Breaststroke
L Scully
photo credit: L Scully
You get off at the wrong bus stop but really you don’t get off at all. The dusty mountain road and graffitied signs point uphill so you follow them while your friend talks about shooting a movie on your iPhones. A queer romance, something about lesbians answering a personal ad for a retreat weekend at the reservoir only to find out that the event was cancelled and they’re the only ones in attendance. Running through the brush, making love in the ruined monastery. Ham on toast and hands on breasts. When you arrive at the water you watch a straight couple swim out to the buoy and shag mercilessly in front of a group of teenagers. When they finish gyrating they swim ashore while a woman in a tiny pink ruffled bikini starts a standing ovation. You clap for their shamelessness. A singing group of children blast by on a floating banana attached to the back of a boat. They scream and raise their voices to the chorus as the speedboat makes its volatile turns. You get too high and feel the truth-vomit sit beneath your clavicle. Sometimes I Want to Kiss You, you say to your friend. She spits out the chips she’s eating and tells you she has to figure things out with her girlfriend. Enormous fish wriggle by and you fantasize together that you’re having a pedicure where the fish nibble the dead skin off your toes. You’re still not sure whether your friend wants to kiss you back but you swim out to the fuck buoy together and ride the rough speedboat ripples. You swim breaststroke back to your sunny encampment and she floats on her back. You rub sunscreen into each other’s tattoos and her hands get softer with each reapplication. By the end of the day you are massaging one another’s upper backs and pulling back swimsuit straps to reach the skin. After the swim you sit at the beach shack and she drinks a beer and you think about how you love when girls drink beer and you see three sets of twins and feel like you’re losing your mind. You walk down the dusty mountain road past the gas station where you drank lukewarm iced coffees and get back on the bus. Your skin prickles and you realize after all that rubbing you got sunburned anyway.
L Scully (they/them) is a queer writer and double Capricorn currently based in Madrid. They are the cofounder and prose editor at Stone of Madness Press. Find them in the ether @LRScully.