Vamos pa’ la playa
By Alice Oh
We went to the beach every single day while we were in Puerto Rico—a “true” spring break experience, one might say. The beach was all any of us could think about when we landed in San Juan and felt its sticky warmness, shed our New England clothing at our cheap Airbnb, and smelled the salty breeze while eating overpriced tacos on an outdoor restaurant patio. It was past ten, at least, by the time we ended up at the beach that first night, but finally: we were here.
Before we even put our towels down, Agnes stripped off her dress and ran towards the water. The rest of us watched silently from behind as she dove in—a moment of cinematic magnitude, her loose curls whipping in the wind, she could’ve been a brave-faced, sad-eyed, vaguely beautiful woman floating in the water in full embrace of her fate, whatever it may be. A wave crashed over her head, and then she was gone. For a moment, I imagined she’d been swept away, unable to tell land from sky in the blackness of the night or, even if she could, unable to fight the lunar strength of the tides. But she re-emerged a second later, blacker hair slicked straight against her scalp.
These were the biggest and loudest waves I’d ever seen, curling higher and higher towards the moon before crashing down to earth, thunderous. In all honesty, this ocean was frightening. It was upset and aggrieved and demanded retribution—but even more than that, it was endless. The water lapped against both shore and sky so seamlessly it all felt like one vast, nebulous entity. In comparison, I was so small. I wanted to jump in after Agnes, but I couldn’t let go of the fear that I’d be unlucky, that I’d be the one swept away, poor Asian American girl, what a tragedy, yet another spring break accident.
As I tried to shake off the foreboding, I was reminded of the last time I’d gone to the beach, only a few weeks past back in New Haven. Lucy and Joe had found a way to receive funding from Slifka to host a Shabbat dinner, and in the post-homecooked-meal haze, someone offhandedly remarked we should go to the beach. Something smooth, soft, but still a little bumpin’—Ravyn Lenae probably, maybe Jorja Smith—played in the background, lulling us into various stages of lounge across Lucy’s living room. A murmur rippled through the room in passive appreciation of the idea that became a plan when Kat shook her car keys: “Let’s go!”
I didn’t really want to move; my body felt loose and heavy at the same time, brimming with challah and red wine. But seven of us piled into her Acura, then piled back out onto a sandy playground. It was so empty. The playground equipment was painted a shade of pink-purple uncommon on most playgrounds that, in the sun, I’d imagine looked fun and welcoming to eager children and their tired parents. But against the flat, starless sky, the scene carried the same lonely eeriness as many of Dali’s surreal landscapes. As Kat pushed Joe on the swings, Lucy whispered to me that this playground had been built as a Sandy Hook memorial. Goosebumps.
This surreal feeling, that things were not quite what they seemed to be, continued as we headed towards the water. The tides were so low; the water had retreated so far; we just kept walking and walking into the wind. I lagged behind everyone else, uncommitted to the cause of seeing the water—it was dark, what was there to see?—but my sneakers stuck and slapped wetly against the damp sand, and I sped up at the impossible thought of quicksand.
Finally, we reached the edge of the water, and I looked back over my shoulder. I couldn’t make out where we had parked the car, but I realized we had walked out onto a sand bar of sorts, surrounded on three sides by quietly rippling water. Lucy noticed, too, and imagined aloud but to no one in particular, What if the water just closed in behind us? I responded glibly, I guess we’d get wet, but the thought had crossed my mind as well, and once entertained, it was hard to shake off. A few minutes later, Lucy said as nonchalantly as possible, It’s getting late, we should head back soon. I quickly agreed.
Eventually, I ended up knee-deep in the rough San Juan waters. It couldn’t make up its mind, tugging me into its embrace one moment, only to push me away a minute later and spit me back out onto shore. I toed the line, too, wanting to be as carefree as Agnes but wanting even more to ensure my safety, too careful to take the risk. Lucy wasn’t with me this time. With no one else there to affirm my sanity, or else to experience the same insanity, the same haunting of improbable scenarios, I wondered if I was just being unreasonably unfun, a prissy party-pooping scaredy-cat. I knew Agnes had been scared, too—she admitted it to me later—but sometimes she did things precisely because she knew they were dangerous and she wanted to be able to act as impulsively as boys could. We complained often in frustration, bordering sometimes on admiration, even envy, about boys who so carelessly show off fancy skateboarding tricks and so thoughtlessly dive after balls, unblinking in the face of potential scraped knees and chipped tooths—probably because the thought doesn’t even occur to them. There is no fear to register.
On maybe the third day while we were in San Juan, we encountered “Calma (Remix)” by Pedro Capó and Farruko. The chorus begins, “Vamos pa’ la playa,” and with our various levels of Spanish-speaking capabilities, it was the one line we all recognized simultaneously. “That’s us!” I shouted. “We’re at the beach!” It quickly became our favorite, and from then on we were blasting it on our phones in glass bowls, spontaneously breaking out into shitty acapella as we wandered through the streets, and asking our Uber drivers to turn the stereo up whenever it came on the radio. It was a bop.
But also—“You know, this song is kind of sad,” Rayan observed around the third or fourth time we listened to the song. “Right after vamos pa’ la playa, he says, pa’ curarte el alma. Let’s go to the beach / to cure your soul. The fact that their souls need curing, that’s really sad.”
Agnes let out a long “mmm” of appreciation, the kind you do at spoken word shows, and I half-expected her to start snapping. The conversation moved onto other songs that, beyond first impressions, were actually quite sad: “‘I Took a Pill in Ibiza,’” Joe said, and “Like, every song by The Chainsmokers,” Agnes added. Underlying all of these songs was the crushing knowledge that no matter what they did, they would maybe never find what they were looking for.
We all agreed that the song was sad, and yet we kept listening to it. I don’t know why everyone else did, but at first listen, “Calma” for me was yes, effortless summer, everything I thought I wanted from spring break, cierra la pantalla / abre la Medalla—turn off the screen / crack open a Medalla. I became hooked on hope and wishful thinking and the idea of ice-cold Medallas, a Puerto Rican brand of delicious, cheap—or maybe just deliciously cheap—beer. Was Capó describing a real experience or pining after one? Calma, mi vida, con calma, he croons repeatedly. Relax, calm down. Ostensibly, he’s singing to his lover: Que nada hace falta si estamos juntitos bailando, nothing is missing if we’re dancing together. But calma, he commands again, and I question who he’s talking to.
This spring break, you know, was really weird for me. I think by weird, I mean mostly sad; there was a part of me that really wished the entire time that my best friend Kiana could’ve been there with me, or that I could’ve been with her my best friend. She had planned to join us, but her grandmother was hospitalized two weeks before spring break came around. She flew out to Macau instead. Her grandmother passed away about a week later, a few days after Kiana’s birthday and a few days before the rest of us arrived in San Juan. I felt weird about lying in the sun all day, about having fun, while she attended the funeral, rushed back to school to catch up on a week’s work of missed classes, and grieved.
And it felt especially weird, and also very scary, thinking about the last time Kiana and I had made plans to travel together. We were supposed to visit San Francisco over winter break, but that time, I had been the one to cancel. Over Thanksgiving, I’d found out that my aunt had been diagnosed with breast cancer, and I was terrified of being too far away from the person who had raised me, terrified of spending money when there were potential medical costs we couldn’t afford. I don’t know what it means that our loved ones, both strong maternal figures in our lives, fell ill these past two breaks. Nothing, probably, except that we’re getting older.
But also, it felt, everything. So the last two days we were in San Juan, I stopped going to the beach with everyone else. A party-pooper, definitely. Maybe Capó could cure his soul with some sun, but it would take me a little something more than la playa y la Medalla.