Shana and Erin

My friend Shana and I at the beach...not much left to the imagination!

Yesterday at the beach, a hot Scandinavian guy approached my friends and I and asked for some "stuff that blocks the skin from harm." We said, "Sure, you can borrow our sunscreen." But we found it strange that someone would approach us (most of us have lived in New York City and are weirded out when strangers talk to us).

Who comes up to you at the beach? I grew up in San Diego, and no one ever mixed it up—especially not in the ocean. There is a code of silence that happens on the water. People don't even swim close to each other except on accident. On the sand, people stagger their territories and keep their blankets at a distance.

How do you maintain your comfortable space, but start a conversation?

This is only a problem at the beach. Would I go up to someone in a Starbucks and ask to borrow a chair from his table, or pet someone's dog in a park? Certainly. But talk to a stranger at the beach? Maybe it's the fact that we're all half-naked. Like what Ryan was talking about yesterday—how he feels a distance in strip clubs. The intimacy of naked bodies blocks any possibility of a meeting of the minds. At the beach, we're showing skin, so we can't know each other. Plus, we're all wearing sunglasses and not making eye contact.

But if we all see lots of skin on TV and in magazines, what makes us so modest and weird at the beach?