87% of sex acts in Dewey are heterosexual, often with multiple partners simultaneously.
You cross a bridge going south from Dewey Beach to Bethany Beach, a.k.a., the family beach or the quiet resort. Lots of bored married couples and their children with sticky ice-cream hands, one-piece bathing suits, dad jokes, no loud bars, and junk food restaurants with attached playgrounds. The above-referenced statistical study indicates that 94.65% of the sex acts in Bethany Beach never happen. The remaining 5.35% are self-play.
Me and my family would go to the beach, along with a neighborhood family, during the summer for about 15 years. We stayed in Bethany because it was the least expensive place to rent. And we had small children with us that could play in the streets with no supervision from us. We’d let them out in the morning and then go do our thing. There were so many other parents around, that someone would bound to be watching our kids. During those years, I kept a diary. This is an excerpt from my diary.
The last bit of explanation for this story is that I used to run a pop-up margarita stand on Rt 1 south of Dewey beach. I pulled it on a small cart behind my bike and usually set it up in the morning south of Dewey Beach. I’d take it down around 3:00 PM, or earlier, if I had no customers. The rest, they say, is history.
Dear Diary,
Things have been great at the beach this year. Other than one bad day that I’ll write about later, the weather has been perfect. Day after day of sunshine, temperatures in the high eighties, and low humidity. Fantastic beach weather for fun in the sand and surf.
Most days when I am not running the margarita stand, I like to go to Rehoboth. Like yesterday was a typical day. People watching was pretty darn good. The guys are generally more buff than at either Dewey or Bethany. I think this may be a gay thing. Anyhoo, the buff guys attract buff women who like to compete in beach body building contests. Gay buff guys attract gay buff guys and athletic gay buff women attract women who attract good-looking men and in no time at all you have a chaotic mix of electrically unstable high voltage male and female gazes that periodically explode into smokestack lightening creating an aurora borealis seen from miles around.
Me, I’m sitting on a boardwalk bench in my flip-flops, Speedo bathing suit, worn Hooters T-shirt with my beer gut peeking out, wearing my fake Ray-Bans and a big straw hat while I drink three cans of Bud Light I poured into a Big Gulp cup from 7-Eleven and I admire the parade of local talent. When it gets too hot, I sunder up the street to Tijuana Taxi, where they have air conditioning and fantastic ass-kicking margaritas - almost as good as I sell at my pop-up margarita stand. I cool off with two high-octane margaritas and I’m feeling no pain. Life is good. One last stop at Kohr’s frozen custard, where I get a large cup of vanilla and orange swirl. After I lick that away with my tongue that can touch my eyebrows, I go to my red Maxima with maximum horsepower to motor on back to boring Bethany. But in a last gesture of rebellion, I put on my endless loop cassette tape of “Born to Be Wild” by Steppenwolf, crank it up to 11, and cruise southbound down Rt.1 at 115 mph. I’m feeling like taking Rt.1 all the way to Florida. I could run over some DeSantis folks if I’m lucky.
That was yesterday. Then my luck plumb ran out. It happens that way. I was raised in Southeast Washington where, if you wanted luck, you had to pay for it.
As for the unfortunate incident I previously alluded to, on my second day at the beach, I loaded my portable pop-up margarita stand on the bike trailer and pedaled out to my favorite spot between Dewey Beach and the bridge to lost sexuality. That’s where I earn some walking-around money selling margaritas to all the parched beautiful single women out exercising along Delaware’s Rt.1. For obvious reasons, I don’t sell to men. As soon as I got the stand stood up, I posted that I’m open for business on all social media: TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Grindr.
Dear Diary, you may ask, “Mike, why do you stand up your stand at that spot?” Nostalgia. Exactly one year ago at exactly this spot, Heather rollerbladed up to me, took me to the Hamptons for four tempestuous days as she enslaved me to be her sex slave, only to discard me like an old stale pizza crust for a callow youth who drove a Lexus. So today I sit and wait for customers at the place I met Heather. I can’t help but harken back on those halcyon days with Heather. Despite looking as confident as a WWE Wrestling World Champion, on the inside I’m a puddle of emotions hoping Heather will rollerblade back into my life.
No one came by. I mean, absolutely no one. Not a single customer. Perhaps today’s nor’easter with hurricane force howling winds and torrential rains, sleet and snow spooked the hard-bodied women of Dewey Beach from coming out to rollerblade down Rt.1. Instead, everyone, and I do mean everyone, went shopping for the day. Standing in the pouring rain for several hours wasn’t a total loss, as it saved me the trouble of both taking a bath and washing my clothes that day.
While packing up my margarita stand in defeat, a black van with black windows pulled off the highway in front of me. A worrisome development if there ever were one. On the side of the van, painted in big orange letters, was “Bethany Brethren Church.” I heard the electric hum of the dark tinted passenger side window as it lowered two inches and then heard a perky female voice. “How’s business?”
A whiff of weed from the car caught my attention. I couldn’t see her face through the dark glass, but something about her sing-song voice put a chill into the very marrow of my wet bones. I knew it was fear, cold deep gut from the grave fear, but I wasn’t ready to admit it. Overcompensating, I answered her question in great detail, including describing my daily receipts, accounts receivable, cash flow, short and long term debt, supply chain, current inventory and my business plan. With no hesitation, I told her my long and short-term profit projections for this stretch of Rt 1. Without saying a word, she closed the window, and the van sped off to the north, soaking me in dirty road spray. I cursed the White patriarchal side of my personality for being so easily trusting and disclosing to total strangers. If I only knew then that my lack of guile was the least of my problems.
To be continued…..
I have not thought of any music to go with this, but I’m working on it.