Matt’s aunt’s beach house

Matt's aunt's beach house
First appearance	Golden Hour, page 1 October 5, 2015
Related characters	Matt, Rachel, Paulo, David, Jessica, Madison

Matt’s aunt’s beach house is a vacation house owned by Matt’s aunt, a few hours’ drive from Roseville and sitting right on a beach. It appears in only one chapter, Golden Hour, where Matt brings his friends for a July vacation that ends up changing quite a lot for Paulo.

Description

A corner of the beach house: the computer desk, with a neat pile of papers, a cola, and a monitor mid-college-search, lit by a tall brass lamp.

The house belongs to Matt’s aunt, who has never appeared on panel, so the group has the place entirely to themselves during the trip. It sits directly on a beach with a volleyball net set up by the water, and a city skyline is visible from the shore at night. The building itself has only ever been seen from the inside.

The comic shows one big open room with warm peach walls, doing duty as both office and living room. Large multi-paned windows take up most of one wall, with a sliding door in the same glazed wall that opens straight onto the outdoors. One corner holds a computer desk with a monitor, a neat pile of papers, and a tall brass floor lamp beside it. Elsewhere in the room, a green couch has a red-and-white striped blanket draped over its back, while a chunky cordless phone gets carried all around the place.

History

The trip is arranged months in advance. In Boy Toy, Matt mentions that his aunt has a beach house a few hours away and that he promised to carry some stuff over there for the summer, so he invites Paulo along for July.

Golden Hour opens with Matt at the desk researching college applications, which Rachel considers a crime against relaxing right up until she joins in and starts daydreaming about decorating their future apartment. She promises him that no matter what, she’ll always be there, and he won’t have to worry about a place to stay.

Paulo bursts in through the sliding door demanding to go to the beach, and gets his wish. On the sand at sunset, a boys-only volleyball game turns into a two-on-two match with Jessica and Madison, who are only shown on the beach and never inside the house. Mid-game, Paulo learns the two of them are a couple. While Matt starts organizing a campfire, Paulo slips back to the house to check on Rachel.

Inside, Rachel hands him the cordless phone, and it’s Daisy on the other end, calling from her bedroom back in Roseville. The friendly catch-up sours once the subject turns to Abbey. Daisy confronts Paulo over the years of cruelty he’s put Abbey through, and she does not let him wave it off: “You’re terrible. You’ve always been the aggressor. He’s never done anything to you.” By the end of the call, the room has gone dark around him, and Paulo is left alone on the green couch.

Down the shoreline, David finds Paulo crying. He spins him around in the air and, with none of his usual clowning, tells him “And that’s why I love you.” Paulo panics and runs, and when he reaches the campfire he screams a homophobic outburst at Matt. Matt answers by telling Paulo how his own parents reacted when he came out, and admits that while he can handle being screamed at, he’s scared of what others might do to him.

Paulo then hugs Matt over the fire, insisting he’s “just testing something out”, and Matt tells him to take his time.

Trivia

• Readers had a long wait for this place. Matt extends the invitation in Boy Toy, published about seven months before Golden Hour finally made the trip happen.
• Veronica has said that Golden Hour implies Rachel invited Daisy out to the beach house, as a sign of how close the two are. Daisy stayed home and only attends by phone.
• The Kickstarter pitch for Bittersweet Candy Bowl: Volume Six, which collects Golden Hour, sums the arc up as “summer nights at a beach house challenge childish prejudices.”

See also

• Golden Hour
• Boy Toy
• Matt
• Paulo