I am your girlfriend, not your ‘groupie’: I do not intend to adopt my boyfriend’s ‘hobby’

PalmaMy boyfriend and I don't have any hobbies in common. We don't have weekends for going hiking or mountain climbing, nor do we have Wednesday salsa or bachata, or yoga afternoons, or mornings of cycling and specialty coffee. We have nothing that binds us to the other like a subscription, an extracurricular activity that you've already paid for until next year. You can unsubscribe whenever you want. We are fond of each other, without intermediaries. Something clean, that leaves no room for error, a blank voucher with random options: the last session of the day to go see the one by Sorogoyen, a paddle surf excursion in Colònia de Sant Pere, an exhibition at the Toni Catany, a walk through L'Estanyol, or a dinner at the Vietnamese restaurant in Palmanova.

We have both assimilated that we do the things we enjoy on our own, that we don't have to convince each other to try our hobbies; that this won't make us or our interests any better. We are quite clear about it, until we leave for vacation in our beloved province of Cadiz. Then, the pacts appear: he ends up having rebujitos at three in the morning inside a caseta at the feria in Conil and I, renting a surfboard for two hours at El Palmar. And all to conclude the same as Foster Wallace, that it is A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again.

I have been on a surfboard three times in my life, and each time has started with the same feeling of not knowing how that piece of cork behaves. I can recognize a good part of the semantic field of surfing and understand what an in and out is, but, when the wave comes towards me, I remain paralyzed, not knowing what to do with those two meters of fear and adrenaline. It is funny to see a person so out of their natural element, and that is why I grant my boyfriend the luxury of seeing me like this, shouting that it is lucky that I know how to read and write and that I don't have to dedicate myself to anything that has to do with this to survive.

Neither my head nor my body are made to assimilate those forces of nature. I do not practice the sport: I train for the ridiculous. There is no one who screams louder than me on this beach. “The fins, the fins! The fins will hit me in the head!”, I constantly warn my boyfriend –now, instructor– when he encourages me to let myself go pushed by a wave. I know what comes next: the front tip will sink, control will escape me and the foam will make me get ejected to one side, and my bikini and the board, to another.

In the time that this exceptional moment of obeying my boyfriend's orders lasts, I can only think of my muses, and the compassion they would feel for me. I remember Amaia, when she got Californian highlights on Operación Triunfo: “They tell me: ‘Surfer style’. And I: ‘But what are you saying about surfer? But I am from Pamplona!’”. And also Hannah, at the beginning of the last season of Girls, when she leaves to write a chronicle of a surf camp and fakes an arm injury to free herself from classes and take refuge in the infirmary. A resource that, in my case, I have to discard, because the nurse is also my boyfriend.

Men who seek a hobby and not a partner

I distrust couples who are so united by a sport, or by a hobby. I ask myself: if it were taken away from them, what would be left of them? Would they know how to face the void? Would they have things to say to each other? They remind me of the marriages that call each other “mommy” and “daddy” and who, when the children leave home, realize that they no longer have anything in common. But I distrust even more the men who look for partners with the same hobbies as them. It is as if they could not bear for someone to have to talk to them about a subject that does not interest them during the two hours that, at most, they will spend together a day (the time we have left after work, the gym, shopping, dinner, the tupperware). And this is just the type of guy we find on the beach during our holidays: guys with girls who are fans of surfing –whether they practice it or not–, who walk a few steps behind them on the sand, up and down, taking photos and videos of them, dressed in baggy “surfer style” t-shirts.

From the beach bar where I sit, I can witness this staging. At the table next to me, two couples are sitting and one of the girls boasts of knowing everything about her boyfriend's routines, and explains them proudly: “Every morning he takes collagen and also eats the chicken skin, because it is a natural source”. Rather, she is his groupie. I eavesdrop on other conversations and their voices always seem like a distant echo, as if their words were dictated: they sound used, learned by heart. They repeat that the “conditions today are not good” or that it is “a very sacrificial sport”, as if they could not break the silence with their new, fresh ideas, basted in their heads. They talk about what they already know, trying to fill the void that separates them. And I cross myself remembering the time when I tried to understand what an ollie or a varial was, sitting on the bench in the Plaça del Tub, with my friends. Passive, motionless, surrounded by skaters interested only in shattering their shins into many little pieces.

I retrace my path from the beach bar, walking along the sand, conscious of the collective trauma that is having invested so many hours in hobbies that did not interest us, just to try to shorten this void. Until I arrive at our towel, where my boyfriend is chatting with another surfer, from the Philippines, who suddenly offers me his board: “And you, don't you surf?”. No, thanks, it's fine like this.