Tuesday, June 06, 2006

Lil' Rip

I was at a surf contest this weekend, watching the kids compete in weak, knee-high waves. There’s one little surfer whom my friend BA and I call “Lil’ Rip”. We don’t know his name, so we call him Lil’ Rip. Thus far, Rip has been known to me as a small, stout, deeply tan teenager who, when he’s not surfing, likes to run screaming around on the beach after the seagulls or otherwise cut some caper to attract the attention of any nearby girls.

My friend BA, however, has always been convinced that Lil’ Rip has serious, professional-level surfing talent, and maybe he’s right. I have certainly seen Rip out there tearing it up even on the biggest days.

Immediately prior to the contest there was a memorial service in which all the surfers paddled out, formed a circle, and threw a flower into the ocean to commemorate the death of a woman who, judging by her picture, was rather young. My wife and I speculated about who this woman might have been, but then the contest got underway.

I was disappointed with Rip’s performance. He seemed more interested in making sarcastic, exaggerated gestures to indicate that the waves were small than in actually winning his heats. Not only that, but he insisted on going right, which was frontside for him, rather than taking the lefts which were actually opening up a little bit. I made a note of all this for later discussion with my friend AB, who, as I said before, had always been a fan of Lil’ Rip’s. AB lives in San Fran now and is always asking me how Rip has been doing. I was afraid that in this instance, my report would not be very complimentary where Rip was concerned.

As it turns out, AB got to me first. He called the next day and said, “I have something sad to tell you.”
“What?”
“There was this woman, right, who took a bunch of sleeping pills and died in her bedroom. And then, two days later, this woman’s husband was all bummed about his wife dying, so he hung himself in the bathroom.”
“Yeah, that’s bad.”
“They left two kids behind.”
“Terrible.”
“And the oldest one is Lil’ Rip.”

Things came together in my mind. It was Rip’s mom they were memorializing before the contest. No wonder he lacked focus, no wonder he couldn’t seem to get it together. And then if AB’s timeline was correct, the father hung himself later that night.

AB talked about what we could do. We both declared our willingness to adopt Rip and his little brother on the spot.

“That kid needs someone, man,” AB said. “He’ll never be the same either way, but it could get a lot worse if he doesn’t have someone in his life.”
“God forbid they take him away from the ocean.”
“No, they can’t do that. If has to go live inland with his grandparents or something, he’ll never make it. That kid lives to surf, he’s in the water every day, he needs the ocean.”

AB and I both agreed (maybe we were a little carried away at this point) that we would follow the story and offer our homes if Rip didn’t have a home by the water. As it turns out, we didn’t need to worry. Rip’s uncle lives just north, near a good break, actually, so at least Rip will have mother ocean to comfort him in this terrible time.

If I know mother ocean, she’ll treat him just how he needs – lovingly but firmly, reminding him, as she reminds every surfer, that he’s only a small blip in an immense system. All those clichés come into play here. That’s one thing about extreme sorrow – there’s no room then to make intellectual judgments and you’re glad for anything you can get. Anyway, AB and I are pulling for you, Lil’ Rip, and if I see you in the lineup you can have my waves. Not that you wouldn’t try to take them anyway…

Monday, June 05, 2006

Crazy from the Heat, Diamond Dave-Style

I’ve always wondered how people make truly horrible decisions, you know, the kind of inexplicable lapses in judgment that lead otherwise sane people to get into fights, traffic accidents, etcetera. I don’t know if I have the answer now, but I can clearly retrace a bad decision I made yesterday.

My wife and I went to the beach. It was already very hot and the waves were mostly flat, the winds offshore, so there were these little six-inch tubes spitting out right near the water’s edge. It was the kind of morning in Florida when it’s so hot that even the ambient sound seems affected by the heat. You can see that people nearby are talking, but only a weak murmur reaches your ears. The heat leaves you in a kind of isolation.

Anyway, we walked down the beach and I threw the ball with the dog for awhile. She was grateful to get into the water and swam out into the waves to get her ball but she seemed to be moving slowly. Everything was moving slowly, even the little waves.

It was near lunchtime when we left the beach, and on the way back we stopped for coffee. I got an iced coffee but nothing to eat, even though I was hungry. On the way out of the parking lot I offered my coffee to my wife and when I asked for it back, she taunted me and held it at arm’s length. I was so hot and so thirsty that instead of laughing and getting in on the game, I gave her an exasperated sigh. We exchanged some words about my reaction, and then I got angry with myself for having reacted so petulantly. After all, as my wife pointed out, it was only a coffee, right? But I was thirsty, dammit. Why didn’t I just play the game with her, laugh along? Because I was thirsty. I should’ve strangled her for taking my coffee. I shouldn’t be having these thoughts, I shouldn’t be so angry. Choke her out, gulp that coffee, pour the ice down your shirt.

In the middle of all this, I decided to make a turnaround on a busy street. I swung my car into the turnaround lane and then yanked the wheel to join the opposing flow of traffic. I knew there was no way I could make the turn without stopping to reverse, but I kept going anyway. In fact, I accelerated. In some ways I was looking forward to the violent jolt of my wheel going up over the curb as I swung around.

It was a violent jolt, all right. The tire blew out instantly. As a reward for my bad decision, I got to pull over and change the tire in the baking Florida sun while my pregnant wife stood there fanning herself. Good times, although to her credit, my wife did not say “I told you so.”
Analysis: by the time I made that turnaround, I was no longer in my right mind. A combination of low blood sugar, anger, and self-judgment led me to a craving for some kind of violent, jarring experience. It could have been much worse, I guess. I can understand now why people in those northern cities go on killing sprees during heat waves. It feels like the natural thing to do, just take someone out.

Too damned hot and there are no waves. Summertime in Florida sucks. Heat this extreme makes me crazy. Later I got angry when I was mowing the yard because it was too hot. Still later I got angry while pumping up the tires on the bicycles. I’d been slaving and sweating with the hand pump and then my wife insisted on checking the pressure with a little tire gauge. Of course she fumbled and fudged around with the nozzle and let out at least ten pounds of pressure just getting the reading. When I said there was no way the tires needed more air, she got her pregnant self down there and started trying to do it.

All of this in a stifling hot garage. I finally got down and finished my wife’s bike tires but only after I had beaten myself up for endangering the life of the baby. I’m telling you, I’m envisioning multiple Joan Crawford-like moments of rage with this kid.

“No more tire gauges!” Whack. Whack. “Your (#(#ing tires are pumped up, do you hear me? Pumped up!”
“Yes, daddy dearest,” the kid whimpers.

Yet another permanent psychological scar inflicted by the heat-intolerant old man. Maybe I should move back to Michigan. Then again, I don’t think I’m quite crazy enough for that. Yet.

Sunday, June 04, 2006

My Dead Friend

I had a dream about one of my dead friends. He was still alive and had aged appropriately, with gray flecks in his hair. He lived in a cabin on the side of a mountain and had come down to have a chat with me. I was trying to show him a new videogame that I knew he’d appreciate (he was a sci-fi buff, like me). The game was a fully interactive version of the original Star Trek series with an almost unlimited galaxy to explore. I was very excited about showing him this game, but it wouldn’t play correctly in my console.

My friend lay back on my sofa and talked about how he’d reconnected with his old girlfriend, the one with whom he was living when he committed suicide. I asked him how this was possible (in my dream she was responsible for his death).
“It’s simple,” he said. “You just start over. That’s all, you just start over.”
There wasn’t much else to the dream. But it was good to see my old friend. Even if it was only in a dream, it was good to see his face. I woke up thinking that I should give my son my old friend’s name. No, that's too much weight to put on a kid. A kid should have a name that serves him faithfully and doesn't pull him down.

Dissonance

Was thinking yesterday about perceptive dissonance. I’ve always wanted to use “dissonance” because it’s so punk rock. The name of the big local punk band when I was growing up: “Repulsion.” That’s another great word.

Anyway, yesterday I was driving to meet this lady in my writer’s group and a bird flew across the road. All I saw was the shadow racing across the surface of the road and I thought it was a small, dark animal. I cranked my brakes before I realized it was a shadow. On the same drive I approached a line of cars stopped at a red light and began to slow down. I looked in the rearview mirror and at the car behind me and when I looked back, the light was green and the line of cars was moving. My perception was that it had happened too fast; there was no way I’d been looking in the rearview mirror long enough for all that to happen in front of me. And where was my peripheral vision in all of this, anyway?

The lady I’m working with always slurs her words. I think she’s a secret drinker. She has the look of a secret drinker (slightly puffy, eyes slightly dry, deliberate movements). And I wonder sometimes about her rather muddied thought process. But then again, these could be signs of staggering genius. What do I know? She’s nice, anyway and it’s nice to be nice. Richie from Elmore Leonard’s “Killshot” wore a t-shirt with that saying on it, if I recall correctly.