Lessons By Thrashing

I was two years into writing a novel set in a Walmart-like Supercenter, and it wasn’t going well. It was my third novel, so I should have known what I was doing, but I was utterly lost, sitting down daily to generate pages without getting any closer to making the thing cohere.

When book people hear I’m a surfer, they often ask whether I get ideas while I’m out in the water. They want to hear about a connection between surfing and writing. After all, the parallels are obvious: flow, style, difficulty, dedication, improvisation… But I like to keep surfing and writing separate from each other. The ocean is where I go to reconnect with natural time, not to dream up narrative solutions.

So I stood up from the keyboard and hit El Porto. Standard closeouts, consistently overhead, a few corners here and there. Crisp winter air, no wind. Lowish tide and an inside sandbar creating a washing-machine situation about halfway out. Mercifully uncrowded.

Maybe 20 minutes into my session, I was sitting outside after a challenging paddle out, catching my breath, when this guy floated up next to me. In his twenties, clean-cut and wide-eyed, he was wearing a wetsuit that looked a size too big for him.

“Wow,” he said.

He was sitting high in the water on what looked like a funboard, maybe an 8-footer.

“I’m impressed you made it out on that thing,” I said.

“It’s my second time,” he said.

“Same.”

“It’s your second time surfing?” he asked.

“No. Sandbar had me paddling in place—had to get out and find a rip.”

He gave me a blank look.

“Please tell me this isn’t your second time surfing,” I said.

He didn’t have to reply. It was obvious from the way he sat on the board: nose high, hands on the rails to stabilize himself.

By some fluke, the same combination of swell, tide, and sand that had me duck diving wave after wave—to the point where I had actually gotten out and done a walk-around—had ushered a novice and his 8-foot funboard straight to the outside.

“I heard there were waves,” he said, “so I borrowed my buddy’s board.”

“Are you a good swimmer?” I asked.

“I’m okay.”

My stomach dropped. This wasn’t going to go well for him. 

He asked whether I had any tips.

I offered something generic: “If you’re on the inside, paddling back out, and there’s anyone at all behind you, don’t bail your board.”

“Okay.”

We were quiet for a few minutes.

“I’m going to get worked, huh?”

“Probably.”

Lines appeared on the horizon. We’d been sitting well outside, but now it looked like we might be in position.

I felt compelled to say something else. It came to me seemingly out of nowhere, channeled, delivered up on a platter.

“The ocean is going to humble you, and you’re just going to have to let it.”

As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I knew exactly where they’d come from.

Almost 20 years earlier, I was living in a bachelor apartment in Redondo Beach, near Aviation and Artesia, paying the bills by tutoring kids up on the hill in Palos Verdes. I had converted my apartment’s storage unit into a mini library/computer room, and when I wasn’t working or surfing, I was writing short stories on my old Micron PC and applying to graduate programs.

I got into two schools: Iowa and Columbia. I knew that if I went to New York, I’d learn more about publishing, but also I’d get no writing done. Iowa it would be. I packed up my apartment, stayed with my parents in Santa Monica for the summer, and, as my departure date approached, surfed Topanga as much as possible, as if I could cram in extra surfing to make up for the lack of waves I’d have to cope with in the Midwest.

When I got to Iowa City, I felt like I’d finally found my tribe. I hadn’t taken creative writing as an undergrad, so I didn’t know many other writers. Suddenly being surrounded by a bunch of like-minded people was tremendously gratifying.

That said, it wasn’t long before I was jonesing to surf, and my collection of old VHS surf movies began to wear thin, to the point at which I’d resorted to watching Rob Machado surf G-Land in a mirror, a stylish regularfoot on a perfect right.

Conveniently, a few years earlier my mother had become a flight attendant, which meant I could fly standby for free. Inconveniently, the closest airport served by her airline was Chicago O’Hare.

A portrait of my desperation: Once a month or so, I’d wake up in the dark to drive four hours through winter weather to Chicago so I could arrive in time to get on the standby list for the first flight to Cleveland. Yes, Cleveland. I was flying east to go west. Why? Better chance of finding an empty seat than if I were to go through Houston. Then, if I was lucky—and I was usually lucky—I ended up in LA for a day or two of waves.

Late into my second year at Iowa, with a couple of feet of snow on the ground, I flew Chicago–Cleveland–LAX to meet up with a buddy—an art history grad student and seasonal Zuma lifeguard—at Manhattan Beach on a cold, gray morning. The waves were pumping, a mix of groundswell and windswell keeping lulls to a minimum, and there was a lot of water moving around. I didn’t care. I had come all this way. I’d paddle out into whatever the ocean had to offer.

We hit the water, and immediately I felt at home. Then came the paddle out. A few duck dives in, I was already starting to feel winded, and the distance between me and my buddy grew with every stroke. This wasn’t an anomaly—he’d always been a stronger paddler—but two years in the cornfields had taken its toll. Soon my arms were spaghetti.

I’d feel like I was on the verge of making it out, and then more waves would arrive. When one broke in front of me, I bailed my board and went under, leash yanking at my ankle. I popped to the surface, but by the time I retrieved my board, I had to bail it to duck under another wall of whitewater. A few of these in a row and I was properly winded.

I got a mini respite from the onslaught, caught my breath, got back on my board, and started paddling again. My buddy had made it to the outside. It didn’t seem that far away. I can push through, I thought. I’d done it before, felt like I was about to give up, like the ocean was going to beat me that day, and I’d always gathered my strength and made it out. 

I watched my buddy paddle up the face of a wave that was going to break in front of me. I resolved to duck dive it and got soundly thrashed in the turbulence, board ripped from my hands, gasping for breath as I surfaced, shaking off the foam. That was when I was struck by a thought, clear as the chime of a bell: I have no business being out here.

This thought felt qualitatively different from the regular assortment of healthy doubts and fears. It came from a different place, and there was no brushing it off. It was as if my subconscious had done an end-run around my willpower, assessed the situation, and decided that I was no longer the person for whom these conditions would be somewhat challenging but essentially routine.

I turned around, rode the whitewater to the beach. I had driven four hours through snowy darkness, spent an entire day flying Chicago–Cleveland–LAX, slept on the floor of my parents’ home office, and gotten up at the crack of dawn, only to find myself sitting in the sand, watching my buddy catch a few waves. Maybe I should have felt humiliated. Maybe I would have, had the circumstances been slightly different. But I didn’t. I felt humbled.

Humbled versus humiliated: a distinction I didn’t recall ever making before, at least not explicitly. This wasn’t about my ego, or my ability, or my sense of self, or my identity as a surfer. (Okay, maybe a tiny bit.) This was about reckoning with the power of the ocean. About recognizing, as I never had before, the mutability of my own limits. About summoning a different kind of courage. The courage to acknowledge that enough was enough, to set aside all of the tools that had worked for me in the past, to swallow my pride. To push past the fear of humiliation and let myself be humbled.

“The ocean is going to humble you, and you’re just going to have to let it.”

Did it mean anything to the guy next to me on the funboard? I couldn’t tell. But I’d given it a shot. All I knew was that sets were incoming and the first one looked like it was actually lining up. My priorities were straight. I took off on a speedy right runner, picked off a couple of turns, and went for the closeout reentry at the end. Or my version of it, at least. There was no way I was pulling it off as the wave imploded on the sandbar.

I got soundly thrashed in the turbulence, board ripped from my hands, gasping for breath as I surfaced, shaking off the foam. That was when I was struck by a thought, clear as the chime of a bell: I have no business being out here.

I ended up getting rag-dolled, during which I felt my leash break. Damn, I thought. I’m going to have to go back to the car and get another one. Once the wave had had its way with me, I surfaced and started to swim for shore. There must have been a ditch of deeper water next to the sandbar, because I felt like I was swimming in place. I let a few waves push me toward the beach and bodysurfed my way to the inside.

By the time I got there, some good Samaritan had pulled my board up the sand. Cool. Except that sitting next to my board was an 8-foot funboard.

I decided to hang out a minute before going to the car for my leash. I scanned the water for the guy but didn’t see him. Then a head popped up near the impact zone. Probably the guy? It was hard to tell. He was maybe a hundred yards out. He ducked under a wave, popped back up. He wasn’t swimming toward shore, but he wasn’t trying to get outside, either. Just bobbing his head up and looking around. Nobody else seemed to notice anything amiss, but for some reason I felt responsible. I’d look out for the guy, at least until he was back on the beach.

Then he started waving his arms.

The lifeguard tower behind me was shuttered. I looked down the beach to the next one. It was open, but there was no can hanging from it, and I couldn’t see the guard on the sand. I got some people’s attention down the beach, told them to alert the lifeguards, pass it on. The beach wasn’t crowded, but there were enough people to form a kind of communication chain.

He was still waving his arms. A bad sign, but also a good sign. 

I watched, hoping the waves might push him toward shore, but he remained stuck in the impact zone. I was debating the wisdom of trying to paddle out to him, and the potential for doubling the problem if I lost my board again with its broken leash, when the lifeguards rolled up, Code 3. 

They’d been on another rescue down the beach. Two of them hit the water instantly, red cans in tow, and punched through the surf to retrieve the guy. He stumbled onto the sand exhausted, looking like a wet rat. I don’t know if he thanked the lifeguards or if he was too stunned by what had just happened, but the only thing I heard him say was, “I guess I should go out when the waves are smaller.”

Had he learned his lesson? I don’t know. But something in me had shifted.

Driving home, I knew that the time had come to abandon my grand conceptual novel. To stop trying to push my way to the outside. To give myself over to the reality of the situation. To admit defeat. To let myself be humbled.

The next morning, instead of going back to work on the novel, I opened an old story I’d given up on a while back, about a near-drowning and rescue at a municipal pool. I started over from the top, changing the setting to the ocean and, this time, subjecting my narrator to the same gut-dropping feeling I’d experienced when I realized the guy in the impact zone was in distress. Before I knew it, I had the seed of what would eventually become my next novel, Mouth to Mouth.

So much for keeping surfing and writing separate.