About 2,000 Words

First Serial Rights

JELLY FISH

by

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This surfing lesson—Brinkley’s birthday gift to himself—was not panning out to be the vital toughener-upper, the crucial step-up-to-manhood, the fateful proof-in-the-pudding that Brinkley had imagined. Shivering in his rented wetsuit in the wave zone off Ocean Beach on the edge of fog-frosted San Francisco, Brinkley Minton, 37 last Tuesday, sat bobbing astraddle a borrowed surfboard in water cold enough to slam his skull with sherbet headaches and drive his testicles up into his lungs. It didn’t help that he’d been saddled with the build of a peasant stevedore paired with the face of a palace fop. It had never helped. CAUTION, said the signs posted in the lot where he’d parked, PEOPLE WADING AND SWIMMING HERE HAVE DROWNED. His instructor, Erika, guessably mid-forties, had been shouting encouragement of diminishing cheer at him over the arctic bite of …show more content…
LOUD. He congratulated himself on a fine profound haiku, never mind that the “we” in the middle line was pure fantasy; Brinkley had banged alone. Oh, for a waxed-paper-lined basket of toast-blistered naan glistening with ghee, for a mound of basmati ladled with vindaloo, for a pyramid of gulab jamun. Monday—lunch!—yes. Buoyed by the prospect, Brinkley relaxed his grip on his surfboard and twisted around in search of Erika—here she came, plowing toward him through the choppy wave zone, a rosy-cheeked mermaid ripe for a haiku—just as a claw of foam reared up and cuffed him into the frigid water. Floundering, gagging on brine in the aquatic roar, Brinkley somehow remembered to heed the directional tug of his ankle leash and cover his head to that side, per Erika’s instructions, so as not to get clobbered by his board. “Jeez, man, the thing’s floating right next to you,” came Squiffy’s voice, warbly through the water. “There’s a difference between getting barreled in an eight-foot tube and just falling the fuck off,