36. Sailing Lesson
Short and sweet.
When I was 11-years-old, I spent a month going to day camp while staying with my uncle and aunt in one of the nicer parts of long island. During the day, they worked laying tile and as a masseuse at the fanciest spa in town, respectively. I’m not sure where my mother was, to be honest, and I would not have been able to stay with my dad who was either firmly ensconced in his bachelor’s studio apartment or living briefly with one of his girlfriends.
Camp was very tense for me, because I’m a real freak when it comes to making friends, even now. People find me fun and interesting at first, only to sense something is not quite right after one too many conversations with unwavering eye contact. I think I am just a bit too needy. With age, I have gotten slightly better at disguising this, or have met more people tolerant of it, but was not at all capable either defense as a pre-teen. So I went from being incredibly popular to being accused (erroneously!) of peeing in the pool within four weeks. Yes, I too have suffered the TRAUMA of being unpopular.
The summer ended with a sailing lesson on a small Sunfish. I remember very little about the sailing part of the Sunfish and mostly only have a vision of the end—a brightly colored sail turned pastel by the hot sun behind it, bearing me down, down, down into the town’s little lake and holding me pinned under the water. Therefore, technically, I have been taught how to sail a boat and I’ve been on other boats since, but that is all I recall of my lesson.
My decision to go to the Hudson River Community Sailing School for a grown up lesson I paid for with my hard earned adult money felt quite different. There were a few similarities, though; much like camp, I didn’t quite fit in with the group. I was the only woman who arrived for a lesson that morning and the teacher was a man too. The school is clearly part business and part volunteer organization, which means there were a lot of people randomly walking around, locked into tasks it was hard to understand as an outsider. It took a while to even be sure who the teacher was, especially as more dudes kept showing up for the lesson who could have been him. He was a guy who I will not identify by name, however I will say that he adopted a nickname that was completely unexpected for his first time. As an example, it was like someone being named Maxamillion and going by Ion instead of Max. Later, when he told me his last name, I realized this was because his full name is the same as a pretty famous actor and I will be thinking about that for a long time.
As we waited, another volunteer or perhaps a manager or even the owner of New York City harbor entered. He mentioned the Billion Oyster Project, which was exciting to me as a fan, and then pointed to an empty tank.
“Someone must have been hungry. We were growing oysters in here and they disappeared.”
Someone would have indeed had to have been hungry, because as cool as BOP is, I would not say any oysters I’ve seen them grow look safe to eat. I hope wherever the eater is, they’re okay or a sea lion.
“Ion” gathered the small crew of beginners in one of the rooms in the large riverside building, which had all its doors and windows open, creating a cross breeze that made it feel as though we were already aboard the ship. On a white board, he moved around magnetized wooden boat shapes, explaining the two sails of the Bermuda boats. The port and starboard. The basics. I have retained very little that I could verbally articulate. I could Google it right now, but I won’t.
Still, I am undeservedly confident that I could recreate the sailing movements again if I were on a boat of the same approximate size and style. This is what I want. I wish to be part of the machine that flies across the surface of the water, that tilts and groans and shoots up spray. I want to be the thing that floats and speeds and passes by the coastline, wondering who lives along the shore and never knowing.
We were taken to the Bermuda boat in a little dinghy with a motor, carefully sliding in and out of it. No one fell in, thankfully, and no one fell off the sail boat either though there were times it tilted to the side so far you could stretch your fingers across the wet surface gliding by behind you, almost dipping in your ass cheeks for good measure. The men getting their sailing lesson were all incredibly nice. A few were very young and obviously wealthy. One was a dad who had a son taking sailing lessons somewhere else. Ion was from Louisiana.
The boat tacked back and forth along the Hudson, first moving uptown. Towards Jersey and away, towards Jersey and away. Much of it was tedious, because the wind was low. The sun was so intense off the water, I knew my eyes would burn through my cheap sunglasses. Ion told us when to change course, knowing where the depth by one side or the other suddenly turned shallow. He seemed quite bored, which makes sense. Unfortunately, when we follow our passions we often end up with jobs that suck the magic out of them. For all of us students, there was a great deal of magic in gazing up the mast, watching the sails fill and pull us along, peering into the windows of other boats skipping across one another’s wakes.
A lot of my posts are about things I’m doing for the first time that I am paying for. The world in general is very expensive and gets more expensive everyday and sailing is on the high end of special treats. I cannot afford a membership at the sailing school and have been trying to get in there as a volunteer in exchange for lessons to no avail. The volunteering situation appears to be complicated and Ion did not respond to my email about it. I finally got in contact with a coordinator who ghosted me. My plan for the spring is to just show up every day and wait around until someone gives me a job or lets me on a boat, even if I have to snack on putrid oysters.
BUT. I want to say this about the money thing: that being able to afford experiences is a privilege, absolutely. And anyone saying, “Just do it” about a new experience that costs money is probably glossing over that. However, I have personally been able to afford to buy this one introductory lesson for some time and it took me so so so long to do it. Why? Now it is done and I’m glad.
Embracing a new experience is never entirely about practical matters or economics, I am certain of it. Sometimes we really want something, something we can have, and can’t quite reach out for it. Especially a new thing that will unsettle us. I had to go to a new place, far from home, amongst strangers, and move across a completely unfamiliar element, guided by invisible currents above and below. It was so easy in the end, yet so hard to even try. I know there are people who don’t think about things this way. But many folks do and this is for you. Being open to new experiences is scary in a way we both understand. Because being open to good leaves you open to bad as well, of course. There are so many strategies and habits and shells I draw into to avoid the bad I already know, the maneuvers that make it all tolerable. The love of guaranteed mediocrity over potential misery is powerful. Days and months and years can pass moving from one theoretical safe space or activity to the next and it becomes harder to place our feet outside these grooves as we age. They get too deep.
One sailing lesson has not saved me from this and one more person telling you to “Just do it” will probably not save anyone reading the words either. I will still say, just do it. There is a river and it bends and we don’t know what’s on the other side. That’s wonderful.
Wow! Been a long time and it’s almost my birthday AGAIN and I haven’t even finished 39 new things! Horrible. And yet I will. And yet I must. I have like, two more things to do.
Help! What should I do!!
Should I keep going past 39? Totally a failed conceit anyway, may as well!