Page 38 of We Are Just Us

Let me back up.

For those of you who don’t know, Black’s Beach is San Diego’s most famous clothing-optional beach. It’s accessible only by a hiking trail that should come with a liability waiver and a priest for last rites. I passed a man on the way down who said, and I quote, “The nudity is the easy part.”

He was right.

Here’s what no one tells you about nude beaches: they’re aggressively normal. I expected chaos. Debauchery. At minimum, some light pearl-clutching. Instead, I got retirees doing yoga and a man reading The Economist while his entire scrotum enjoyed the coastal breeze.

Basically, it was a regular beach, except everyone had accepted that swimsuits are a conspiracy by Big Lycra. Also, there were powered paragliders. Constantly. Zooming back and forth, a slow-motion surveillance system. Nothing says “embrace vulnerability” like a stranger with a GoPro floating past at fifty feet.

I’ll spare you the full arc of my courage journey. Just know that it took me roughly an hour to go from “fully clothed coward” to “naked on a towel, wondering if seagulls judge.” The progression was: shirt off (revolutionary), shorts off (terrifying), and then lying there realizing that no one gasped, no one pointed, and I was another human body on a beach full of human bodies who’d all signed an unspoken peace treaty with the concept of shame.

It was weirdly...freeing?

And then someone introduced me to perineum sunning.

Yes. That’s a real thing.

For the uninitiated, perineum sunning is the practice of exposing your taint to direct sunlight. Allegedly, it boosts testosterone. Increases energy. Aligns your chakras or whatever.

But I tried it anyway. Because when you’re already naked on a beach, what’s a little more vulnerability?

It was warm. Vaguely medical. I lasted about thirty seconds before I started laughing at myself, which is hard to do gracefully when your legs are in a position usually reserved for childbirth.

Character growth? Questionable decision-making? Both can be true.

The hike back up was brutal. I passed a family on their way down and nodded with the solemnity of one soldier acknowledging another soldier.

“Good luck,” I said.

“Thanks,” the dad replied, looking terrified.

But I will say this. I spent most of my life trying to be less visible. Trying to shrink. Trying to fit into spaces that didn’t make room for me. And yesterday, I stood on a beach, naked, deeply aware of my own ridiculousness.

And no one cared.

Not in a cruel way. In a liberating way.

Because here’s the truth they don’t tell you. Your body is just your body. It’s not a statement. It’s not a project. It’s just the thing that carries you around while you figure out how to be a person.

And sometimes, that thing deserves a little sun.

Even the taint.

Honestly? San Diego is a weekly newsletter about moving to a place you don’t know and trying not to embarrass yourself too badly. Subscribe if you want more stories about poor decisions and occasional personal growth.

Next week: I joined a book club and they’re reading a memoir about competitive cheese-making. Send help.

Twenty-four hours later, Emory’s face filled his phone screen. Kieran had already dissected the conversation in the truck from every possible angle and invented three new ones, pacing the length of his small living room until his floorboards groaned.

On screen, Emory propped her chin in her hand, her kitchen in Roseville blurred into a haze behind her. “Okay,” she said, her eyes bright and unblinking, pulling her curly hair off the back of her neck and twisting it up off her shoulders, the way she did whenever she was about to enjoy herself at his expense. “Before you say a single word, I need you to know I cleared my schedule emotionally for this.”

Kieran groaned, sinking onto his sofa and propping the phone against a stack of books on the coffee table. “I haven’t even—”

“No,” Emory said, pointing a manicured finger directly at the camera. “Absolutely not. You went to the nude beach. And got naked. You do not get to ease me into this.”

“I sent you the Substack post!” Kieran said, crossing his arms and trying to look detached. “You already know everything.”

“I know the sanitized version,” Emory snapped, leaning so close to her screen that her forehead went out of focus. She squinted at him. “I want the real version. The hot neighbor version.”