My parents were sleeping in one morning while we were at the beachouse, and my grandparents took me on a picnic date. The beach we lived next to was beautiful to look at, but dangerous. It was the Pacific, after all.

We drove for an indefinite amount of time, I was eleven, and it’s hard to remember the passage of time when you are eleven. We arrived at a bright beach full of women in bikinis and handsome surfers. I waded for a while why my grandmother collected seashells next to me. She was hunched over with a large white hat and a blue swimsuit, seeming at home in her body, at home in the ocean.

My grandfather interrupted our peaceful search to teach me how to bodysurf. He said that he had taught my mom when she was younger than me, so we had a lot of catching up to do. It was awful; the saltwater swallowed me, flooding my nose over and over again. It was unbearable, until that one perfect wave I caught, that one that took me to the shore in an effortless curl. I chased that feeling, that freedom over and over again for the rest of the day, but it was impossible to find something as perfect as that one had been. Nevertheless, I found another freedom that day.

While I was resting, sitting waist deep next to a group of gulls cawing, I saw this person, with their surfboard. They must have been sixteen or seventeen, and I remember thinking that they were the most beautiful person I had ever seen. They had this sort of formless blonde hair that was plastered to their cheek with water. I couldn't tell whether they were a boy or a girl, and I liked that. After a few years of thinking about it, I understood what was so attractive about that person. I had seen myself in them, and seen who I wanted to be. I now understand that there is more than a boy or girl, there is an Other, and I really like that space. The one in between. That is the space that I want to exist in.

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