A story about a bikini
Roxy Girl dreams, a few chic suits, and one that's just right
I wanted to surf since I was in middle school. It stems from the surf shop. There’s one on Ocracoke Island, the beach my family goes to every year. Ride the Wind. It was the first store with clothes that I could get to on my own. I could hop on my bike and explore the streets that used to have no signs, and would inevitably end up at the shop.
I liked the posters that lined the walls, ads of beautiful beachy girls living out what would become my Roxy Girl fantasies. Wavy blond hair, tanned skin, surfing. I wanted to be like them. I figured it wasn’t that much of a stretch. I loved the water, growing up in the pool, jumping off the high dive when I was two, swimming in the Atlantic Ocean every June, first in tide pools, then a lifejacket that I’d sneak off and float next to me. I just needed instruction. So I saved up for surf camp. Took about a year.
For something I’d built up into A Big Deal, my memories of the actual experience are:
My friend Paige got hit by a fish, a real big one knocked her off the board.
The instructors took us to the tip of the island, where I paddled across a channel filled with jelly fish, which was thrilling.
I don’t remember the actual surfing.
I do remember the Roxy bikini.
I bought it the following year, spent days debating whether to get it. Biking to and from the surf shop, trying it on, looking at myself in the tiny wooden fitting room covered with surfer chicks. The top was a halter with a thick band and the bottoms had these little ties on the side. I felt very surfer girl in it.
I wore it for one of my favorite memories on my dad’s sail boat. It must have been a no-wind day because we took the boat to a real shallow part of the Pamlico Sound, the body of water that’s between mainland North Carolina and the string of islands that make up the Outer Banks, and just waded in the water. Shelby, Brian, and I played Human Dominos, which was a game I invented, that involved falling on top of each other. At one point, I landed on a shell, and it scooped out a chunk of my left shin. It didn’t hurt because the scoop was so deep. I looked at the chunk, curious of what it contained. My flesh! I still have that scar, my favorite, the last from my kid days.
I would surf again, right before I started high school, wearing the Roxy bikini. My youth group leader Jamie got me up on a board in Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina, and then I stopped going in the water. I decided that my time was better spent working on my tan. So I did that, for 17 years. I’d get fidgety lying on the beach and jump into the water for a splash, but not too long, because it was cold! —and my suit would fall off. I couldn’t move the way I wanted to. I’d swapped suits for swimming for suits for sitting.
I don’t remember what happened to the bikini.
***
The first day of October 2022, I was in Lisbon for my friend Cammy’s 40th birthday. It was the last day of the trip, and we’d gone to the beach. Sun out, weather like an early summer day. Divine. We played this game where you smacked the other person in the cheeks with a mat and you won if you didn’t spit your water out laughing. We weren’t drunk, just being silly.
I felt like a kid again.
My friend Kira wanted to go in the water, and I did too, but! it was cold! And then sitting on the beach I realized that this was my last opportunity to swim in the ocean as a 31-year-old, so I might as well suck it up and do it. I did, and it was cold, but not so bad. Floating around, I started thinking about how silly it was that I’d stopped doing something I liked because of the temperature. I’d worked up this whole narrative that I didn’t swim anymore—I’d worked up a whole lot of other narratives too—and it’d prevented my from actualizing my Roxy Girl potential.
Something had to be done.
So that’s how I found myself walking through the Costa Rica jungle four months later, on my way to the beach. I spent six weeks there, learning how to surf. Got pretty good at it too. Getting back to my athletic, outdoorsy self. A part of me that was always there, just hadn’t been expressed in awhile because I was busy making up for all that time I wanted to be a fancy New Yorker. I was starting to think I could be both.
***
Last week back in Ocracoke, I stopped by Ride the Wind to help Brian find a swim suit. Maybe I’d look too. I’d been thinking about buying a bikini for months now, but no luck.
The suit I had in my mind was a compilation of two-pieces I’d seen and read about over the years. The strongest image was a series of words from Cameron Russell’s memoir How to Make Herself Agreeable to Everyone. She writes about greeting someone in a bikini bottom and an old cashmere sweater, and I thought, “oh, how perfect.” I like my bathing suits doubling up as clothes—it implies that I’m close enough to some body of water, it would be impractical to be without one.
I visioned navy, originally a balconette that started morphing into a triangle top, and a bottom that cut across the meatiest part of the cheek, with little strings on the hips. I’d been on such a kick with these 90s-inspired bottoms with their thick waistbands worn high on the hips, and now I was ready for the opposite—something minimal, chic. This would be a suit for sun bathing, not surfing, swimming. I’d bought a one-piece for that: long sleeves, zip up the front, contained, mostly, (although it was pretty cheeky).
I hadn’t browsed Ride the Wind in years, but the shop felt familiar. The same beachy girls on the wall, handwritten inspirational quotes taped next to the staircase. Memories of younger me.
A rust-colored Billabong bikini caught my eye, this surf brand I thought was real cool when I was 12, 13. Triangle top, cheeky bottom. I was hesitant to try it on because I was convinced that the suit I sought would be found browsing the bikini brands of fashion writers I read, but what the hell—Brian was busy looking upstairs.
A selfie to my friend Michaela got a “so chic,” which is not a description I’d typically use for Billabong, but looking at the photos, I realized she was right. This surf shop bikini was chic. Like middle school Robyn, I biked off to think about it, but instead of a few days, I got about a quarter mile down the road and then decided I’d buy it. The suit wasn’t what I’d imagined, but it would do.
Later, me and my new two-piece are in the ocean, and I feel like swimming, so I swim, and the waves are real good, so Shelby and I grab boogie boards, and I haven’t boogie boarded in years, maybe a decade, and it’s not surfing, but oh-my-gosh is it fun. I’m cruising! I only wipe out a few times, and when I do, I’m not bothered, I just let the ocean washing machine me out, rolling me around, one-two times, then popping back up, and orienting myself for a moment, then pushing back into the waves again.
After being smashed by a particularly powerful set, I appreciated that my bikini was still on. My other ones would have been flapping in the wind, which was what post-Costa Rica-Robyn-Who-Surfs was telling herself was keeping me close to shore—the malfunctioning. If I wanted to be out in the water, I’d need to choose ahead of time, go one-piece, covered up, instead of itsy-bitsy. I couldn’t have both.
Or maybe not. Maybe this bikini was the answer!
I just needed to decide I could do, could be both, and the right suit would find me. A merging of selves.
Hmm, I like that.