Mutts on Beaches

I'm sure it's March, early March, but today was the kind of sunny summer day that would make July proud.

We went to the beach and played with dogs. Since we have none of our own, we are required to use other peoples' dogs for fun and frolic.

The word is out on me in the dog community. Strange dogs approach me on beaches and sidewalks, straining at their leashes to lick me. They are always grinning, and when we make eye contact, they prance a little. Sometimes they have erections.

I can't remember ever having quite that effect on men, but maybe I've just forgotten.

I have always been a beach person. Water sign and all that, but I really love beaches. I love the smell of the ocean, and the feel of sand between my toes.

As a child, I swam out beyond the breakers and cavorted in the surf all day. When my mother called me back to shore, I was always shivering, with purple lips and shriveled fingers and toes. But I would protest that I wasn't at all cold until she finally let me go back in the water again.

My mother made me wear my brother’s outgrown dark woolen swim trunks with white mesh liner (for storing ones penis) and curved metal belt buckle. At eight, I was mortified to appear bare chested in public as other little girls wore cute outfits with frilly tops.

I pleaded with her. “Can't I get a real girl’s bathing suit?”

“What’s wrong with this one?” she asked. “It was Richie’s.”

She said it like it once belonged to God.

“I want one with a top.”

“You don’t need a top. You don’t have anything to put in it yet.”

As usual, my mother was missing the point.

I acquired my first girl’s bathing suit at the practically senile age of 11 when two perfectly symmetrical mosquito bites appeared on my chest. The suit was a one-piece skirted affair of printed cotton chintz in an indeterminate color which hung loosely on my skinny body.

I forgave its ugliness because I finally fit in with other pre-teen girls, our perfectly flat bras serving no purpose but to honor our future breasts.

A few years later, a boyfriend told me, “A woman’s breasts should fit perfectly into a champagne glass.”

“Have you really had champagne?” I asked.