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“How long have you known Penny?”
The questions went on and on, and she wondered how much Penny had told them about her and why they all seemed so interested. It was great feeling so welcome and she decided she did plan to stay a while. How long, she wasn’t sure, but she was in no rush to go back to the quiet solitude of home.
***
Sylvia had always enjoyed large parties with lasers flying all around and young people with neon lips and painted faces wearing revealing clothing. Maybe it made her feel younger than she actually was. Maybe it was all part of the DJ lifestyle. She played chill R&B tunes, everything from the classics to modern sexual sounds, but the crowd she associated with was a late-night one and it usually led to arriving home in the early morning by Uber or taxi.
This was her first ever beach barbecue by firelight. Sitting beside Penny, who was leaning back against Thane, she looked at the faces around her, the happiness of all these people who didn’t seem to have a care in the world, and she thought how great it must be to be them. Could she be one of them? She didn’t mean a shark. She meant carefree like them. She’d always lived by the “fuck it” mentality, but this was the ultimate in that mindset. No shoes? No shirt? No underwear or pants? Fuck it. No problem. No bills. No electricity. No jealousy or anger or frustration. They talked of things like play fighting with each other, swimming the waters and searching for anything dangerous to humans. At first, they’d seemed cautious about how much they said until Penny mentioned that Sylvia knew the truth about them. Then it was all out in the open and it seemed nothing was kept secret.
“First time you had sex,” Paisley said. “Kino?”
“Oh man,” he said. “You tryin’ to get me in trouble or what?”
Ruby laughed and slapped his shoulder.
“The kids are in bed,” Paisley reminded him, “so no excuse. Spill it.”
“Okay,” he said. “I was part of this welcoming group for tourists. I was…fifteen maybe? We would do fire dances and shake our asses and sing tunes and shit. You know, to make the locals feel like Honolulu was the coolest place ever! It was a tourist chick. She was older than me. She was there with her family and she was like one of those goth girls.”
Kino suddenly jumped to his feet, smashed his arms against his sides so he was standing completely straight, and then did some ridiculous penguin-looking dance as he sang along to Marilyn Manson’s “Beautiful People.”
“What is that?” Hailey asked, throwing a handful of sand at him.
“That’s how white people dance,” he said.
Sylvia lost it. She laughed out loud. She’d always made fun of the way Penny danced, claiming she needed to find a little bit of soul.
“You’re fuckin’ white!” Jagger said.
“I’m tan!” Kino defended himself. “It’s different.”
“Anyway,” Kino continued, “I put a lei around her neck and she whispered into my ear that she was high as hell and thought I was cute and asked if I liked blowjobs.”
Everyone laughed and booed him.
“I call bullshit!” Rickshaw said. “No fuckin’ way!”
“Cross my heart,” Kino said. “So, we snuck off behind one of the huts, she sucked me off, and then she rode me right there in the dirt.”
“Huts?” Ruby asked. “You didn’t have houses?”
“I did,” Kino said. “But this was a touristy place, you know? We had huts so it would look all authentic and shit. Oliver. Your turn. Tell us about your first time.”
Everyone grew silent and Sylvia wasn’t sure why. It seemed everyone was more interested in his story than they had been about Kino’s. Sylvia guessed it was because he seemed more serious than the others and maybe kept to himself more.
“You have to go, dude!” Kino said. “I went. It’s your turn. That’s how it works. A question is asked and we all have to answer.”
“Fine!” Oliver said, as he set his attention on the sand in front of him.
He poked at the ground with a stick, drawing something and tracing it over and over again. From where Sylvia was seated, she was pretty sure it was the letter “A.”
“His name was Anthony,” Oliver said. “And he was my first, and maybe my only true love.”
Silence. Sylvia wasn’t expecting that, but she still didn’t see what the big deal was. She came from a world where being gay was almost as normal as being straight. Surely these people knew their friend was homosexual if they lived with him all this time, however long that was.
More silence.
“I fuckin’ knew it!” Kino suddenly yelled and ran to Oliver to lift him up and give him a big bear hug.
