Six Foot Eight Date

GIANT'S BEACH

ENTRY #Wattys2014

His name was Miles.

That’s how tall he was...

I was terribly late, but I had made a promise with myself to get out of my comfort zone this summer and taste more of California than just the Inland Empire. It took three hours to drive out of the desert and reach the beach past every smog-choked hood in LA, but I finally got to Manhattan Beach for this year’s Volleyball Open before the players broke for sushi.

After paying one hundred dollars to park in front of an owner’s dumpster hills away from the gray glitter of the Pacific, yes, a hundred dollars!, I had three hours on the dumpster clock to watch tan bodies whack a white ball back and forth on the dusty sand, by myself.

I hiked straight down the side of Manhattan Beach Boulevard’s crowded wide lanes and towards the birthplace of beach volleyball and the Beach Boys. A Mediterranean-style structure sat at the end of a wide pier as if placed on an oceanic pillow, drawing the line between beach babes and surfers, and showcasing the edge of the world behind it.

Sun-kissed skin passed below me—I had on flip flops, but that still put me a half inch higher than the six inches I already had on most of the burned faces at the pier's entrance. A long bike and people trail known as The Strand extended in either direction, also covered in bodies, taking advantage of this God-blessed sliver of heaven where some of these lucky people actually called home. Dense crowds on the sand and on the pier all leaned to the left and to the squared off sections of barely visible blue lines defining the volleyball courts. I wasn’t one of them. I was a ghost in the daylight, every shade of blonde clashing with my milk chocolate hair and phantom-hued arms and legs. I was glad that I at least chose shimmery tangerine lipstick instead of midnight red. I didn’t want to look gothic, which I wasn’t. I just worked too much when the sun was out and spent too many off-hours doing indoor sports or herb planter Olympics in my small kitchen.

All the vantage points were already taken, and even being six feet tall, I couldn’t see shit. The sandy line on the bike path and the pier were stuffed solid, and I only stole glances of white volleyballs flitting into the air, blindly cheering along with the crowd as I made my way down the path one tanned person at a time. California sunlight warmed my shoulders between my chocolate swathes of hair, and I fingered them back as brown shoulders turned into brown asses, which eventually turned into seeing actual volleyball nets on the sand. The Volleyball Open was now well behind me.

And then, from about fifty feet away, I thought I saw an unusual volleyball pole.

I removed my sandals and stepped onto the sand, letting my toes explore the minced rocks and shells beneath my feet as I walked towards the sandy volleyball court, and from about twenty feet away, I realized that it wasn’t a pole at all, but an actual guy, a real person with flesh perfectly wrapped around him that rose from the sand in grand stretches and curves. He was incredibly tall, sun-kissed and beautiful, his muscles and bones overpowering the anonymous public below him, his bare back a perfect canvas for my hands to explore, and I just stood there, ghost skin and all.

His eyes were on a volley between two shirtless guys darting around at his waist, and I lost track of myself as I soaked in the miles and miles of him—Miles, wouldn’t it be funny if that was his name?

Sunlight cut through his luminous, tousled hair, like dry hay wildly forked apart, so golden white, a perfect blend of sand and cloud. A few feet closer, and his hair would have literally blocked the sun from my eyes.

“Tallula,” my voice seemed to say as it carried up to him—did he ask me my name? And then someone slugged me in the shoulder.

I had missed the, “Watch out!” when I got nailed by a blocked spike, and I instinctively flung my long, lily-white arm around and caught the tail end of the ball’s ricochet, launching it directly into the face of God’s perfect, natural volleyball pole. He turned at the last instant and got struck smack between the eyes, which caused his long rolls of golden muscles to contract and coil, toppling him from the mighty pedestal that he naturally stood on.