Bare-Ass Beach

Bare-Ass Beach is a secluded stretch of lakeshore that gives a name to Anthony Casati’s adolescent fantasy and then quietly overturns it. He and his cousin reach it by canoe expecting to find girls; instead, they arrive at a gray, nearly empty beach, where their awkward presence unsettles two young women. The encounter gradually eases into a shared, relaxed evening, and the place becomes the setting for Anthony’s first meeting with Stéphanie Chaussoy—the beginning, the narration emphasizes, of something that matters.

Name and Setting

The beach’s name is an optimistic joke. Anthony and his cousin call it Bare-Ass Beach because they hope to see girls sunbathing topless there, or at least to find some prospect of that. For days, Anthony has been urging his cousin to go. The destination matters to him less as a known landscape than as the imagined answer to their boredom and his desire to see girls.

The actual shore is gray, enclosed, and inaccessible from the road. As the boys round Pointu Spit, the horizon opens onto the other half of the lake and the beach finally comes into view off their right. It is nearly deserted. A motorboat is anchored about thirty yards offshore, a conspicuous sign of the small group already there and, soon, of the girls’ connection to the water. The isolated setting makes the boys’ arrival feel less like an entrance into a public gathering than an intrusion into a place where other people are already keeping to themselves.

The Journey and the Failed Expectation

Reaching the beach takes effort: the cousins paddle there in a canoe, after motorbikes have driven away and their wavering echo has faded. The approach prolongs Anthony’s anticipation, but the view delivers almost nothing of the scene he has imagined. His first response is disappointment at the lack of people. The distance and effort do not produce the easy social opportunity he expected; they leave him and his cousin on a quiet shore with no clear plan for what to do next.

When two girls become visible, the cousins come closer. The girls look very young and nervous. The smaller one stands in the water and whistles toward the motorboat, apparently trying to attract its attention, then returns to sit beside her girlfriend. Anthony recognizes that they are scared, even as his cousin turns the question back on him. The exchange makes clear that the boys’ arrival has not been experienced by the girls as a welcome approach. They pull the canoe onto shore and sit by the water’s edge, unable to think of a better course, then light cigarettes without speaking to them. Anthony senses the girls’ dull, impenetrable hostility and begins to feel that he should leave, though he also regrets abandoning the trip after the trouble they took to get there.

An Uneasy Encounter

The beach exposes the gap between Anthony’s fantasy and the people who actually occupy the place. He looks toward the girls in brief glances, notices their appearance, and feels bad about bothering them. His attention remains shaped by the expectation that brought him there, but it is checked by his awareness of their discomfort. The scene does not turn the beach into the uncomplicated erotic destination its name promises: the girls are nervous, the boys unsure, and the water’s edge holds them in a tense proximity without conversation.

The mood changes gradually. Later, the girls gather their belongings farther down the beach and call toward the motorboat again. As the evening goes on, however, the group becomes sheltered, stoned, and relaxed, laughing for a long time. The heat drops; the lake laps nearby, the highway hums in the distance, and occasional two-stroke engines break the quiet. The girls put on T-shirts and remove their bathing-suit tops; their breasts move beneath the fabric, and they do not seem concerned, while the boys pretend not to be concerned either. The scene preserves the awkwardness of looking and being looked at rather than turning it into a simple conquest. When the girl sitting near Anthony gets up, her knee brushes his. The fleeting contact makes the encounter bodily and immediate, and the narration lingers on how unfamiliar and soft a girl’s touch still feels to him.

Stéphanie and the Beginning of a Story

The girl Anthony meets at the beach is Stéphanie Chaussoy. The identification gives the location lasting narrative significance: what began as Anthony’s persistent wish to go somewhere in hope of seeing girls becomes the setting for an encounter with a particular person. The book fixes the meeting to the summer Anthony turns fourteen and presents it as the point where something has to begin. Bare-Ass Beach is therefore both a real, secluded place on the lake and the scene where adolescent expectation gives way to a first, uncertain intimacy. Its teasing name continues to frame the difference between what Anthony thinks he is seeking and the meaningful encounter that actually takes shape there.