...picture it: San Diego, California, a bright August day on the beach. Your humble narrator is splish-splashing around out in the surf, bodysurfing here and there, but mostly just enjoying a heavenly blend of warm air and cool salt water.
As usual, I'm feeling confident and ready to flirt with any female swimmers that happen to wade into my general vicinity. On this particular day, it's a thirtyish woman in a one-piece whose slightly-chubby-but-well-tanned body catches my eye. My passing interest begins to turn to full-fledged desire as I realize she's checking me out almost as blatantly as I'm ogling her. After raising a quick fist skyward in a tribute to the mighty Ra, I make my move.
"The water's great, isn't it?" I ask, letting my arms open to indicate I'm talking about the ocean around us - and to send a subconscious signal of availability.
"It's wonderful," she replies, intrigued by my daring, and saying as much with solid eye contact and a warm smile.
"It's as much fun as you can have with your clothes on," I say with a grin, throwing caution into the wind.
"Hee hee hee!" she giggles - and the game is afoot.
After ten or twenty minutes of conversation out in the water, I've got all her general info - new in town from the Chicago area, working 9-to-5 as a secretary, just realizing how pleasant this Ocean Beach she's moved to really is. To those confessions I add my own appraisal: she's lonely, sex-starved, and already moistening at the thought of taking on a young, sexy, stylishly-tattooed beach bum like myself as a lover for the summer.
Looking towards the beach, I begin the hardest part of any pick-up: the segue from initial flirtation to a course of action. "I think I'm headed in. Where are you sitting?"
She hesitates briefly in the face of my boldness, but quickly regains her composure. "Over there by that lifeguard tower," she says, standing on her tiptoes to point.
"Can I grab my stuff and join you?" I ask.
"Sure," she replies, and we part for the moment.
As I make my way back to my towel, I can't help but smile at what I've been up to for the last several minutes. While I've come a long way with my technique in recent years, I've never gone for it like this - at least, not without trusty alcohol at my side. "It's on," I think to myself, "it's so on," and I don't even reprimand myself for the cliched Swingers reference.
Anyhow, back to the beach. I'm making my way over to where she's at, and I'm as happy as a clam, ready to drink deeply from the well of feminine goodness.
I see her and spread my towel a few feet away. Our conversation picks up right where it left off, she playing the part of the new person in town, me the native who knows a few of the town's best-kept secrets. It's going great - we chat comfortably, with a few laughs from her here and there at my cute little jokes. "All right," I begin to think to myself. "Where do you go from here, champ?" A good conversation on the beach is nice and all, but I'm just about ready for something more along the lines of a sex marathon back at her place.
At this point, however, fate intervenes - in the form of a fat, shirtless 8-year-old kid in swimming trunks. The kid seemingly materializes from nowhere, waddling through the sand to position himself so he's standing at the foot of our towels. His gut hangs over the waist of his trunks. He's got a half-eaten blue raspberry snow cone in his hand.
The kid stands there, looking at me and the woman who I'm hoping to hump all night long. The moment is so surreal that time seems to slow down. A bright blue drop of melted snow cone takes an eternity to drip off of his chin and splash on his fat belly. For what seems like forever, no one says a word.
The kid snaps everyone back to reality. He takes a big slurp on the snow cone and chews on it for a second. Then he points at me and says, "Who's THIS guy, mom?”
