Steve Toltz - Quicksand

‘Me?’

Handing me a wetsuit and a surfboard, he says, ‘You’re his friend, aren’t you?’

He has me there.

Aldo’s all zipped up and aiming his pleading eyes in my direction. This preplanned excursion clearly hinges on me going along with it. I turn to the clean, endless ocean, the blue air sparkling above it, and I’m reunited with old childhood terrors of dumpings, the taste of seawater and my own bile. I suddenly remember that anger is the sea’s default setting. Aldo exhales my name as miserably as possible.

Oh, what choice do I have? I say, ‘I guess it’s like Morrell writes: if not working on your art, time should only be spent on sensual pleasure or charity work .’

‘There you go.’

Once again, thinking of Angus Morrell saddens and oppresses us.

I change into the wetsuit.

The short one says, ‘Know much about surfing?’

I say, ‘We aim the pointy end at the horizon, right?’

I hadn’t been surfing, as I said, for over twenty years. My memories are: falling prey to a bad rip, being grievously assaulted by a wave, and dragged from the surf by a hungover lifeguard with faintly diarrhoeic breath. I don’t want to do this, I think, as Aldo lies prone on the board and the two men carry him like a battle-weary king, just like the goddamn Fussy Corpse, to the shoreline.

‘Come on!’ he shouts.

I shuffle to the water’s edge and wedge the long board in the wet sand and stare at the pitiless waves pounding the shore.

‘God,’ Aldo says, to no one. It suddenly dawns on me that surfing with someone who hasn’t been on a board for twenty-five years — and who has paralysis in both lower extremities — might just be unbearable.

A stiff wind is tearing up the sea. Each wave has a face of angry grief. In contrast, the mammoth backlit rock is nightmarishly faceless, solid and anonymous as death. I look over at Aldo, prone on his specialised surfboard, wincing as the waves curl. Why he wants to go out there is unclear, but I can see the creeping onset of stupefying fear and realise he might just flap about on the shoreline until sunset and then hate himself as we head for home.

‘Come on,’ I say, ‘let’s go in.’

The tall one says, ‘We’ll wait here a bit to see if the board needs any adjustments.’

It’s up to me to propel him out into the cold, fast-rising swell. I push him into the shallows and get ready to help him duck-dive under the first wave, but he shrugs me off.

‘I’ll get through the breakers myself, thanks.’

‘He wants to do it himself,’ the short one says.

‘Let him try,’ the tall one says.

‘Whatever, bitches,’ I say and slam my board on the ocean and lie down on it; it flips over immediately. I stand and turn quickly to see if anyone’s watching. They all are.

Aldo shouts, ‘Incoming!’

A wave breaks on my back and I fall facefirst onto the wet sand. This time when I gather myself I don’t look; I turn and go through the shoals and a repulsive dense bed of seaweed, dive in under the breakers and make my way out to the flat behind the first peak. I swing the board around and see I’m alongside the rock, which juts up steeply, menacingly, casting rigid, dislocated shadows on the water. I paddle as far from the intimidating, windswept monolith as possible while scanning the shore. There he is, waves crashing into his face; Aldo can turn away slightly, but can’t duck their force. He is knocked off. The khaki men hoist him back onto the board. He tries again, this time paddling twice as hard, clawing for his life against the lines of white water, yet is inevitably spewed up onto the shore. The waves deny him access to their peaks. He’s still in the shallows. Even from here I can see his eyes burn from the salt water. This is ridiculous.

‘Want some help?’ I yell.

‘I’ll get there!’

I straddle my board in what feels like all seven-tenths of the earth’s surface, longing for terrestrial existence. I’d forgotten how much I hate floating on the endless drama of the sea, hate drifting aimlessly as a little door swings open and self-loathing thoughts come out. I’d forgotten how much I hate the ocean spray in my face, the sun like syringes in my eyes, and the prospect of sharks, or shark look-alikes — dolphins — and bluebottle stingers and the odds of wallowing in underwater silence until death. I’d forgotten the total boredom that commingles with continuous terror to make surfing as unpleasant a pastime as there ever was. I pray for long flat spells.

Aldo, who has lost all access to his ‘brave face’, is still having trouble getting past the breakers. He’s trying to duck-dive under the crashing foam, and is so enraged, he begins intense, vein-popping hate-paddling with his Popeye arms until he finally makes it through the aggressive wall of water and splats down next to me, heaving violently.

Letting his arms hang in the water, he rests awhile, lying limply on the board, waiting to catch his breath. We silently watch the loudmouthed, heavy-jawed, rancorous and unfriendly surfers beside us who, in my professional opinion, you should never leave an unguarded drink next to; i.e. ladies, these are hunters who medicate their prey. These men with the abs of galley slaves are staring us down. Now that I think about it, Aldo has always made a point of hating subcultures; the whole idea of mobs celebrating their differences from other mobs, of being different together , never worked for him conceptually. He even hates the paraphernalia of subcultures: ‘the tight singlets of homosexuals, the black hats of Orthodox Jews, the polished boots of skinheads’. So what are we doing here?

‘So?’ I say.

‘So maybe evolution was a backward step. So maybe I want my gills back.’

Full, steep waves march towards the shore every couple of minutes. Aldo is floating beside me, with his lumbering, insensate body’s whiff of septic tank. He is equally horrified by the looming rock yet seemingly unperturbed by the absurdity of us being out here. He looks like he could keep floating for some time.

‘Go on then,’ I say. ‘You want to fucking surf, fucking surf.’

‘As predicted in the Book of Revelation: And the sideshow shall become the main event.’

‘Just move.’

Flat on the board, Aldo starts paddling. A wave lifts him up and he rises with it, but he puts too much weight on the front and the nose of his board goes straight to the bottom, like it’s drilling for oil, then catapults out of the fattened waves. I scan churning water for a downturned torso or the international symbol for drowning. Minutes later, through curtains of spray, I see him, back on the crescent of copper sand, readjusting his catheter, conferring with his specialists, conferring with his heart that, even from a distance, is almost visibly throbbing through his chest.

My turn, but I can’t seem to swing the board around; I am facing out to sea. When I do manage to turn and paddle to catch a wave, it comes time to get to my feet but I can’t do it. I get as far as my knees and stay there; I must look like I’m about to take the holy sacrament. I tumble into the sea and a second later I’m underwater in coffin silence. I think: I only hate golfing more, and I come up in time to see Aldo vanish into the seething white water.

I paddle over and fish him out. ‘Had enough?’

He gazes at me as if reading a map that doesn’t correspond with the terrain. ‘Let’s get back out there.’

We return ourselves to the snarling waves. Miraculously our boards both make it over. We hyperventilate in tandem.

‘Your turn,’ he says. ‘I need a minute.’

For the next wave I crouch and try to imagine little Sonja on my back; no way would I want to fall. But my foot isn’t far enough forward. I tumble off, and a cave mouth closes around me, the surge of water sucking me along a secret curve.