Sand
art by Jameson Currier
gouache, acrylic and pencil on paper
20240622001

SAND

by Jameson Currier

“This book is lousy, “ Kenny said, tossing the paperback on the sand near Rick. Kenny, dressed in a T-shirt and shorts, was sitting beneath a yellow-and-blue striped beach umbrella, shoved at an angle into the sand.

“Did you read page thirty-five?” Rick asked, squinting as he looked up from his towel. Rick wore only a sharply cut, small red swimsuit.

“Trash,” Kenny said.

“But it got a brilliant review, “ Rick said.

“It’s still pornography,” Kenny said. “I don’t know how you can read that on the beach without getting an erection.” Kenny dipped his hand into the ice bucket and popped a cube into his mouth. “It’s going to be sizzling by noon. There’s a one and a three o’clock showing. And it’s air conditioned. I asked the houseboy this morning.”

“Why don’t you go in?” Rick asked. “The water’s warm.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Kenny said. He tossed his hair, still long on the sides. “Too much sand.”

“What? “ Rick laughed. “That’s why we came here. You said we hadn’t been to the beach in such a long time. You were the one that wanted to check this place out. This was the place where all the boys were going.”

“I don’t know,” Kenny replied and looked out over the cluster of bodies flattened to the sand. “It’s just not what I expected.”

“What did you expect? That they’d be crawling all over you? Asking you for your number? Where you’re staying?”

“Thank you for reminding me I’ve aged.”

“You still look good in a bathing suit. Why are you wearing so many clothes?”

“The sun,” Kenny said. “It’s not good for you.” He looked at the perimeter of the shade the beach umbrella cast and Rick lying on his towel in the sun. “Are you sure you should even be in the sun?”

“I’ve got plenty of protection.”

Rick looked up at a young man, dark and slick with oil, walking near his towel. Kenny caught a whiff of suntan lotion and he, too, turned his gaze and watched the young man weave around the beach blankets.

“Do you think they even notice us?” Kenny asked.

“It’s the beach, Kenny. Just relax.”

Kenny studied the landscape again: sweating skin, nipples and navels, bright-colored bulges of crotches–the male body in all shapes and sizes–sunglasses shielding stares. Music drifted in the air, patches of old Sixties tunes flaring up against the thump, thump, thump of a hip hop beat.

“I thought we had outgrown all this,” Kenny said.

“What? Outgrown what? Pretty boys? Lustful thoughts? We’re just admiring. Did you expect to be immune to all this too?”

Kenny lifted himself out of the beach chair and sat in the sunlight beside Rick. He took his palm and began scooping and molding a portion of the sand into a large mound.

“Are you going in again?” Kenny asked.

“I will, soon,” Rick answered.

Kenny began to sculpt the shape of the mound, squaring the top and sides.

“Do castles have spires?” Kenny asked.

“Turrets,” Rick replied. “Like missing bricks.” Rick watched Kenny designing the sand. “Don’t forget the moat,” he said.

“How could I?” Kenny looked up again at the crowd on the beach, away from his project. “I was never good at this. I flunked fingerpainting in kindergarten.”

“It looks sort of gothic,” Rick said.

“Gothic? Aren’t mansions gothic? Castles are supposed to be formidable. What do I do to make it look formidable?”

“Make the moat deeper,” Rick said.

“Deeper,” Kenny said, as if an echo. He began to dig a deep ditch around his castle; small chambers of ocean water began seeping up through the sand. “Remember the black Speedos?”

“What? “

“The black Speedos I used to have,” Kenny said.

“Sure,” Rick answered. He turned on his side and continued to study Kenny at work. “You know, you can go out tonight if you want.”

“Do you want to?”

“No, I mean, alone.”

“I came here to be with you.”

“But you don’t have to be tied to me.”

“Is that what you want?” Kenny asked.

“No,” Rick said. “But I just don’t want you to feel obligated, you know. If there’s something you want to do alone.”

“What? Like pick up a stranger and have sex with him?” Kenny burst out with a girlish chuckle.

“If that’s what you want,” Rick said.

“Is that what you want?”

“I want you to be happy,” Rick answered. “I’ve always wanted that.

“I am happy. See.” Kenny dipped his hands into the sand and smiled, digging the moat deeper and deeper. A tiny electronic beep cut through noise of the radios and the waves of the ocean. Kenny slid across the sand to the shade of the umbrella, brushed his hands off, and opened a knapsack. He withdrew a vial of pills, popped it open and handed a caplet to Rick.

“Want some water or juice?” Kenny asked.

“No,” Rick replied and slipped the pill on his tongue and swallowed.

Two teenage body builders paraded in front of the waves and Kenny and Rick watched them pass along the edges of the towels. Rick sat up, arched his back, and then moved to the shade of the umbrella.

“Bury me in the sand,” Rick said.

Kenny, startled, opened his mouth in shock. “I will not.”

“No,” Rick laughed. “I mean now.”

“What, and abandon my castle?”

“Bury me so that you can’t even see my face, so that I’m just a voice. Just a voice to you, inside your head, nagging you on.”

“You are a voice in my head nagging me on.”

“Come on,” Rick said. “Bury me.”

“I will not. You’ll have sand in your hair for days and you’ll get it all over the bed. I can’t stand that. You know that.”

“The thing that I love so much about you, Kenny, is that you just never surprise me. You never change. Sand, sand, sand.”

“Au contraire,” Kenny said. “I’m always changing. I couldn’t even fit my leg into the black Speedos.”

“You still have them?”

“Of course I do. I’m waiting to find the Prince Charming that fits into them.”

“How about him?” Rick asked. They both looked up, this time at a lanky, boyish blond.

“Oh, he would do nicely,” Kenny said. “What it would be nice to do to him. “

“Take a number,” Rick replied and nodded, indicating the stares from the other men following the figure as he moved along the horizon.

“Fantasies,” Kenny said. “All of them.”

“Does that bother you?”

“No, of course not. You have fantasies too. At least that’s what you told Dr. Williams.”

“That was supposed to be private,” Rick said, reaching for the paperback at the edge of the towel.

“Nothing’s private, dear,” Kenny said. “People read your blood and genes now. We’re scrutinized into death.”

There was a silence between them; Rick opened the book and began to read and Kenny returned to working on the turrets of his castle.

“I have what I want,” Kenny said. “Everything I want. You know that, don’t you?”

Rick looked up from the book and nodded, slightly, in acknowledgment. “You want to see the one or three o’clock movie?” Rick asked.

“What? And leave all this?” Kenny let out another girlish laugh. He leaned and reached over to a patch of sand near Rick’s foot, grabbed a fistful and lifted his hand into the air.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Kenny said, sprinkling the sand over Rick’s ankles, grain by grain by grain.

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“Sand,” a previously unpublished short story by Jameson Currier, was written in 1993.