*This piece was originally written in 2018. I worked long and hard on it. I feel it’s some of my strongest writing. Do me a favor: I need two things:
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**If you’re interested in a “brain dump” of anecdotes, random thoughts, book notes, poetry, etc etc etc, check out my latest post on Sincere American Writing.
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There was silence. No one said a word. It was one of those early January days in your youth when you realize that life is very short and mostly good but that there are mysteries in this world that you won’t comprehend until much later. This was before the alcoholism came, before girls, before drugs, before getting kicked out of high school, before punk rock, before all the chaos that etched itself into my life like some jagged bowie knife.
I recently started reading the memoir called Barbarian Days, by William Finnegan, a book about Finnegan’s surfing experiences in the sixties, seventies, eighties and nineties, all the way up to the present. He’d been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1987, and had been a war reporter. But, in the mid 1960s, he moved with his family, as a 13-year-old, to Hawaii. This was where his real surfing apprenticeship began.
Besides the writing being gorgeous, his story resonates deeply with me. Growing up in Southern California—Ventura first, Ojai starting in 1991, when I was eight years old—I learned to surf around age ten. By eleven I had a “gun,” a term used for a half long, half short board—a long, thick board but with the style of a short board, traditionally used for big-wave days—and by twelve I could carve green swell with the old guys. By age 13—where Barbarian Days starts—I was surfing this spot in Ventura, not yet popular, called Solimar Beach.
Solimar—“Soli” my friend Chris and I called it—was right off Highway One in Ventura, off PCH, Pacific Coast Highway. A half mile string of million-dollar homes sat above the sand facing the curving beach. Early morning sunlight glinted off homes’ windows. There was the road—PCH—and the train tracks (you could see long silver Amtrak trains and old rickety freight trains with text saying “Burlington Northern Santa Fe” in black against rusty red passing as you surfed) and then palm trees, hills and dense California forest. Cars swished back and forth on Highway One.
I don’t remember anymore how Chris and I “discovered” Soli. We were 13 and 14. Chris was one year older. He lived in Oak View, a working-class town sandwiched between Ventura and Ojai. I came from money. He did not. By the age of five or six he’d been helping his father here and there at his plumbing business. And he worked part time during the summers. He would be expected to work throughout high school.
My dad was driving us around on PCH in his ’94 beige Dodge Ram truck, our short boards lightly clattering in the metallic back bed, up and down the Ventura coast, when we saw the perfect peak breaking out there in front of the million-dollar homes. Dad pulled over. Chris and I watched a few sets. We eyed each other.
Twenty minutes later we were out. It was January. Cold. A storm brewing. Light on/off rain. We were the only ones. Our wetsuits kept us warm but barely. We had to move to keep warm. The water was a gray brown sludge color, not from runoff or anything but because of recent rain and winter storms. When you “duck-dove” under a wave you got that ice cream headache.
After a wave I crested which was enormous but easily avoidable due to how far left I’d gone, I saw the “huge wave” Chris had yelled about. It was huge. Probably “double over head,” meaning a solid 10 or 11 feet. Most gigantic wave I’d ever seen live, let alone been out in the water to witness. Terror bloomed in my mind. I felt paralyzed. But I kept paddling. I doubled my effort; I paddled so hard my arms felt like rubber.
Before we knew it we were catching waves, left, right, chest high. It was fun. Exhilarating. Chris had a fat grin on his face. He was tall and skinny and muscled; carved out of clay. He worked with his hands, came from blue collar Irish Catholic alcoholic stock. My hands were soft. I was from the upper-middleclass. A different world. Everyone in my family had a master’s degree. My dad had two. He was a computer engineer that worked for the Navy. My mom taught a master’s nursing program at Cal State. Chris’s dad owned a piping and heating company which Chris was expected to work at. His mom worked there, too. He had two younger sisters. I was an only child.
“Outside,” Chris said. He started paddling wildly, dipping his black wetsuit arm into the sludgy brown water and arrowing ahead. I caught a glance down the beach and saw an older man walking in our direction from the muddy dirt parking lot where my dad waited in his Dodge reading The Los Angeles Times. The man carried a bone-white long-board.
When I flipped around I saw a massive set approaching. Big, thick, brown. The waves coming were the bulkiest we’d seen. Must have been a solid seven, eight feet. At 13, this was terrifying. Chris was way out ahead of me. I panicked. I paddled furiously, both to my right side, heading away from the main impact zone, and out, hoping to get past the breakers.
I barely made it past the first wave in the set. It scared me. Too meaty, too thick, too harsh. I paddled as hard as I could. I wanted to turn and look at the older man with the long-board, see if he was watching from the beach, or starting his paddle. But I didn’t turn.
“Shit,” Chris yelled. He was probably 30 yards ahead of me. He slid off his board, took some breaths, and jumped off, diving under water. The giant wave closed down just ahead of him and crashed into mega boulders of white water, cascading like some mountain slide on Mount Everest. I hoped he’d gone deep enough. But what about me?