A Day at the Beach

Non-fiction.

I went down to the beach today. I had been drinking since morning and was now in a state, I was dressed head to toe in black, wearing a heavy jacket to ward off the wind and large, superfluous reflective glasses in the overcast light of winter. The beach was full of people in shorts and t-shirts, a man walked his dog, an old woman fed the seagulls and old couples sat in the benches, enjoying each others company. A group of young, shirtless Maori boys were singing in the changing rooms, audible from the exterior, even through my headphones blaring 'So Glad' by David Lynch. I lit up a cigarette and observed the sailboats crossing the bay, I glanced over at the man walking his dog along the beach, he was staring at me. I became self-conscious due to what I was wearing and that I was drunk and smoking at a beach in midday surrounded by people vastly older than me. 

Feeling profoundly unwelcome I decided to go home, I walked back along the beach and stopped just along from an elderly Chinese woman spreading pieces of bread for the birds to eat. A car of the Maori boys from earlier drove along the road that runs parallel to the beach behind me, the  driver stopped behind me and asked if I had weed, I held my cigarette up to them, hoping they would get the message I had none and leave me alone. I finished my cigarette and stamped it out on the edge of a public rubbish bin and dropped it in, wondering as I usually did if perhaps this time it would start a garbage fire. I started walking back to my house, realizing that I was living in a neighborhood occupied by either the elderly or middle-aged couples with children.  The old idiom 'you are not welcome here ' filled my head and I felt unwanted by the community I was in and alone as I've never felt.

 

I went home and poured myself another drink, I smoked some more on my porch and walked down my backyard to the stagnant creek that runs down the side of my house, leading into the ocean. I smoked while staring into the murky grey water, occasionally flicking ash into it. I finished my cigarette and went back inside my house and drank, wishing I was somewhere, or someone else. Somewhere I was accepted, or someone who was accepted.

Author's Note

Written hastily diary style, unedited. It's not very well written in my opinion.

Reviews

[Goulden Bean]

This definitely gives a drab and dreary feeling, like a place that you want to escape from. The lack of dialogue keeps us distanced, and also keeps the scene still and almost lifeless.

As a grammar nitpick, twice you write about "an elderly women", which should of course be "woman". Also keep an eye for redundancies. At one point you say "wearing ... large reflective glasses though it was overcast and they were unneeded". Ironically, "they were unneeded" is in fact unneeded, because the "though" already implies that.

In sum, you did great at establishing a mood here. I'd recommend working on the prose style, but your content is good. Nice work!

[bharris]

Thank you for your feedback, I made a few changes to the grammar and structure of the sentence you pointed out.