Back to the Beach

I feel happier and more settled than I have for months, as finally the next year of my life is planned out. I’m going up to York to study some more Medieval history, and I’m so relieved to have been given the money, and to have been rejected by UCL, because the thought of living in London and suffering through 3 hour Latin translation exams there was filling me with dread. I hoped life after university would be more clearly mapped out, but I can deal with these small steps, a year in Corsica, a year in York. I think that being here influenced my disquiet about London: things move so slowly now that the thought of an old city, small enough to get to know in a year and with the Shambles instead of the rat race, just seemed so much more appealing.

I spent the afternoon on the beach with a book, having opted out of sailing because of the gusty wind and a lingering hangover. On the long stretch of pristine white beach I was sandblasted, so I kept going, away from the town, until I reached the little cove past the last of the beachfront restaurants. It was rocky and littered with seaweed and shallow algae filled pools, but there was a patch of sand in the wind shadow of a bleached log so I settled down and read about a soldier returning from Burma and feeling suffocated by village life and resentful of his unknown son. I have read perhaps 5 books since I came to Corsica, which is slightly frightening. I thought it was something I couldn’t live without – when I was a child I would have 5 or 6 books on the go at a time, leaving them splayed open, scattered around the house. Gutting five a day at university seems to have broken my addiction. I hope it comes back soon.

I lay there for three hours, all alone with the sea except for one woman hiking past who said bonjour. Then a man came and squatted down next to me and started asking me whether I was living in the town, whether I was German (because I’m pale and podgy? More evidence of my weird accent in French?), what was my name, what was I doing that night, would I give him my number. He was polite, and smiled, and didn’t say anything obscene or touch me, but I was lying on the sand with no one within sight or shouting distance and I just wanted him to walk away.

It’s hard, when you are taught to be polite, make eye contact and smile, to successfully reject someone, especially in another language. Even harder when as a women you know, although you learned this through experience rather than parental injunctions, that an explicit rejection, even a polite one, can be dangerous. Even when you are willing it to end, you want to keep your interaction on a light, social level, so a passer-by might think you were acquaintances having a chat. You don’t want him to call you a bitch, or tell you you’re lucky to get any attention, you don’t want him to get angry, and you don’t want him to touch you. You also don’t want to explicitly tell him to leave you alone, because if he refuses, you have crossed a line and you know for sure that he doesn’t care what you want. It must be hard, as a man, to learn that you have to get women to sleep with you in order to be respected, that you always have to be the one to approach them, and that sometimes women who are interested in sleeping with you will coyly refuse many times before they say yes. And to have women be afraid of your approaches, when you are respectful and wouldn’t dream of harassing them, because they have been harassed by so many men before you.

It’s such a shame, because he was probably a very nice man. Maybe we could have been friends. Maybe he had no sexual interest in me whatsoever. I want to give people the benefit of the doubt, and what is so frustrating is that I desperately want to meet people here, but sometimes I can’t stand the effort of making it clear from the start that nothing is going to happen beyond friendship. Anyway, it was fine. I answered some of his questions, dodged others, smiled at him, and said a couple of times that I just wanted to get back to my book. He stayed for a few minutes, then got up, smiled and we wished each other a good day. It was getting cold though, and the spell of being on my own deserted island was broken, so I went home.