FRIDAY, 11 AUGUST, 2000, REHOBOTH BEACH, DELAWARE

Then there were five. Two of the tenants at our happy little beach house have mysteriously departed yesterday morning with all the intrigue and urgency of Madame de Tourvel calling for her coaches pre-dawn and escaping her holiday prison in the French countryside. They left a cryptic note that was supposed to (one supposes) inspire guilt within the remaining vacationeers and woeful contemplation upon our vicious and/or irreverent and/or slutty behaviour which prompted their dramatic exeunt. It being a jolly-olly-oliday at the beach, and the remaining vacationeers being in the highest of spirits, the note spawned a brief, somewhat-slightly amused conversation over coffee yesterday, then was quickly shrugged off with a, “Oh well. Queens will be queens,” as we merrily trotted off to the beach which was (as if you care for the update) brimming with dead jellyfish making swimming a truly distasteful activity. But the flesh-removing horseflies were at a minimum as were most of Nature’s other oogey little soldiers. The other night we closed the local leather bar (“local” being the operative word here — you cannot not give patronage to a bar that’s thirty feet down the road). Patrick had found a new little friend who insisted we go break into a neighbour’s yard at 3am and go skinny dipping in their pool. The neighbouring house is likewise filled with a sundry of holiday bandits and the popular theory of our rationalisation for our crime was that if someone in the house heard us, it would be assumed that we were friends of another person in the house. “Oh yah, we’re friends of … ergh … ‘Bob’ doncha know.” That sort of thing. And we were not off the mark in our assumption, for although no one came out directly and asked us what we three strangers were doing splashing about naked in their pool at 3 in the morning, someone did hear us and had the kindness to turn on the muted garden lights so that we might not trip over foliage, furniture and other darkened obstacles. That’s just funny to me. We break into someone’s yard and noisily splish about, and the reaction is one of blind consideration. “Besides,” said the instigator, “what would happen if we were caught? A houseful of fags is not going to object to three more fags in the pool, right?” “I’m not a fag,” I dead-panned, then very soonafter squealed like a little girl as most of the skin on my foot was removed by grazing it against the rough pool bottom. “Uh-huh, sure you’re not.” “I’m suing,” I said as I massaged the sting from my foot.