The Perfect Beach Weather for Every Gender

The Perfect Beach Weather for Every Gender

Marne Litfin

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Daisies by Marne Litfin

Neither of my girlfriends would take me to the beach. When I told Miller, they yelped into the phone like they’d broken a toe: But it’s summer! That’s what summer is for! And you live so close! Their voice cracked, on summer and summer and close. I heard them bend down and whisper to one of their chihuahuas: can you believe that? The chihuahua tippy-tapped back. Two days later, they put the dogs in daycare then drove three hours down from Binghamton.

I watched from a window while they parked their dead grandma’s Camry in front of a fire hydrant. They strolled up my porch steps already grinning, already giddy, already preparing to sell my town a boatload of invisible musical instruments. Well well well, I said, flinging open the screen. Their mustache wriggled. Picture the underside of a caterpillar, dancing.

We hugged. I laughed, too. How could I not? Miller and I are always thinking the same thing: I’m so glad you found me. It’s ridiculous that we were born on opposite coasts. It’s ridiculous that we only met three years ago at a feminist podcasting conference—I’ve never recorded a podcast in my life. We’re both skeptical of mass gatherings; I’m not really a woman anymore and Miller hasn’t been one since way back. Life is a stupid, beautiful miracle. It’s rude and homophobic that we didn’t get into any of the same grad schools and have half a mountain range between us now. We should’ve been brothers. We would’ve made great small dogs.

Hey buddy, they said. You gotta learn to fuckin drive. Their arms soft pretzeled around me and the words were warm and muffled in my shoulder. I don’t like touching my friends, Miller especially (it’s like touching one of my actual siblings; a little too close) but we hadn’t seen each other in six months.

I’m leaving! I yelled upstairs. Someone, either my girlfriend or her wife, shouted down drive safe. We were already sprinting to the car.

The trunk was crammed with a boogie board, pool noodles, two-liters of Mountain Dew, and a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles beach blanket. I pointed to the blanket when I popped my bag in. You are twenty-nine human years old, I said. I know, said Miller. Isn’t it great?! In the front seat, they handed me an open bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. Hold these. Ambient techno shit exploded against the glass. Absolutely not, I said. I set the Cheetos down by my feet to reach for the stereo. Do not forsake our holy snack! Miller shouted, batting my hand away. I made us a playlist. They pulled out their phone and the noise evaporated. I was just waiting for you so we could start from the beginning.

 I picked up the Cheetos. I am ready. See? Play me my playlist.

Good, they said. I sat obediently while they programmed the GPS, and then “Wouldn’t it Be Nice” by The Beach Boys clinked on. Brian Wilson, as we pulled away from the curb, thought it would be nice if we were older. Then we could live together in the kind of world where we belonged. Wouldn’t that be nice? I think it would. Brian Wilson, very sadly, was never a gay transsexual.

I hummed along. I liked watching Miller drive. Driving is a private act. Watching someone drive is like watching them groom their genitals. They’re vulnerable. They can’t make eye contact. You need to give them total concentration. Also, I don’t drive.

I thought about Miller pointing their car towards me that morning, winding through the Poconos, watching the fog burn off. I imagined them writing weird little poems in traffic, texting their wife good morning from a gas station, chugging vanilla draft lattes by the can. Three empties rattled in the cupholders, which I interpreted as love notes for me: I’m here. I am with you. I am ready for anything because I am extremely caffeinated.

How’s the murder? Miller asked. We sat in traffic on 76. Same same?

They’re fine, I said. They both want to quit their jobs. Miller waited, giving space for me to say more. I wanted to unload—we never got to see each other during the semesters—but it was complicated. My girlfriend had gotten obsessed with miniatures and was wasting her evenings hunting down collectible toys, mostly Funko Pops. She stalked eBay auctions at night, fell asleep in front of digital estate sales alone in our shared office. A month ago, she had, without telling me or her wife, paid a thousand dollars for a vinyl figurine of Sloth from The Goonies.

Her wife retaliated by deciding to build a kayak. She wasn’t very handy, and tried roping me in at first, getting moon-eyed while describing its unique construction. Look at the plans, she said. There are no nails, no screws anywhere. I didn’t get it. How will it stay together? I asked. With  pegs and lashes, she said. We can steam the boards together in the backyard. I had no idea what that meant; I didn’t think she did, either. She took meandering field trips to various lumber yards, kept coming home with the wrong kinds of wood. After three or six or seven of these failures, she hired a handywoman, a “rent-a-dyke” whose woodshop she’d been disappearing to every night.    

And we did all the right things. We ate breakfast together. Had sex. Between us we shared six Google calendars, went to therapy, hosted a bi-weekly movie night. I didn’t know what to do. Mostly I was doing a lot of laundry, waiting for them to come to bed. I moved dishes along, from the sink to the dishwasher to their homes in our cabinets. I cooked dinners with too much butter, delivered full plates to the office and labeled leftovers for the freezer. At the start of the pandemic, we’d seen footage of cruise ships floating at sea, bobbing beyond ports where they couldn’t dock. We’d held onto each other while the clips cycled over and over again on CNN. We thought lucky us, we will never be stranded like that.

I used to think of us as a constellation, as individual fires connected by unseen forces. That’s what we should call us, I’d said—the Little Dipper. Throuple and polycule were straight people words that sounded like science projects. My girlfriend’s wife suggested The Triangle (since we’re all equal). I don’t remember when one of our in-laws joked about us being a harem. We vetoed him immediately, but then someone said the thing about the group of crows. After that, everyone called us the murder.

They’re really stressed right now. I think maybe they see me and hear me talk about you and wish they could be back in grad school, too. How’s Priss?

She’s good, Miller nodded. Gets out next week. Counting the seconds ‘til we’re both on break. We’re taking the dogs camping.

Cool, I said. Miller’s wife was a stressfully hot flannel femme and decorated swimmer who taught second grade. In the past I’d wondered how much time Miller spent worrying about Priscilla waking up one day like, Oh shit, how the fuck did I end up marrying this nebbishy trans sadboy, why has god abandoned me, but then one day I just straight up asked and Miller was like, Dude I literally do not think about anything else.  

You should’ve said something, I said. We could’ve waited until her school year was over, I would’ve loved to see her. Miller did not acknowledge I was lying. She’s been a bunch of times. And today’s more of an us day, they said. Two little guys, right?

Right, I said, Two little guys. But next time? A little plausible deniability would be good for us—Ocean City is big into cop shit. Like, get ready for ‘family friendly’ fun. You can’t buy alcohol. They like Nazis and baseball. They want to see good American women in bikinis.

Whatever, Miller said. I don’t care; it’s one day. I love the ocean, I’m a delight—you’re a delight—we’re gonna swim and take naps and no one’s gonna talk to me about their fucking dissertation. I didn’t even bring a book. I’m gonna get a hotdog and think about nothing. These motherfuckers—

They don’t know a thing.

Exactly.

As we rolled off the Atlantic City Expressway, the sky spread out for us. Blue, blue blue; light, high and hopeful, like the sun had gone for a ride in a balloon that would never come down. The horizon was patchy with pale clouds. We rolled our windows down, and I blasted Miller’s playlist all the way down Asbury Avenue, a synthpop track about self-control that sounded vaguely Swedish and gay. The chorus was the word “self-control,” over and over.

They don’t know! I yelled over the music.

Absolutely fuckin not!! Miller yelled back.

I knew Miller would lose their mind the second they saw the boardwalk. Ocean City was fully committed to pastels. All fonts were nostalgic, every shop window ripped straight from a hazy memory of an unexamined childhood. Underfoot, each plank sat tight against the next, all solid hardwood, pressure treated and feathered with bike lines. Police officers dotted the path like candy buttons; American flags hung everywhere, as if today and every day was the Fourth of July. It had none of the scruff and grime of Atlantic City, eleven miles to the north (the beach the murder preferred when they weren’t too depressed to drive; we were the least weird things there). Signs pointed us towards sand toy shops, saltwater taffy, clean bathrooms. In the distance: the ocean, unbothered, roaring like the white noise machine outside my therapist’s office door.

What do you want to do first?! Miller asked. Their backpack bobbed behind them, bright pink and patterned with flowers, a homosexual bullseye. You want to get ice cream? Hotdogs? God, this place is amazing. Look at that Ferris wheel! They have carnival games?? Dude, you didn’t tell me! I gotta win P something. I’m—oh my god, holy shit, look, they have frozen lemonade. We have to get one, I haven’t had that si—

Let’s get a spot first, I said, pointing to an area between lifeguards. We passed families in Tommy Bahama chairs, spread out like honey on toast. Clean, blonde heads on clean blonde sand. There was no one like either of us anywhere. Trust me, I looked.

Underneath my clothes was a new, red singlet. A one-piece spandex thing, kind of like what Greco-Roman wrestlers wear, from an online-only gender-neutral swimwear brand, Captain Beefhart. It didn’t have a built-in binder but came with the next best thing: a thick double lining that smoothed breasts into something less breast-y. The algorithm had dangled it across my social media every summer for years. Instagram, I eventually admitted, knew more about my gender than I did.

It looked great, but I’d only pranced around in it safely at home. The murder adored it. Ooh, look at my little muscle man, my girlfriend whooped. She said it with the set of implied air quotes we used to refer to all genders and pronouns in our house. She was kidding but also not. It was a joke, but also it wasn’t. I writhed for my audience. That’s my Baywatch boyfriend!

Miller stripped immediately and zoomed around the blanket, pulling out sunscreens and a hat. They tucked the edges of the blanket under our shoes. I’d never seen them undressed before. They had so much chest hair. Their bathing suit was a tiny pair of black, glossy, flamboyant speedo shorts, covered in white and yellow daisies. The trunks were tiny—no bigger than the microfiber cloth I wiped my glasses with—and so tight, you could’ve shot them from the back of a classroom like a rubber band. They were stupefyingly faggy and made them look like a 70s gay porn star. Their bellybutton was an outie.

I didn’t know you had so many tattoos, I said, freezing with a hand on my zipper. What’s that one? I pointed to a bluish stick-and-poke blob below their collarbone. It’s supposed to be the Shade from Hollow Knight, they laughed. Prissy’s friend did it in undergrad. Hollow Knight was a video game Miller played compulsively back when they were still doing “dyke with bad posture.” They’d walked through it for me on Twitch after my prelims. The Shade looks like the shadow of the main character, the knight, but it’s an enemy. It spurts out of the knight’s body whenever you die. When you restart, your Shade is waiting there for you, ready to attack. You have to kill it before it kills you.

Here, this one’s better. They turned around and pulled down one side of their shorts. On their ass below the seam was the Shade in a solid, professional outline, now a real ghost floating in deep black, a four-inch tentacle body with glowing eyes. A nail—the knight’s signature weapon—stuck out of its back. Wow, I said, T gave you a lot of ass hair.

Shut the fuck up, they laughed, pulling their suit up. This is all me—100% homegrown, Armenian body hair, baby. When I was a girl, it was a fuckin’ nightmare. My mom tried dragging me to electrolysis when I was like, nine. My littlest sister still practically lives there.

You grow that Robin Williams chest nest yourself, too? I asked. I couldn’t help it; I pointed. You can barely see your scars! Miller slapped a pat of sunscreen on one arm. Dude, that’s not a compliment, they said.

I squinted at them, pretended the sun was in my eyes. I knew Miller was thinking about whether they wanted me to apologize, or if they should silently forgive me, or say some small thing to remind me that we weren’t the same. I stared down at my feet, unzipped my shorts and slid them off. People were looking at us, probably looking at both our chests, trying to figure out who and what we were, wondering if we were homeless or some kind of vintage cosplayers. I kept my head down.

I don’t think I want ass hair, I said, finally. I don’t want to look like the men in my family. My father and brother were bushy, like Brawny paper towel men. I folded my shirt into my backpack, away from the sand. I hoped Miller would say something.

Cute suit! they said. But T body hair isn’t genetic, you don’t know what you’ll get.

Well, they both have acne too, I said. Do you want to swim?