*Originally published by Storgy Magazine; later on 8/31/2022 on Substack, only in part. Here is the full story, all 4,792 words of it. It’s a fun, action-packed read. Give it a try. I think you’ll enjoy it. Be forewarned: There is some racist language included. And remember, this is largely (but not entirely) autobiographical, about a time when I was much younger, wilder and drunker.
**This story is paywalled roughly at the 50% mark. If you want to read ALL my writing and posts, consider going paid for only $5/month or $35/year.
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In the early 2000s I had a close friend named Tyrell; he and I were about as different from each other as you could possibly imagine.
For starters, Tyrell was black; I’m white. He grew up in Ventura, an hour and a half north of Los Angeles along the coast—where I was born—and I grew up in Ojai, a little mountain town nestled within the Topa Topa mountains 12 miles east of Ventura. He was tall and had a hard, sculpted torso. His dark eyes were constantly bloodshot from ripping bong hits in his white Mazda. He had short, nettled black hair. His father had split when he was ten; his older brother had been fourteen. A single mom had raised the two boys and a younger sister. They struggled. There was drugs; violence in the home; fighting; police. It was, to say the least, tumultuous.
I, on the other hand, came from money. Single child. Two married, happy, productive parents. Dad was a computer engineer; mom was a nursing instructor at a local college. That said: I was troubled. In 2002—a senior in a Catholic, college-prep high school in Ojai—I was expelled from school three weeks prior to graduation for my turgid reputation (angry, rebellious punk rocker who slept with many girls, shot up dope, and stole cars; the rumors were only half true) and for bringing a backpack full of pot and booze. It was within this globulous teen confusion that Tyrell and I connected.
Our introduction came through the mutual world of Ventura surfing. Growing up near the coast—driving Highway 101 and Pacific Coast Highway obsessively—surfing had become for most males between the ages of 13-25, The Thing. We waxed and unwaxed our shortboards. We watched surfing videos until the wee hours of the morning. We subscribed to and religiously read Surfer Magazine. We went on epic surfing adventures to places like Baja. For a while, me and some of my friends were even sponsored, enlisting in paid competitions.
I don’t remember the exact day or moment that we met. I think it was at one of our favorite pointbreaks, a place called Solimar, a football field length of narrow beach, million-dollar homes behind it, the green glimmering sea facing us and always beckoning us toward it like a mother with open arms. I was twenty. I can still see all the cars and trucks parked on the hard-packed dirt in front of the ragged boulders at the beach; can still smell the rancid, lovely stink of wafting pot, kids hitting from a glass pipe. I can smell the Sex Wax on fiberglass, that chemical reek. I can picture all the smiling hoodlum faces, the jerking chins, guys always saying, Sup, bro. Many wore baseball caps, either normally or backwards. White wife-beaters were not unusual. Lifted trucks with flowmasters to increase the noise. Some brought their girls with them; others, like me and my crew, just came us boys. We were on a mission. Destroy waves. Destruction of nature was our lazy, ambitious art.
And then I picture Tyrell, bloodshot eyes, arms dramatically outstretched, one hand holding a marble pipe, the other lighting the green packed bud, his dark skin, his black baseball cap that said, Billabong, the bill shielding his eyes, his cheeks now puffed, inhaling, like some wild shaman. His arms were taut and cut; he was shirtless and had most of a six-pack. I was not gay but I’d experimented a little, even back then, and I couldn’t deny the man’s natural beauty. He looked like natural perfection wrapped up in a time bomb; violence not yet stretching its wings.
That afternoon—it was some time, I think, in late January—with the air bitingly cold and the sun fresh and warm on our bodies, the green waves crashing hard fifty yards away, the parking lot half empty, he glanced over, blowing smoke out his mouth, saw me, smiled, and offered the pipe to me.
He jerked his chin. “Hit that shit, dog.” His voice, contrary to what I’d expected, was soft and warm, like heated honey sliding slowly down a tree. The voice seemed to contradict the body: He now appeared to me some sort of alien creature; a poem in physical form.
I nodded, took the pipe. Sunlight glanced off the thing into my eyes. I squinted. I watched the sea, pretending not to be nervous about the eyes I felt on me like nails being hammered into wood. I lifted the pipe to my lips and took a hit. The hit seared my throat, burning my lungs in a good way. I took it in, held it, blew out. I felt the eyes on me soften.
“What’s your name?” he said.
“Andrew, I said, suppressing a pot cough.
He hit the pipe again, arms in harsh angles like a gangster, then, his voice cracking from the toke, said, “I’m Tyrell.”
Six months had passed since we’d met. We had become fast best friends, in that way men do in their tumultuous early twenties. He drove a little white Mazda, low to the ground, with a sound system which was so loud, and contained such throttling bass, that it rattled the entire car. He often played either rap (Dead Prez was a favorite) or contemporary melodic pop punk. He played guitar quite well himself and had started a band. He loved music. He mocked me for the way I acted and dressed. In his eyes I was too attached to “the punk rock thing.” How was I going to score with any girls, he wanted to know, when I dressed like a jackass?
Tyrell wore the usual Southern California uniform: Van’s shoes; surfer-brand shorts; wife-beater or surfer-brand T-shirt; baseball cap on normal or backwards. The idea was to look cool and loose and unafraid. As if you were just putting it all out there. He wanted to show off as much of his glorious body as possible. I couldn’t blame him for that. I, on the other hand, was different. No hat. Pants—usually tight, torn jeans. Ripped punk T-shirts. And, Tyrell’s worst enemy: A beat-up leather jacket.
We fought constantly and yet we were close. He’d drive all the way out to Ojai—half an hour—just to pick me up in his Mazda, and then turn around and take us to the beach. He loved to drive. He loved the feeling of control, of sharp contours on the road. He saw driving as a challenge. He saw existence as a challenge. Survival.
That evening—it was the tail end of summer—he pulled up outside. I was living essentially in “the ghetto,” an area called The Avenue in Ventura, a rough patch where Latino gangbangers shot guns off at night like fire crackers. The rent was dirt cheap. I lived with two punk friends. We were disasters. Nearly twenty one, I was not in college. I worked a dead-end job. One roommate worked the overnight shift at Target as a stocker. The other one was unemployed. We were aiming to dissolve our parents’ middleclass dreams for us. Why follow the path we hadn’t chosen ourselves?
I said goodnight to my roommates, who sat playing a videogame, sitting on our ratty orange thrift store couch, listening to a Dead Boys album spinning sluggishly on the silver turntable. They did not respond. I shut the door and walked down the sidewalk to the waiting Mazda, steam billowing from the exhaust. It was cool out; the last remaining wisps of summer still barely clinging to the air. We were going to some house party in Santa Barbara. A friend of his told him about it.
“What up,” he said, eyes averted, baseball cap on.
“Hey,” I said, plopping into the passenger seat.
The car smelled like a mix of farts, lemon Christmas tree scent, pot, cigarettes, spilled beer, bad body odor, Old Spice High Endurance, and just the faintest whiff of old chicken.
I heard music on low volume, some sort of melodic punk, the bass even this low making the consul slightly vibrate, like water in a glass shaking from an earthquake 100 miles away.
“Dude,” Tyrell said, gaping at me. He was chewing tobacco; he’d started doing that recently. He picked up the habit from his older brother, who’d started doing it after a three-month stretch in Ventura County Jail for drug possession. “Why do you wear that fucking jacket, bro?”
Clearing my throat I said, “What do you mean?”
He pretended to adjust his rearview mirror. “Bro. You look like a faggot.”
I ignored his homophobic epithet; it was still “normal” back in the early 00s. One of his favorite words, actually.
“Whatever, man,” I said, sounding too sensitive and too defensive. “You do you and I’ll do me.”
Tyrell grinned, then full-fledged howled with laughter. “Whatever man,” he mimicked brutally, making me sound like a nine-year-old girl. “Dude, could you sound any more pussy, or any more white?”
I glared at him. “I am white, Tyrell.”
He chuckled, averting his eyes, shaking his head. He just barely adjusted the black bill of his hat. “Whatever, bro.”
He flipped the volume knob and the music suddenly became very loud, encompassing everything, filling the tiny car with sonic insanity.
Thirty minutes later Tyrell got off 101 and headed east on West Haley, through downtown Santa Barbara towards the hills. Cars were everywhere. We rolled our windows down, letting the smoke from the pipe we hit roll out along with the pop punk still full volume. People ogled us, groups of teens and early twenties kids looking and pointing. The drive had been exhilarating, as always. No words. Just the music and the pot and the night air cutting into the open windows. That feeling of rugged young freedom, like our whole lives were unrolling lazily ahead of us. We had all the time in the world. We were unstoppable. Nothing could hurt us. Nothing could kill us. Darkness outside had been total minus an occasional street lamp off the highway and the Mazda’s low-lit head beams. The road unfurled, curving like a concrete snake, awaiting the mystery of time and place.
Then we ended up on Alameda Padre Serra, way up in the hills, the road winding and twisting, heading north, the twinkling gold and red and green and blue lights of downtown now far, far below us. We were the kings of the world. We were up here; they were down there. It was as it should be.
Tyrell slowed and took a right on Arbolado Road. We crawled along, looking for the address. It took ten minutes to find parking. He cut the engine. The music died so suddenly, and the silence was so complete, and the darkness so total, that I felt like I was somehow back in the womb of my mother, pre-conscious.
We trudged up the hill towards the house. Already—a quarter mile away—we could hear the loud party noises. Screaming; yelling; buzzing chatter; Snoop Dog from The Chronic album. Just before we reached the steep driveway, Tyrell stopped and said, “Hold on.”
“What?”
He adjusted his hat bill. He did this when he was going to say something I didn’t like; when he was going to do one of his mini “lectures,” usually about How to Be Cool. How to “not be a kook.”
“Look. Andy. Just…” he paused, trying to find the right words. “Just be chill in there, alright? Don’t blackout. Don’t be too serious or weird. Don’t steal anything.”
“Steal?? When have I stolen anything from anyone?”
“Shhhhhh,” he admonished. “Keep your voice down, bro!”
I rolled my eyes, folding my arms across my chest; my leather jacket crunched.
“You really gotta ditch that jacket, bro.”
“Leave me alone, Tyrell. Let’s just go in.”
“Pssshhhhh,” he said, annoyed. “Whatever. You look like a kook.”
We climbed the driveway, a steep incline. Cars were parked everywhere along the curb outside and in the driveway, even on the grass. The front door was wide open. The music blared: One, two, three and to the four; Snoop Doggy Dog and Dr. Dre is at tha door…ready to make an entrance so back on up (cause you know we’re bout to rip shit up…)
People our age and a little older were omnipresent. They all had red plastic cups. Beer sloshed around. The cool air reeked of pot and cigarettes. A loud buzz of constant talk and chatter filled the air under and around the music. The sound of people leaping into a pool behind the house could be heard, laughter, screaming girls.
An hour later Tyrell and I had separated. Who knew where he was. I was alone, leaning against a kitchen counter. People stood around the marble island laughing, telling bad jokes, and passing a bong. I watched, bored. I felt alone. I always felt alone. I thought of surfing, how the best moments were in winter when only the serious kids went out, when the water was brown and sloshy after a storm and it was freezing cold, and even your 3/2 millimeter wetsuit and booties hardly kept you warm. We used to pee inside of our suits to heat ourselves. And then those days in summer, when you’d been out for five, six hours, and most people had finally gotten out, and it was just you and a few close buddies, and the golden-red sun was descending below the horizon, inch by shifting inch, blurry and hazy in the distance and you watched it, cold and wet and alive, and you thought, This is what it means to be alive.
“Hey,” a female voice said, jarring me out of my reverie.
I came back into reality, into awareness. It was a girl. She was a few inches shorter than me. Long blond hair, she wore tight blue jeans and a bright pink low-cut top. Her eyes were so deep blue it seemed you could open them like a door and enter into the portal that was her soul.
“Hey,” I said, feeling the crimson creeping into my cheeks. I felt nervous and embarrassed, almost ashamed. I always felt awkward around pretty girls. Like I was so beneath them that the idea of talking with them was patently absurd.
She cleared her throat tenderly. “Who are you?”
“Me?” I laughed. My heart started thudding.
She smiled loosely, flipping a chunk of blond hair off her shoulder. “No, the other guy, the one behind you.”
I nearly looked behind; thank God my commonsense kicked in, even if late. “I’m Andrew. Andy,” I corrected. “I came with Tyrell?”
“Melissa,” she said. “Who’s Tyrell?”
I was glad she didn’t know Tyrell. Somehow that felt safer.
“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “You live around here?”
“Carpenteria. You?”
“Ventura.”
There was a lengthy, almost bottomless silence, and then she said, “Want to kill this pint of Jameson with me?”
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