1967 - 8,407
Previous Next TABLE OF CONTENTS
Change had broken into the Top 40. And it was rising with a bullet. The more people played its tune, the louder and more audacious it became and the more people sucked it up. Change wasn't just at the microphone, it was playing all the instruments, it was at the controls, it was working the lights.
And the water had changed. Oh, it was still wet, foamy, heavy with brine but the way it was viewed wasn't the same. Boards had dropped from over 9' to around 7' and they were still shrinking. Technological advances in foam had made it stronger and lighter and a variety of available glass weaves were layered thinner which meant less resin could be applied resulting in less weight to the boards. Changes were being fueled by the need to innovate. To surf, not in the old style of putting the board in the wave, but of moving the board in and around the break. Surfers weren't content to ride the wave, they wanted to thrash it to pieces.
Damon was the first of us to pick up on the new ride. He had made himself a board and he couldn't wait to show it to me. He left a frantic message for me to call him as soon as I got in. I thought it was some kind of emergency or something. He was so excited he was practically climbing through the receiver. I pictured him in his kitchen pacing and gesticulating like a mad Shakespearean actor.
He was heading north for the weekend.
Because I heard the news with less enthusiasm than it was presented I suppose the ensuing feeling of guilt was amplified by what transpired.
She had a taut and wiry body. The hip-hugging styles of the day were made for bodies like hers. Long and straight, her hair was dark and hid her face. She made me drool whether I was looking straight into her face or watching her little butt move. We had exchanged regards but there was never that widening of the iris that told me she was glad to see me. Then again, she didn't appear to be a girl who cast longing looks at anyone or anything. She wore skin that was 5 or 6 degrees cooler than the rest of us. But man, if I could ever warm her up - my imagination was doing the hootchy coo. Oh, and she was at my door.
"I need a favor from you."
I was all ears and crotch.
"My friend needs a ride and I know you've got a van."
I hoped her friend bore a resemblance.
"Can you drive to San Luis?"
"Yeh, the van should be able to make the grade."
"Thanks," Autumn's words covered the floor like whipping cream. "I'll check back with you when I know more."
Prolong my ecstasy as long as possible. I'd get to see her again, an event I looked forward to with hungry anticipation, more than I could say about Damon's impending visit.
I was working on my identity. I surfed, there was no use in denying it, but I didn't necessarily need to be a surfer, certainly not in Santa Barbara where half the goddamn population was evolving back into amphibians. I wanted to be something further out from the mainstream. Girls had a way of following members of the intelligensia. Unfortunately, I was comparatively stupid and I wasn't particularly good at hiding it. I wasn't a scholar. Self- discipline tended to make me tired so study-time and nap-time seemed to comingle into a case study for learning through osmosis. If I had talent or nerve or the ability to play an instrument, music would have been the way to go. Screaming girls trying to get into my room greatly appealed to me. But as it was, Fantasies were the only thing I could entertain.
So I began to flirt with being a politico. The requirements for being a radical are fairly limited. It's basically just attitude. I don't think you even need to know what you are talking about. Right wing politics wasn't even a consideration; a brain cast is bad enough but walking around like you've got a rod iron pole up the butt is too much. And the girls in the movement on the left were often cute even if they seemed to need to cover themselves with big coats and frumpy fashions. I became a revolutionary, if only in attire. And that was how I met the long haired, sleek bodied, beauty I was about to befriend, in a meeting of students concerned with our South East Asian policy.
Damon's appearance on the scene upset me. I knew he could detect me through any disquise and I knew he wasn't about to let me go unmasked. And he was encroaching into my territory. I'd staked out the university. I'd gone out on my own to make my mark without his help. I didn't want him horning in on my new friends and experiences. Yeh, it was entirely irrational especially because Damon was arriving on the scene to share with me his experiences.
Autumn knocked on my door again and told me her friend was joining her Thursday night and we'd leave sometime Friday. She looked better each time I saw her.
Friday afternoon rolled around and I heard nothing. Friday night she was at my door in an agitated state.
"He's had a bad time of it. He's too tired to leave before tomorrow morning."
"Let's make it early tomorrow morning," I said.
"I've got to get back to him. Be ready."
She had said "him". I don't know why I had not considered that her visitor would be a male but I hadn't and he was disturbing my vision of what the future might hold. And her anxiety rattled me.
A drive to SLO usually takes about 2 hours in the slow lane. That's 4 to 5 hours round trip. I was counting on leaving early in the morning, before 8. I figured I'd be back by noon and could hang out with Damon after lunch. Damon might have to wait a couple of hours for me but he could handle that.
About 9:30 they show up and they're in a hurry.
I considered waiting for Damon which is what I should have insisted on doing. But I opted to get on the road and get the trip over with. Besides I'd rather have only one companion on the return.
He was tall and thin with the stooped shoulder look that gave him the appearance of always squeezing under a door beam. He was in standard issue blue work shirt and jeans. So it wasn't his clothes that made her fawn all over his myopic face. There was idolatry in her eyes. They spoke in hushed whispers and their volume did nothing to include me in their conversation.
Before we left my room, I understood that I was just the driver, the wheelman who had no say in anything but the operation of the vehicle. In an effort to up my status, I grabbed my cowboy hat and a kerchief from my drawer.
"Alright, pilgrims, let's get the wagons moving." I thought I had the imitation down pretty good. "Belly up to the van, partners. Head 'em up, move 'em out." Both of them ignored me with great vigor.
"Are you a grad student at UCSB?"
"No," Autumn growled answering for him. I backed way off which was obviously the point of her reproach. I was clearly the passenger in my own vehicle.
Other than the question, "You got any Dylan?", he didn't speak to me. I put "Blonde on Blonde" on the tape deck and contemptuously hoped he was planning on "Blowing in the Wind".
About an hour out of Santa Barbara a Highway Patrol car pulled in behind and began trailing me.
"What's wrong?" She had noticed that I was checking the rear view mirror.
"Maybe nothing but the Highway Patrol has been following me for a while now."
Autumn looked back through the side mirror and he stayed down. They both were playing it a little too smooth. "Whatever you do don't get stopped."
It had taken only about 50 miles for my wheels to touch ground, for me to take off the parking brake, for my brain to engage. The furtive looks and now the admonishing tone as the specter of authority shadowed us, the big backpack including the heavy coat he carried. He was heading north alright, way north. And he was on the run.
I put the brim of my hat down low. What would the Duke do? The Duke, I thought, hell, he'd be in the goddamn patrol car, he's the cavalry. He'd be turning us in, pulling us over, guns blazing, asking questions later. The Duke wouldn't be riding in the van I was driving, anymore than he'd be an Indian or a Vietnamese or a Quaker or a pacifist or a conscientious objector. The Duke's conscience was linked to the old red, white and blue and all objections were handled with fists or bullets.
The black and white charged up the off ramp to secure the overpass.
I hadn't even considered flagging down the cop and having him run an ID check on my passengers. That choice was not on my list of viable options. The Duke was further from me than my passenger was from the border. The Stetson I was wearing dropped behind the seat.
San Luis Obispo is a neat little college town wrapped around the SLO Mission with the school sitting on the north end on a hill. We meandered around a couple of side streets.
Autumn triple checked the address, "This is it. I'll go to the door." She came back distressed. "No one home."
We waited in silence for several minutes. "This isn't good. We're too conspicuous. Let's go rest somewhere else."
After an hour of bouncing between a variety of shopping centers, we came back to the address and they were home. My passenger gathered his traveling kit together. I handed him the cowboy hat, "Here, you're going to need this." The two of them headed into the house while I waited in the van.
The return trip was forgettable. I tried to fire up a little conversation but I might as well have been a coroners assistant 'cause I was pulling a dead body. I put Hendrix on. You have to get use to Hendrix and I don't think she was.
"Do you have to listen to that kind of music?"
"Yeh."
It was late afternoon when we got back. Autumn managed to exit the van and head towards her dorm without saying a word.
A note from Damon was on my desk. "Waited, but you didn't show. Had to leave." I called his house and he wasn't back yet so I spoke to his mom and tried to explain but it sounded feeble even to me. And even later when I saw him again, there was a gulf. Perhaps, if I'd come clean and told him I was scheming on a girl and she took me for a ride, something he could understand, and then asked him back the next weekend we could have gotten back on the same wave but I didn't and we weren't.
My board sat propped against the wall. It called out to me. I nodded at it and took it to the beach. The waves and I were not in the same key. I couldn't find the groove. Nothing felt right. I'd take off and crank a turn and then sail right off the top of the wave. Or I'd come back towards the curl and get so far behind the break that I couldn't catch up again to get out front. Maybe it was the conditions. There were waves but also wind and I don't like wind. Some surfers hunger for an offshore breeze because it pumps up the wave and blows against the face and hollows it out but it also throws off your timing by holding up the nose of your board and sending spray into your face as you paddle for the wave. The swell lifts and you rise into the fuller force of the wind blowing against the wall of water. In addition to the wind, the afternoon sun was backlighting the waves. That meant that the upsurge at your back as you paddled had the effect of blotting out the sun and shadowing everything inside the curl. Very eerie.
Surfers are heavy birds with short wings. We can grab the air and stay aloft for a span of time. To the casual observer it may seem natural, but it is not without great exertion and it is always a question of measurement, how far?, how long?, before the flight is over. So when the natural forces conspire to keep the bird grounded, the surfer asks himself if the air has ceased to be his silent partner.
A bad day grabs me by the throat and pins me against the wall. I'm ready to cash it all in. That's it, I won't recover. I've seen the downward gyre. I've experienced its centrifugal spiral. You stand on the sand, surfboard under your arm and watch and count and wait for the big set to strike. You grab your chance, after the last of the big waves when the breakers adjust back down in size, you spring towards the horizon, fling yourself onto your board and commence striking the water. You push through the shorebreak with your timing, momentum, and your fresh energy. It's not a set wave but a substantial body of water and it hits you square and shoves you back and in the direction of the current. You right yourself and climb back on the board. It takes more energy but you make it back to where the crests are forming and maybe you make it over the first barrier but the second racks you badly and you fight its push. Your arms are noticably weakened and you're breathing is coming from your gut. You slap at the water as your strength loses its muscle and begins to flap at your side. You are no longer able to scoop the water to pull yourself through it. The set waves roll in. At first they're shadows on the horizon. You may not even see them from where you are prone and concentrating on just moving forward. You're almost grateful for the expediency of the large swell that casually dismantles you and flips you, sputtering and feeble back to shallow water, stripped of all resolve.
Sea lions putrify on the beach. Their bloated carcasses stink in the sun. They are not fish. They are fishermen. Theirs is the domain of the ocean. Yet they are not a part of it. It is not their home, only their area of expertise. They breathe as we breathe. They come to die amidst the rocks or are washed ashore when they can no longer navigate the waters. I step gingerly across the wet compacted sand trying to give there decaying remains a wide berth but still the ghastly choking stench takes residence in my nostrils.