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Darling it's Better Down Where it's Wetter
November 20, 2003, 11:46 p.m. Your eyes are heavy, they have been since you dove beneath your first wave. Your skin is hot and prickly, you’re worried you got burnt. Your hair feels dry and coarse; it smells salty. There’s sand in your belly button. The water was freezing: a sea fog had rolled in, and banished the thick, hot air that had prompted you to wear your first singlet of the season. You braced yourself, and dove into the grey blue clearness, skin thrilling at the refreshing cold. It was bearable with the water up to your neck and your limbs moving to keep yourself afloat. Beneath the waves, a rush of bubbles and foam tumbling overhead, you pushed yourself forward but didn’t move an inch against that force. You surfaced, gasped for air, smothered your face with a hand to wipe away the water, and then dove again. You rolled onto your back to watch your pale, pale legs stream out behind you, and you wished they would transform into a lucent, sleek, sinuous mermaid’s tail: a tail with the same strength as the waves that heave and billow towards you, lifting you like ash on an updraft. You performed a few handstands, sometimes dismounting gracefully, other times getting knocked over by a wave. You swam along the bottom, scraping your belly against the sand – skin that had never felt the sand against it before. You held your breath, you whipped hair out of your face, you dodged seaweed. You went to the beach.
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