I had just struggled onto my second wave this morning at Ocean Beach when something blue-black flickered past me quick as a starling.
The apparition was past before I recognized it as a fellow boardsman. Sliding along a sixty-degree wall of water, he had simply weaved around me, no room to spare, like Jackie Chan in neoprene. My first thought was damn.
My second thought –after he paddled back to the lineup and gave me an ain’t-I-hot grin – was how good my fist would look, just there, on the bridge of his nose beneath his neoprene cap.
One wrong move and we’d both have collapsed on a deck of fast-moving fiberglass.
But I made no fist. I was in the wrong and both of us knew it. Whoever is on the wave first, closest to the peak, owns the wave, and in the excitement of the moment I hadn’t seen him.
He caught wave after wave. He’s one of those greedy surfers who gobbles waves like Cheetos. The wave boils behind him and his tongue hangs out, like Mick Jagger slurping a microphone.
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