AustLit

'ONCE WE’VE PEELED OFF the wetsuits and packed up the boards, we are quiet. The car ride home is scored with the sound of sniffing, as though in grief, though it is really the ocean emptying out of our sinuses. There is no need for speech. It is a soft quiet, a golden quiet. In the driver’s seat, my partner is thinking about his turns, the way he twisted his body to pull the board against the wave, flitting up the fist of the sea. Next to him, I am thinking about how, one day, I might be able to stand up without screaming. I am what surfers refer to as a kook, which is to say: I am terrible at surfing. In every possible way, I am an embarrassment to the art of standing on the ocean. I was terrible at it when I started, and I am terrible at it now, and I love it.' (Introduction)