LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth |
Weekend Beach Bum |
by Eric Morrison |
I have what I know will be a lifelong love affair with Rehoboth Beach. This may sound sentimental or trite, but it's true. A multitude of Rehoboth Beach memories are locked inside my head and heart. Rehoboth has been the stage or the measuring stick for numerous significant events in my twenty-six years. I am sure many others who live here or visit regularly feel similarly. Please indulge this author, and slip on your walking shoes for a trip down my Rehoboth Beach memory lane. Early Rehoboth memories involve family. I grew up close to the beach, and weekend excursions often found us at Rehoboth. My parents liked the family atmosphere. My older brother and I liked the games, rides, and pizza. My brother liked the girls. I hadn't admitted it yet, but I liked the boys. On day trips and vacations to Rehoboth, our four-person family sometimes separated for a few minutesparticularly when my father and brother went to pay homage to the hungry parking meter deity, while my mother and I walked, talked, and waited. During one memorable trip in about my tenth year, my mother and I witnessed an astounding sight. Walking along Rehoboth Avenue, I prayed diligently that my mother didn't see it, but she did. In classic mother style, she waited to comment until we reached the corner. Leaning over to me, she hesitantly whispered, "Did you see what I just saw?" A moment of maternal courage for her, a moment of utter horror for me. "Yes," I answered, "two women holding hands." Anxiety rushed through my veins like blood as I waited for the sharp axe of condemnation to fall upon the person I knew I must become. "Just checking," my mother shrugged. My mother's casual comment wasn't massive encouragement to crack the confines of the closet, but it wasn't an unconscious stab at my heart, either. It was subtle acceptance and encouragement, which I now take to be one of my mother's greatest strengths. My family vacationed annually at a Rehoboth hotel that featured a swimming pool, an ice machine, and continental breakfastthe life of Riley to a teenage middle-class boy. One year, a group of four handsome thirty-something men spent the same vacation week in our hotel. They seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time frolicking in the pool, sunning on its side, and...touching each other. One man, with dark, careless hair and a slight moustache, seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time gazing in my direction during pool hours. His frequent gaze introduced terror, recognition, anddare I say the wordlust in me. Like the stranger that killed Roberta Flack softly, he looked right through me. Even as a teenager, he recognized me as a member of his people and what would become, what always were, my people. Gay people. I recognized myself in his deep brown eyes. I knew he had something to say to me, to teach me. But I wouldn't get the chance. A few days into our vacation, sucking in my stomach and holding down my heart, I entered the pool area, eagerly anticipating a warm dip into those liquid brown eyes. No such luck. The boys never came out to play that day. That evening, I mustered the courage to ask my mother if she knew what had happened to them. "They left today." Gulp. Casually, Eric, casually. "Do you know why?" Double gulp. "The hotel manager asked them to leave. He told them that this is a family hotel, and..." My mother's waning voice trailed off into infinity, and my crushed heart quickly followed. One of my first serious lessons in "gay isn't good." If the hotel manager knew I was gay, would he throw me out, too? Would I ever be able to stay in any hotel if I admitted my gayness? Would I ever again meet a man with eyes like that? A few years later, at a very anxious seventeen, I came out to myself in the Rehoboth sand. During my senior year of high school, I indulged myself in a lukewarm love affair with a slightly older female. I cared a great deal for Kim. The passion was consuming but forced; the love was platonic, not romantic. Kim wondered why I couldn't keep an erection in the back seat of my car, and I wondered why I kept thinking about her jock boyfriend every time I kissed her. Throughout the year, as I obsessively contemplated coming out, I spent many nights alone on the Rehoboth sand. I was clueless about the huge Rehoboth gay scene. (In hindsight, this was probably a good thing. Had a hot man approached me on Baltimore Avenue, at a hormonal and neurotic seventeen, I either would have made a nosedive for his zipper, or run screaming into the middle of the Atlantic.) One fateful night, letting the roll of the ocean waves and the leftover warmth of the sand absorb me, I made a solemn promise to myself. If things did not work out with Kim, I would come out when I went away to collegefirst to my future friends, then to my family. Kim and I didn't last. She kept her on-again, off-again jock boyfriend that I never did get to kiss. I kept my promise to myself. These are only a few of my memories of Rehoboth. I won't mention holding my first love in a lifeguard chair, my one and only ecstatic trip to the Renegade, losing an expensive dinner over the balcony of the Blue Moon while my best friend scoured the bar for me, or last year's vacation that left me and my savings account much more exhausted than when we left. All of my Rehoboth memories haven't occurred somewhere over the rainbow. I remember many special moments with heterosexual friends. I remember summer Sundays with my graying grandmother people-watching from her wheelchair on the boardwalk. I remember cursing my brother every time he annihilated me at miniature golf. These days, I scream and squint my eyes, riding the teacups with my six year-old niece. Rehoboth is magic to me. Butterflies fill my stomach when the sand fills my shoes. For summer 2001, I will be a weekend beach bum, working and staying in Rehoboth. I will be making new memories of Rehoboth, thinking new thoughts, and coming to new conclusions to shape my life, gay and otherwise. If you do not mind, I will be sharing these things with you, the readers of Letters. I hope you'll put on your walking shoes and stroll with me. Eric lives in North Wilmington during the workweek, and in Rehoboth on the weekends. He can be reached at StarchildB612@gateway.net. |
LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth, Vol. 11, No. 7, June 15, 2001. |