Memories
Power in Recollection
1. Me, five years old, gap-toothed, wearing a multicolored collared shirt, thin arm extended upward, my hand clutched by my 6’1 father, mostly bald, towering over me, smiling, at the Oxnard Amtrak station. We stood in front of the tracks, the train not yet arrived. We were about to take the train north from Southern California to see my paternal grandmother in Waldport, Oregon. Circa 1988.
2. Me and my two best friends, the summer of 1999—between freshman and sophomore year of high school—with my parents on a two-week epic vacation in Ensenada, Mexico. We drove down—the five of us—from Ojai, north of LA where I grew up. Almost 300 miles; 6-and-a-half hours. On Fourth of July my friends and I obtained M-200s and lit them off at the beach, terrifying half the lazy, lounging middle-aged tourists.
Then, we met two girls, one our age (16) and one her older sister, a few years older. Black hair, from the States, some long-forgotten Midwest town. We walked them back to their vacation apartment, maybe a 10-minute slow walk, the two girls ahead, then us. My two friends, punching me gently in the ribs, gaping at me like I was crazy; go for it, man. The one our age liked me. I was innocent. Incredibly nervous.
Of course I wanted something to happen, but I had zero clue how to proceed. When we arrived near their place they stopped and the girl my age hesitated, but then said goodnight. They started to walk off. Embarrassed—but knowing I’d be mocked ruthlessly if I failed—I said, “Wait.” I approached the girl. I kissed her, awkwardly, just a little peck on the lips. She smiled, grabbed my hand, and pulled me behind a pillar. She said, This is how it’s done, and she kissed me deeply, full of taste and promise, our tongues exploring, wrapped around each other’s. That was my first real French kiss. We walked back, my friends and I, in silence. I felt like a successful Visigoth having sacked Rome. Upon our return one friend held me down and the other one gave me half a dozen brutal “dead arms,” both of them screeching at me that I was soooo lucky, dude!
3. Me and my best friend Clay, the start of the 1990s. We were maybe seven, eight. My paternal grandfather’s apple orchard ranch in central California. The cabin. Bunk-beds. When there was a full moon my parents would wake us up at midnight telling us the moon rained down candy onto the Earth. We’d wrap ourselves in blankets and walk outside into the cool, silent September night and find candy placed in the trees. We walked and ate the candy and gazed up at the fat, full white moon. For years we believed in that fairy tale. One of the warmest memories I have.
4. The same friend—Clay—circa 1989/1990, when what I call The Gun Incident occurred. I walked up to his house. We lived at the top of a hill in a cul-de-sac in Ventura. It was supposed to be safe. Everything was supposed to be safe. His father was a hunter, a doctor, an asshole. His dad hunted wild boar in Alaska.
One day Clay told me to come over. I did. His parents were both gone, I don’t remember where. When I walked into the back side of the house he told me he had a surprise for me. It was his father’s loaded 9mm handgun. He showed me the chamber, the shiny copper-colored bullet-butts. I was shocked he knew how to do that. After clicking the chamber back into place, he pointed the gun at me and walked me backwards until I was flush against the wall. He said he was going to shoot me. He put the gun in my mouth, the cold taste of steel; the metal clinked against my two bottom teeth. He said he was going to count down from 10 and then blow my brains out. At zero, he yanked the gun out of my mouth shouting BAM!!!
I ran home crying.
5. Age 9—around 1992. We’d recently moved to the Ojai house from Ventura. My father had his work colleague and his wife and their 19-year-old son over for dinner. It was a rarity. We all ate at the table. The teenage son was thick with black hair, blue eyes. He wore a college ring. I forget where he went to college. At dinner I became bored when the three adults started talking about Bill Clinton; politics, that foreign land I did not comprehend. The teenager eyed me oddly. I felt strange. I asked to be excused. Mom said yes. I left, feeling intense eyes against my back.
Fifteen minutes later a knock sounded at my door. Quiet. I walked over and opened it, the thin hollow wood with the gold knob. It was the son. He stood there looking down at me. He asked if he could come in. I felt conflicted but said yes. He entered, locking the door behind him. He sat on the edge of my bed and patted next to him. I sat. He looked at me hungrily. I felt an energy I didn’t understand, a sort of thirst, a rapacious need. Something above and below and beyond me all at once. He pulled out his wallet, then extracted some crisp twenties, and asked if he could touch me.
I was scared and thrilled all at once. Something new and dangerous and off limits. It felt like stepping over the edge of something. I took the bills. I said yes.
It lasted for hours.
6. I’m 19—2002—and it’s just after high school. My parents left for Europe for a week, shocking me. The only time they’d left me. I had a week-long raging party. One night perhaps 200 people came. I invited everyone I knew and they invited everyone they knew. It was pure anarchy. Before anyone even showed up my best friend and I glugged Vodka from a handle, got drunk, got into some pointless dumb fist-fight, and ended up shirtless and bloody.
At one point I was moshing to punk music in the living room with half a dozen other guys and I fell and the back of my head caught the sharp pointed corner of my parents’ bookshelf. Blood everywhere. Surging, searing heat and pain. Someone carried me to the bathroom and placed me in the empty tub. I lay there for a few minutes then suddenly leapt up, deciding the party was over. I grabbed a hammer I had in my room and started screaming at everyone to leave, waving the hammer around like a madman.
I must have looked certifiable: Shirtless, blood everywhere, head wound gushing, jutting the hammer left and right, swinging at invisible people. Most jogged and shuffled out of multiple doors. In a surge of adrenaline and madness I saw a local surfer kid I didn’t like talking shit to my good friend. I ran over, dropped the hammer and, with superhuman strength, choked the surfer kid and literally lifted him off the ground and against the wall. People watched in terror and awe. The kid threw punches at me and I felt them on my face but they did nothing. I was completely beyond pain at that point. Nothing could stop me.
7. Around age 12—1995—my first backpacking trip with Dad. That photo of the two of us standing down on the grass under the massive Eucalyptus tree at the Ojai house. Smiling, both of us. Matilija Canyon, the dirt trail, the October silence, just the two of us, me always trailing my father, his slow pace, his hands clutched together behind him, he humming softly as he always did. I felt safe. I felt protected. I loved being wrapped up in Nature. I loved the bright white pulsing stars at night, the dome of midnight-black sky, no sounds of cars at all. Holy, divine silence. I knew my father’s love then, and it came mostly in the form of hiking and silence. This was one of the best gifts my father ever gave me: Backpacking.
8. The first time I ever rode a real wave on a real surfboard: 1993. I was about ten. Bates Beach in Carpinteria. Ojai via Highway 150. My best friend, my mom and his mom. Summer. Sunscreen, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Safety. Risk. Paddling out in just boardshorts. Cold water, but nice. The rush of adrenaline. First it’d been boogie-boarding, and then skateboarding, and then BMX, and now surfing, which soon became my One True Love. (Later it would be punk rock, and finally writing.) Paddling “outside.” Waiting. Seeing The Right Wave, green-gray and maybe three feet high. Turning around. Paddling with all I had in me. Feeling the wave come up underneath me, pulling me with it, dragging me along. And then I stood up, arms flying akimbo, smiling widely, and I rode down the little face of the wave, and then I was going, moving. Surfing.
9. My paternal grandmother, her 80th birthday, at her “mansion” in Waldport, Oregon, along the coast; 1994. My best friend and I, upstairs. (We’d gone on a road trip with my folks from Southern California and had rafted five days down the Rogue River before attending Grandma’s birthday celebration.) Past the 100-year-old pool table we later inherited from her. Down the narrow hallway. To the library she had. A tall, pentagonal room. Filled with books and magazines. We looked for hours. We found a book of drawings about sex and genitals. As if possessing some kind of ESP, we heard my grandmother downstairs say, I think they found the sex books. And then we heard my father’s steady steps up the stairs coming for us. We hid the books.
10. The day my best friend Kurt—1996, we were about 13—got so burned at the beach—he was nearly paper-white/albino—that he screamed, weeping, in the shower. We went back to his single mother’s house at the farm up on 150, above Ojai heading towards Santa Paula, on Sulfur Mountain Road. I remember their poverty. I remember the Hustler Magazines. I remember riding Kurt’s motorcycle. I remember watching myriad 1980s horror movies. I remember the sickly-looking horses they had, feeding them in the early silent mornings, the stench of horse manure. I remember his mom telling me constantly to not shut the white door of her old white Volvo so hard. I remember the class tension between our parents, and between us, even then, if unspoken. I remember our chats about sex and girls and the future.
Kurt died at 25, in 2008, in a motorcycle accident in Ojai. Too fast. Windy road. No helmet.
11. First sex: Age 18, 2001. High school. Casual. We were sitting on my first real girlfriend’s bed. After school one day. She smiled and suggested it. I agreed. She told me to walk down the street and get condoms at the Vons. I did. When I got there I felt extremely awkward. I had to ask a guy in his twenties to unlock the plastic case. I felt like a reprobate. He opened it. He smiled at me. I felt horrified. I grabbed a pack of Trojans. Purple. I walked back. We took our clothes off. We were both virgins. Both 18. She slid it on me. I got on top. I got it inside. We did the dance. I came. It was neither fantastic nor terrible but just…good. We lay down after, her head against my chest, both of us slightly sweating, breathing heavily, saying nothing. I would mimic this routine for decades.
12. I got sober at age 27, in 2010. Hit a bottom. Bad, rough night. Woke alone, at a friend’s apartment on Stanyon Street in San Francisco. It was early fall. The girl was gone, friends were, too. Blackout the night before. I ached all over. Shame coated all my thoughts. I hated myself, I remembered yet again. I quickly stepped into the bathroom, knelt down, opened the lid, vomited for a good few minutes. Cleaned myself. Threw cold water into my face for a while. Made myself coffee. Chugged several glasses of water. Sighed. I couldn’t find my phone. It didn’t matter.
I knew in that moment that it was over, the drinking. I never looked back.
“I would mimic this routine for decades” had me nodding sagely. Appreciated this peak into your life’s photo album.
Hope you’re doing well.
Love the young camping backpacking photo? Does your shirt say pro spirit?