CHAPTER 5
WE HADN’T PLANNED ON A CONTEST. BUT WHEN
John Fiedler showed up with a bottle of tequila, Cuzner with a bottle of vodka, Parking Lot Danny with a 12-pack, and Willy with a keg, well, somehow it all made sense. ■ It was Labour Day. The beach at County Line was packed. Situated on the Los Angeles/Ventura county border, it enjoyed almost no police presence. Here you could drink and frolic and maybe even fornicate on the sand. Here was where we had bonfires at night, and where a guy who’d picked me up hitchhiking claimed to have seen Charles Manson and his girls playing in the shore break. ■ Our surfer buddy Matt Warner had rich parents, and they had a house that looked out to the fun break. We’d planned to hang on the beach, have a bonfire and BBQ. We did not plan for so much booze. It was Willy who scanned the tequila, vodka, 12-pack, keg, and couple dozen excellent surfers, and saw the potential. ■ “20-minute heats. Beach starts. But before you hit the water you have to guzzle a full cup of beer. No spilling. No spitting it out. And if you puke you’re automatically DQ’d.” ■ Willy wore Oakley blades, a black Quiksilver tank top, and red and white star-spangled Quiksilver boardshorts. He wasn’t consciously trying to channel Colonel Kilgore in Apocalypse Now, but he did. Next to him stood Simone, in a pink baseball cap, white tank top, and black sweats. I’d hung out with the two of them on several occasions. They were not affectionate, made no gestures that would suggest that they were a couple. They carried on much the same way Simone and I had when we were casually fucking. It had been going on for over a year. Often in the back of her truck after surfing. She was never not up for it. Until the time I placed my hand on her leg and she peeled it off and said, “Can’t do it anymore. I’m going out with Willy.” Did Willy know about us? I certainly hadn’t told him. And judging by the way he behaved, Simone hadn’t either. ■ The sky was cloudless. The air was hot and dry. The surf was three-foot and soft and forgiving. The tide was on the rise. We drew names out of Simone’s baseball cap. Man-on-man heats. There were 20 of us, which meant that the two finalists would have knocked back a six-pack, or more than a six-pack, given the size of the plastic cups. And that’s not counting the beers we drank between heats. There were no jerseys, no bullhorns, no scoresheets. We used our watches to time the heats. Judging was done collectively, with scores written with sticks or fingers on the sand. ■ I won my first heat against Fiedler, second heat against Brett Lyon,
