Surf & Sex

oceans and orgasms.

Sri Lanka, 2026.

Warm light, calm energy, 4 Europeans sat around a wooden table on the other side of the world. I’m the only man. Important to some. I’m away for a few weeks so wondering what happens in the evenings. Where I can mingle, make friends, chat shit, hear stories. All that good stuff. Soul searching. I ask them what their plans are that evening. Honestly, it was as if I was speaking another language. I might have been speaking their second language but we were all engaging moments before with that same tongue. I was met with silence because past 10pm they do not have plans. They might have done when they first arrived in Sri Lanka but certainly not now. The only plan these women seem most concerned with is the one with their big blue lovers. Up at 5 o’clock and into the ocean’s arms, every single morning. At one point, one of them had been lamenting about their inability to maintain a long term relationship. I began to wonder if they were acknowledging the one they were already in.

Initially I came out to Sri Lanka as the result of a love for heat, scooters, a budding interest in Buddha, the ocean and my friend has a house here. I’m writing my next book. And a trip to Sri Lanka in January served as part inspiration for the book’s content. I hadn’t realised the extent of surf culture out here. I knew you could surf and that people enjoyed surfing but I hadn’t witnessed or engaged with the lifestyle. I also hadn’t surfed that much myself, but being that a surf retreat named Surf & Soul kindly offered me their space as a kind of residency - it’s become unavoidable. Up at the crack of dawn, awake at the break of wave, maybe again at dusk, definitely asleep before midnight.

It’s particularly the women I’ve spoken to about surfing that I’ve been most intrigued by. In my experience, I’ve not witnessed a sport based hobby draw the attention of such a diverse pool of women and it tip into obsession to the point of priority. Perhaps I’m being naive or ignorant. I know women who play tennis but they don’t play tennis every day for 70% of the year. I know women who write every day or play music every day or paint every day. I know women who run every day or go to the gym every day. Do yoga every day and develop various meditational groundings as practice. But many of these interests are flexible or can adapt in and around life’s many random circumstances. The control still lies predominantly with the hobbyist. What’s so fascinating about surfing is that such a large part of the experience relies on the balance of nature and the variables that nature carries with it. There’s no anti wind machine that you can apply to the ocean. Or sun deflecter. Once you really get into surfing you can get wiped out and end up face to face with a shark.

I specify women because I know loads of men who will engage in sporty hobbies or interests to the point of obsession and priority. Who will play football every day or rock climb or cycle. I guess cycling becomes subject to nature too. Or even more heady like fantasy football or football manager. Gaming is a huge thing for men. Finding times of day and close circles and headsets in order to feel alive and establish a very new age sense of connection. In the case of gamers, it’s the internet that acts as the major and deciding variable but that’s pretty available these days.

And even still, having just started gaming with one of my best friends recently. The parallels between the joys that come from it and things like male sensuality become quite obvious. The rushes of dopamine are instant and constant and up and down and exhausting and even if there is presence of focus when the games are in full swing, there’ll be moments between the games where we can pick up our phones and double screen or reply to a quick message or check our social media.

In feeling, that must serve as the core allure for every human engaged with surfing. The fact that it requires total presence and having a phone in the ocean is (((currently))) incompatible. *I do know one surfer guy that has an indestructible Apple Watch. Is that because he’s a man? Who knows.

The passion I hear from the women on this island about surfing draws more parallels to football than anything. Supporting a team. Because essentially the games themselves are out of our hands, but the culture around it is intoxicating. There will be many occasions where football will take priority over relationships, for better or for worse. Do I know any men that would actually pick their football team over love? I’m not sure. I’m off shore. Probably.

There’s something sensual about surfing. It carries with it unignorable parallels to what I’ve learned is more of a [[ typically ]] female experience of sex, for example. The amount of energy involved in paddling out to get onto the right side of the waves is a lot. And involves concentration and balance. It involves constant conversation with the ocean and attention to its movements and suggestions. You have to adjust your position accordingly. You have to be ready to adjust if a prediction is mistimed. It’s easy to exert a lot of energy paddling out in the hope that the quicker or more tense the movements are, the further out you can get. But the reality is that the paddling is more about form and precision, which enables you to travel further with less output. Then after the initial push, you sit on the board and wait. Immediately, after that initial struggle, you’re met with the grandiosity of the Earth’s body of water. You can look out and see the horizon. You eventually turn on the board to face the shore and pay attention to tiny curvatures in the water to predict what might become a wave. The reward for that labour isn’t another screen or distraction. It’s the opposite. It’s a lesser challenge with added beauty. A mini reward before the potentially overwhelming one. The reward that keeps rewarding. The feeling that permeates the mind in the hours before an early bed time. The feeling that arises when someone asks you what your plans are that night at 9pm.

If the shape of the waves has been correctly predicted, if the paddle is measured and precise, if the feeling of the energy that the wave carries arrives once the paddles quicken slightly, then you jump onto the board and find communion. If desired you can go from sea to sand. Some don’t. The real professional surfers can be so far inside that the breaking of one wave brings with it the start of another one. The ocean is capable of multiple waves within a short period of time. And with enough practice, you can catch every one.

Sometimes you can paddle out. Mistime a wave. Fall off the board. And have to start again. But you just do - because it’s worth it. Build and then release. A fight then freedom. A flow state from a flow state. A flow state plus. Presence in getting in position. Ultimate presence being carried by the energy of nature. It’s difficult to disagree with wanting to spend so much time in nature. There aren’t many greater connections available. And nowadays it appears it might provide a better connection than some people.

I’d surfed once before in Costa Rica but that was it. First lesson in is mainly just jumping up onto the board and keeping balance. Saying that - my ‘pop up’ was decent because of that extra hour. Helped me head into the waves sooner. My instructor in Sri Lanka assured me that I was a strong beginner but I was a long way from being in the line up. That’s where surfers go unassisted and from the sounds of it, it’s also where much of my ignorant optimism might drown.

After a couple of lessons and a couple of days of getting smashed to pieces by waves beyond my ability, I began to surf green waves and they were thrilling. Surfing green waves is what surfing is ultimately about because you’re making the most of a wave before it breaks rather than just surfing on the energy of a breaking wave which is what you do whilst you’re learning. When you’re learning and surrounded by beginners —> watching someone catch a green wave is met with encouragement and applause. Contagious joy. I carried this back to where I was staying one afternoon and asked if this joy carried through to the level of the line up. I asked if I had finally stumbled across an egalitarian and uplifting hobby?

My friend’s faces dropped and the answer was no.

They made it very clear that once they got good enough to hit the line up - the reality of the world that we live in arrived. A couple of my friends said that they’d get hit on in the line up. I could understand that being suffocating if they were there alone. It’s an athletic hobby though - we’ve all heard about the Olympic village. Some experiences I’m too far from. Perhaps etiquette was lost with the dopamine. I don’t know, I didn’t pry too much. What was massively shared as a frustration though was ‘enforcement’ of hierarchy into the line up. If all waves good waves were coalescing in one area, surfers would line up and take turns by order of who was the most competent. Achievable in a communal group that all know each other. Less so if you’re in new waters.

Apparently in place of community - remarkably reductive assumption would kick in. Mainly gendered. Apparently you could find yourself cut off by a male surfer regardless of whether or not they’d seen or engaged with you about your competence. The bigger the waves, the less it became about creating an infinite unison with what constitutes the majority of our planet, and more about dominating the water itself. Increasing risk as much as possible. Strict order. Cliquey behaviour. Dismissive. Uninviting. Gatekeeping bullshit.

All of these frustrations were communicated to me before I chose to share my newfound love for surf culture on my weekly podcast ((( Miss Me? ))). Dissapointingly /// and without goading, the subsequent response to my enthused relaying of surf culture, was the very people I had been warned about. It pisses me off to say it but the haters were exclusively men. Pridefully I can also say that there were opposing male surfers in the comments who stepped in to denounce these self appointed surf guardians too. Those guys are legends.

All the female surfer comments were positive. It blows my fucking mind that someone can watch a video of a novice talking about how cool they found surf culture, and their immediate response is to belittle and demean the experience. At no point did I say that I myself was an authority. I simply relayed my experience. When the first snarky fucker responded, I simply replied “they warned me about people like you”. And shortly afterwards I faced this response.

“@jordanfstephens you’re literally being told about surf culture by someone who understands surf culture and you’re arguing with them. These people you spoke to are not surfers, they are kooks. They can not surf they do not understand surf culture, they are the parasites of the ocean and are despised by actual surfers as they don’t understand the rules of surfing and how they should behave in the line up. There has been a global influx of these morons in places like Sri Lanka Philippines and Bali where I live. Most core surfers will party at places like you’re talking about and they’ll go to locations where there is world class waves that are actually waves of consequence where they surf all day getting barrelled off their heads come in have a feed a few beers and crash out before 9 ready to get up at 4:30am and do it all again. The people you’ve spoken to can barely stand up and have never been barrelled in their lives!!“ - angry surfing instagram male person

There’s always going to be purists. Everywhere. In every form. And most of them I think are pricks. I understand authentic critique if it feels as though an art form is under attack or having its lineage tampered with. If there’s no respect to the form’s history and people make harmful misinterpretations. Or claim something to be their own. I can be a snob sometimes. But it’s something I’m aware of and it’s certainly not something I would share publicly unless it felt profoundly valid or in opposition of a greater level of snobbery ((( my disdain towards Adrien Brody for example ))).

Everyone I spoke to in Sri Lanka had a genuine love for surfing and the ocean. They didn’t claim ownership over anything. Ownership over the ocean is actually deranged. The man who speaks of ‘kooks, culture and consequence’ does not strike me as a sensual man. I can only assume that a person willing to be this closed minded in a comment section under a video applauding the hobby that he enjoys - is a highly strung control freak who has somehow arrived at the idea that he is something more than a tiny dot on the planet. I could be wrong! He could be a surfing purist / great lover! I wouldn’t put money on it.

I loved it at Soul & Surf. My new friend Rosie Parton was full of wisdom in particular. And her partner Rash is supposedly the best surf teacher on the island. He got me onto bigger waves quick. A couple turned up on the second week and were lovely. Both surfers. One Brazilian, one Australian. They were very experienced. Another retreat attendee said that they saw him go out into some big windy waves and it was incredible. He lived and breathed it. I didn’t hear him say a single disparaging thing about any beginners or god forbid female surfers the entire time. And his partner seemed very happy.