Cliffs is like that boyfriend your family warns you against and your friends hate.

“He’s a loser,” they say. “You’re just wasting your time.” “Ditch him,” they nag. “You can so find someone WAAAY better.” To their defense, they are mostly right. Cliffs isn’t exactly that gorgeous stud muffin called Bowls, or that metro Queens with his neatly trimmed grass, bushes, and hedges, and that undeniable, constant cocoa butter smell. In fact, Cliffs can sometimes be downright ugly. It’s 70% windy, 20% hairy, and 10% flat. It can’t handle most of the time. On 4-5 ft swells, it starts looking like a light weight after 5 shots of Patron. It just hurls these massive chunks of throw-ups. But when the stars, the blue moon, and the sun align just right, I have seen him stand up in perfect glass walls— but it’s only happened once.

But I’ve also had my share of heartaches. After several hard days at work, I come to him for a little solace and comfort—what do I get? A cold shoulder combination of flatness, choppiness, and a million of kooks like myself, I guess. It just hurts. Despite having a bruised ego from being taken so casually as if he just doesn’t give a shit, somehow, he’s got me captivated—And it’s because of days like this afternoon. Just when I was starting to believe that Cliffs is a piece of shit shmuck everyone tells me about… Just when the report says he’s a foot or a foot and half, he turns around and surprises me with a sweet clean solid 2-3 with only a handful of people out (well, for an hour at least). I remember now why I keep coming back to him. It’s afternoons like this when the resident monk seal greets me at the bottom of the trail. And it’s days like this when my skin tingles from the sun, my back aches from so much paddling, and my head is filled with snot from being worked—all worth every single perfect head/overhead clean wave I rode. It’s that surf cap in that surrealistic form of a vibrant red and orange sunset. Essentially, it’s these moments that remind me why I go to him. It’s that feeling of absolute serenity and content. Even for just a rare moment, he just makes me feel very gay—as in exceptionally happy.

…