Moon Over Denny-Blaine

by Max Delsohn

People called it a beach, but it wasn’t. People called it paradise, but baby, it wasn’t. It was a public park shoved against a lake. Three levels: green grass, yellow grass, and dirty dirt sand. Most people sat on the yellow grass, because there wasn’t much space on the sand. If you wanted to sit on the sand, you’d have to claim a spot in the morning, and most of us were showing up after morning shifts or before night shifts, most of us were descending on the socalled beach at 3pm and not a minute sooner. It wasn’t the kind of place you rushed to, Denny-Blaine.

To the left of the concrete stairs, on the yellow grass by the bush with the wasp nests, that was our spot. To the left of that was the bush without the wasps’ nest, where people would pee sometimes, although we usually just peed in the water. It was a talked-about thing, peeing in the water. The city wouldn’t give us a Port-A-Potty, even though the real beaches had them. We suspected this was the fault of the mansions on either side of the park. Once someone called the cops on us for swimming too close to their “backyard,” and another time, I saw a woman with mean, bird-like features snarl at us from an upstairs window. The cops showed up that time too. We didn’t assume it coincidence.

Denny-Blaine was, functionally, a nude beach. There are no laws against being naked in the city of Seattle; you just can’t indecently expose yourself, you know, make it sexual, and the only beachgoers you could accuse of that were those old straight guys who showed up, the ones who walked around with semis and struck up conversations with topless femmes who tried to hide their faces in their copies of Pleasure Activism or The Argonauts. Before those straight guys started showing up, the beach was affectionately referred to as Dykiki. Only a few of us still called it that.

Most of the folks showing up at DB were queer, but there were more and more straight people showing up every day. It was a problem. The park was a shithole, yes, but it was our shithole. We had to protect it. There was real pride in bringing a new queer to Denny Blaine—You’d wade, naked, in the blank blue water, chug warm cans of PBR and ignore the Bellevue skyline for that holy, hallucinatory vision of Mount Rainier. You’d tell them hey, this isn’t a safe space, this isn’t everything we deserve, this doesn’t even have a bathroom you can use, but it’s something. Something the gay bars with their cover-charges and their corporate-backed drag shows can’t give us. We can all be just here, together. We can all finally be alone.

The most crowded, batshit day to go to Denny-Blaine was Pride Sunday. I’d argue it was also the best day of the year to go to Denny-Blaine, because that day, more than any other, it attracted a particular kind of queer: a queer with zero interest in attending the sponsored festivities at the Seattle Center, a queer who was probably hungover and half-asleep from dancing at SLIP till 6am, a queer who cared enough to do something in proper spirit of the holiday, who wanted to be with their people in spite of  the straight, the rich, and the cops.

It was one such Pride Sunday when Denny-Blaine Park met its full potential, by which I mean, it was one such Pride Sunday that we drove the breeders out.

There were only three of us in my old Subaru that day: Mikey and me up front, his new girlfriend, Christine, in the back. It had only been a month, but Christine and Mike had spent near every day together since he’d gone into Joe Bar, written his number on a receipt and pushed it into her hands. She’s gonna make an honest man outta me, Mikey said after they fucked for the first time. The next week he posted a picture of Christine eating pancakes at Beth’s Diner with the caption, Stop me before I marry this binch!

As we turned onto Lake Washington Drive, I saw Mikey hook his hand behind the passenger seat to reach for Christine’s knee. I watched in the rearview as she felt him there, then smiled and rolled down the window. The wind caught her thick brown hair, pushing past her head like a dark flag.

Turn up the music, she said, and Charli XCX wailed:
I just wanna go back, back to 1999—
We twisted and turned our way through the fir trees. There was something different about the trees on the route to Denny-Blaine, a jumble of light and leaves so dense that the city behind you seemed to disappear. Joggers and bikers merged onto the sidewalk through brief gaps in the forest, and strange, wooden stairs twisted up through the surrounding hills. The getting to Denny-Blaine was part of the Denny-Blaine experience; that extreme descent through the trees was a psychological reset, meant to strip away the concerns of the heterosexist world we all suffered through to make a buck, where King Bezos and his government cronies struck down joy wherever he found it, where pleasure was scarce and sanctuary was scarcer. But for one day at Denny-Blaine, we could build a new world.

There were no parking spots against the park wall, so I made the loop around and wedged into a spot between two long, gated driveways. Mikey shimmied out from between the car door and the ornamental driveway bushes, then took off his shirt. His tits were massive, a feature he bragged about and whined about in turns. He hated to be seen as a woman, but he was never going to cut them off, was never going to go on testosterone, or so he said. I’m just too hot like this, he would say with a slow, sad shake of the head, then burst into violent laughter.

Christine was already in her bikini and high-waisted cut-offs. I was in my typical white tank top and my blue-green tropical board shorts.  I’d take my tank off when I got to the grass, but I’d never been bold enough to strip off before then. For me and my tits, there was no ambiguity—I wanted them gone, gone, gone, but I was in between gigs and the GoFundMe campaign had stalled. The board shorts were the most masculine I could find in the little boy’s section at Target; there was something earnest—dad-like?—about the palm tree print, which suggested the masculinity I was going for: easy, self-assured, unconcerned with the intensity and passion Mikey so relished. Nah, not me. Just a guy watching over his kids at the beach.

That was the aspect of Denny-Blaine I never liked, the aspect of Denny-Blaine beauty-queers like Mikey and Christine sought out: seeing and being seen. Because there were so few free, insulated queer community spaces in the city, you were bound to see someone you’d fucked, someone you’d fucked had fucked, someone you thought you could love or someone you fucking hated. I worked hard to stay friends with everybody in the scene, so for the most part this feature of the Denny-Blaine experience was at best irrelevant to me, at worst a distraction. I didn’t come to the park to confront my sexual history; I just wanted to take off my shirt, goof off with my friends, and get so high I couldn’t see.

But Mikey always had a rotating cast of queers in his head that he might run into at the park. Today, he was banking on June.

It’s gonna be June, man, Mikey said as he pulled his folded pink inner tube out of the trunk. I think it’s gonna be June.

Mikey and June had been together for five months—by far the longest Mikey had stayed with anyone—until Mikey unceremoniously dumped her for Christine. He didn’t even tell me he had broken things off. He just brought Christine to Kremwerk and introduced her to me as “his girl.” This kind of move wasn’t out of character for Mikey, bringing dates in and out of his circle without context, but June had been around a while. She was an intense, newly-out femme, loud at the wrong times (libraries, plays, parking garages where we were trying get high), but loud at some of the right times, too (dive bars, karaoke, city council meetings). For a while, at least, she had held Mikey’s focus, made him considerate, even attentive. And I had liked June. I thought her canning merited a debrief, an acknowledgment, something.

But nobody had seen June since the dumping. She’d deleted her Twitter, her Instagram, everything. For all we knew, June had left Seattle altogether.

She’s not showing up here, Christine said. She reached into her purse and pushed black, oval sunglasses onto her face. She doesn’t even have queer friends.

That’s not true, Mikey said.

Really? I asked as I grabbed my backpack from the trunk. Who’s she friends with?

I don’t know, Mikey said. There’s a bi girl at her job? It doesn’t matter! You’re right. She probably won’t be here.

He shut the trunk hard with a grunt, then turned to me.

But guess who posted an IG story in a bikini this morning! Mikey said, grinning.

Who? Christine asked.

I groaned. Claudia.

*

The beach was packed. The green grass level was almost entirely full, and there were way more straight people there than I ever had seen before, especially during Pride. We stepped around the seemingly-infinite number of towels as Christine and I exchanged glances. Mikey raised his eyebrows and hawked a loogie onto the ground next to a white guy with dreads playing guitar. Next to the stairs were several fully-dressed straight couples leaning their fronts against a concrete wall, looking out at the queers sunbathing below. I looked at the crowd with dread as we passed a straight couple doing some kind of acrobatic yoga. A small, spray-tanned woman with a tight black ponytail was doing a handstand on a guy’s feet.

What the fuck, Christine said under her breath.

As we walked past the yoga couple and down the stairs, a flurry of white rocketed past us. Christine and I flinched; Mikey screamed. The three of us whipped around to see that a cream-colored cockatiel had perched on the yoga woman’s feet.

Mikey turned back to us, his eyes wide and searching. Christine pressed a hand to her lips, still staring at the bird.

Let’s just sit down, I said. By some miracle, our usual spot on the yellow grass was open, but it’d be tight. Christine and Mikey spread out a Superman blanket for the two of them to share. I folded my towel in half and took my Crazy Creek chair out of my backpack. It was only after I had settled into my seat and lit up half of an old joint from the bottom of my pack that I looked across the way and saw Claudia, flitting through the mess of people and smoke.

Told you, Mikey said with a laugh.

Claudia and I had been on four dates last winter. The first two were short, informational. We met through the apps. She was the only person who messaged me that didn’t reek of baby-gay; she was a therapist, almost 30, and already had a primary partner, so we could go in knowing the limitations of the thing. We met at Bar Sue to confirm this—cohabitation and commitment ceremonies were off the table. I sucked down a vodka tonic while she told me about a birthday orgy she had gone to last week, and then she hugged me tight, too familiar for the moment, and it felt good. We had a few more drunken amblings through the city, sloppy sidewalk kisses and one bad oral sesh. Then she stopped answering my texts for a week, then two weeks. A month after that she called to apologize, she had never been that into it, it wasn’t going to work out. I told her that for a polyamorous therapist, I was disappointed in her communication. She hung up on me.

Claudia was with a willowy, wan man in plain round glasses and a little golf cap.  They both had their bathing suits on, him in nondescript black swim trunks, her in a loud pink and green bikini with frills. The bikini was too small; fat and skin and hair bulged everywhere. She was too beautiful for him. As she lit up a joint, the man slid a hand onto her hip. It occurred to me then that this was her primary partner, Tom. She had told me her primary partner was cis. On our first date, when I asked her if he was straight, she said, Not really. Well, mostly.

I looked away. Maybe it’s what I deserved for getting wrapped up in another queer from the scene. If they’re weren’t fucking a straight dude, they were fucking someone for clout, or better drugs, or a secret trust fund. Who in this godforsaken city wants real intimacy, real, radical care? What do you call a queer space filled with straight people? I should find some closeted farmer in Yakima, I thought, a cis guy who will only fuck me in the cunt. Then I can move onto his farm and never talk to these people again.

You okay, buddy, Christine said. She was propped up on her elbows and sucking on a Dum Dum. Mikey’s head was in her lap; he was staring at her calves like he was trying to memorize them. A bright red bag of Juanita’s Tortilla Chips was sideways and open, spilling whiteish crumbs onto Superman’s cotton face.

Where does she get off, bringing her straight boyfriend to Denny Blaine? I asked. This is how it happens. This is how our spaces get overrun by Toms and semis and tropical birds!

Who’s Tom? Mikey said.

Claudia’s primary. We’ve done this.

Oh. Yeah. Yikes. He turned over so his face was pressed into Christine’s stomach. She cooed at him and smoothed his hair onto her thighs.

Fuck her. I’m going in the water.

Do you want the floaty? Christine asked, gesturing to the inner tube. I’ll help you inflate it, if you want.

No, that’s okay, I can handle it. I took off my shirt and grabbed the floaty, found the valve stem with my mouth and started to blow.

Something settled in me when I stepped towards the sand. Lake Washington was at once clear and impossibly blue. Dozens of queers dotted the cove, bookended by two matching wooden docks, one for each mansion, but I tried to ignore those. Almost everyone had drinks in their hands, mostly PBRs and Rainiers but some La Croix and some White Claws. Usually PBR was my bag, but Mikey had brought Happy Apple soda, which I couldn’t resist. Weed drinks came on faster for me than other edibles, so I took only a small sip before I pulled the inner tube over my body and walked into the water.

The lake was a sharp, bright cold. I was never ready for it. I moved deeper into the water and saw M, that queer who was friends with Robert that I always saw at the No New Youth Jail demos, swimming several yards out, and there was Theresa, the ID checker at Pony, spinning around in a circle as her friends blasted SOPHIE from a waterproof speaker. I can make you feel, I can make you feel, I can make you feel better. Was the weed drink starting to hit? No, it must’ve been placebo. It must’ve been the sun beating above our heads and that queer with the tuft of blur hair paddle-boarding with their dog and Mount Rainier emerging from the clouds and M yelling, Look, the mountain’s out! and all of us together looking. Was this queer? Well, it was nice, I mean it was something.

I splayed myself out on the tube. Denny-Blaine was the only place in city I could go shirtless with any confidence, the only place where my gender was legible, where in terms of gender I was getting what I wanted. Here I could just be a guy at the beach. And it would get so much better after top surgery; most people who came to Denny-Blaine had tits for some reason or another, but there were always at least one or two queers with those gorgeous scars on their chests, which I thought looked especially masculine, more masculine than a cis chest in all its cleanness. That faggy masc was there that day; I’d seen him around the bars, mostly The Door. He was off by himself, past the docks, sprawled out on a big inflatable pineapple. He stared back at the shore, sipping a flask. When he caught me staring he nodded. I nodded back.

After a half an hour or so of stoned contemplation, I spun around my tube to look at the park. So many bodies. So many tattoos. Feeling flashed in my chest, a fast warmth. Desire? Hope? Even though I hadn’t met half or more of the queers at the beach that day, they all looked familiar to me. Maybe I was high, sure, but maybe we were family.

Up on the wall separating the yellow grass from the green, a big football type looked out at the water with his arms around a brittle blonde girl. They looked relaxed, peaceful: the death of this place.

Behind the serene straight couple, though, someone was walking through the parking lot. I was too far away to immediately make out a face, but I could tell, even at a distance, that this person was not dressed for the beach. They were in a dress, a big dress, and they were walking fast, with two other, more appropriately clothed people behind them, holding the dress’s train. I could now see it was a wedding dress and the person was wearing heels. As they descended onto the green, I could see that the person looked angry.

I could see that the person was June.

I downed the last of my weed soda, dove under my inner tube and flung myself towards the shore.

*

Despite spending nearly three days a week every summer at Denny-Blaine for the six years I’d lived in Seattle, I was not, in fact, a strong swimmer. More of a floater. Most of us were. And I had floated far—too far—from the shore with my tube and my bottle of Happy Apple, which I held tight in my right hand as I flapped wildly through the lake. I didn’t try to see what was happening on the yellow as I swam; I knew June would get to Mikey and Christine first.

At some point, my feet found the sand again, and I was pounding through the water, until I was actually out of the lake, at which point I reverted to a sort of jog-walk. I didn’t want to add unnecessary drama to the scene—and it was already a scene. I could hear Mikey shouting from the level above. I could hear he was drunk.

Are you serious, June?

I walked up the park stairs.

Are you serious? Because you look serious! June was gesturing to Christine, who was standing close behind Mikey, not hiding behind him so much as supervising. She looked annoyed, even bored.

Don’t tell me this is about fucking Instagram, Mikey slurred.

Of course it’s about Instagram, June said. We broke up two weeks ago, and you’re online talking about marrying Hot Barista?

I’m Hot Barista? Christine asked, perking up. Cool.

Mazel tov! June yelled. On your blessed union. And mazel tov to me, too.

I’m marrying myself. You’re all invited to my wedding.

She pulled a miniature bottle of Bacardi from her bra and drank it, then sputtered, The wedding’s today.

Fuck this, Mikey said.

Can you touch me up? June turned to the people behind her, a goth-looking girl with a septum and a guy in a Nike hat. The goth girl pulled out a makeup bag.

And you brought a straight couple here? Mikey shouted. How could you?

The goth rolled her eyes and kept applying June’s eyeliner. You know Katya’s not straight, June said. She’s bi.

Well, this guy’s clearly straight. Mikey gestured to the Nike hat, who was pulling out his phone.

Hey! Mikey said. Hat guy. Are you straight?

You can’t just ask people if they’re straight! June said, pulling away from Katya.

I’m straight, the Nike hat said, tapping on his phone. I’m definitely straight.

I’m not marrying Christine. I’m not marrying anyone. Marriage is for suckers. Mikey stepped forward.

It was a joke, June. And we broke up. I can fuck whoever I want.

You’re right, June said. You can fuck whoever you want. You can break up with me and then fuck Hot Barista the next day. God, that’s like, so queer.

Oh, so you’re queer now? Mikey said. I grimaced. Christine sucked at her teeth. We both knew it was a soft spot with June, that people didn’t read her as queer, that she was new to us, that she was in some way new to herself.

June’s face flushed red.

I’m sorry, was it not queer enough when we went to your childhood home and I ate your ass in a bunk bed?

My ass? You mean this ass? Mikey turned around and bent over. He put his hands on his ass cheeks.

What the fuck is that? June said. She looked drunk, too, but not as drunk as Mikey. How many beers had he downed while I was out on the lake?

I’m mooning you, Mikey said. I’m mooning you!

Christine cackled. The Nike hat started walking away. Every queer on the yellow grass was watching now. Nearby, Claudia surreptitiously turned down the music on her portable speakers. I put my face in my hands.

You can’t moon me, June cried. This is a nude beach!

Yes, I can, Mikey said, still bent over. Mooning is a construct. I realized then he was trying to grab his ankles, but he wasn’t flexible enough.

Fine, June said. She turned around too, flipped the wedding dress over her head, and spread her cheeks wide. I didn’t see her asshole; out of instinct, I jerked my face away.

That’s when I heard it. The football-type from the green grass. He said it slow, as if he didn’t want anyone else but the brittle blonde to hear. But I did hear.

What’s going on? the football-type said. I looked to the grass. He was watching Mikey and June. He was backing away. Backing away, too, were the yoga people and their bird, which was sitting on the yoga woman’s shoulder, as if it were watching us, too. I saw the yoga man mouth something: Maybe we should go.

It must’ve been the Happy Apple. It must’ve been the clear view of the mountain. It must’ve been the knowledge that for this one glorious, glistening moment, so many queers were looking at the same thing, were sharing the same freak show moment. It must’ve been that we were on the yellow grass and the straights were on the green. It must’ve been a higher power, bigger than myself, because I’ve never had an idea this good since, I mean it was the best idea I’ve ever had.

I squared up with the yoga couple. I looked the bird in the eye. Then I spun around, bent over, and yanked my swim trunks to my feet.

I did not see what the yoga couple did but I could hear—ew, gross, let’s get out of here—that my plan was already working. From my peripheral vision I could see Christine, too, had caught onto the idea. She was bending over and laughing and pushing her bikini bottoms off her hips. Mikey and June were laughing, too. Everybody on the yellow started moving. I saw mostly shadows: people springing up from blankets and bending over and flinging wet shorts into the sky. I heard sore, staccato muttering from the green, then I heard Claudia turn her speakers back up: It was SSION, it was SSION’s best song. It was Comeback.

Sometimes I still breathe in… What I don’t believe… As if superstition… could keep you away from me…

Then I was laughing. Laughing? Laugh-singing? Sing-shouting? I was shouting. The rest of the Happy Apple was starting to hit, and the sun was blaring down my back, and SSION was blistering through the speakers, and the straight people were leaving. I remembered then that I had played Claudia this song on our third date, that she had stopped kissing me to Shazam it right there in my bedroom. I wanted to look over at her, to smile or pump a fist, but I didn’t want to break the pose, so I just sang louder, straining my ass higher and higher into the air: Comeback, comeback, comeback, comeback, comeback, heaven is my thing again…

I don’t know how long we stood like that, straights gone, asses out. Minutes? Hours? Somebody yelled, are they gone? then somebody yelled, they’re gone! and we rolled our bodies up. I kicked my trunks off my ankles and tucked them under my arm. Queers who’d been squashed together on the yellow started hauling their beach bags up to the green, spreading out and making a show. Mikey and June were walking up the stairs, debriefing, giggling, while Christine stayed next to me on the yellow and looked on with cool acceptance. I turned around and saw Claudia looking at me. Pantsless, we walked towards each other, already smiling.

Max Dehsohn is a writer from Seattle, Washington. Their work has been published in VICE, The Rumpus, and Triangle House, among other places. They have been awarded residencies and fellowships from Hugo House and the Mineral School. They are an MFA candidate in fiction at Syracuse University. Find them on twitter @fakejewishboy or at www.maxdelsohn.com.