Why had she left it? Really, she’d not chosen to get out of the classroom as much as been slowly drawn out of it. She realized her reasons sounded as thin as Renny’s. First, she’d gotten her graduate degree, which just made sense when it increased her teaching salary. Then there’d been the occasional summer workshop she’d been pegged to do, first by her school and then others. When the job offer came from the private company to offer training full-time, it was too good to say no to. The hours were better, the pay was better, and there weren’t any papers to grade. But she’d once loved even that task, hadn’t she? How had good decisions taken her to unhappiness?
“John, huh?” Renny’s smile took her by surprise, and she struggled to catch up with the subject change. “Celia here says you were in a clinch with her boss.”
Celia sucked in her breath. “I didn’t, Mara, I just said that you kinda—”
Mara gave up any defense. “It’s true.” If Celia was a peppy Golden Retriever, she was a beagle who rolled over on her back in both surrender and guilt.
Renny had the grace not to laugh out loud. “Two men? That’s ten times as bad as one woman. What did the husband say about the sharing?”
“It, uh, didn’t come up.” She feared her eyebrows were twitching up and down like a nervous beagle.
“Didn’t come up? Well, that’s reason number six-hundred-and-forty-eight to be a lesbian.”
“I’ll keep that in mind, although I’d probably find myself in the same boat.”
Renny quirked an eyebrow, and she could also see that Celia sat breathless, taking in every word like she was the one human on the planet who really could learn from others’ mistakes. Well, Mara was pretty sure she could make as many mistakes as a lesbian. “I’d have been a good girl and married, as much as the law would allow, my college sweetheart, and she’d be a sweetheart, right?”
Renny smiled. “Yours would be.”
“And then after adopting a lovely son.”
“Daughter. Chinese.”
“A dozen or so years after adopting a lovely Chinese daughter, I’d snap, and end up in another country trying to enjoy a small break in the middle of my whole entire life. A life where I did everything I was supposed to do, straight or not, and just like now, I’d be crossing the line.”
Celia gave her a comforting pat. “You’re not doing anything but working and going out with friends.”
“And clinching,” Renny added, “with her boss.”
“Well, I’m sure she has a perfectly good reason.”
She did. Did she? She could point at a thing or two but would it be a reason or just an excuse? “I don’t. Sorry, I wish I did. It’s just that I draw the line, like we all draw the line, about what I’d do or what I wouldn’t, but the line, my line, right now, keeps moving. I don’t really cross it at all because just when I get up to it, it scoots.”
“I love that about lines.” Renny leaned closer as if Mara looked too pathetic to sit in her own personal space. “It’s probably easier for me. I’m already out of bounds.” She shrugged. “It’s where I live, not by choice so much, but that’s where the world draws the line for me. Celia too. She doesn’t know it yet, but musicians, artists, have already set up camp on the outside. I pay for it. You’ll pay for it.”
Celia looked alarmed, but Renny just smiled at her, a couple of decades of choices already in the rear view mirror. “It’s worth it. It’s damn well worth it for your art, for who you were born to be. Sometimes you get scraped up when you’d rather not. But for you…” Mara felt Renny’s arm over her shoulder. “It might not be worth it.”
She shook her head as if saying
no
would change what she knew to be true. “I’ve got to figure out how to get home before the line gets too far away, but right now I just can’t go back.”
“Well, then. You’ll take your chances with the rest of us, won’t you?”
Taking her chances was a day at the beach, an actual day at the beach. Saying the word
beach
to herself as Renny’s English sports car flew down the road, sounded as restorative as it felt. She’d been rescued twice in two days, first by Celia who saved her from her own response to John and then by Renny’s sunny day offer to show her Vancouver’s piece of the Pacific. In two more days, she’d have the next photo shoot lined up, but until then she was going to relax and refuse to think about the dwindling number of kisses left on the teddy.
They’d gotten out of the downtown area despite the clog of busy commuters and headed down the long stretch of South West Marine Drive. They passed the long edge of campus for the University of British Columbia. Even in glimpses it had a serious quality Janie would have loved. She smiled, imagining that Mara was the kind of woman who liked attending keggars and flunking out. She might even throw caution to the wind and forsake her sun hat.
Renny pulled off the main road, the turn off marked by an unusual native totem that had Mara sitting up straighter. She’d only gotten a little eyeful of the giant man who was wood, brown, and… naked?
Renny shut off the engine, threw her keys in a bag that held a towel, and as near as Mara could tell, several bottles of wine. Ah, a day at the beach and Al Fresco drinking. She could use fresh. She embraced change. She was…
Renny headed towards an opening in the woods, a rocky opening Mara would barely call a trail. “Come on. Everybody’s already there.” There may be an unexpected trek, but a beach party was a beach party, and ever since she’d seen the old sixties movies where guys rode giant surfboards in knit trunks, and girls shook their wares in fringe bikinis, she’d wanted to Beach Blanket Bingo.
It came to her attention almost immediately that on the rocky beach with the cityscape of Vancouver rising across the water, there were no women in fringed bikinis. There were no men in knit swim trunks. Also, there were no beach-goers playing bingo. There were blankets, lots of blankets, strewn across the sand with coolers, dotted with the occasional guitar. The place had all the makings of a beach party. But in this nineteen-sixty’s adventure, everyone was, “naked.”
Renny shook out the blanket. “I plan to be.”
What? The question ran through her head, but even in her thoughts she stuttered it. Wwwwwwwhat? But while her
w’s
ran wild, Renny peeled off her top. Her brown breasts…
look away, look away
were the next thoughts skittering through her head. But she glanced anyway because Renny’s breasts were really bragging that they’d seen a day or two in the sun, and that Renny had never had kids. “Good for you.”
As Renny stepped out of her shorts, Mara heard a man’s voice narrating,
and then she wore nothing but a smile
. She shook her head as if she had already gotten water in her ear. “I’m hearing a man.”
Renny smiled with amusement. “It’s just the lingering effect of being straight for so long. It’ll pass.”
“It’ll…” She felt a spasm between her eyebrows and reached under her sunglasses to rub the bunched tenseness there. Even her eyebrows were so tightly wound they gave her a headache, and she was supposed to get naked? She sat down with force to avoid falling over and watched Renny move across the beach toward Amy and Jodi. Renny managed to be even more feline naked. Lean and compact, she possessed extra sleekness without clothes. Mara felt something, but maybe it was pride because she was on the same team. Not the lesbian team but the spectacular Team Woman. They all had the exact same body parts. Okay, she and Renny didn’t have
exact
so much as
similar
body parts.
Renny waved at an old hippy guy down the beach, and Mara committed to slipping off her hat. The bonnet seemed like overkill with everyone else naked and all, and since she did normally take her shorts off near the water, she pulled the denim cut-offs down too. It exposed the yellow bathing suit Renny had reluctantly loaned her. Mystery solved why Renny had informed her she wouldn’t need one. It was kinda like borrowing a scarf for the shower.
She’d like to leave the suit on. She really wanted to leave the suit on. She’d pay to leave the suit on, if she had any money. But it was a nude beach and she needed to ditch the suit before it became obvious she was the only one not nude. They would all eventually make their way over to where she sat, and she really, really, really didn’t want to strip in front of witnesses. It would be so much better to do it alone. She toyed with the band of her top. Maybe, like a bandage, it should be ripped off in one quick move to save some pain.
She reached around behind her for the clasp, unclicked the hold the top had on her breasts, and stripped it off. Then before she could breathe, think, or run through the woods like a terrified wildebeest, she hooked her thumbs in her bikini bottoms, yanked them off, and threw herself face down on the blanket.
Sand had less give than she would have guessed. It felt brick-like under her, but if she didn’t move at all, ever, everyone would think she’d fallen asleep in the sun. But damn, her breasts were squished, pain-ful-ly squished.
And the face down position exposed her butt and the backs of her thighs. She didn’t even want to imagine what they looked like. They could be fine. White, certainly, and there was no shame in that. But lumpy? They could be hideously lumpy. Who knew these things about their own backsides? She only just recently discovered that Renny’s thighs, for example, were smooth. Maybe hers were cottage-cheesy and from the rear she resembled the before picture of a thigh reducing magazine ad. Now it was too late. Curse her for not buying the magic herbal cream that dissolved cellulite while a person slept and could have been hers for three easy payments of twenty-nine-ninety-nine.
She could hear the women getting closer. Who was she kidding? Of course she had a malformed backside. She didn’t work out, get any sun exposure, or rub anything on her nether regions. She couldn’t be caught in that position. She rolled over, eyes clenched, and felt her breasts settle sunny side up. She was, God help her, a beached suburban mom.
Renny’s voice floated down to her. “Mara, nobody suns tense.”
She kept her eyes closed, pretending even for herself that she was unconscious. She heard someone reach into a bag, and the click of glass, as they pulled out the first bottle of wine. Then, beside her on the blanket, someone sat. She cracked one eye open, relief waving over her. “Gretchen!”
Gretchen shook her head. “Renny didn’t tell you Wreck Beach is nude.”
Mara kept only one eye opened, aimed at Gretchen’s face. Wreck? Appropriate.
Renny uncorked the wine with a satisfying pop. Help was on the way.
Gretchen sighed. “Renny communicates about as well as a man. I mean, what’s the point?”
She considered that. A woman with a man’s sensibility would be… still a woman. “I bet she wouldn’t take your staple gun away.”
Renny handed Gretchen a plastic cup of wine, and Gretchen studied her. “No, it would be too much work. Wouldn’t it, Renny?”
Renny didn’t answer, but held wine in front of Mara’s open eye, so she opened the other in response and sat up. She crossed her arms, casually she hoped, around her knees and took the cup from Renny. It was tricky, bringing it to her lips without exposing anything. She felt like a turtle, a turtle trying to get drunk. Renny sat down on her other side of her and just as Gretchen turned to say something to Renny, Renny smiled at Mara. Mara blinked, took a drink and considered that she knew that move. Men and women, women and women, the combinations may alter the specifics but generalities remained the same. Renny wanted Gretchen’s jealous attention, and Mara’s naked white presence was supposed to get it for her.
She felt… she’d have to think about it for a while. She’d never been a pawn in some woman’s game of affection. She’d never been a pawn in a man’s game of affection either. She’d never even had small animals or children use her to make anyone jealous. It was a peerless experience. She sat back a degree, relaxed the tight bend of her knees, and felt the sun warm her skin, all of it. Janie would have blacked out, and while she nearly had, she hadn’t. She might even be able to enjoy a game of affections.
Jodi jumped up, and she had to admit jumping naked probably worked better prior to the age of thirty-nine. Jodi did it really well, and she vowed to stay seated all day. She watched the group head across the sand, wine in hand. Asses and glasses. See, she could keep her sense of humor even naked. Things were looking…
“Volleyball.” Renny waved back at her. “You’re on my team.”
Mara studied the red circle in the center of her chest. It was the kind of welt that marked her to the world as a nude volleyball victim. Amy may have a mean spike, but that girl didn’t know who she was dealing with. Mara earned an A in a semester of college P.E. volleyball, so she had that experience under her belt, and even if they took away her belt, that kind of skill was forever. The winning serve was hers to make. “Fourteen, thirteen game point.” She felt the wind, salty off the lap of the ocean, and tossed the ball in the air. The afternoon sun made it so white she squinted to connect the heel of her hand to it.
The ball flew over the net just above Amy’s head, and before Gretchen could get a piece of it, the ball hit and kicked up a spray of winning sand.
Renny threw her arms in the air, a victory yell, aimed, Mara thought, at an ignoring her Gretchen. Renny high-fived her, and so did the old hippy guy whose brown skin held wrinkles like a delightful wallpaper pattern. He’d held his own in the game, but she’d cheered him on without ever using his name. She wondered if by the end of the day she could bring herself to call a naked man Bob.
She watched everyone walk toward the blankets, their strides making foot-shaped divots in the sand. The experience should feel sexual, at least decadent. She was living free of clothing on a gorgeous July day with beautiful women and Bob. Weren’t entire sections of video stores devoted to such things? But it felt… She raised her face to the sky, arms wide, and breathed in cool air and warm sun. It felt like childhood pleasures, a kind of abundance of joy she’d forgotten or maybe never known.
After they’d eaten a boggling array of food that came out of coolers with ingredients like arugula and prosciutto, she’d enjoyed a glass of wine and watched the oranges and pinks of the streaky sunset. The slight chill made her slip into her daisy cardigan, but she couldn’t bring herself to button it. The window of naked opportunity couldn’t stay open much longer, and she wanted to enjoy the stars on her breasts. She’d already wrapped a towel around her waist to both warm up and keep sand out of her nether regions when the blanket space filled up, and she’d scooted onto the beach.