Life's a beach and then you write

I have been going to my favorite beach at least once a summer for so many years that when I step onto the sand there I am assaulted by overlapping memories -- from the first time I went there with a classmate and we walked too far along the surf, not realizing that the tide would come up and wash away our towels; to deciding I would run from one end of the beach to the other barefoot, resulting in fallen arches that had me hobbling for days; to many happy views during the Speedo era; to a memorial service for one of my best friends, taken far too soon; to boogie boarding with my kids until their lips turned purple; to spending days there without my kids, the only true days off I get each year. 

But one of the memories that comes to me clearest is a fight scene.  A group of vacationing gay men has become friends with a young woman named Belinda.  One afternoon they see her propositioned by someone who doesn't walk away when she says no.  Before they can intervene, two men who have been sunbathing nearby jump to her rescue and take the guy down.  She reveals to the group that she works at Damascus.  They know what that is; everyone does.  It's a brothel owned by the mob and patronized by the richest and most powerful men in the world.  Belinda is a prostitute both protected and imprisoned by the sunbathing guards. 

Of course that memory does not exist outside my head.  It's a scene from my current smutty novel-in-progress, Damascus.  But that doesn't make it any less real to me.  I know exactly where on the beach it takes place.  I know how high the tide is and the position of the sun when it's happening.  I know the complicated relationships between the five vacationing men.  I know the fallout from this scene.  All that, even though I haven't written it yet.

And that is one of the greatest joys of being a storyteller.  You live simultaneously in this world and in a parallel world of your own making.  You carry some of your friends with you, in  your very soul, wherever you go.   Social distancing be damned, you are never alone.