NEWPORT
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I'm in a deep dark funk. In a room with no windows or doors. A room painted black. You could show me the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, a Van Gogh, and I wouldn't see it. I mean I'd recognize its presence but I wouldn't see its form or shape. Beauty doesn't exist. Laughter angers me. I'm pissed. Pissed off at everything and everyone and it only gets darker. It is the isolation of those in mental institutions, the isolation of the aged, the isolation of the infirmed. I've moved inside, away from the physical world of touch and smell into a scowling box of space.
I know why the impatient souls walk onto the tracks in front of the speeding train. They are not loaded down with the weight of innumerable burdens. Just the opposite. They can no longer attach significance to the annoyances and irritations. They're weary of the pettiness. And the sameness. No such thing as exotic exists. If people are present, it's the same pathetic howl across the globe. To the restless, the train is a way of not surrendering. Screw you. You think you're going to take me alive? I've got one more maneuver.
If the Wedge was breaking, maybe I could at least be diverted. How could you not acknowledge the spectacle? The water is usually a clean aquamarine color and the tanned limbs and torsos and heads are easy to pick out as they go sailing into the sand. The wave seems to skyscrape as it sweeps down the jetty to break in shallow water and slam everything within its grasp into the sandy bottom.
I always felt vulnerable body surfing. I routinely faced much larger waves when surfing but it was the nakedness of body surfing that unnerved me. You have nothing between you and the wave. Instead of being freer with the wave your stuck in its fist. A board skims across the water so it moves at a speed faster than the wave but a body surfer must be a part of the water mass. You're at the mercy of every surge, the ones that go out as much as the ones that are coming in. And when I finally do find a wave to swim for and I kick myself into its movement, I'm always aware that it would just as soon snap my back as push me to shore.
But the Wedge wasn't breaking and the hot white sand was nearly empty under the overcast. Not the anticipated bevy of bikinied beauties to hasten my heart. I was left more despondent as I headed for Surf City.
Godzilla hotels are eating up Huntington, taking the best air, abducting the views. The small places are being smashed or swallowed by the monster chains. The only familiar landmarks are the hulking grasshoppers pumping oil. Behemoths don't fight each other, too much risk of fatal injury. A serpentine mall is being hatched on main street. Only a matter of time before the thing gobbles what remains of the former character of the city. The quaint old beach cottages are mutating into freakish condos and multi-million dollar abominations. Real estate agents must be jerking off in the alleys to relieve the tension. The surf shops will have to relocate inland to the low rent areas.
The tattoos and piercings on the kid's bodies are moving testimonials to the love and respect they hold for their parents. Walking billboards to 225 years of independence. Their town is being pillaged, sewage spills have become routine poisonings, poor crazy people are scrounging for recyclables, hardass cops patrol the streets their nightsticks alive at their side primed to get into the game, and the kids are busy spiking and coloring their hair. But maybe that's their only recourse. Powerless except over their own bodies.
Did we all go south? These weren't the children we were going to raise. We are our parents, those kids are who we were. Where are the proud righteous caring children who were going to be free and able to go 15 rounds with the world, who would dance on the belly of trouble and sing in the face of incorporated madness. These kids are straight and more uptight than a pole up the ass. They've got psychosomatic hair loss from worrying about not getting into the right school. They don't wear the correct socially acceptable shoes and their peers ostracize them to the lunch table for geeks.
"SKATEBOARDING IS NOT A CRIME" was smeared across a street sign. Tell me I'm over-blowing the repression. At least they're not being drafted. But they're still shooting each other. The county hospitals are filled with paraplegics and cadavers from the self-hating drive-by's.
Skateboarding is not a crime. I wonder if my kid is out on midnight runs tearing up the sidewalk, his buddies blowing kisses at keystone cops as they wheel down a flight of steps.
It is amazing what the kids on the skateboards can do. Sliding down handrails, twirling the board in mid-air, hanging off the lips of jumping ramps, staring wide-eyed into faceplants and then sailing down the slope and into the next trick. I've never seen my kid skate.
I left Huntington and ran north. I knew that Redondo and Manhatten were more of the same and I didn't feel like fighting traffic even to take a peek at their pretty beaches.
The Venice boardwalk was at one time a focus of cosmic weird energy. Entertainers, psychics and psychos, freaks and 9 to fivers dressed up to be freaks, misfits, the homeless and the panhandling, buzz saw jugglers and fire eaters, swamis and unholy preachers, musclemen and skimpy swimsuited babes, basketball games and paddle tennis, biking and skating. The socialites ate at the sidewalk cafe while the rabble milled on the strand. You could be walking next to a pretty round bottomed skater one minute and the baddest, hippest, meanest, dude the next. L.A.'s pro athletes would wander down on their off days. The young Hollywood types would come down out of the L.A. heat to check things out between deals. Venice always had a criminal element in it. Plenty of junkies and way too many rapists. So when gang activity picked up it was a good excuse for the city officials to rein in the boardwalk. What self- respecting grifter files a permit? The authorities wanted the drummers licensed and the impromptu conga sessions that held 1 to 101 players checked for decibel levels. Strangulation is incremental. It's not like a shot through the head. For instance: at first, dogs ran free. That was cool as long as they didn't bite or fight or hump your leg. You just stepped around the dogshit. But because they did bite, fight, and hump, they were put on leashes. That didn't curb the shit. So eventually they were restricted altogether. Only one element of color removed, you say. But even if it stopped there, which, of course, it never does, would you tell Gauguin to remove a color from one of his paintings? Certainly not, and this is real life.
I sat at the light on PCH and Lincoln and watched a bent up man slobber down the sidewalk. His belongings were piled into his shopping cart. It was difficult to determine his age. He was ageless and might as well have been faceless, bodiless, and soulless. Officially, he doesn't exist. We didn't build our cities or our freeways or our concert halls or stadiums or great business centers for the likes of him. He leaned into his bundle as the wheels wobbled across the pavement. The grate to the storm drains wedged the front wheel and he pushed and pulled and struggled against the snare.
Three teenage boys were sauntering down the sidewalk towards him, hip-hopping, boogalooing, and jiving down the street.
I braced myself for the confrontation. Teens generally slip to the lowest common denominator at every chance they get. Anyone more vulnerable than they is usually one of those chances. I knew they'd give the poor old guy a rough time. I was braving myself trying to find the courage to respond to them. One blocked his path and the other two had flanked his cart. Then without skipping a bounce or a waggle of the head they lifted the cart out of the street and onto the sidewalk.
I don't even know if the man was coherent enough to be grateful. They didn't mind, just continued to be-bop down the line.
What a dickhead I told myself. Why is it I believe all the crap I hear? Kids' lowest denominator is often higher than mine. I don't think I'd have crossed the street to help the guy. Too afraid to catch germs. Who knows when the last time was that he washed his hands. Those three were head and shoulders above me. I slunked back into the driver's seat of my car with my head down against my chest. I was low and getting lower.
I bypassed Venice and the more gentrified Santa Monica and went straight to Malibu. Malibu had a contest going on. I might have driven right past once I saw the event was taking place except someone on the northbound side of the road pulled away from the curb leaving an empty place to park and I couldn't pass up the gift.
I dodged the cars trying to kill me as I crossed PCH and dropped onto the sand. The girls at Malibu are unique. They look like would-be starlets a little too desperate to make the big time.
Half the beach was closed for the contest. The contest took over the far point near the river mouth. The inside point that was normally reserved for the longboarders was given over to those who had to have their surf fix. The locals were not appeased. Bullhorns blared and warned away the intruders who ran commando raids inside the contest buoys.
I've never understood surfing contests. I've never understood considering surfing a contest sport. Not that some surfers aren't better than others, the pros are as good as it gets on a surfboard. They're quicker, stronger and I dare say smarter on a wave than your average bear but between you and me and the waves, from a purely qualitative perspective, given two surfers of exceptional ability, it's difficult to tell who is riding a wave better. Furthermore, as any surfer worth his weight in silicon grains knows, it is entirely irrelevant to the activity. Surfing is not about performing on the waves, it's about the ocean doing its dance on your being.
People as a rule need to be validated and surfers are no different. The more money, the greater the validation. And money went bigtime when the clothing, beer, and Fortune 500 sponsors kicked in. People were being paid to surf. They were getting money not for manufacturing a product but for manufacturing an image. Surfing had become an All-American-corporate-conglomerate- acceptable-by-parents activity. It was enough to make me puke. You want to be identified as a surfer?, then you've got to get in the magazines. You want to get in the magazines?, find yourself a sponsor. You want a sponsor?, score big in a couple of contest heats. The message is clear. If you're not featured, you ain't a real surfer but you can become a real surfer or at least get close to becoming a real surfer. All you have to do is purchase whatever it is that the real surfer is shown standing next to or holding in his hand in the glossy pages of the magazines. You want to know the goddamn absolute truth about real surfers. Honest to god,real surfers wish they were the only ones in the world who ever thought of riding a wave on something called a surfboard. They don't want people to see them walking along the beach with that silly grin on their face, nor do they want anyone to watch them twirling in the water, or resting on the beach like they were the goddamn kings of all nothingness and proud of it. Real surfers only care about getting their waves, not about people or what they think or what they do, because one way or another people get in the way.
The judges signalled that another heat was completed and I watched the contestants who had just finished their heat belly in on their waves so they wouldn't interfere with the next round. How splendidly organized. We are measurers. We measure things, events, each other and our own lives. I'm a failure by any measure.
I have no illusions only delusions, like performing rescues. When I look out at the water sometimes I see kids at the beach and I want to have the chance to save them, to see them in trouble, fling down my wallet and keys, kick off my shoes and dive into the surf, swim and bob my way out to them, calm their fears by telling them I've faced waves three times the size, wrap my arms around their chest and press them agains my side and stroke in with them in tow. I want the chance to make my life worth something and a rescue would do that.
Damon blamed me for taking his brother away. He never said it but he didn't have to, I would have felt that way had our positions been reversed. I had made it back to the states but because Rallio had deserted he was not entitled to parole. If Rallio had been this titanic presence in my life, it must have been ten times worse for Damon. Rallio was his older brother, a whirling mixture of competing and enveloping forces striking at the mention of his name. But it made no sense for Rallio to take Damon with him. Damon was married and had a high number so he never would have had to go. Besides, Rallio didn't do me any favor.
The sidewalk along PCH was spotted with melted wax. You gotta have wax for your board. Wet fiberglass is the most slippery surface known to man. Wax, like everything else, has been taken to science and science has given us a boxful of flavors and styles. We use to go into the cooking section of grocery stores and buy bars of parafin or let candle wax drip onto the deck. Now they've got cold water wax, summer wax, vanilla wax, cinnamon wax. They've even got non-wax wax. You peel off these pieces of rubber and stick them on your board so it becomes a non-slip surface. I confess I never really got the hang of rubbing the old bars of parafin on my board. It took too much muscle to lay it down and I have always lacked muscle.