jawnbc | Bob is not my uncle

When I was eight. Or nine. I kind of had a friend, one who was not a relative. His name was Michael Carmody and his family rented a room in our Summer House one...summer. It's the earliest memory I have of paling around with another guy. And Michael's Ma was a charming little Oirish dumpling: she and Mr. Carmody had Michael relatively late in life, and he was an only child. So in Oirish Catlick terms, they were a dysfunctional family.

We were at the beach, and the days were rigidly scripted in their lassitude. Roll out of bed as late as possible (since we had no air con and the House wasn't sleepable until after midnight), brush teeth, if you're a brekkie person have brekkie, hit the front porch and hang a bit, then head down to the beach. In our family you couldn't go to the beach without a parent until you were 8, and you couldn't go in the water unless someone else was on the beach (in the water or not) with you. The latter rule makes perfect sense to me; the former I know see as bizarre. But we all survived, and we're all excellent swimmers. Go figure.

The Carmody's weren't Clan™ members so they had different ways. Mrs. Carmody never made it to the beach before noon; if she had been a Good Catlick Woman she would have had at least 5 more kids, and their din and clamour would've led her to acquiesce for an earlier departure. Poor Michael: one wee boyo versus Ma just isn't a fair fight and never will be. So by the time they arrived we Egans had been swimming and whatnot for an hour or two. Of course half of us were black Oirish, so all that happened is we became more gorgeous. But the other half--including my brothers and me Ma--were auburn-haired and pinkish. They, like the Carmody's, popped, crackled and blistered. So perhaps Mrs. Carmody was onto something.

We used to climb on top of the wood jetty (it's wood and it jets out into the water, get it?) between low and high tide. The jetties were covered in mussels and seaweed and hermit crabs and the odd starfish. Those of us who could manage to walk out to the end and climb onto the jetty head would then dive into the water and prove we were all that. Since our parents totally jacked us up on sugar and crap, for the most part none of us stopped vibrating long enough to develop that measure of poise, so we fell off the sides a fair bit. Mrs. Carmody fed Michael a much better diet and he could manoeuvre his way out with ease. My friend was the kewlest!

One day Michael and I were working the jetty (work it! work it! sell it to me!), when we noticed something bobbing up and down in the water. It was bigger than a bread box, it was blue, and we realized pretty quickly that it was a dead person. Rockaway Beach is a New York City public beach, and is arguably the nicest ocean beach accessible by the subway. Youse pay yuz fare (or jump a turnstile) and your on the beach. And in the water. And quite often, you're drowning--particularly if you don't know how to swim, the undertow is strong, and you've been coiffing warm beer all day in the hot sun. More often than not the lifeguards dragged these eejits out and after some coughing and puking they'd go back and finish their beer. But not always.

This guy was, clearly, a not always. The first thing we noticed was how bloated he was--he looked like a flattened out version of the Michelin Man™, except face down. And his skin was discoloured--brownish, but with pinkish patches, and very leathery looking. He was also wearing a "Bay One", which normal people called a Speedo™: if you were a dude and from Rockaway (and not a DFD, down for da dayer) you wore baggies, specifically baggies from the Rockaway Beach Surf Shop. Or, in Michael's case (he was a DFS, down for da summa), those boxer-like bathing trunks, which was also OK. But Latinos (which, by the way, was not the term used) and fags (that was the term used) wore Bay Ones. Bay One, just so you know, was the first beach in Riis Park. Riis Park was attached to Rockaway but was a federal park, so it allowed nude sunbathing on one section, Bay One. Which was pretty much chockers with gay men. I used to press my gay little nose against the fence between Bay One and Beach 149th Street, feeling like the caged one when in fact it were them. But I digress...

Neither me nor Michael felt horror at our discovery. It was, in fact, kewl--and we knew we'd be forever kewl (read: a week, maybe 10 days tops) having found the dead gay/Latin man. So we ran to the lifeguard station, which was a big wooden chair about 2m (6 feet) high--called, coincidentally, a lifeguard chair. "There's a dead guy in da watah! There's a dead guy in da water!" we shrieked with glee, awaiting our moment of glory. "Get the fuck outta here ya little shits!" was the shocking...nay, gutting reaction from said lifeguard. We tried to convince him, but he wasn't buying. So we did the only thing we could do, we shrugged our shoulders and went back in the water--but not near the dead dude.

About 10 minutes later some lady started shrieking--that got the lifeguard's attention. Sure enough the rising tide and brought dead dude into the surf line and she'd bumped into him (to be fair, that would be pretty gross). In the good old sexist 70s, a shrieking woman brought all the mens, so everyone came a-running. By now, dead dude was languidly riding the waves into shore.

"See! See! We told ya so! He's dead! Dead! We're no fuckin' liars! He's dead!" Blah blah blah blah. Is there anything quite as pure as the vindication of an 8 year-old? I don't think so.

The lifeguard dragged dead dude onto the sand, got a blanket and covered him. When the police came, they examined the body, which had little bites taken out of it by the carnivorous fishes--ew. Bumped into dead dude lady was lead off by her peeps while a good crowd of about 50 watched the police do their work. Michael and I watched with a particular sense of ownership, having first sighted him. Together. Me and my friend Michael Carmody.