It was pretty small, but I was doing a lot more surfing than I thought I would be doing. Sometimes no-look paddle outs put you in some precariously dull situations. But as I predicted, there was some tide push and just enough sneaky windswell making it fun enough. I overdressed in a full suit because I hate surfing in trunks. I was on a workday mission to get myself to a place where I could officially say, “I surfed,” should anyone ask me what I was up to today.

There was one other guy out — or one other guy who could surf well enough to be trading waves with — and he was a goofy foot. Everyone else was surfing for the first time in their life. Or wading through the shorebreak looking like slalom cones so it was really just him and I sharing the 3-foot lunchtime peaks. Fun. Until it wasn’t.

A set approached. A perfect peak for the day, a right and a left.

“You going right or left?” he asked.

I hate this question. I don’t want to decide, I like to go with intuition. It's more complicated than going right or left, man. I want to do what feels right.

Being put on the spot by another surfer makes me panic. For one, I am a regular foot but I think I prefer going left — which complicates this question and if we’re getting technical I think my backhand is better than my forehand but deep down everyone wants to go forehand, right? This guy was a goofy foot, and I’d noticed it’d been a while since he got a left. Did I owe him? Nah, I was up, but why does it feel like he’s deciding for me? Maybe he was like me and liked to go backside? Would he be bummed if a guy who normally goes left, went right? Dammit, why did he have to ask me this? It’s not like I can say, “What do you prefer, dude?” There was no time for debate. Waves keep rolling.

Normally I would just go left but they had a lot of backwash and there were a bunch of swimmers in the way. The right had a rip tearing through it, but maybe I could race it and punt in front of the tourists frolicking in the shorebreak…Neither choice was all that great.

“Ah, go ahead…” I said and decided to just not go.

I sat there as the blue lump went beneath me and I thought about how dumb it was that I let him decide what way I went. “I’ll get the next one,” I thought.

The next wave that came was a complete closeout so I went straight and bellied all the way in.

These are my politics.—Travis Ferré

[Above art: Study for Currents #3 (1970 by Robert Rauschenberg]