Accidental Nakedness at the Beach, Part 2, or What the Hell Happened to My Camera!?, Part 4

You’d think I would have learned my lesson by now, but clearly, I have not. Every time a certain rowdy group of friends invites me to spend a weekend at the beach with them, I go, and I get drunk. Really really drunk. You’ll remember one such occasion last summer when I found myself late one night on the beach frolicking naked in jellyfish-infested waters (everyone in that group had decided, as drunk people so often do, that they needed to be naked).

Anyway, this past weekend, once again I found myself on the beach with this fun-loving group, though this time we were decently dressed for 10am. I untied the straps on my halter-top bikini and relied, admittedly rather foolishly, on the bath towel wrapped around my body to maintain modesty. I set my camera on a frail-looking balcony railing, and just as my friend jumped up to sit on the railing, my camera launched itself into the sand 5 feet below. “Oh no!” I said. “Not again!”

It should be mentioned here that I have a long and ugly history with mixing cameras and alcohol (yes, I did say this happened at 10am, shut up and stop judging). The first one bit the dust some years ago after it fell (some would say jumped) from a bar counter in Tonga. But that was ok because there was sand in the gears and the memory stick sort of came down with a case of amnesia. Camera #2 met its demise at the bottom of a margarita glass. (I know what you’re thinking, margaritas go with everything, but the viewfinder became so messed up it was like perpetually looking through beer goggles, and God knows I do that enough on my own, so I was ok with throwing that one out.) The third victim came as part of a packaged deal with a DIY photo printer at Costco. It was lost one night during a post-breakup breakdown at the bar at the Ritz Carlton, which involved so much crying and rhetorical “Why doesn’t he [hiccup] LOOOVE me?!” (that came with a few unsolicited answers from passers-by) that the Ritz gave my friends and me complimentary use of their car and driver. I guess that’s how the Ritz kicks you out of their bar. I’ll give it to ‘em, that’s pretty classy. So that brings me to camera #4.

It was on the railing of a wooden balcony that would have fallen apart if the termites ever stopped holding hands. Then before I knew it, the camera was in the sand. I ran down to get it and haphazardly pushed buttons, trying to resuscitate the poor thing. My friend Ashley thought she could fix it, so she also pushed some buttons and declared it in perfectly good working order. “All right!!” she said, raising both arms to meet me in a double high five. I was excited about the camera working too, so I met Ash halfway with the high fives. Unfortunately, just then, my bikini top and towel decided to fall to the ground too. I gasped and pulled them back up as quickly as I could, just in time for the boys to realize they had, in their own words, “missed out on naked boobies!” I was so embarrassed, but one of the boys took a sympathetic tone. “Don’t worry, it’s ok” he said. He was right, we were all adults here, and the guys were pretty gentlemanly. Or so I thought, until he continued with, “I mean, we’ve all seen you naked before!”