From the Shores of Cape Hatteras

I was drinking a beer on the beach, as is the custom, feet a-propped, borrowed umbrella fending off the harsh ultra-violet rays, a fine and gentle breeze caressing the old cheek, when I was confronted not unexpectedly by one of man’s basest urges. I rose from my seat.
“What’s up, Andrew?” inquired a near-by friend, she who lent the umbrella.
“I have to pee,” I told her, “and I don’t like the looks of the ocean.”
The natural thing to do, of course, when at the beach and needing to relieve ones self, is to head out into the sea and let your micturition disperse there. Everyone does this. I had done it myself the three days before this, and all had been well. But now, as I mentioned to my friend, the sea was a good deal angrier than in days past. It was with a good deal of apprehension that I approached the surf..

It wasn’t bad at first. I got a few feet out, and the waves were a little strong, but nothing unmanageable. I headed a little further out, and my head went under a couple of times, but I bobbed back up, and was soon far enough in to lower the old swimmers’ trunks.
I had brought one pair of trunks only, you see, and had no desire to piss into them. So I lowered the trunks, exposing the necessary apparatus, and began getting down to business. Only the business refused to be got down to.
One has to be relaxed if business is to be got down to, and relaxation doesn’t come naturally when every ten seconds or so another great honking wave is bearing down on you and you have to doggy paddle like crazy to keep your head above surface. Add to that lowered trunks, an exposed apparatus, and the close proximity of young ladies in bikinis, and relaxation becomes well nigh impossible. What if some great surge of water up-ended me, exposing God knows what to the eyes of total strangers, all of whom would know doubt point me out to their friends. I’d be discussed at dinner, “that stupid bearded jerk,” whose “huge pale ass” seared itself onto their mind’s eye, making causal dining at the Froggy Dog impossible even three hours later. It was as I imagined this particular scenario that the big one hit me.
My head was not merely pushed under, but pushed to the ocean floor, upon which I slammed my chin, thus prompting me to open my mouth and take in several gulps of salt water. As I struggled to right myself, to little effect, I remembered the words of my friend Allison on the trip down. Getting off the phone with her family, she said, “My dad wanted everyone to be sure to watch out for the undertow.” We'd laughed at this—Oh concerned parents, HA!—but now the irony struck me as unbearable. I'd never encountered an undertow before, but this was surely it, and soon my lungs would fill with water and I'd be some sad story that Gene Cox would report to an uncaring Richmond, Virginia on Channel 12.
But it was no undertow, and moments later I did right myself, maybe thirty seconds later but it felt far longer. I also managed somehow to hold onto my trunks, and I staggered out of the ocean clutching them as though some new wave might come up onto the sand and try to rip them from me.
“Are you ok?” the friends asked.
I don’t remember what I said. Not stopping to towel off, I limped off in the direction of the beach house: hair mussed, nose be-snotted, desperate for some calm indoor facility where I might relieve myself without drowning.