It was six months, no, longer, it was almost summer, after Kenny's death. It is hard even for me to believe that after growing up near the top of that cliff that I would be twenty years old before my first visit to Wreck Beach. But Kenny used to go there, not often, and I felt keenly a drive to somehow walk with him down there. I started where Carl went in from the forest, continuing on from Spanish Banks West Beach along the rocks, stones, driftwood and sandbars, passing here and there naked people basking in the sun or playing frisbee out on the tidal flats. Not all naked, but enough. Then the two gun towers, two gaunt concrete monoliths on each end of the section of beach named appropriately Towers Beach, built during the Second World War to ward off any less than likely Japanese attack. Then turning the bend just past tower number two, there was Wreck Beach proper, I would say, fifty percent naked, and sometimes very easy on the eyes, but I was careful not to stare, knowing how utterly tacky. I got near to the gay section, where the ocean turns into the mouth of the Fraser River. It was a warm, sunny day, and now it was all men, mostly naked, likely one hundred percent gay. Near where a trail began seated on a log outside his tent, Chuck looked up and said hi to me...
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