Under the Influence of Affluence

Alexia Norton Jones – First Place

East Hampton’s hot August wind, the splintered path among the dunes down from our summer house to the beach. They looked like movie stars, perfect bodies their laughter and barely there bikinis. But no one looked like me, I was brown with Afro hair, fourteen years old, invisible, inside my parents’ designer dream home. Interested only in what they wanted. I hoped for a hug, even one. In the silences I sank into oblivion.

The Hamptons had the beautiful ones. Tanned boys down One Mile beach, Twenty-four year olds, went to bars, drove sports cars, wore hippie clothes, had mustaches. I wanted to be with them. I wanted to be like the girls they craved, lithe, golden, confident, like the one who said, “your friends are your lovers your lovers are your friends.”

It was 1975. No one asked your age in a bar or in bed. Those boys knew I was young. They laughed and called to me, I said, “ Yes, I’ll go, I don’t need permission.” A walk down the beach to his red MG where everyone gathered, drinking beers, smoking. I liked how he looked at me. Anything to escape my family.

Those boys were smooth, cocky with smiles like they were in a beach movie. They showed me what they wanted and made me feel over and over and over that I was special. Like I was a grown up. But I wasn’t.

Those sunny places we went to every summer were where our parents could abandon us. With no questions or rules about where we were, we innocently rushed through our youth. I know each shame by name. I know each intimacy by blame.