This post was submitted by Ben Carver

Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. Each summer, gay DC empties itself 100 miles to the east, on a strip of Delaware beaches. It’s a sunstroked orgy of fraternal house parties, inveterate bar hopping, and sun tanning at the far end of a boardwalk where the gays make camp in a patch of sand called “Poodle Beach.” Rehoboth has everything you might expect from a quaint family-friendly beach town with a substantial sodomite fan-base. A smattering of gay businesses mix with a bustling economy of expensive restaurants and quaint shops that sell an inventory of escape to tourists that roam the streets between high and low tide, the idea of being one overpriced t-shirt or crystalline clown-shaped seashell figurine away from convincing themselves that they’ve gotten away from it all. Young adults unleashed by the age of consent flock to Dewey and Bethany Beach to embalm themselves in alcohol, leaving Rehoboth to middle-class families, retirees, and queers: a mixed crowd united in a desire to bring the city to the beach and create a quiet urban suburb extended to include seagulls and drag queens.

The conception of “the beach” is framed in the minds of most as a place where life is generally better, where men diminished by the demands of the savage inner continent can be restored and rejuvenated. Despite this escapist notion, a weekend on the Delaware coast captures much of the same ambiance as a summer weekend in DC. During the day you sit by a body of water or mix with friends for food and drink. At night your established clique of friends drink themselves silly and blind, wander between a few crowded bars and house parties, and separate to hunt for prey. My first night in town for a long Memorial Day weekend attempt to plant a stake in the heart of winter, I smell the sweetness of desire mixed with testosterone and alcohol as soon as I visit my first gay bar. Bottle it in cultural claustrophobia, shake it, and let it sit for three days and you have a recipe for madness. Pop the cork and your knees wobble from the scent of putrid lust mixed with high expectation and nothing else to do but what’s been culturally defined as a good time. I estimate two more days before desperation snakes its way through the crowd until consuming its own tail. When that happens, I can only hope this group doesn’t scare the straight people into opening the fire hoses on the whole twisted lot of us.

I understand the nature of the human animal, so I write this dispassionately and much less critically than implied. I’ve been a beast in scenes just like this, medicating the pain of being a man by embracing libertine excess in search of basic human need. A cartographer of my own shadow, if you will. Like any mixed bag, I’ve enjoyed it. However, I don’t pretend for a moment that what I’m doing is “getting away from it all.” If that were my aim, I would stay home and eat a gram of salicylic mushrooms over vacationing in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. It’s a hell of a lot cheaper and the experience is less predictable and infinitely more interesting.

Anxious after two days of Rehoboth’s patterns, I separate from the group and join a girlfriend of mine. We rent bicycles and make our way to the less populated Whiskey Beach to the north of the city. Whiskey Beach got its name as a drop off point for illegal bootleg liquor in the 1920’s, and In the 1970’s had a quiet reputation as a gay place for nude sun worship and sex among the sand dunes. Today it’s known as a place for fishing, dogs running through the surf, and most notably, lesbians. Moving from the gay beach to the lesbian beach provides perspective on the gay experience. The lesbian beach differentiates itself by the presence of children, the lack of nearby commercial establishments, and enough footballs flying through the air at any given moment that it might be mistaken for an NFL training camp. There’s also a strong competitive streak among lesbians that manifest itself in frequent verbal brawls. While playing football with 20 women, the game would stop frequently for loud, combative arguments that would take minutes to resolve – remarkably, without bloodshed.

In spite of tribal differences, I’m surprised by our similarities. Like gay men, many lesbians are sharp, funny, and physically fit. From my conversations with them I feel a growing sense of solidarity and shared purpose. Despite our differences, we all want to get inspired, twisted, and fucked, and look good doing it.

Gay women tend to mistrust gay men. I’m not qualified to comment on all the reasons this may be, but one deals with trust. Lesbians aren’t always treated well by gay guys, so when my boyfriend and I join them on the beach for football, we feel the apprehension caused by our presence. Luckily they acclimate, and later that night we are welcomed at an all-girl house party where we get wrecked on tequila and end up in a kiddie pool with 30 naked women. Later that night in the kitchen of their rented group house, after having liquor shots squirted into my mouth with a water pistol and receiving a lap dance from two hot, soaking wet amazons in their underwear, I feel a sense of disappointment that gay men and women don’t enjoy each other’s company more often. Too often we fail to extend our boundaries and push past that awkward prickly stage where a lack of commonality separates us from those we meet, particularly if they don’t hunt in our tribe and drum around the same fire. Lap dances aside, for those of us who are bored and looking for new ways to experience the world, this is a big loss of opportunity and a failure to evolve. When alien invaders arrive from the sky bringing judgment, what hope will any of us have in negotiating our survival if we can’t even talk to the lesbians.

Later that night I leave my new friends and drop in to a couple of the bars where my confederates spend the night, where they spent the last two nights, and where they will spend the next afternoon listening to the prozac of thumping house beats that never change or grow old. Being with friends makes me happy, but this night they clarify what made me disappear in the first place. Their voices are undermined by a frisson of suppressed rage as they communicate stories of a world that is stagnant, patterned, and desperate in its singular focus. Those sober enough to talk are upset by the rejection of their sexual advances or by the behavior of those labeled unfriendly and pretentious. Those still holding on to good cheer are heavily medicated or doing so in equal measure to the flicker of hope that they might still get lucky. As I make my way back to my hotel room, I hope the ones who get lucky are happy, at least for the night, and I think about possibilities and places far from the coast of Delaware.

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