I made it past the breakers, beyond the brute slap of the Pacific’s arm and the ramming plunges of whitewater, onto the mammoth back of the ocean. It swells and heaves beneath me. I feel so small.
I paddle farthest out, and behind me, everyone bobs atop their boards, all in black, all watching the outside. Suddenly, floating above the emerald heft, I relax in between sets. I circle to face shore, sitting upright. My feet tangle in the slick fingers of kelp that sways in a world beneath me, a mystifying, pulsing abyss. Sea otters hump three feet from my board, unashamed, and I smile and wipe snot off my face while they cavort and roll in a large circle around me.
I swing outside again and see nothing under the white curtain of fog. But back on the shore, I watch the boys and Dwight take turns sliding on the sand, learning to skim, climbing the cliff rocks. Chas is wearing a red baseball cap. That was a good idea.
Damon, yards behind me on his big banana longboard, puts both fingers to his eyes, then one finger points outside. I turn my back. A tremendous hussy of a wave shows me her hand, and my face falls. I am sucked offshore in her slow inhale, and in the green-gray glassy shadow, where I watch the kelp reach skywards, I draw a pillowfull of air and slink off my board. That’s when the beginner follows her stomach, covers her head, and plunges round and round to the place where leashes become necklaces, surfboards rocket, and the ocean smacks a big fat bubbly sign on my forehead that reads “DUMBASS.”
