We are on our way to spend a few days at a beach club in a small cove near Portofino. We stop for dinner in Santa Margherita, it’s George and I, my aunt, and her grandson Fabrizio, Nino’s son.
The first restaurant we stop at offers us a table at the back of the room, near the kitchen. It truly is the only free table, but my aunt declines it. She doesn’t like it.
At the next place we get a table outside, among a sea of tables, close to the street. It’s festive, it’s a nice summer evening, it’s almost electric, there are so many people eating, walking, driving by.
George must feel the electicity because he’s wired. He is uncontrollable, I can’t make him sit still. He knocks over his drink, I get up with him “per fare due passi,” to take a few steps, to try to talk him down, but I can’t. He’s wired.
We have pizza, I eat mine and most of his. Fabrizio eyes the four-cheese pizza but he doesn’t order it. He’s supposed to watch his diet, to eat reasonably, and the four-cheese pizza is too much. “I’ll digest it tomorrow,” he says. It’s supposed to be humorous, but it’s not that funny coming from him. Coming from his father, as I’m sure it does, it would be funny. There’s a whole segment of Italian humor based on extreme exaggeration, and this is an example of it.
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Liguria is a region poised to the sea. The mountains behind it are high and wooded, the sea is big and open, between the two are occasional stretches of flat ground, including some beaches. The beaches are small and rocky, not sandy. Most of them are occupied by beach clubs—bagni—bathing establishments, many of them, side by side, elbow to elbow.
Each beach club has a distinctive color scheme and a catchy name such as Bagni Flora, Bagni Paolina, Bagni Sole e Mare, Bagni Surf Club, and Bagni Torino. The latter name I find hilarious. Each one consists of changing shacks that can be rented for the day or by the season, chairs and umbrellas arranged in perfect rows. There’s a snack bar and sometimes games like foosball and pinball machines. Some rent boats, and then there’s the boa, a floating square 20 meters out, 60 feet, that you can swim to and sit on and dive from. And there’s water to rinse your feet at the end of the day.
Some days the beach clubs put little signs out that they are sold out.
There is a whole tradition to the beach club scene. People choose one over the other based on intangibles—usually they know someone who goes there. They go every day, same routine, they sit for hours, they chat, they play cards, maybe they go home for lunch, or they eat there. There’s a certain beauty to the beach clubs, their neatness, the colors, their predictability, year after year, day after day. I used to covet the beach club life when I was young. Although they’re not clubs, they give you a sense of belonging. We went to the beach club with my aunt some, though mostly we went to Sassello. Now I can’t imagine spending my summer that way. It’s just not me.
Plus I don’t like to pay the fees.
So we usually go to the public beach.
For every long sequence of beach clubs, there are a few arm lengths of public beach. The public beaches have to be there, they’re legislated, but they’re tiny. The public beaches have no pretty colors, no umbrellas, no place to change or rinse your feet, and no spare square of sand. They’re usually very crowded and they don’t have that feel, the part I coveted, of belonging. The crowd at the public beaches is not made up of regulars. It’s out of towners down for the day and Eastern Europeans.
But today we are guests of my aunt and we are going to a beach club, and a fancy one at that.
We enter the beach club with my aunt and Fabrizio. The beach is in a tiny cove so the beach club is mostly on decks attached to the rocks next to the beach. There is a tiny little actual sandy beach, and we have two chairs and an umbrella right on the beach, in the front row. This is a plum location, my aunt is treating and I’m sure it’s very expensive.
This is a place where a great tan is very important. All the women wear tiny bikinis and some are even topless, and they lie in the sun all day every day. It looks spectacularly luscious as a life style, but I couldn’t do it. I really couldn’t. I had specifically thought I would go to the beach with George, I had thought of that as an appealing luscious way to spend a vacation, but more than a couple of days would be too much for me and I think eventually for him too.
The life guard is a middle aged man, thin, fully clothed. He is wearing white shorts, a blue polo shirt, and boat shoes. He has his own umbrella and chair on the beach. There is no expectation that anyone will need to be saved. His umbrella and chair are strategically located at the edge of the beach club beach, right before the free beach. The free beach is small and overflowing and his true role in the enterprise I believe is to prevent the free beach bathers from encroaching on the expensive beach club.
There is a second fellow who looks like what I consider a life guard should look like: young, hunky, and in swimming trunks. This young man is there to entertain the children. He runs games and contests of all kinds.
Fabrizio is around 11 years old and one of the bigger kids, he is confident and independent, and I call him the Mayor of the beach club. He collects sea creatures in a bucket with water in it, and he touches them. George is like a little yellow duckling, he follows Fabrizio everywhere, all day. And he calls out to him constantly, “Fabrizio!” “Fabrizio!” “Fabrizio!” At a certain point, Fabrizio gets a little annoyed and tries to shake him, very graciously though. George is little and he’s friendly, and he has no idea he’s getting on his nerves, and he will not be shaken, he stays with him. If Fabrizio stops short, George will run into him.
In the games organized by not the life guard, George plays along as best he can. Not the life guard tells Fabrizio to explain to George what he’s supposed to do. George is klutzy and little and not competitive, so he has no idea what’s going on, but in all the pictures he looks perfectly delighted, with a big smile, and at the end of the day he has a red scrape all over his belly from jumping on and off the floaters.
In addition to the life guard and not the life guard, there are many people working here, there’s a reception/cashier, people working in the restaurant, and a woman who works the towels. They all hustle and are exceedingly attentive and courteous. The following year I will come here without my aunt, and—I’m guessing that because of the English and because George doesn’t look much like me—they thought I was the baby sitter because they didn’t so much as look at me when I walked by. They were completely rude. I never went back again after that.
We have lunch at the beach club and Fabrizio orders the four-cheese pizza. I guess he feels he can digest it today same day.
