ABOUT MEN

By Mike Gordon
Advertiser Staff Writer

I saw the shark quite clearly. There was no mistaking it for any other fish. For something ordinary.

This one glided silently before me with predatory confidence. Sleek, gray, 20 feet away. Its dorsal fin slit the water like a knife blade.

When you're out surfing, as I was, you avoid saying the word "shark," as if somehow that might summon one from the depths. In four years of surfing, I had never seen a shark. I didn't want to.

Of course, I knew they were out there. Someone once told me that if you spend time in the ocean, you've already been spotted by a shark.

And I've seen sharks on TV, caught in some fearsome moment of flashing teeth. But you know they can't hurt you when your butt is on the couch.

It feels very different when your legs are hanging over the sides of a surfboard like live bait. Count to five and you'll know how long it took for me to shout a loud warning and catch the next wave.

Floating inside the reef, I talked it over with two buddies who hadn't seen the shark but heard the warning.

"The waves were really good," they said. "Are you sure? Maybe it was just looking for something."

I pointed a finger at my chest and wrote the word "SOMETHING." We all had a good laugh before going home.

That should have been the end of it. Instead, I have thought about the experience every day since.

This was nothing more than a chance encounter. Why should there be any meaning to it?

Then I would ask myself: But why not?

Until now, the only notable things I'd encountered in the ocean were a humpback whale and a topless woman. Neither seemed menacing.

When I told my shark story to others, it dawned on me that I had joined a brotherhood of those who have stories about the wild things in the world.

People listened to my story and were amazed. That amazed me more. Men who could share a similar story rushed to do so with pride.

Several men I know had come a lot closer to sharks. One friend swam through a school of fish off Waikiki and nearly bumped into a shark. Another kicked one away with his swim fins while diving off Midway.

I was barely into this fraternity when I began feeling inadequate. Their sharks were bigger, meaner — closer.

I hadn't stared into the face of death. I had just watched a swimming shark. Sharks live in the ocean, so what was the novelty in that?

A veteran surfer rescued my ego when he told me I had "arrived." He concluded that my encounter was mystical.

If the shark had wanted a bite, I would never have seen it coming, he said. And because it left me alone, that made it my very own 'aumakua, he said.

That sounded good to me. Everyone needs a guardian angel.

Still, the next time I went surfing, I kept scanning the ocean for something other than a wave.

And as I floated there, I couldn't decide which was better: To see a shark or not?