As a child, I can distinctly remember the fear I felt of having to go even remotely near the deep end of the pool during a swim lesson. So to find myself way out in the middle of the ocean off Rockaway Beach getting railed by my boyfriend felt like a far cry from those days when I would make my swim instructor work for every last dollar to get me to do what he wanted…you know, “stroke-wise.”

Looking back, I suppose my more than slight (and inappropriate) attraction to him set up some kind of latent fetish that my boyfriend, Sean, would eventually activate. In the three years we had been together, he would often allude to his desire to bone in the water. But not just any body of water, oh no. He wanted to do it in the ocean off Rockaway Beach. Somewhere between Beach 9 and Beach 126, which, yes, left the geography potential wide open, but he could have at least tried to entice me more with the thought of doing it among the more pristine (and vaguely less populated) beaches of Jacob Riis Park, or even Fort Tilden. Alas, that would have involved too much “schlepping,” as far as he was concerned. Though it was my belief he secretly thought that Jacob Riis was “too gay” of a beach and I knew him to be faintly homophobic. Which probably meant he was gay himself. That’s always how it goes, innit? I mean, honestly, he liked venturing up my ass far too much not to be. And, perhaps worse than indulging him in his homophobia, I indulged him in this sexual practice as well. Anyway, he was certain to tell me that he only wanted to do “vag stuff” once we were in the waters of Rockaway and I had at last conceded to letting him bang me there. The question remained, however: would I ever concede?

My aversion to yielding to his faux kinky (but, in truth, rather vanilla) request stemmed not only from the lack of faith I had in the successful mechanics of any such “operation,” but also from my utter sense of disgust for that particular beach. People could talk all they wanted about how much “cleaner” it had gotten since the days of syringes, other assorted drug needles and dirty diapers in the sand (or, worse still, floating around in the ocean itself). But a dirty beach was a dirty beach at heart…no matter what was done to gentrify it. Sort of like Edward Lewis trying to dress up Vivian Ward in Beverly Hills drag but knowing full well she was still a prosty beneath it all.

Even so, Sean had kept on me about it for so long that his “power of suggestion” started to weigh on me. Subtly infecting my thoughts to the point where I could scarcely glance at any form of water—whether a small glass of it or otherwise—without picturing myself getting railed by him (in miniature form, in the case of the glass of water “fantasy”). And so, regardless of whether I actually wanted to do it or not, I was becoming of the opinion that I needed to. Just to get it out of my system. Just so I could stop seeing such pornographic images in every clear liquid I even briefly espied.

A part of me was convinced Sean had enlisted the assistance of some kind of hypnotist to influence my mind so effectively. There was no other way to explain my rather inexplicable “hankering” to try it. Especially after so many months (turned years) of resisting it. Resisting not only fucking in an ocean itself, but one so gross as Rockaway. And this is something I knew to be absolutely true about Rockaway: it was fucking disgusting. Contaminated. In fact, maybe it was better off being genuinely contaminated the way it was prior to making it “white-friendly.” Now, even if it’s not “legitimately” grimy, it has remained so nonetheless…thanks to the endless runoff of “hipster scum,” as they called it in the 00s.

And yeah, that was the decade when Sean first started regularly visiting Rockaway Beach. He was just a teenager then. Fifteen years old in 2008. Now, at thirty, he acts as though the joint is the only place where he “feels like himself.” Oof. Yet despite his “love” for the place, he has so little awareness of its history. As is the case with most people who dip their unfit, unkempt bodies into the water there. The ones who are certainly not worthy of the retroactively ironic nickname it was once given: the Queens Riviera. Which quickly devolved into the more euphemistic “people’s beach.” A sobriquet that does not match Princess Diana’s “people’s princess” vibes at all, in terms of elegance.

It’s technically still very much a “people’s beach,” even if most of those people make more in a month than any of the former druggies who frequented Rockaway in the years well before Sean started splashing about over there (and probably also fucking other women in the water without confessing it to me). Sean, who had arrived onto the scene years after the Clean Beach Act of 2004. Years after a report by the New York City Council called “Swimming in Trash? A Look into Cleanliness at NYC Beaches” was released. I didn’t bother to point out these facts to him when he bragged to more recently-moved-to-the-city friends about how he was going to Rockaway back when it was “hard.” Might as well let men have their delusions or they’ll end up acting out in harsh and severe ways toward you. Or other women around you.

I guess I gave into Sean’s delusions about who I was as a person, too. Because, by the end of that summer, I let him do what he had always wanted. Hell, maybe it was what I always wanted. But, even if that were the case, I was cured of any such fantasy as the dick I thought I was feeling rush inside of me turned out to be a hypodermic needle. Because I fucking told you: once trash, always trash.