This piece is part of Waterfronts, a series of personal essays that engage with the waterways of New York and/or Los Angeles, presented in collaboration with Underwater New York.

Bald guy in his twenties paddles out next to me, introduces himself. Jason. Friendly, eager, not your standard head-nod type. Afterward, every time I paddle out at that spot, he’s there, talking to somebody in the water. He introduces himself to me again and again. He tells me he’s now friends with a local surf shop owner. One day, it’s head-high and stormy. Nothing crazy. Jason paddles to the outside, announces that it’s the biggest he’s ever seen it out there. Nobody says anything. And then, as quick as he appeared, he’s gone. I think I see him in a supermarket once. I ask if the guy surfs the spot, he says yes, I ask if his name’s Jason. No, he says, it’s John. I never see Jason again.

This is in the nineties. An older guy cruises past on his stand-up paddleboard and harasses us. You’re just sitting there, he says, I’m getting a workout. You must be cold down there, he says, up to your armpits in the water. He looks just like late Picasso. He preaches to us the virtues of his watercraft. He’s obviously a madman. Fifteen years later, stand-up paddleboards are everywhere.

We see a massive triangular dorsal fin in the water, about ten yards beyond where we’re sitting. We freeze at the sight of it. Definitely not a dolphin. The fin tilts away from us until it’s flat with the water. We see the barnacles first, then the massive body of the whale, lumbering up the coast.

I go to a therapist for a little while. I tell him that surfing keeps me sane. He tells me he’s a surfer too. A few sessions later he tells me that a guy at the beach who teaches surf lessons (whom I thought was cool) is an asshole.

We’re up early. No hyped swell, no traffic. We come around the bend past the power plant and there’s a young woman on the bus bench, next to a giant backpack. Either she’s just been kicked out, or she’s bumming her way down the coast. D says, Check out this chick.