the divine hangover

dopamine inhibitors fully ingested, slack-jawed like a yokel, light piercing through a basement of an acquaintance, not really talking as much as filling the silence with useless sound and with this i decide to be homeward bound. pounds all around, a nod, perhaps a wink and out into the big bright world, purple sheeted and veins pulsing from my eyelids covering everything. every creaking step, all the dust and dry dead leaves leaping and flying, whirling around at my feet, blades of grass wet with dew and me on my long walk home.

fugazi is in my head. Ian and Guy are in my head saying; 

"i'm so tired. barely see my breath, surrounded, by jealousy and death." I can't remember the second verse so i just rewind back to the beginning and sing with them.

uphill's a struggle, morbid struggle. in my hamstrings i feel all the grit and tenchun {sic} and there is a swelling sensation, boiling into my knees. Full House feels close, and it is, so i walk up to Alamo Square park. I'm moving so slow that the little man inside says, "move you, fuck." 

There is hope on a hilltop. I arrive at the top of the park as the moon sets on the pacific to my right and the sun rises over the Oakland hills to my left. I just stand there atop the park, letting my eyes dilate from the 7 am sun, dopamine flow shot, grime beneath low nails, a sudden shake out the neck via the jugular, sweaty hands that clench, steam and beauty rise off my tattooed back, breakneck speed is now draining through my sinus cavity, chest aches into nothing, all my leftover glory drowned knowing that 8 am is a bad bedtime. soundless forestation, wet dirt bonding with my slipons, not a sound or a murmur, till this nice old lady asks me if i saw the full moon set and I say,
"why yes, it was lovely."

a first; my first moonset of recent memory.

I look back at Full House and I can picture the whole family in there. I can see John Stamos counseling DJ on how to handle her rapidly developing breasts and the Olsen twins getting advice from Bob Saget on why its unfair to pee on her sisters bed. I think about TGIF and all of my innocence now lost in the subdued underground futility i find now on friday nights fueled by chemical dependence. i need the uncles to give me a talking to about my self destructive habits, but they're long gone. How sad...

the divine hangover is upon me and I know this because the shudders say so. "bluuuuhhhhhaaaaaallljahhh"
work with me.

everything is still purple but the heavy ache sets over everything waiting for my body to go horizontal. mr. 21 hayes moves his fat ass up the hill with that beaming, pinging repetitious sound buzzing up. i slide down the park grass, on my flat ass ruining my jeans. i hop on the empty bus and sit at the back waiting patiently for me to strengthen my resolve to stop this nonsense.

EPILOGUE
"...this epic problem's not a problem for me
and inside i know i'm broken
but i'm working as far as you can see
and outside it's all production

it's all illusion
set scenery
i've got this epic problem

this epic problem's not a problem for me"
-fugazi

my last great skate

We can forget all this and concentrate on what's important. Its a big step for me.

There are so many empty, wordless songs in my head overlapping. I can close my eyes this last time because I know the ground, the cracks, faulty pieces of pavement, manhole covers like the back of my hand. The ground, she trusts me like an old friend.

"Yes, old friend," I say, "its time to say goodbye."

Back to my mind, in the center combining both sides of my brain into one tiny membrane I can remember my love affair with skateboarding. The struggles, dedication and sacrifice I put forth through skating gives me the hope that I can do anything. I'm not an accomplished skater by any means, but I'm deft enough to impress. The accolades are personal and fleeting, of a time and place that only exists with the sensations as they are experienced.

With all of this I still ask myself why quit? Why now? Well, let's be real, its not like I'm never going to ride a skateboard again for the rest of my life, but I feel that my reliance on it as the only means for transportation maybe catapulting me toward an untimely demise or some other casualty. So I'm not "quitting" per se.

The reasoning is harder for me articulate. I believe my first real questioning happened on a date with this girl I was really digging at the time. She told me to meet her at Dolores Park. Turns out our date was more like an audition. When I got there she was surrounded by her two best friends and their boyfriends. Resilient as ever, I overcame the astounding awkwardness of the situation and got comfortable with her and the five heads of state peering down on our second date. I had skated to the park and as we were leaving she turned and looked at me.

"Only kids ride skateboards on the east coast," she said blankly, oblivious to the deep sting such a comment would have on my confidence.

"Yeah, I guess so," I said, shrugging off the insult, looked away and then rolled my eyes.

She sensed my antipathy for her and began to qualify her statement.

"But here, you see guys your age still riding them all over the place."

I hope this girl does yoga so she can stick her foot in her mouth I thought.

-Dumb bitch is insinuating that guys who are 27 years old need to grow up and buy a bike or worse an automobile?

-Of course not. She's insinuating that you need to grow up and buy a bike because she feels like she's baby sitting little Bradley from down the block. Oh, and remember she's drunk.

-Phew.

I went on with the rest of my date, trying to negate my feelings of nausea and anger at her by being pleasant and drinking all the booze in sight. On the skate home that night, I bombed an old friendly hill that drops onto Divisadero and the thought of quitting, her dumb comments and the anger was wiped away by some cute girl winking at me as I cut her off.

My concussion was the second hand pointing me away from skating. The doctor told me not to skate for six weeks. I took the next two days off work. The doctor said I had to. She said that if I fell again I could go into a coma. She told me that I should wear helmet if I was ever going to skate again. I lasted about twenty four hours following her advice.

The third signpost was the whole Timmy and the piglets incident. Just as a small aside, they've posted a bench warrant for my arrest at 850 Bryant because I've neglected to pay my ticket. I've been hassled by cops all of my skating life so I didn't take the ticket or harrasment as anything to take too seriously.

The fourth was another injury, this one maybe the most embarrassing of my life and almost as painful. I was showing off for some friends and strangers, drunk and possessed by some strange will to draw, what a dear friend termed, "unnecessary attention to myself". I did a powerslide on fourteenth at Noe, going downhill too fast, too soon and too much. The board gave way to my ass and at the impact it felt like I broke my tailbone. So I writhed in pain, lincoln-logging across the road till I finally rested my nose against the pylons, as strangers and friends alike had a nice little chuckle at my expense. I deserved every sharp biting pain, every crumbling bit of bone fragment, all the excruciating blaring of laughter, sharpened nails attached to long creepy fingers pointing in my direction and the humility, the blood gushing out my elbow and everything afterward. My board continued sailing down the block until it stopped near the closest intersection. I gimped my way down the street and hopped right back on like nothing ever happened.

The last straw was my last great skate. It was one of those beautifully slow, dreary SF days where the fog and the sun are fighting for the city's affection. After attending a few birthday parties and bar hopping around till midnight I took a late skate to the chillier climes near my apartment. I found myself at The Transfer for their Frisco Disco party. It was a little too intense for my liking and once I ran into some friends we decided Amber might be more our speed. So I grabbed my board and when we got to the bar I placed in the same spot I always do, except when I left with a friend a little later it was gone. Stolen!

Enough is enough. Now, without a proper farewell, I'm separated from a part of me. A womb apart. A cloak of serenity. A skateboard was to Elliott what a security blanket was to Linus. At my age, I had a time machine. Once the wheels were pressed and the rolling thunder pounded down your block, making all the dumb dogs bark, I would breathe deep a man and exhale as a twelve year old boy, rosy cheeked and innocent, scabless fury and the gumption, ready to fail or to fall. And in an instant, breathless, many blocks from where and when it started, I'm walking like the rest of the sheep, ankles unrolled, concussion free, clean elbows and knees. No speed downhill, no coarse cement to bond with, just a memory of something simple that felt like home.

EPILOGUE

"If we never meet in this life,

let me feel the lack.

A glance from your eyes,

and your life is mine."

-Malik

The Injury Report

So in the past two months I have sustained what I like to term medium injuries from skating, or more to the point, showing off.

Empty stomach, lonely eyes full of acid drop dreams and the newly found hollowed heart push toe to heel away from the providential hell that some bitch that left me thinks is hers. On a bus with a crazy 180 degree turn to a 270 degree view to me burning urethane on the ground. Knees deep, the autumn late breezes warm against my stubbly face, Lexapro unofficially drains as the gradients become more and more. The smoothness, the friction, that sound like draining water or thunder before the storm is perfection unleashed tickling mine ears. Velocity increasing I make deliberate, cursive zigzags between the medians and spit a mouthful of spit on a Mercedes as it drives by. All this rush, the twinkling color in the sky, sensations of the calves, muscles quaking, cell division felt, the blood centrifuged from my rapid beating heart out my eyes swirling through my brain is mere preparation for the steep fall down Clayton before me.
"Ughhh," I grunt viscerally as I dig urethane against cement shoving my weight and my heels to the ground.

After the speed achievement check, all the poetic language stops.

Push, push against warm stubborn ground till I get up past Shrader.

Some lady is having trouble parallel parking I can see. She's coming in too acute or obtuse, I can't figure which. She's driving an automatic for what seems like the first time. She throws it into drive and sways almost across two lanes and clips me going backside. I fall long and landing on my left hip scraping against the rocky edge of the cement, then hit my head hard enough that I am zonked out.
I'm sprawled out in the middle of the intersection, my beanie has flown off my head and my skate lay underneath a truck, the wheels still spinning. I look up and the lady who clipped me along with a few other strangers are huddled around me.
"Are you hurt," this young lady asks me, seeing full well that I passed out.
"Yeah," I say not remembering at all what went down.
"Call hospital, 9-1-1," the lady who hit me says.
Lifting my head off the ground, I reach my hands to the back of my head, feeling a large goose bump on the top of my skull.
"No blood, that's good," I say looking at my hands. "What happened?"
"You hit your head on the street after that lady hit you," some guy says helping me to my feet.
"Where's my skate?"
"Here," this homeless man says handing it to me.
"Thanks," I say feeling wooziness. I turn to the lady who hit me and put my hand on her shoulder. She's shaking and obviously very scared. "No 9-1-1. Just take me to my house and I'll get your insurance information."
The relief in this dumb bitch's posture annoys me. I can tell she doesn't give a fuck if I'm alright, just that she doesn't get an increase in her insurance.

From that moment till the moment I'm at the top step of my apartment is blurry. The insurance information from the lady who clipped me was in hand, but I had no idea how I had gotten home, what I was doing at home or why I was there. My roommate comes walking down the hall and says I don't look so good. She says I look grey, pallid as the walls, like I'm going to be sick. She takes me to the hospital and they tell me I've got a concussion and I can't skate for six weeks. Fat fucking chance, I thought.

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