The Sand-Filled Oyster Summer is sexy. Yeah, and spring ...

There's something so obvious, so hopeful, so bittersweet about bumster short shorts, increased condom sales, complicated daiquiris and exposed viscera. During the summer we're forced to be Brazilian for 113 days of the year. Summer is about trying too hard. That might be sex, but it isn't sexy.

Summer is about loosening up and bending the rules, scolds your matronly inner ad-man. Look, school has been out for me for a long time. I'm already loose and the rules are cracked. As a matter of fact, I'm at my loosest and most cracked when the sky is not blazing white and I can wear something other than a stained sarong knotted under my armpits.

Sex in the summer (especially on the third 90-degree day) is a cruel lesson in bodily fluids. One drop of his sweat falls into your nostril, and you'll have a coughing fit spasmodic enough to eject his detumescent member. Trust me, you'll be trolling for hotels with brutal a/c right quick. A furnished meat locker is okay for a couple of nights, but then all those exposed viscera start to get too cool and funereal between those rented sheets.

Now, that Abercrombie & Fitch catalog is sexy. Doesn't make sense, you say, considering my previous complaints? Here's another mantra: Summer is contradiction and confusion! It's not the A&F summer uniforms, pre-broken-in for that coveted stoner lacrosse look, everything prohibitively priced and sized and presented like museum pieces; nor is it the thick matte catalog stock. No, what's sexy is them preppie manchild slightly pre-broken-in models. They've got washboard abs and a whiff of Moor meets Choate. They collectively remind me of Jeff.

Jeff had that A&F thing going on, but better: splendid acne scars and boils spattered on his chest (Linda, my semi-dykey shadow, called him "bloob" behind his back, short for blueberry), two low-gauge piercings through his nips (so hot, since it would be years before body mutilation kiosks hit the malls), a few vague tribal tats, plus the copper green eyes, aquiline nose and sliding walnut hair only French Indians have. He was sublime suburban rough trade. Our sucky time would certainly come (I said the word love in another city during mating season, bad move), but before that we had a good 113 days. Yes, summer is sexier in the past tense.

Since we both had live-in girl/boyfriends at home, a majority of the summer was spent driving around, eating, preening, drinking, drugging, fucking and visiting our families (usually we were doing all of these things simultaneously). The two other activities were dyeing my nipples honey pink with a homemade strawberry henna potion and Jeff crawling his legs up a wall so he could beat off into his face. His little noble dick and righteous ass and me with my red hair and soft white overindulged dancer's body: we looked good, and that seemed to matter more than the sex, which was anorgasmic (for me), greased with guilt (for him) and picturesque (for anyone lucky enough to witness our public exertions). No bathroom mirror was big enough for our egos.

Well, you get the picture. Or maybe you don't. Watch us then, in the mid-August of our love, as we spoon on Georgica Beach surrounded by stars. Jeff is sipping off the can of warm Ballantine I couldn't finish. Since we arrived at the cottage four nights ago, he has kept a steady buzz on. Jeff, being devoutly Catholic, will put out only when he's juiced. He has been bending me over at every available opportunity, and I've been bouncing up and down and back and forth on his wee erection and faking orgasms gratefully. This carefully uncommitted and unnamed pretty thing we had was going to end ugly, and I knew it. Allow me the embittered pleasure of fast-forwarding to Graduation Day, less than one year later, when I landed a solid right sucker to Jeff's goatee.

But not here, and not tonight: Jeff grinds the empty into the sand, burps and rolls onto his back, taking me with him, so I'm sitting on his nuts with my knees drawn up to my chin, jockey-style. This is the only way to avoid the dreaded sand-filled oyster position, which is inevitable when drunk amateurs make it on the beach. After an interval, I ended up on my back with Jeff on top of me. He was cradling my head, and neither of us was moving. He was staring vacantly at the dunes, looking like a spent, defeated Puck, with the stars everywhere and his hair all damp and flying. I could have said I love you at that moment and killed it right then, but I didn't. And besides, it wouldn't have been true.