Linda Alvarez - The Mammoth Book of Threesomes and Moresomes

“He’s right,” I said. “I’ll race you, but let’s not do anything stupid, OK?”

Jamal measured me with his eyes. I let him look. My sawn-off jeans showed the bulges in my thighs, and my arms strained at the sleeves of my T-shirt. I was a fair match for him and we both knew it.

“All right,” he replied. “Nothing stupid. We take it easy. But I bet you I’ll be the one to make it down there without breaking a sweat.”

“In your dreams.” I turned and kept climbing down, Jamal neck and neck beside me.

“Tad, you OK up there?” called Jamal.

“You bitches better slow down!” he shouted back.

“Yeah?” I said to him. “You gonna come down here and make us?”

Tad chuckled. “I bet you’d like that.”

I could hear him puffing, his feet landing heavily on the steep stairs, but Tad didn’t ruffle easily. Like when he’d come and pulled me out of my parents’ house, where my dad had me under house arrest for the crime of being a bulldagger. Dad had reached for the baseball bat he kept behind the couch, but Tad had just grabbed it away from him and calmly told me to pack a bag, he’d wait for me. Been too long since Tad and I hung out.

“I can smell the sea,” Jamal said.

“Yeah,” I told him. “I love this part. The forest belongs to the land, but as you come further and further down, the sea starts to peek through. You smell it first, then you begin to see it. A few more steps, and … ah. There she is.”

We were at the landing, just a few yards above the beach. The sand stretched out on either side, with the water just beyond it, its gentle waves licking at the beach. The sea smelled like sex. Off in the distance, the Coast Mountains marched away from us, range upon range, disappearing into the mist.

Jamal stood tall, but he was breathing hard, and I could see the beads of sweat on his face. I bet they tasted like the sea. “Little winded, there, Jamal?” I teased him.

He sucked his teeth. “Don’t give me that, girl child. Look at you.”

He was right. I was puffing a bit myself, and my T-shirt was soaked. I pulled it over my head. I never wore a bra. Jamal literally jumped. I calmly tucked the end of the T-shirt into my belt. “What?” I asked him. “I told you it was a nude beach.” You weren’t supposed to get naked until you were actually on the beach, but I was feeling the devil rising in me. Wanted to see how Jamal and Tad would deal.

Tad had caught up with us. He burst out laughing when he saw me. “Susanna Paulette Avery, you’re still flat as an ironing board!”

“Don’t talk shit, Tad. This a thirty-eight inch chest. I work out hard to get this chest.”

“Chest, yes. But where are the titties, girl?”

“On your momma.”

Now Jamal was laughing too. He looked relieved. Probably cause he didn’t have to look at bouncing boobies on me. Even with my shirt off, lots of people still mistake me for a man. Nipples a little thicker than on most guys, is all.

I pointed to the Johnny-on-the-spot off to one side on the landing. “You guys want to use the facilities before we go down?”

“Nah,” said Jamal. “We can piss in the bushes if we have to … oh. Excuse me, Susanna. Unless you want to?” He gestured towards the toilet. Damn. Show a little bit of girl parts, and he goes all gentleman on me.

“No.” I moved past him and headed for the stairs. “And shut it with the ‘Susanna’ crap. Everybody calls me Shuck.”

“Except your daddy!” Tad sung out. Giggling, he brushed past me on the stairs and raced down to the beach. “He calls you …”

“Don’t start, Tad!” I ran, caught up with him, tackled him to the sand.

“Ow! Big meanie.” Laughing, Tad got me in a chokehold, pinned my back to the sand, one arm behind me. The buttons of his shirt were plucking at my nipples. They swelled. I got my legs around Tad’s body. Men have the upper body advantage; women have the lower. I twisted, flipping Tad like a turtle. I sat astride him. Jamal ran up and stood there, watching us both with a shit-eating grin on his face.

“Now,” I said to Tad, “ what does my dad call me? Tell me.” And I started tickling.

Tad wriggled helplessly under me. “Bitch! Stop it! No!” He giggled, tried to slap my hands away, but I kept moving them, kept digging my fingers into his tummy, his sides, the bit along the bottom of his belly.

“Here, let me help,” said Jamal. He knelt at Tad’s head, grabbed his arms. Laughing, Tad struggled, but Jamal held him fast. I kept tickling. Tad started to squeal.

“I think you men need to go to the other part of the beach,” said a firm woman’s voice.

I looked up. She was pointing to where the gay men usually hung out. She looked part Asian, part something I couldn’t identify. She was completely naked, all soft curves, about fifteen years older than me, with a relaxed, amused grin. Just the way I like ’em. I stood up off Tad. “Yes, ma’am!”

“Oh,” she said, hearing my voice. “Maybe not.” She’d pegged me for a woman.

“Where is it?” Jamal asked her.

She pointed, but I said, “I can show you.” I took Tad’s hand, pulled him up off the sand. The woman raised an eyebrow at me, but only said, “I’m sure you can,” and sauntered off.

I watched her departing behind: chubby and round, like two oranges. I bet that ass felt good in the hands. It was bouncy, too. “Gotta be jelly,” I muttered.

“Cause jam don’t shake like that!” Jamal finished. We laughed, punched each other’s shoulders.

I led the boys further out on to the beach, to a nice patch of sunlight. Sunlight, like black people, was a rare and precious occurrence in Vancouver. Tad and Jamal stared around them. Even in early fall, some people still came down to the water. There was a mound of sand, human height, with a sand sculpture of a naked woman carved into its side. Over to our right, someone had stuck bleached fallen logs into the sand, angling them together into the shape of a teepee. Over to our left an elderly Asian woman and man, nude, sat on towels with their chess game on the sand between them. Three ruddy children and their dog played with a bright green ball. The children’s laughter and shouting and the barking of the dog ascended into the cool autumn air and were thrown back from the forest behind us.

“Water? Pop? Smokes?” The vendor strolling the beach was male, stocky, white. He swung a bright red cooler from either hand. He wore sturdy rubber sandals, a money pouch around his waist, a sun visor on his head and a bow tie around his neck, all in the same red as the coolers. Nothing else. Tad’s face as he spied him was a picture.

“We don’t have anything like this in Seattle,” he murmured.

“Hey, Philip,” I called out.

The vendor smiled when he saw me, and came over. “Hey, Shuck,” he said. “Nice day, eh?”

“Beauty,” I agreed.

Tad quirked an eyebrow at me. “Beauty?”

I shrugged. “Been here three years. Starting to talk like the locals.” Philip snickered.

“You guys thirsty?” I asked them. They nodded. So I bought some pop from Philip.

“Smokes?” Philip asked again. “I got tobacco and, um, herbal.”

“Reefer?” asked Tad. “You selling reefer out in the open like this?”

Philip just grinned.

“Shuck,” said Tad, “we’re the only black people as far as the eye can see. You know that if some shit goes down with the cops, we’ll be the ones doing jail time, not him.”

“Just chill, man,” Philip told him. The borrowed black phrase sounded odd in a white Vancouverite’s mouth. But hell, probably no odder than me saying, “beauty”.

“This is Vancouver,” I told Tad. “And it’s Wreck Beach. If the cops start picking people up here for smoking weed, the jail’ll be overflowing in an hour.”