Coney Island
A perfect afternoon on Coney Island. I could live every day like this, drenched in sea and sun. Vendors shout their wares. Margaritas! Mangos, elotes, maíz! Ice cold nutcrackers! Families lounge on beach chairs. Couples lay on blankets. I hear Latin music from a boombox, soft beats and sad ballads. Everybody sings along.
I make friends with the people around me. Mario is sitting under a green umbrella. He comes by every so often to check on my progress. He brings me a cold beer. “This is very nice. I’m from Guatemala. My country, we know the beach. We have both the Pacific and the Atlantic. I’m from the Pacific side. Now I live on Long Island, so I get the Atlantic.”
I tell him I’m from Kansas, nowhere near the beach, as far from both the Pacific and the Atlantic as you can get, and yet this feels like home.
Tainos on the Beach is hard at work delivering drinks. Mojitos, piña coladas, sangria. He’s wearing orange ski goggles and a Puerto Rican flag mask. “You really fucked it up man. Don’t waste that talent.”
He convinces me to show the painting to the two women sunbathing in front of me. “It’s me? Really? Wow. So nice!” They can’t stop laughing.