Shark? I Ain't Afraid of No Shark.

Shark? I Ain't Afraid of No Shark.
Approx: 1400 words

It was the summer of Jaws. Steven Spielberg had made his mark, and it was indelible.

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For anyone who hasn't seen it, the movie version of Jaws is based on Peter Benchley's best seller, and it tells the story of a beach town on Long Island that was harassed by a conniving, murderous, man-eating monster of a great white shark with an attitude. The thing ate everything and everyone who managed to get in its path. To be sure, the story was only okay, and would have ended up as nothing more than a B-movie, except for one thing. It had been dropped into the lap of a director whose signature-creativity did then, and will forever more, guide the art of film making to a different place. I have yet to see another character and musical score meld into such beautiful terror.

In order to combat a problem that threatened the very completion of the film, Mr. Spielberg contrived some of the most horrific scenes I, a self-proclaimed ocean-loving, water-bug, have ever seen.

The last thing I will say in prefacing this story is the scene that had the greatest effect on me, and is indeed the basis for the incident in this story, comes right at the film's opening, where the shark is stalking his victim: It's night time. She's swimming alone, and we, who were quietly observing her playful romp until this moment, are suddenly thrust into the mind and heart of something menacing that lies beneath the surface. We’re privy to lanky arms and legs swaying in a gentile, tantalizing ballet through the eyes of the shark - from beneath. Music, in pensive rhythmic bum-bum, bum-bum, bum-bum, bums, like the beast's own heartbeat, pulses faster and faster with anticipatory tension as it closes-in its lazy circles and lurches toward her.

In a flash we are mercifully drawn out and given a reprieve to watch from a safe distance. Once again, the swimmer's ignorance of imminent peril drives our hearts to keep time with the quickening pulsations of the score.  With an eye-bugging gasp from her and an armrest grasp by me, she is yanked beneath the surface and thrust back up again, sucking for air as one does when in incalculable pain and consumed by terror. Then she's drug back and forth along the surface of the water like a hip-deep water skier.

The terror in her eyes mirrors that of the audience who've never experienced anything like this before.

Down she goes again, arms flailing, and then back up once more before she disappears beneath the calming surface for good.

We are left in silence to consider her fate, ashamed of our relief, hoping the beast's appetite is satiated, at least for now.

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I'd seen the movie the week earlier, and the best that night could offer was only a fitful sleep. But that had been a week ago, and I was over it. So, when my boyfriend, Rafael, suggested we go to the Jersey Shore the following day and sweetened the idea by encouraging me to invite my friend, Elizabeth, to join us, I jumped at the idea.

In preparation for our beach-day, Elizabeth and I modeled our bathing suits for one another until we'd each settled on the perfect ensemble for the trip. I chose a sleek cobalt-blue one piece, because I like to swim. She decided to wear a trendy pink and red bikini, because she prefers to sunbathe. It was very fashion-forward and had something other bikinis didn't: vertical draw-strings at the hips that one could loosen to lengthen the briefs' coverage or pull tighter to make them skimpier. Elizabeth chose "skimpiest," and we'll leave it at that.

Next morning, Raf picked me up at 8 o'clock, we stopped for Elizabeth and hit the shore in record time. Decked out and ready to be ogled, we slathered every last inch of visible skin with Coppertone and dreamily reclined on our respective beach-towels to read our summer novels. As the heat became intolerable, we'd jump up, run down to the water's edge, and leap into the waves for a cool-down.

It was mid afternoon and the sun gifted us with a crystal clear day with nary a cloud to be seen. The beaches from Sandy Hook to Seaside Park were crowded with summer vacationers and day-trippers like us. Lifeguards were in full force, the boardwalk beckoned with clinking and clanking of games of chance, and amusement rides shimmered through to-and-fro and circular journeys. The synchronized grinding of their huge mechanical gears was matched in volume by joyous shrieks of anticipation and excitement from the passengers. Sausage and peppers and cheese steaks sizzled. Their steamy aromas mingled with those of waffles and cotton candy and the scents of tanning oil and salt water to create that wonderful olfactic symphony that is summer.

It was a great day to be alive.

Rafael and I had long since tired of the heat and migrated to the water for some fun and frolic amongst the waves. Tired of baking to a crisp, and consumed with jealousy over the fun Raf and I were having, Elizabeth decided to join us. She untied and re-did her drawstrings to broaden the coverage, lest the rolling waters leave her bare--ing some degree of embarrassment.

"Hey you two," she called out with an exuberant wave as she dove headlong into a breaker. She popped up as it passed and continued where she'd left off. "How about a race or two between the beach markers." She pointed from one to the other.

The beach markers are thick yellow ropes extending from the shore to a few hundred yards out. They are kept afloat by red buoys spaced at 25-foot intervals. Their sole purpose is to section-off the private properties and designate lifeguard stations.

"Great," says I, and off I swim toward the rope to wait for her to catch up. Our swimming area was fifty yards across, and we would swim north to south, turn around and swim back. I was a champion competitive swimmer at the time, and she swam only for recreation. Rafael declared our race pure nonsense and elected to swim back to the beach and play judge-pretender.

"We clasped the rope with our left hands and stretched out toward the promise of a win. After a mutual wink and nod, and a harmonious "Ready-set-go!" it was every woman for her suntanned self, and we swam like our lives depended on it.

Now, what I must share with you here is Elizabeth's bathing suit was clearly not designed for actual movement. With each vigorous kick the cute little ties, the ones that held her briefs in the afore mentioned fashionable position, came undone. This didn't become a problem until we hit the south rope. As she slowed to stop and turn, the now dangling lengths of string brushed against her legs and caused her eyes to bug out.

This alarmed me.

I have to state for the record that in all the years I have known Elizabeth I have never heard that pitch or volume come from her body before or since that moment, but it scared the living bejeepers out of me, and, friendship be damned, within 30 seconds I was on the sand, next to Raf, not even out of breath. I had no earthly idea where Elizabeth was.

Rafael was laughing so hard, his knees buckled. Because, he said, "Your arms looked like cartoon wheels."

The lifeguards, who must also have seen that god-wretched movie, heard her screams and leaped off their perches, blowing their whistles and waving wildly, shouting "Everyone out of the water! Now! Now! NAOW!" On the private beaches to the north and south, their lifeguards reacted to our lifeguards and followed suit.

By the time Elizabeth was dragged from the water, by a brave, though traumatized, bleached-blonde, Noxzema-nosed lifeguard, Raf had composed himself well enough to share what he had found so funny about his girlfriend's (namely me) having almost been eaten by a monster-shark. People on the boardwalk had stopped what they were doing to watch in bewildered wonderment over what the beach commotion was about.

The view, as far as we could see in both directions, was a mirrored domino effect of lifeguards scurrying and hustling, “Everyone, everyone, out of the water! Now!”

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Elizabeth had a brief affair with the lifeguard who rescued her from, uh, the bikini string that brushed against her leg and paralyzed her with fear. Two years later, she married the cop who took her statement that day; they have a pool with a great white painted on the bottom.

No one knows what ever happened to the stringed bikini.


CsA