Golden Gardens attracts a class of aimless asshole unlike any other beach in Seattle. The Lake Washington beaches can draw that crowd, but they're a little too nice. The ratio of families to douchebags has a sort of self-correcting unwritten limit and aside from late at night they know they can't really get away with much there. Alki is fine but it's too long. Golden Gardens is the perfect size for them; it's big enough that they can move from one end to the other if need be, and remain anonymous at the north end should they have become suspect in the south. But it's small enough that they can make their presence felt, like annoying children tapping on the glass of an aquarium tank, the fish inside only able to hide partially with fins poking out from behind the fake rocks.
I didn't notice when the trio got to the beach - they were probably already there when I got there. None of them were in beach attire, in fact their outfits looked uncomfortable for the relatively warm Seattle day; they were all wearing heavy looking t-shirts and jeans, kicking around in the sand and alternately hitting eachother, or the sand, or pointing out across the water with a two or three foot long stick, as if surveying some imagined kingdom.
Before them a guy was burying his girlfriend in the sand, working on digging a hole around her, which she stood in, looking somewhat impatient. The trio of assholes had apparently gotten bored with their stick; their pent up sexual frustration switched outlets from wrestling each other in the sand to staring at the girl in pit, who stood there like a statue wearing a bikini bottom and t-shirt. The three guys kept staring. It looked uncomfortable, but she seemed to be enjoying it - she slipped her shirt off to reveal a bikini top; I couldn't see her front but I imagined it being accompanied by a giggle - and undoubtedly a look of resentment from her boyfriend still clawing away at the sand around her feet, now almost invisible inside the pit, save a few limbs and hands throwing sand out of the hole.
The three kept looking, not just glancing, not even trying to be discreet, but staring. We were staring at them now, from about 100 feet away, but their gaze was so transfixed on the girl in the pit that they didn't notice us. The boyfriend came back up and they started talking. Slowly they moved out of the unfinished pit, and the girlfriend, still in her bikini, went into the water. The three guys keep staring as she splashes around in the water, her boyfriend having momentarily left. One leans on the stick like a cane, out toward the water, as if it were a stake holding him to the ground, and stopping him from chasing the girl into the tide.
The boyfriend was back over by their pile of things now, near the pit. He signals to her to come out, and reluctantly she does. They talk for a moment - they look like they're arguing, or at least starting to argue. I couldn't tell if it was the trio of guys, or maybe that would just be the catalyst that would bring out all sorts of other underlying problems in their relationship. The three were still watching. They kept watching as they packed their things up, their expressions still rapt and only slightly dejected - soon enough another girl would come along.
