Get used to failure. It’s not a bad thing. Photo: Trevor Moran
A good hoot can persuade a man to do curious things.
cuck·old
nounarchaic
noun: cuckold; plural noun: cuckolds
1.
the husband of an adulteress, often regarded as an object of derision.
verb
1.
(of a man) make (another man) a cuckold by having a sexual relationship with his wife.
It’s true. Kinda…
In 1936 Ernest Hemingway published an amazing short story called The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber. In it, Macomber and his wife travel to Africa for a hunting safari. Their guide is a strapping, rugged and emotionless hunk (a fear in and of itself for every belly bulging, hair line receding hubby) called Robert Wilson. Macomber hits a lion, but it doesn’t die. It stumbles into a heavily wooded, grassy area. Their guide, Robert Wilson, tells Macomber he can’t leave the lion that way. He needs to go into the bush and finish the kill. Macomber is terrified. Wilson says he will go with him. Macomber’s wife, Margarate, is watching this all unfold. Nonetheless, the first piece of her husband’s masculinity starts to fade when she senses his fear.
The two men go into the bush. Macomber succumbs to fear. Wilson kills the lion. Macomber is stripped of his manhood. On the ride back to camp Margarate kisses Robert Wilson right in front of her husband.
There’s more. Later, Macomber wakes in the middle of the night to find his wife absent from her cot. She walks in some time later. He calls her a bitch. The next day she “accidentally” shoots him to what Wilson says “will be a certain amount of unpleasantness at the inquest. The gun bearers will serve as witnesses…but you should be ok.”
A 6 foot wave at Long Beach, New York took my manhood and made me cuckold.
It wasn’t big. Head high, maybe a little bigger. Pretty good form from the higher tide. ESE angle. The water was cold though. Probably around 41°.
Actually, now that I think back on it, that bulging swell of saltwater did look like a lion rushing out of a tranquil bush. Long Beach (NY) locals (who rarely surrender a set wave) posed as the gun bearers and surrogate wives watching and waiting for me to turn and pop up, proving I have two testes. The current had drifted them toward the end section of the lineup and I had just paddled back out.
So I sat there alone. Waiting. About eight hooded black rubber suits bobbed at the end of the line, slowly making their way back to the lineup, watching me. Detached. Then from about 60 yards out to sea, we all saw the peak of a set wave rising. It marched closer.
In the ocean, amidst all that expanse, there are no buildings or cars to muffle noises or calls. Especially when you’re sitting there alone and the signals are meant for you.
“YEWWWWWW!”
“YEAHHHH!”
“EEEEEUUUUUU…”
All the howls were translating to “YOU BETTER GO P**SY!!!”
There was nowhere to hide. There was no other surfer nearby to relinquish priority to. I paddled toward the peak. The hoots continued. I turned toward shore, dug my hands into the water and started paddling. As I looked down the line, a cadre of NY locals staring through me, I realized I did not like the look of this wave. I didn’t feel like getting pinched by 15 cubic yards of an ice cold Atlantic closeout with a fraction of possible Hep C. Sorry.
The pull back was awful. Open mouths. Shaking heads. A couple of “un-f**king believables.”
You try to play it off like it doesn’t bother you, but like Hemingway and Macomber there is a side of us that is sickened when we cower. When we shy away from the brutal reality of a manhood challenge. I felt that tinge of nausea in my belly.
I walked back to the car some time after, hoping my wife was not on the beach. Hoping the ammunition store was not open yet.
