Surfing

I used to love surfing. There's something unique and special about being on a board slicing through the glassy underside of a breaking wave. My first board was an eleven footer. These days they're shorter. I remember my first 7 foot board, bought for me second hand by my friends for my 21st birthday. I'm still in touch with two of them, one alas is dead and I've lost touch with the other.

I loved surfing for the sport, for the fresh smell of the sea, for the freedom, for the perfection of cool water on a hot day. Really. OK, I was also in love with -- let's call him Josh -- who was a extraordinarily beautiful bloke. Josh was a surfer too, intelligent, loved poetry and dope, and himself. All that self-directed admiration left little love over for me.

I don't surf any more. We live too far from the sea, and anyways, the water here's so cold you have to wear a wetsuit and that's just not the same as doing it in your fantastic baggies (alias boardshorts.) Here are two pics of very different surfies, one in fantastic baggies, the other in swim briefs (Aussiebums, I'd say). Of course, the surfies were another reason to go surfing. With all the paddling, surfing naturally gives you huge shoulders and arms and pectorals -- as you can see in these photos. You don't need to do weights work if you surf, and somehow the bodies created by surfing look better than those scuplted by weights.

I never admitted my attraction to surfers to myself. Ah, the poison of the closet.