My Time as a Human

I had a mohawk when we first hit the road to Santa Cruz where, my friend Ori believed, his next big romance waited with open arms. We spent days winding slowly through the west Texas desert, stopping every fifteen minutes or so to make sure we read every single historical marker along the way. At night we threw open the tailgate on his aging Ford F150 pickup, filled the back with old brightly colored Mexican blankets, and slept under the stars.

Somewhere at the very start of the journey I decided it was time for a change and chopped my mohawk haircut down to a tiny sprout that sprung up like a leak from the top of my head. I had recently quit my job and so any weak remnants of constraint brought on by the corporate world were dropped with those locks into a bathroom trash can. The mohawk could still be left down to, in some ways, resemble normal hair. The sprout protruding from my barren dome left little doubt as to my general abnormality.

My plan for the new hair was to ultimately grow it into a kung fu-esqe braid, giving me a somewhat funky style and yet leaving me with hair that could easily be cut by my friends in the back yard. This would also forever free me from the oppressive hair stylist corporate machine, breaking the cycle of endless haircuts they used to keep me paying into their scheme. This was the plan, but the little braid I began to call a “dilbus” grew to be so much more…

Several years earlier I had experimented with purple hair. At first I styled it very normally, and even showed up at work in a three piece suit the first day. Two girls I didn’t know well were struggling visibly to contain themselves when they saw me. They finally let loose when a friend came into the room and immediately broke into laughter, thus making it OK. What could they have been thinking? That I was somehow taking myself seriously and would be offended that they were laughing at my bright purple hair?!

They proved to be the exception and I quickly learned the value of making a visible statement that I was, in effect, clowning and therefore ready and willing to be interacted with. People would chat with me on the street, or come up and ask me about it at clubs. As someone who loves people, but sometimes has trouble starting conversations, this was solid gold.

The dilbus followed much the same principle and I can’t be happier with the results. People remember me. Strangers come over to greet me on the street. Little kids go nuts when I dance and spin it around my head. It’s the ultimate conversation piece, and always leads to more interesting interaction. In one of my favorite and most extreme examples, I was buying a hard drive at a chain store. The experience was typically cold and lifeless until I got to the register, where the girl working it leapt up over the counter, gleefully tossled my hair and shouted, “wow no way what is this?!”

In keeping with the tradition of having friends be involved in the process, the dilbus has also become a canvas for artists. It’s been dozens of tiny braids, several forked braids, intricate weaves, the shape of a cube, a tree, and even a crazy glowing sculpture covered with dangling, glowing rings. It even once served as a gesture of truce when someone with whom I was experiencing a bit of tension and conflict offered to take a minute to rebraid it. That quiet moment between us conveyed so much that couldn’t be spoken at the time.

My bicycle helmet has a special hole through the top for the dilbus. It’s actually how a friend of mine recognized me when we first met formally. “Hey, you’re that guy that bikes through campus with the crazy braid!” Hats are a different story, though, and despite how much I like wearing them I don’t think I’ve ever done it without having at least one person have a nervous breakdown. “Where is it? I can’t see it! Did you cut it off?!” Maybe I need a little sign for my hats, “dilbus inside”.

For now I can’t foresee the day when it too will pass, but there are plenty of angry girlfriends with scissors between now and my ultimate demise. Until then when you ask me how it’s hangin’, I’ll always know what you mean.

I was once given a warning about a guy I’d just met and it stemmed from something he’d said to a girl he was dating. Apparently he’d told her, “Face it. You’re fat and no other guy will ever be attracted to you”. From the language I think it’s already clear that this was at the tail end of a failing relationship, but what might not be clear is that they had dated for more than a year. I just heard another rumor recently about someone I consider a friend. He said some similar things, including calling the girl who was leaving him, “ugly”, which in this case was impossible to imagine.

Granted, no one is hitting or stabbing anyone here, but I myself am pretty much incapable of saying these kinds of things to people, and I have to admit that it’s a bit surprising to hear, even in the context of a relationship that’s souring. But it made me think about what it is that I do in those situations instead of lashing out openly. I’ve certainly been the one being left behind, and there is an overwhelming feeling of powerlessness in the rejection I feel when it’s clear that someone I love is separating from me.

Telling someone they are ugly, fat, or stupid is a quick and dirty way to put someone lower on your hierarchy when you’re scrambling to keep their opinion from mattering. On the flip side, at times in the past I’ve made myself completely unappealing by wildly struggling to anticipate, and be, everything that my significant other must have wanted, turning me into a driveling, pathetic mush. More commonly, though, I think my unconscious strategy has been to transform the process into a cerebral challenge and a story I’m writing.

The challenge is to solve the puzzle by gathering all of the pieces of data and using them to construct an understanding of why the breakup is starting to occur. This understanding does in fact have a lot of value in helping work out problems, but it’s also a really great way to emotionally detach from the details as each is categorized for analysis and placed in a box.

As things move ever more quickly towards their inevitable conclusion, I craft the events into a poetic story and start adding it to the collection of stories that make up my life. By doing this even as it occurs, it gives the event purpose, meaning and value. The breakup and suffering become, in fact, a process of creation, the very thing that makes the blood flow through my artist veins.

In the aftermath, this stage becomes crucial and I am very disappointed if I haven’t harvested my intense emotions for poetic profit. Fortunately, this does no harm to my long term relationship with my former girlfriends. Better yet, by avoiding pawning their iPods, burning down their apartment buildings or, worst of all, calling them ugly I’ve so far been able to emerge with some interesting scars, a nice little musical repertoire, and some incredible lifelong friends.

Writing has been slow in coming the last few weeks due to travel and my inability to see. After the Last American Road Trip surf experience I recalled my promise of the last eight years to keep researching lasik until I was comfortable with the technique. Sitting out beyond the break was the turning point. I could just make out the swells as they formed and it was hard to not only read the incoming waves, but to truly embrace the ocean that was so much an essential part of the beauty of the experience. I came back on a mission.

I’ve always had a list of reasons for the procedure, the primary being the ability to survive in remote regions of foreign countries where I don’t speak the language and might suddenly be blind. Teddy Roosevelt rode into battle with the rough riders and twelve pairs of extra glasses for essentially the same reason. This also lead to my choosing a form of lasik called epilasik that involves regrowing a new cornea. This should help some with long term integrity, essential to someone as prone to nutty environments and weird stunts. (As it turns out, I already regrew a part of my cornea years ago when a flying wood chip got under my glasses.) The downside to epilasik is that the healing time is longer and so I’m only now able to start computing again using high contrast super zoom.

In an effort to get out of the house after a long weekend of recovery, I threw on some dark shades and headed out to slam poetry night last night. The theory went that while I couldn’t see, I could still hear. As my life would have it, it was decathlon night and so despite not having a poem to read I was easily goaded into joining the melee. There were plenty of events like competitive eating, sock puppets and a dance off that I could get in on. The next thing I knew I was miming poetry for a group piece, leaping off of monitors, thrashing and crawling along the floor with an air guitar, and gyrating wildly though an improvised, synchronized dance routine. None of this fit into my recovery plan and I recall all of it through the dark, soft haze of my vision at the time.

Despite being driven to such madness the weekend wasn’t so terrible. It was filled with visits and long talks with good friends. I practiced guitar more thoroughly than I have in a long time. I listened to a lot of This American Life and ate a lot of tubular food: vegan wraps brought from Wheatsville by my generous housemates. Most importantly, I experienced something breathtaking: I looked at myself for the first time in my life without manmade lenses. There was nothing artificial between me and myself. It was incredible. I just stood in my own gaze for a long time. I have the most beautiful blue eyes.

Surfer’s log: day 4.

I got one!

Trying out a new beach a little further south we discovered a nice spot where plenty of locals, families and beginners found their spots in the sun. At high tide there isn’t much of a beach left and the ocean runs right up against a line of wooden poles, fences, and cement barriers struggling to hold back the relentless waves. Many of these barriers sit powerless above caverns carved deep into the stone where the the ocean, like a child, has scooping them out like sand.

There are no lines of brightly painted food stands full of colored ice and t-shirts. There are no humans lying like corpses in neat rows as they let the sun burn off their outer layers. There are no brown women in florescent g-strings and roller blades swimming like salmon upstream through the crowds of corn dog munching patrons. In contrast with the manic consumer-centric world of the San Diego beaches, this place felt like the ancient California where surfing began.

The people were friendly and low key. This was their home and it was easy to imagine that this little town consisted entirely of people who had decided that living by the ocean was more important than pretty much anything else in life. Every morning they strolled down the street with smiles on their faces and surfboards under their arms, coming to and from a handful of beach access points. Some of them even said hello. As a particularly outrageous touch, we actually saw a garbage truck roll by trailing tiny purple flowers in its wake.

After the previous day’s beating we were newly enthusiastic about hanging around near shore and riding white water. As it turned out, this not only built up my confidence but also gave me a chance to keep improving my ability to maneuver the big board. Instead of flailing and struggling to stand I was really controlling the ride and consistently catching everything I tried. Of course the better I got, the more I craved stronger waves and longer rides, and this had me walking the board out further and further each time. As I got more determined, I didn’t notice how far out I was going until, toward the very end of the day, I found that I’d accidentally walked and slid my way out past the breaks again.

At that point I certainly wasn’t going to miss the chance to make another attempt. I sat up on the board and waited for a nice swell. As the first one came through I paddled furiously only to have it lift me up and leave me behind, arms digging helplessly into the water. I whimpered and started for the next one. This one caught me, and I felt it lift me up until the nose started dipping in a terrifyingly familiar way. I heaved myself backwards to no avail. The wave curled up over my head and sucked me into the blender yet again.

This time was different, though, and instead of resisting or letting myself panic I simply relaxed and let the water turn me until it was done. I popped to the surface feeling far less the worse for wear and certainly ready to give it another try. I was told later that this beach was less brutal than the last, but I’d also learned to relax and take a solid breath before going under. Instead of fleeing in terror I pushed back out.

This time around I timed things a little better and I managed to paddle enough to feel the force of the wave grab me. I arched my back upwards to keep balanced so that instead of nosing in, the board formed a watery shelf as I was lifted up into the air. I jumped into position and immediately felt myself fall forward as I slid down the wave face for a stomach gripping moment until I realized that this was exactly what was supposed to happen. I was cruising towards land, knees bent and arms out, the power of the wave suddenly mine to control. I was standing on top of the board and the board was on top of the world. I took the ride as long as it could last, only dropping into the water as the wave went completely flat into the sand. I ran up the beach and began leaping and screaming incoherently at Margaret, my heart pounding and my arms flailing like I was trying to call up an ancient ocean god to bear witness. I had caught my first real wave. I could hardly breathe. There was no turning back.