Guys with Giles Guile

22 June

ON a 5km coastal walk from Bondi to Coogee beaches, I lingered at the Giles Baths rockpool to watch the boys jump.

The Giles rockpool is a brilliant natural bowl at the northern tip of Coogee beach. At the base of dark cliffs, the rocks provide a nearly circular wave break & a rough pool the size of a house. A steep set of stairs runs down to it. Adults pause at the rail above to watch.

Skinny 13 or 14 year old boys in black wet-suits perch at the ocean-side rim & hurl themselves into the water exactly as a choice wave smacks the rock, exploding upwards, & then fills the bowl with a turbulent cream. The jumper’s head breaks to the surface again like an otter’s & he paddles up to do it again, about as happy as youth can be.

Rockpools are one of these minor wonders that makes me happy to be a human. Because if there exists a rockpool with exploding waves, then people will hurl themselves into it. This is axiomatic. Just as people will climb on unusual cliffs, rooftops & chairlift towers, even though it’s dangerous & there’s nothing up there. No amount of dire warning signs will stop people from doing this. It’s just what we do: if it’s fun, we’ll play on it.

It was here that I overheard a perfect moment of early manhood.

When the 3 otter-boys tired of jumping into the bowl from the rim they shivered up the steps & leapt from the various ledges above it. These were still a little ways down from us onlookers, some of them out of sight entirely. Being directly down from me, the jumps were riveting as the boys would simply disappear over the side to what looked like certain death by dashing against hidden rocks below.

This was their pool, though. Up close I could see beneath their goosebumps that they were leanly muscled & sun-bleached: they did this all the time. Their suits were well-worn. This was their childhood delight. Sure enough, a too-long moment later they’d bob out into the bowl & wiggle right back up the steps to jump again.

Then one time, all at once, they spy another boy at the top.

This new boy is the same height as they are, but he’s crossed over: conspicuously broader in the shoulder & jaw, ruinously handsome & confident in the way of a benevolent alpha. To their adolescent skinny, this new boy is comfortably tanned & muscled from surfing & swimming in the ocean. To their plastered-down kid hair, his mop has an intentional cut & style. More, he’s not wearing a wetsuit. He’s dry &—in a ballsy defiance of winter—wearing nothing but cool, red swim trunks. He does not have goose bumps.

The otter-boys approach this new kid as if summoned, as if drawn by magnets, wearing slack expressions of awe. This is their pool in some way & if this new kid were just a year younger, I think their gang might lay down some laws. But this—they can’t compete with this. They stand with their arms limp & their toes together, blinking. Suddenly their black wetsuits seem excessive, maybe something their mother made them wear to keep warm out there, honey, with all those big waves.

Slightly agape, they wait for him to address them. Or to do something amazing, something only kids who need razors can do. Gracious in his superiority, red-trunks only glances over the side here & there—so casual—as if for a place to jump. No, exactly for a place to jump. From HERE.

Red-trunks has drawn them up to the grassy flat part of the cliff, directly opposite the observation rail, where I’m standing. It’s much higher here—death-defyingly higher. It doesn’t take but a glance to know that our 3 otter-boys have never even considered jumping from here.

“Is it cold?” asks Red-Trunks, flattering them by asking. His voice has broken, too.

“Uh. No,” pipes an otter, trying to sound off-hand & cool. “It’s not bad.” Then again, he’s not mostly naked.

“All right,” nods Red-Trunks & without a second’s hesitation, flits right off the cliff. He flew. He levitated. I saw it. He just glanced down, raised his arms & vlip! The kid was gone. I didn’t see him again.

Now the otter boys are left standing there with their knees locked. They don’t move. They don’t speak. They exchange nervous glances. Their future has been written & not by them. Then one of them, nicely summing it up for all 3, says simply: “Fuck.”

They all nod at the rightness & profundity of this. Then, one by one, with no alternative, they throw themselves over the cliff.