That’s 1.35% of my waking life.
How well do I surf? I’m decent. I mean, I’m
definitely not great. If I’m being honest, I’m really not that
good.
Fine! You want me to say it? Fuck it. Gimme that mic…
“I SUCK! OK? I FUCKING SUCK AT SURFING!”
I reckon that I’ve surfed north of 2,300 sessions. My
hypothetical surfing map that my lady would never let me hang on a
wall would include nifty, colorful pins puncturing all US coastal
quadrants, a big fat one on a
mention-it’s-name-and-I’ll-cut-you-red outer Hawaiian Island and
more in Indo, New Zealand, Australia, Mexico, Costa Rica, Puerto
Rico and two man-made surf parks in Texas. With a two hour session
average, I’ve spent approximately 4,600 hours doing something that
I still miserably suck at. That’s half a sojourn around the sun.
That’s 1.35% of my waking life.
Yet, I still suck.
I’ve been playing cat and mouse with my inability for some time,
but never have I felt the dark warmth of the belly of the feline
beast more than when watching some psychologically scarring video
footage of myself from a recent session. If you’re considering
this, but you suspect your own sub-mediocrity, be warned that it’s
something you can’t unsee and you’d be better served staring at
that photo of Messier 87 for an hour contemplating the fact that
everything that exists, everything you know, everyone you love,
likely came from and will thus return to nothingness. (Spoiler
alert: In the end, darkness wins.)
It was the first time in nearly two decades that I’ve seen
myself on video playback and it was like happening upon a clip of
my parents on Pornhub. It was like, after a lifetime of severe,
untreated nearsightedness, I got LASIK surgery and discovered that
I look like an ogre who lost a fight to a bigger ogre. It was like
I got kicked in the nuts by my nemesis after he and my wife,
fingers clasped, informed me that my 3-year-old son is not actually
of my own seed.
Whatever veil of delusional innocence I had been living behind
was at once pulled back, leaving the stark, sobering reality that
the level of grace my surfing carries is akin to that of the
titular character in the 80s absurdist comedy Weekend At Bernie’s.
If you’re not familiar with the film and therefore the reference,
Bernie is dead. I look like I have some form of micro-amnesia
whereby I’m perpetually coming to from a blackout on a
second-by-second basis to the startling realization that I am, in
fact, gliding upon the surface of water. Look, Ma. It’s wet!The
post-mortem biopic of my surfing life would be called 5000 First
Waves. My turns look like an alien trying to copulate with a human
having not yet figured what goes where. My pumping looks like I’m
trying to actually sink my surfboard underwater. My tube stance is
a dookie crouch. But the worst part is the way I would
pseudo-casually exit waves with my
too-cool-for-school-Slater-nose-wipe-non-claim-claim like I just
did something of a measurable amount of objective worth, like
anything beyond the mere success of staying afloat just
transpired.
Among the strangeness of realizing that Italo surfs better
switch than I do regular, the thing I can’t quite reconcile is how
supremely sublime something that looks that hideous feels.
I often go to concerts where bands jam and meander into
territories heretofore unknown. At these shows, if I’m inspired, I
dance. I noodle my legs, torso, arms and head around in rhythmic
fashion as I surrender to the flow and connect with Mother Melody.
Sometimes, I’m so moved that I compulsively make that
boobie-motorboating sound when their jams peak. I’m sure it looks
ridiculous, but I don’t care. It feels great in my body. If a video
of me doing this concert-noodle were aired on national television,
with my name superimposed beneath it in flashing rainbow letters, I
genuinely think I’d laugh it off and very well may feel a bit of
pride.
If only I could apply this level of casual acceptance to the
recent revelation that my surfing looks like John John’s would the
day after someone broke both his kneecaps. (DON’T BREAK JOHN JOHN’S
KNEECAPS!) But I can’t. I find no humor in the fact that, on a good
day, my surfing looks like that of a man twenty years my elder with
three herniated discs in his back who’s a day late on refilling his
pain meds.
And for this, I feel shame.
But why?
Not why do I suck. I suck because I didn’t grow up near the
beach and wasn’t taken hostage by surfing until I was 22 (Can one
be grandfathered-in as a VAL?)… or because I’ve never taken a
lesson or been instructed in any way whatsoever… or because my
constant, pre-mature-ejaculate-level frothing supersedes my ability
to maintain any flow… or perhaps because the fundamentals of wave
sliding are just beyond me.
No, the itchy, whiney why? that I can’t quite scratch is why do
I care so much? I know… the act of surfing itself is a ridiculous,
meaningless endeavor blah blah blah Chas and the entire Beachgrit
premise that’s neither productive nor consumptive on a sociological
level blah blah blah Aaron James and is as arbitrary as going to a
bucolic meadow to catch apples falling from a tree or eating a
bunch of caramels with Minnie Driver but it still means something
to me, though that meaning is often as elusive as a shifty beach
break peak.
Personal relationships aside, it kind of means, well…
everything.
And I suck.
Like,
Frankenstein-night-surfing-after-he-took-too-many-hits-of-blotter
suck.
And this leaves me full of sorrow.
It would appear that life is a process whereby — if one keeps at
it — youthful fantasy violently collides with reality in something
often referred to as “adulthood.” Personally, I’m still fishing
pieces of shrapnel from this collision out of the lower backside of
my torso. An applicable term may be arrested development.
Maybe it’s my love for (Stockholm syndrome with) surfing that
illuminates the fact that I suck. Buddha says you care = you
suffer. Hold on a sec… suffer… surfer…
suffer…surfer…suffer…surfer…suffer…surfer… Maybe I just suck at
caring. At loving things. Maybe I’m like Lenny in Of Mice And Men
and surfing is the bunny rabbit that — while I intend to gently
caress — I strangle to death.
I won’t stop. No way. I can’t. I’m a helpless hostage. But, for
psychological preservation, I feel I must do something about the
fact that I’d likely lose a heat to Jordy if he were wearing both
an eye patch (#realnotdecorative) and a straight jacket.
Maybe the answer is to stop trying to surf like those aquatic
freaks my mind, expectations and endorphins have been inundated
with through the torrent of surf porn I ingest on a regular basis.
Maybe I should stop punishingly defining myself by standards of
performance I haven’t a chance of achieving. Maybe I should stop
defining any of it.
Is that even possible?
My inner naive idealist, the one who waxes my board and lives in
a state of denial about my inner bitter asshole, the one who ends
up surfing most of the session, says it is possible. He says it’s
possible to one day find harmony between my capability and my
expectations. To marry my hustle and my flow.
Moving forward, I shall attempt to leave my efforts and
execution of this kinetic act of buoyancy undefined, since that’s
the essence of why I’m self-destructively drawn to it in the first
place; that barb of the hook that won’t stop tugging on my
cheek.
Someone somewhere probably said that surfing is an
expression.
Suppose it’s time I try to surf like… myself?
What’s that even mean? Could it be fun? How would I gage my
success? How would I know if I’m doing it right? Where would my
approval come from? What if they laugh? Could I ever be so bold as
to plant my flag on an isolated atoll of identity as such?
Have you attempted this?
Do you… do this?