The Übermensch of Wreck Beach by Harrison Kim

Naked aged beach hippie Leon shows his baseball bat to the modern world.

Image generated with OpenAI

I’m the Übermensch of Wreck Beach, the naked iconoclast with my djembe drum and a sign requesting a new partner tied round my waist. I stand waiting for a suitable mate, at the bottom of the two hundred beach stairs to this, the most famous nude beach in North America.

The scent of salt rises from the sea beyond, for a few seconds almost blanking out the stink of ganja. Tonight, we will engage in a heartbeat session, the pounding of the sunset rhythms. I will be a 66-year-old drummer thumping in the dusk. I also brought a baseball bat, now hidden under the sand beyond, for who knows what decadent games will occur tonight? This modern world is swinging out of control. I have disciplined my own shadow self and ended all anxiety through a focus on what is true and right. Many in this world have lost that discipline.

I believe in peace and love, in sharing music with others at sunset, showing God and nature the purity of my nakedness. No artificial elements, only pure human connection through the beat. As red sky glimmers on the horizon, young folk from the University step down the long stairs with their bongos and rhythm sticks. Old hippies and limber gays stretch their limbs in rhythm. The joy of the primitive brings all citizens to this Pacific place, where they shake off their cares and clothes and play like children again. They bang the drums and kick the sand and yell into the coastal wind. I’ve been part of this place since 1967. But there’s cell phone tourists now, flocking down the stairs to the beach. They stand as spectators, not participants, and I feel on stage, or in a zoo, a hippie iconoclast in a Garden of Eden cage captured in alien photo images.

Scummy peddlers hang out at the edges of the cliffs, selling not only cigarettes and dope, but meth and fentanyl. In the back areas, behind the logs, shadowy figures stoop over, motionless, low under the trees, in a hard drug high. Others sit against the clay bluffs, sucking on crack pipes. This self-destruction, this disappearance of control, boils my blood.

I still ride the blue bicycle my friend Jackson gave me thirty-five years ago. The only thing I replaced was the chain and the sweat. Frugality saves the world, but all I see around me now is self-indulgence, even here on Wreck Beach. This destroys my joy.

I hear a call. “Hey, Leon with the skinny haunches.”

It’s the capitalist Watermelon Lady, who like me has been here for decades. The lady’s made a lot of money over the years, selling her fruits on the beach. She now lives in a high-rise condo and vacations every winter in Greece. “Where is your friend Janine?”

“We had too many arguments,” I tell her, “And as you can see, my sign says, “Looking for a partner.”

Janine and I clashed on minutiae and those minutiae became vast crevasses. Where does connection go, between those who were once lovers? I take out one bag of trash a year. She couldn’t handle the recycling. “Only a few hours a week,” I told her over and over. “You spend more time in front of the T. V.”

Janine ate sugary products from plastic containers, sipped multiple cups of coffee. I smelled marijuana smoke off-gas on her shoulders.

“I just want to have some fun before I die,” she told me, and I answered, “That is not fun, that is disappearing into temptation and decadence.”

I am seeking another partner, yet wondering if there’s any purpose in relationship, except with yourself. Be true to yourself, they say, and you won’t need anybody else. At 66, maybe it is time to hermit down.

I grew up a Mormon in Salt Lake City and I guess some of those religious beliefs still influence me. In the Sixties the elders told me to cut my hair, and I said, “Jesus had long locks,” and they couldn’t find a contrary argument, but they still kicked me from the tribe. My bushy beard has remained since those days, when I snuck into Canada to escape the military draft. The beard is white now, yet my arms and legs stretch limber and thin, due to a lifelong lack of sugar and caffeine intake and consistent vegetarian ways. My excellent physical fitness is completely due to self-discipline.

Some call me mentally rigid, even Old Testament. “You should get some counselling about your childhood,” Janine says.

I tell her that without strong personal boundaries and a well-developed philosophy, an individual will follow every trend, become a slave to the moment. I don’t do trends. I know what is true and right, and what are lies and illusions. There is much evil in this world. Like I said earlier, I carry a baseball bat, now buried under the sand in a secret location.

“That’s new for you, Leon,” said Janine, when she heard about the bat.

“If you bring a ball to the beach tonight,” I told her, “We can play.”

She went shopping instead. She said she wanted to buy a sailor suit and three more pairs of shoes.

“That’s too much,” I replied. “You should come with me, to the Wreck Beach sunset.”

But she’d sooner be at the mall.

“I’m too old,” she said, “To hike down the two hundred stairs to beach level, and then trek back up at midnight.”

How can this be, Janine who used to hippie frolic in the sand all summer long? She’s gaining weight, looking puffy around the eyes. It’s as if she wants to be yoked, to be held in some kind of materialist delusion. I don’t understand it. The whole downward spiral can start with one sugary drink.

“So you are single again,” Watermelon Lady says.

“Seem to be” I agree.

This world has changed, but I have not. I miss the poles. We older hippies raised huge logs upright, placed them into holes in the sand. The shore became thick with smooth totems, like a forest of pricks lining the shores of Eden. Now the beach is a regional park, and the wardens saw the giants down. And where the forest meets the sand, clothed fellows lounge. Their phone screens are hidden, but they seek out pretty figures for photo snaps.

“Your decadence is showing in your pant bulge,” I tell one of them, who gapes at my flapping suntanned pecker.

I stalk over to talk with some marijuana smokers.

“Do you enjoy forcing that into your lungs?” I ask, and they exhale and nod.

I try to calm myself. “I understand the feeling of getting high, but I do it with my own thoughts,” I say, personalizing my lecture. “And maybe with music.”

I used to be much more tolerant of difference, in past years I came to Wreck Beach every summer day with friends who are mostly gone now. We painted rainbows on our chests and shimmered our buns jogging for hours along the wave edges. I recall all the conversations about peace and love and how we were going to change the world. Now naked men with fallen stomachs stand facing the water, white chest hair shining in the afternoon sun, swinging their arms as a tattooed woman does cartwheels on the sand behind them.

I am 66 now, but my blood still boils.

Now I notice a drone. It’s buzzing through the air above the sand, a mechanical spy, a technological monster sent forth by the rich people in launches and motorboats who park off the beach shores with their binoculars and giant cameras. A stoned young man laughs and points at the object, hovering above a fort of logs where druggies go for sex and a naked nod off.

I pull my baseball bat from under the sand, it’s been hiding by the last standing upright log. I hold it high, then begin running towards the drone, swatting that giant steel mosquito. Fellow beach people encourage. The Watermelon Lady throws a slice of fruit. I see my friend Jackson appear from behind a bush, “Go Leon Go!” he yells.

The drone zooms up, then back towards me, flying low and I take a swing that misses, it arches out of reach and hovers just above the totem log, I jump up and the machine lowers itself just out of my reach. “It’s probably filming your dong,” yells Jackson.

Other old hippies gather round me, Jackson takes my arm, “just leave it,” he says, like I’m a dog. I shake him off, throw my bat skyward and the wood hits the drone, wow, I think, I’m Robin Hood accurate for my age, but somehow, I can’t catch my breath and I’m kneeling on the ground, my chest heaving up and down like waves on the sea, it’s anxiety coming in. I know it. I haven’t done anything violent like bat a drone in over fifty years. My heart grabs me in its pounding though I try to pull away. I’ve resisted temptation and kept control all these decades and now my body’s out of control, and Jackson’s yelling “Do you want us to call 911?”

I cannot talk but I shake my head no.

I breathe in and out, try to set a regular rhythm.

My djembe and sign remain around my waist. I lift the drum off.

“The Übermensch of Wreck Beach is down,” I gasp to all who can hear. “But not out.”

I lay the djembe in the sand, use the edges to lever myself up, and weave over to the stricken grey drone. It’s my willpower that accomplishes this motion, my desire to rise and show everyone that my spirit and what it stands for cannot be defeated.

My legs are weak, but I stagger to the fallen machine. I raise my sandaled foot and stamp the drone under my sandals, crush metal into sand. I push and pound as hard and as long as I can. I hear yelling from people rushing up to join me as I step back and breathe. They push in and dust billows up as their feet whirl. There are the silver chest-haired ones, the girl who did the cartwheels, Watermelon Lady and Jackson, all in front of me, stomping on the drone. The sand lies pounded and flat beneath their feet. Jackson and the cartwheel girl pull a giant log over where the crushed machine died.

“Thank you, my followers,” I laugh.

I breathe, allow my heartbeat to slow to the sound of the tide coming in and the drums in the background. I think of Janine, buying her sailor suit at the mall.

Did I ever love anyone?” I think. “Not more than I love this place.”

I look seaward at the view towards the far mountains across the Salish Sea and entertain the idea of walking into that ocean sunset and never coming back.

“The last true hippie,” they will say. “He died for the beach.”

Then I laugh at the romance, breathe in deep, harness the energy of the moment. The breeze off the ocean cools my skin, but things don’t look good.

I see another drone, and another, launching off the boats anchored offshore. I pick up my bat once more. The machines dip and curve and hover. They’re looking for something. I hope it’s me. I’ll take them all on. Watermelon Lady scrolls on her phone.

“It’s some kind of video contest,” she says. “Who can get the most exciting photos of Wreck Beach. Apparently, the winning images will be featured on top influencer sites.”

“It’s an invasion!” I yell, but my scream ends in coughing. The thought comes. “I am an old man, and my nerves are giving way. “

I wave my bat. “Get them!” I shout and hack. “Get those bastards!”

Watermelon Lady yells “Take that!” and hurls a slice of fruit at one of the drones, catches it on the edge, and the machine smashes into a prickly pole. “That’s one less donation for the cause!” she yells.

Jackson runs up the beach throwing sticks, “I’ll get them for you, Leon!” he yells, his back and bum disappearing in the rays of the setting sun.

The thought comes, “What have I got to hide anyway, except for my age?”

I stand and show my form to the ocean and the squadron of robots flying over the upright hippie poles and the golden sand.

“Take a look,” I cough. “Take a good long look!”

It’s cool to be real and true. I pull the sign off my waist and throw it to the ground

“There’s nothing you can do to me!” I say to the sea and to the beach, to the drones and the druggies. “I know who I am!”

Maybe I don’t need another partner, just a slice of melon for my dry throat.

The question of the world, and what it is becoming, does not matter in this moment.

I am the Übermensch of Wreck Beach and I am totally in control.