Date a Girl Who Doesn't Surf

Date a girl who doesn't surf. Meet her in a posh dive bar in Los Feliz. Make eye contact with her, and don't smile. You're too cool for that. Approach her casually and ask her if you've seen each other in another bar in Silverlake. She'll say yes, she has been to that bar, but before it got so crowded. Make her laugh by offering her a rolled cigarette when she tells you that she only has one cigarette left for her friend. Take her by the hand as you weave her through the throngs of people in the bar. Kiss her under the night lights of downtown Los Angeles as you share a beer you snuck out of the bar on last call. Stay up and watch the sun rise with her over the Hollywood sign. Take her back to your apartment. Fuck her. And fuck your roommates who can hear you fucking her through the paper thin walls.

Turn a one night stand into a three month stand. Miss some swells for a late morning breakfast chorizo burrito because you stayed out late with her. Tell yourself the tide isn't right. The winds on it. It's too crowded. It's too small. Wetsuit has holes and it's too cold. Board dings stay unfixed as your quiver gathers dust. Gain some weight. Tell yourself that the girl who doesn't surf makes you happy. That she undulates like Mother Oceans' waves when she's on top. Your hair and dick get wet from her. Not from Mother Ocean. The girl who doesn't surf may taste salty when you go down on her, which reminds you of Mother Ocean.  Which is good enough. Unread surf magazines pile up in a corner, much like your surfboard quiver. Both start to whither and yellow, yearning for a page to be turned or a fresh coat of wax to be applied.

Exchange your wetsuit for a dress suit. Get an oversized wrist watch. Buy a slim fit collared shirt to go with your slim fit dress slacks with your skinny tie. Everything is skinny except for you. You who surfed once but now dating a girl who doesn't surf. Buy lunch everyday with your modest middle class income and have a happy hour that isn't so happy after a desk job you loathe.

Take her out to dinner near your work, for that's all you know now. Have the tattooed bartender pour a double whiskey shot for you. You're going to need the liquid courage to ask her to marry you. Reminisce about the first time you two met. Remind yourself of why you're doing this. Why are you doing this? So all this time doesn't seem like a waste of time. Take that last sip of whiskey and ask her to marry you. Present to her that golden ring that she always wanted. Present it with sweaty palms and a happy smile on your face. She'll say yes, happily, with a golden smile from her glittery lips.

Buy a house. By the beach even. Cling onto the idea that you still surf. Get a dog. Have two kids. Try to be strict. Try to be fair. Try try try. And fail repeatedly. Smell the Ocean breeze every day. That same Ocean breeze that once filled your beating heart but now just fills your empty lungs. Smile contently when you watch the sunrise, and squint tiredly when you see the sunset. All from your house with dog and two children and girl that doesn't surf. Grow old and say that you had a wonderful life.

But it wasn't. Where was the passion? Where was the adventure? Where was that feeling of being alive? The girl that doesn't surf never understood that feeling - she was never able to surf, let alone swim. Your passport is void of any surf destinations. Your travel backpack has long been auctioned off for pennies at a yard sale. Your quiver has long shrunk in size, inversely related to your waist size. Surf magazines avoid your mailbox. The only wax you see is in your ears as you pick at them with your manicured nails done by a Vietnamese lady for $50.

Your life is safe, secure, and stable. It's exactly what the girl who doesn't surf has ever hoped for. And the golden ring on her finger. It is the life of vanilla, not salted caramel with hazelnut and chocolate syrup and whipped cream with a toasted marshmallow on top. It is the life no movie script can ever save with a kaleidoscope ending. It is the life of a person who dates a girl who doesn't surf.

You miss the salty water. You miss the poundings on the inside. You miss popping up too late and free-falling through the air head first. You miss the slide of a board on a clean face as you set your rail. You miss the leg burn after a long ride. You miss the heart pounding, mind-numbing love that you once felt with the girl who doesn't surf. And you realize that you had all that at one time in your life. Before the girl who doesn't surf walked into your life.

Don't date the girl who surfs. She has a neck tan line and sun-beaten hair. Her skin has sunspots on them - a far cry from the fair, Vitamin D deficient complexion of the girl who doesn't surf. Don't date the girl who surfs. She knows the importance of staying in the moment. That the next wave could be THE wave. That missing that wave will be the regret of her life, since surf consumes her very soul, and her heart aches and pains every time she thinks of the one that got away. Don't date the girl who surfs since she will be thinking of the next swell that will hit up north, or maybe down south. Just not locally. Local is too comfortable. Her home is too comfortable and she needs to escape. And so she'll want to go to places like Hawaii, Tahiti, Bali, Spain, France, Brazil or Chile. Wherever there may be waves, that's where she will want to go. Your passport will need new pages, for the stamps of foreign countries have trampled all over your vacant pages, and that's a burden in your daily life. Don't date her because you will have to wake up early with her, since the crowd will be on it by the time the sun is up. You will have to watch the blinding rising sun from the line up at least four times a month, changing your perception of what golden means. And you will have to be in the water for the sun when it sets in that blinding orange haze with the purples and the reds melding together like molten lava. You will have to surf with her until it's dark, until no one is out, except the two of you, and the full moon rising above you - the only illumination you two will have in the dark, open Ocean.

Don't date the girl who surfs since she knows that you know that no one else knows. Unless of course, if you go. Go go go. Go for it, she will say. It's unsafe, it's unstable, you'll never make it, is what she won't say. Don't date the girl who surfs since she will understand if you need to catch one more wave, so she will wait for you on shore. Don't date a girl who surfs since all the guys in the line up will be eye fucking her, and you don't want prepubescent boys and retired military personnel and every salty bastard in between to be drooling over her. And as everyone drools over her, she'll paddle towards a wave no one sees, spin around, and with everyone hooting her, she will paddle majestically into a gem, pop up seamlessly, and catch that wave to shore.

Don't date a girl who surfs for the one who surfs will have other hobbies besides surfing. She'll go to yoga, and you will too. You'll have to master downwards dog and king pigeon and cobra. And watch other girls on thin yoga mats in thin yoga pants stretch and contort their body every which way while you struggle to do warrior 1 stance. She'll want to learn guitar or ukulele, since the iPod ran out of batteries long ago, and the eight hour drive in a remote location in the mountains where radio signals don't reach is too quiet. She'll want to paint. Her nails will be covered in acrylics and oils that aren't applied by a cute Vietnamese lady for $50. Her creativity will ooze out onto the canvas and onto the floor. Every stroke is graceful, as she is in the water. Every brush is a board in her eyes, and every canvas is a big, open wave for her to extend her creativity. A splash here, a dab there, a smudge there.

Date a girl who doesn't surf since the girl who does surf knows the importance of hard work. She will be pounded and defeated alongside with you on those days - those days that wrench your board out of your hands and smack you down to the shallow reef. They will break a weak spirit in half, and then into quarters, just for good measure. She'll know the meaning of humble pie, and how a big slice of it is handed out to everyone at one point or another. She'll know what it means to have the shoulders burn from a twenty minute paddle out while being caught inside. She'll know what it means to train out of the water to be ready for those beat downs and hold downs and marathon paddle sessions. She'll work hard, and that's quite the opposite of a comfortable life on the comfortable sofa in a comfortable living room in a comfortable house. Good enough aren't words that exist in her dictionary.  She, the girl who surfs, will know the satisfaction of working out, yoga, a healthy diet, and hours of traveling, all culminating in a screaming barrel that spits her out as she looks back at you when she floats onto the shoulder, yelling, DID YOU SEE THAT?!?!

No, don't date her, because she will make you want to surf more. To be more than just a desk job. To work out more. To be a better person in the water. And be a better person out of the water. Don't date her, for she will change your life, and change is the spiraling chaos of fear that engulfs your timid soul. Don't date her, she will know the importance of being present in the fleeting moments of life's gifts, instead of looking too far forward into the future or drone on the past of what could have been. Don't date her, for she won't be satisfied without freedom. She'll love something more than herself, and it completely sets her free. She'll dream, she'll dance, she'll sing, she'll fly. And she will surf however way she pleases.