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
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