LIFE IS NOT A BEACH

It is traditional during the summer months to head to the beach, smear unguents all over one's naked flesh, and hope that exposure to the suns's fierce rays will make one beautiful rather than cause blisters, purulence, and festering pussy dermal issues followed by rough cancerous lesions. Obviously I am not so optimistic. I am a Dutch American living in San Francisco. I take delight in gloom, fog, dampness. These nurture my soul. A swamp thing. Keenly familiar with second and third layers, downright sneering at the near-nudity other people enjoy and their deviant 'naturverliebte exhibitionismus'.

Even sexual shenanigans should be fully clothed.
Go ahead, put on a sweater and woolly socks.

Paras. Puffy down filled.
Insulation.

Yes, okay, it was thinly drizzling when I stepped out earlier. Totally grey. If you expected us to run in slo-mo to the beach looking athletic and tanned, Bay Watch style, as you have seen on teevee, that was somewhere else, other people, who all got pneumonia afterwards and were paid for it. Actors. Not us.

So you can take that sunscreen off. You look greasy and stupid. This is NOT beach weather. We shall not beach today. Maybe not ever. A beach attitude is too European, too Santa Barbaraish, too drunken Australians in Bali.

Can I interest you in some fog, wind, claminess, and existential angst instead?
It's better for you. Less skin-cancerous.



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