The day the texas rangers caught me topless.
Being born in New England in the spring, I have never had a birthday at the beach. April is a cold month. Fickle. You’ll get two weeks of sunshine and 70F highs, only to wind up with a snowstorm …on my birthday.
Yeah. Screw that.
Since all 2013 I was fantastically funemployed — aside from a serious side gig here and there — completely lacking in an apartment to call my own, and turning over another one of the big 5's on the clock, I decided to go on a road trip. There was a wedding of a good friend in NYC to make it to, a court case I’d been dreading against a client who had just decided not to pay up — and probably never would even under legal duress— and really, I hate that struggle to make my birthday something important to my loosely connected friend group.
Throwing myself a party has never worked. In fact, when I turned 25 I had won a ‘cake&champagne’ party — free, no cover charge or anything — at a club in Chicago for up to 100 friends. I invited everyone I knew, from co-workers to baristas.
Four people showed up. My boyfriend, my ex… with his new girlfriend — I hadn’t invited him, he found out about it on Facebook— and one friend from college who lived around the corner.
So, yeah. Not exactly the party I’d been thinking to have. This time I’m rolling this solo.
The road-trip was a perfect plan. I wouldn’t know where I’d be for ‘the big day’ so no one could wonder why I wasn’t having people over for dinner, or demanding drinks at some local bar. There’d be no ‘maybe I’ll swing by!’ or ‘so sorry I couldn’t make it.’ Make it to where? I’d be nowhere.
Where I wound up was the poster child of all spring break fantasies, something I’d also never had. South Padre Island. I touched the Gulf of Mexico for the first time. I had been sleeping in my car the whole trip — minus the time in NYC.
My birthday started off cloudy. Windy as all getout. But I was determined. I was going to go sunbathing and jump in the Gulf of Mexico. I had my bathing suit. Even better… I had my pasties.
This is another wonder from over ten years ago. I’d wandered into a sex shop in Chicago, a nice one, one geared toward women, called Early to Bed. I wasn’t really sure what I was looking for. It was more a dare with myself. That I was old enough to go into a store and confidently stride amongst the dildos, proudly handle the vibrators and perhaps even select one to make my very own.
What I wound up finding and falling completely in love with were a pair of star shaped pasties. They were black with red centers, stars within stars.
That summer I was bartending at a crappy college bar, having quit my completely legitimate and arguably fast track job at the natural history museum. My afternoons were mine, completely and utterly mine. Other people had their evenings to come out and drink.
I had my afternoons to put on my pasties and lie on the beach.
Yes, on the beach. In Chicago. Or on occasion in a park.
I was conscientious, not going to places where children might wind up having to ask their parents awkward questions or randy college coeds trip over me while going for that wide ultimate frisbee pass. Plus, I calculated, the amount of boob that these pasties covered — having barely A-cups—was far more than most bikini tops.
I never had a problem in Chicago. So, I sauntered down to the water’s edge, there in the land of “Spring Break!” screaming college girls — now conspicuously absent, beach utterly empty. I felt completely self assured. I was going to get my stars rockin!
I laid out my towel. No mean feat in that wind. Down by the water’s edge since anywhere further up the beach was a dermal abrasion death wish. I had brought with me… Cone. Short version: I stole a traffic cone from the gas station back in Oakland across from where I’d been staying and had been taking photos of it on the trip across the country & back.
Yes, it’s name is Cone.
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Cone came to the beach with me and held my towel down. I got myself all nice and situated, phone and keys in my shoes, t-shirt and pants wrapped around my book — it was chilly, so I’d waited to strip down. Then I took off my bathing suit top, slung it around Cone so it wouldn’t fly away, and lay down on the empty stretch of beach to get that tan GOING.
There seriously was no one there.
This wasn’t a tiny beach either. It stretched off for a forever in either direction and I was right down by the water, plenty of room up-beach for people to pass by unoffended by OMG BOOBS.
It might have been 15min when I heard the truck approaching.
I ignored it.
“Ma’am? Ma’am? You need to put a top on ma’am.”
I sat up.
“Excuse me?”
“Ma’am, we don’t allow topless bathing here. You need to put a top on.”
Yes, the Texas Rangers had descended upon me. Texas Park Rangers anyway, in their white 4wheel drive truck, and the woman had drawn the short straw to have to go tell the naked girl to put some modesty on.
“I’m sorry, but my nipples are covered. I believe this is legal, even in Texas.”
I figured, why not? May as well make the most of this. What were they going to do, haul me off in the back of their truck, hands cuffed behind my back, face down to keep my offending boobs out of the sight of the pure Texans trying to enjoy a day at the beach?
“No ma’am. See, if the underside of the breast is visible, then you’re topless… unless you’re breastfeeding.”
Now, if she hadn’t seen that last part… I knew exactly what had spawned this rule. Those damn college girls. Or rather, their grandparents. Horrified to see how badly their children had raised the next generation. I was ready to just lie back down and see what they were actually going to do. See how much of a fuss they’d make, this poor woman and her chunky male companion in his creepy sunglasses, now leaning across the passenger seat, ready to ‘help.’
But here, in Texas, they’d made sure that women could breastfeed in public. Here in this state park, they had ensured that the usual ‘ew gross, women doing womany things’ wasn’t able to hold water.
So I reached for my top. I wrapped it, snapped it, and got ready to leave. Not in a huff, but really… if my stars weren’t gonna shine any brighter there wasn’t any point to surviving this wind.
“Oh, by the way!” — the creepy guy, still in the truck, now speaks.
“Really clever with the cone! I can’t even count how many times I’ve almost run over some sunbather. That’s a really good idea there!”
Cone was getting some love.
“Uh, thanks. Yeah. I can see how that could be tough.”
