After moving to Flour Bluff, my parents took up fishing at the beach on the weekends. We would go down there, they would set up poles in the sand, and I would go wandering up and down the shoreline, looking for shells and poking at piles of seaweed. I'm unsure whether or not they knew it (I did not) but they had started doing so at the gay section of the beach. This wasn't some Miami type of thing, with guys in Speedos running around everywhere, partying... this was the smallish town Texas version, meaning there was practically no one there. Just a few individuals here and there, but mostly you would have good expanses of beach front with no one around you. Which is likely why they chose that area.
One weekend I took off on my own as usual. I had this puppy at the time --I'm embarrassed to say I don't recall its name (hey, it was 30 years ago) only that it was a little Labrador-- we were walking up the shore, pup playing in the water, and came across this giant tree, laying on its side. It had to have washed up there from some distant locale, as trees of this size didn't grow in the area. All that grew there were Mesquite, Scrub Oak and Prickly Pear. And some homosexuals, apparently.
Laying down on this tree was a man. He was fairly muscular, and wearing a pair of blue shorts. Arms stretched behind his head, face to the sun, sunglasses on... soaking up "the rays." I recall that he tilted his head and looked over in my direction a bit, then returned to his solar worship. This made me feel kind of nervous. Not in a bad way, but in the way that here was something I was sexually attracted to, this embodiment of maleness, and it made me antsy.
I continued on my walk for a bit, then eventually had to turn around and start heading back. You can only walk so far on a beach before you have to return to your starting point. As I made my way back I came closer and closer to where the tree lay, and grew more nervous... But then, I don't know, something settled in my brain and in my body. I understood what it was he was seeking, and what I was seeking. I took my fingers and slid my swim trunks down just an inch or so, just below my waist line. Just enough to reveal my hip bones.
And I walked back towards him. And when I came to him, he called over to me, asked me about my dog. I don't recall what conversation we had, but in the end I had his phone number... this adult guy. This "thing" that I had been looking for and desiring. Not he himself obviously, as we'd never met, but this kind of contact.
It would eventually come to be, in that pre-internet age, that we connected again. Rotary phones and everything. How the hell did it work back then?? His name was Michael Cummings, and a friend once described him as "a cross between Joan Collins and a Dallas Cowboy linebacker." He had the most beautiful blue-violet eyes, this thick head of black hair and a body just like described by my friend. Solid. I remember at one point resting my head on his bicep, and basically my entire head fit on it. I loved that.
He was at least 15 years older than me, probably more. You know, when you're 15, anything over 30 is just "over 30." I don't need to go into our sex life together, but I'll say that it was active. Some will say that I was taken advantage of by a pedophile... I would argue strongly against that. Yes, he was older than I was, but it was I who made the initiation. And it was I who was dominant in our physical relations. He never showed me anything but kindness. Perhaps, being a homo stuck in some backwoods-ass town he himself only wanted someone to connect with. Maybe growing up there had "stunted" him in ways that wouldn't happen today, most likely.
I remember passing him off to my folks as a friend's dad when he would come and pick me up from home.
All I know is that he was kind to me, and we got to explore one another's bodies, and ourselves, in a space of honesty. Well, and he also took me drag-racing. Maybe that's why I'm such a grandma driver nowadays. He had this sleek black car (It reminded me of the car from Knight Rider) and we would go to the strip in town where races happened and he would reach over, grab my crotch, I would slink down in the seat... and he would floor it. Whether we won or not didn't matter, and didn't stick in my head. All I remember is that feeling of the pressure hitting me, of the roar of the engine, his hands back on the wheel when I would have preferred them elsewhere. Tires screeching... then afterwards off to an abandoned squat house or back to his place to fuck.
I don't know what happened to him in the end... my teenaged-brain was pretty self-absorbed and eventually I moved on with no regard for his feelings. I remember having friends over for an evening, (one of whom I was interested in, and who would eventually become my first "real" boyfriend) listening to Sinead O'Connor scream Mandinka on MTV, talking to him on the phone... and then I set the phone down, not realizing I hadn't hung up. I picked it up a few minutes later ---after trash-talking him--- and he'd heard everything I'd said. That was pretty much the end. Ok, it was totally the end. We never saw each other again. I wish I could find him (and yes, I've looked on FB and the like) so I could tell him thank you, and that I'm sorry for being an ass.
