Beach Box
When I bought my beach box I thought I was buying a box for the beach. Or in other words, a box that you set onto the beach. I had no idea that the beach box was a box with a full beach inside. Sky, sand, shark eggs. Everything. You could still put it on the beach, but that would be like putting two sandwiches on top of one another. In that it would be two of the same thing on top of one another and it wouldn’t make sense. Not in that it would be very delicious but slightly difficult to fit in my mouth all at once. Although I’m sure it would be very hard to fit a beach and a beach box in my mouth all at once.
I didn’t think I’d get inside. But then I did. Because after a while of thinking I wouldn’t get inside, I started thinking that I would. There, I found a can of beets sitting at the corner of my beach, bleeding out from the bottom. Turning the sand. Turning it all red. Like a red face. Beat red. Not beet red, a face one shade off—beat red. Red like from the impact of a beating or a slap. Strange that it’s beat red not beet red given that it’s red from the impact of beets. A beeting. I pushed it with my walking stick. The can. Slid it across the sand so that it was sitting in the corner instead of at it. Sitting at a junction of sand and sky and sky. In the corner at the junction. I turned it over. I turned it over so that it would stop leaking. As it turned over, all of the beets fell out at once. Perfect stump slices. Stacked up like a swollen, red ankle. I set the can back in the corner, hole up. Hole up facing the holes I poked in the sky so that I could shut the beach box and still breathe out of it. Then I separated the beet slices and arranged them in the sand like shells. Five slices. Like shells. Or toenails. Red ones. Beet red. The color an old woman chooses when her toenails are so thick that any other color would make them look like toy bricks.
I buried the beets and forgot about them. Well, I buried them and tried to forget about them without totally forgetting about them. I was tired of thinking about the beets, but there was nothing else on the beach for me to think about, so I had to forget them to get them out of my head. I tried to forget them enough so that I wouldn’t remember them again unless something reminded me of them, but store the memory of them. I wanted to store the memory like it was something from a while ago. I wanted to store it distantly. I wanted to still have it somewhere in my head, just not at the surface. Just not at the edge of my brain. Just not at the edge of my brain in the corner of this beach box at the junction of these faces. It’s hard to forget like that, but less hard because the biggest thing on my mind is regret.
I regret buying this beach box. I sincerely regret it. If I had understood what I was getting into in a metaphysical sense when I physically got into this beach box, I never would have bought one. Well maybe I would have bought one if I had done the math and seen that the value would appreciate over time if I had gone on not using it, but I certainly would not have stepped into it.
My beach box is very short. The sky is only 11 inches above the sand and I can’t sit up without hitting my head on a cloud, so I’ve been laying down for days. If I got up and tried to walk after all the time I’ve spent here laying down, my cane wouldn’t be enough support. I’d need as many canes as I could hold at once without dislocating my shoulders to hold more. These days the only thing my cane is good for is pushing around canned beets.
My beach box wasn’t made right. That must be why I got it at such a good price. Instead of having a fully stocked ocean side cabana manned by three full time bartenders, my beach box came with only one thing inside: an open can of beets. And there I go again remembering them. Damnit. I wish I had known before I made the decision to retire in my beach box that my beach box would be defective. I don’t want to think about the beets because who wants to think about something like that on a beach? The reason people go on vacation is so that they can get away from home and stop thinking about beets. And here I am retired, and beets are all I can think about. Maybe retirement is just bringing with you all of the things that you thought about inside of your house to a warmer place. Or maybe the reason I can’t stop thinking about beets is because my beach box is inside my house.
All my life I’ve been at home. I had a home birth. I made home videos. I was a homemaker. A homewrecker. I worked from home. And my beach box has allowed me to retire from home too. I just wish there was a TV in here. My house always had a TV. You can make a battery from a lemon. I wonder what you can make with a can of beets. Damnit.
Thank you for reading this story about my beach box. If this was a play I’d give it one of those awful double titles like “Beach Box or The Canned Beets Play” Email me at gableburger@gmail.com if you have any questions or want to wish me a happy early birthday.