A short while ago I mentioned to an email correspondent that I'm not really a beach person. Of course in Australia that's tantamount to disliking beer, not understanding football or hating puppies, but it's true. Partly it stems from a lifelong body image issues, and a resultant aversion to wandering around in public in little more than my underwear.
But maybe there's more. I'd like to like the beach, and it frustrates me that I don't. I find myself wondering if my attitude to the beach is similar to my attitude to women: I can understand the attraction, but I don't feel it myself, and try as I might I can never get into it.
It leads me to wonder if it might not be a gay thing. The beach is a raw, wild, natural place. At the beach you are stripped (literally) to your basics, both in appearance and in relation to nature. On the other hand, your stereotypical gay is a creature of artifice and contrivance. The classic gay professions - floristry, interior design, fashion, the theatre - are all about creating fanciful facades to either cover over the baseness of reality or to frame it in such a way that its beautiful aspects become all the more apparent. Whereas the cliched straight man enjoys the beach because it provides him opportunites to pit himself against nature, the cliched gay man is more comfortable with the inner city cafe or nightclub scene where his carefully cultivated image can be shown to its best advantage.
Of course there a plenty of gay guys who love the beach, and plenty of straight guys who don't. But I'm looking for a broad generalisation here. Plus I am more or less completely pulling this theory out of my ass.
At the end of the day I'm sure many gay guys will claim to adore the beach, but perhaps not purely for the presence of waves and sand.
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