Selling Out

I work in a surf shop now. The biggest surf shop in New England apparently. Full of all the latest surf fashion from brands whose clothing I haven’t bought in years. Full of tantalizingly scented Sex Wax and new neoprene and shiny pearly white or resin-tinted boards, but mostly full of offensively bright-colored softies. 

Thirty-years-old, married and here I am patiently explaining the difference between FCS and Futures fin systems with a dumb smile plastered on my face to a man who will never put them through a proper bottom turn anyway. 

I didn’t always work in the surf shop, but now I feel like it’s the only thing I can do. Not for lack of qualification, education, or IQ. Ambition, maybe. Two years ago I was earning six figures as a Sales Director for a young hip online art auction company on the Lower East Side. I quit and they folded, good fucken riddance. Like seeing an ex-girlfriend who has let herself go after a couple of years and witnessing her once pretty face succumbed to that brutal bitch Time. I have either quit (unceremoniously) or been fired from pretty much every job I’ve ever held. My resume and professional references are mostly fiction anyway; I have a knack for burning bridges and letting things go that I find quite admirable. 

So anyway, now I welcome customers with a friendly, warm greeting and ask if they’re looking for anything in particular. I put this rich high school kid’s leash on for him and waxed up his new $1,200 stick because he didn’t know how. I am here to make the fat man upstairs rich. Both the store owner and manager are grossly fat, if not obese. I’m told the owner used to surf back in his day, whenever that was. I’m doubtful. The manager has never tried surfing in his life, there’s no way he could. XXXL.

A girl comes in with a board that is far too small for her, the entire nose snapped off, and asks if I’ll fix it for her or if we have any ding repair kits for sale. I won’t fix it for her (I barely fix my own dings) but we do have ding repair kits for sale. We have everything for sale. I recognize her from Instagram. She drives a Tesla and her feed is full of her posing suggestively on the beach with her seafoam green Trimcraft fish. I’ve never seen any evidence of her actually in the water.

“IT MAY SURPRISE YOU TO LEARN THAT I DON’T LOATHE THIS JOB. I DON’T EVEN LOATHE MYSELF FOR MAKING THE FAT MAN RICH WHILST PEDALING SOFTIES AND OVERCROWDING THE ALREADY LIMITED AND INCONSISTENT LINE UP WITH FLAILING, CLUELESS KOOKS.”

It kind of contradicts my support for the philosophy of “If you don’t surf, don’t start,” but what can I do? I’ve always been conflicted about one thing or another.

It’s an early winter morning. The death cold bites the bones and stings the face, the weak sun providing little comfort, if any. There is a playground of chest high, punchy peaks popping up all along the quiet beach. They break close to the sand and are sweetly caressed by the gentle but frigid offshore whisper. Wetsuit quality improves every year, they become more accessible, and that means there’s already a herd of rubberized bodies littering the backline, even on this freezing dawn. I don’t waste any time, wrestle on my hood, strap on my leash, fight to roll on my mits and eventually wade into the icy green Atlantic. The rip that runs along the cliff pulls me into the lineup without getting my face wet. I spy a fun-looking, less-busy peak a little way down the beach and decide to paddle over. 

“Hey man, how’s it going? Pretty fun out here this morning huh?” 

Fuck, it’s the man who doesn’t know which fin system is in his ugly Surftech funboard paddling towards me. Out the corner of my eye I notice a set approaching just over the man’s shoulder. It’s easy enough to feign deafness or dumbness or plain lack of recognition when everyone is in 3mm skull caps. I give a fake half-smile, a quick nod and paddle past and to his inside. I’m now in the perfect inside position for the first wave of the set, a jacking right-hander, looking like the wall will taper and peel all the way to the sand. The man gives a half-hearted attempt at a paddle for what is rightfully his wave but pulls back quickly when I snarl and bark him off. I feel nothing for him as I pop up directly into a smooth bottom to top turn, releasing my fins over the feathering lip as it rains spray all over him.

I drop in on the kid who didn’t know how to fix his leash or to wax in small circular motions in order to get small, perfectly beaded bumps. I don’t ever see Instagram girl in the water. If I did I would burn her too, but with less contempt. She has a nice ass. It’s nothing personal.

My wife gets upset with me as I regale her with my accounts of bravely defending surf heritage, history and spirit. “Surfing is for everyone,” she says. But we know better. We know that surfing is not for everyone, it never has been. Surfing was and is and always will be the Sport of Kings. Reserved for royalty, KAHUNA’S, KAMEHAMEHA’S, KA'AHUMANUS, and me. A ritual of a life dedicated to sacrifice and celebration. 

I will see all these same hopeless characters in the shop later and I’ll smile and ask how their board is going and if they’ve been getting any. I’ll take their money for the new Dave Rastovich keels and keep making the fat man rich, and I won’t even mind. It doesn’t matter. I’ll burn them all again tomorrow. —Joel van Wyk