being me being you being you being me 
2024 
Performance, 5 days

The Queen of Pentacles (Abbie Coombs & Iva Suhadolnik Gregorin) 

i am standing on a rock in the shallow water right before it gets deep. i love this rock. i am eleven years old and my parents are on the beach behind me. this summer, i also get my first period but i don’t know if it was before or after this. i am growing up in a naked house and this is a nudist beach and i have been naked on the beach since i first went to the beach. i don’t question this nudity and i don’t want to wear a bathing suit. at school i’m the only one that goes to a nudist beach so i don’t tell my catholic classmates. i am standing on the rock in the shallow water and i can feel my pubic hair being touched by the summer wind - they have gained enough length for that. i understand: this is the last summer of freedom. it’s time to cover up. it’s not safe anymore.

 

i am fourteen years old and i don’t swim naked anymore, i wear a bottom and a bikini top and i feel watched. i go to the nudist beach maybe once a year with my parents. there is a storm coming but not yet, it will come in maybe a day or so and the waves are huge. when i was younger i would jump on them for hours. i am at the beach in my bathing-suit and there is another family with two teenage boys, maybe 16 or 17 years old. they don’t have bathing suits on and they jump on the waves for hours. it’s safe for them and i know and i envy them.

 

i started being topless at the beach. i’m 20 years old and we’re all at our summer house and we go to the nudist beach a lot - it’s the nicest one. both me and my friends are topless. we smoke and laugh a lot. a middle aged man moves his towel closer to us and he keeps staring at us. one of my friends is from germany so we talk in english and he doesn’t understand. we make fun of him and laugh it off. the three of us go into to water for a swim and he follows us, it makes us laugh at him harder. at one point in the water he is too close for it to be funny. we say mean things to him, make fun of him in a language he understands and laugh at his face. we think : pathetic. and i was right. it isn’t safe anymore.

 

i am 25 years old and i am at the nudist beach every summer. i don’t wear a swimsuit and i don’t want to. it’s been a few years now of being comfortably nude on the nudist beach. i feel watched but i got used to it. it’s always men and it’s always the ones i don’t know. above our tourist town, they’re building new ugly houses every year and it makes all the of the beaches a lot more crowded. it brings predators to my beach. i am at the nudist beach and i am sunbathing on my favourite rock. i see a man staring at me and jerking off. he tries to hide what he’s doing, like he’s committing some petty crime. the beach is crowded and nobody does anything. he is staring at me and grabbing the breasts of his sleeping wife next to him. he realises i know and that my boyfriend knows and he tries to hide his invasion; he runs to hide in the water with his hard on. i wish he would hit his head on a rock and drown. his wife is still asleep on her towel. i feel sorry for him and i feel compassion for her - she’s married to a predator. i take my things and get dressed. ‘lets go.’ i cry the entire walk back home. i was right; it’s not safe anymore but i won’t cover up.