Man Down

Standing at the threshold of a bad idea, beside a dull green sea, beneath an overcast sky of various shades of grey. It's September, I'm wrapped from head to foot in neoprene so thick that seals might find me attractive. My face, the only naked part of my body and yet, I'm still cold to my soul. I picked up my surfboard to cross over to what looked to be nothing but "close-outs", then paused and thought to myself..." what the fuck am I doing here?!"

Twas only yesterday, I was in London ensconced in the warmth of a hotel where models walk the corridors posing as bellhops and chambermaids. They wear trendy uniforms: the men, in black tapered slacks topped with a simple grey wollen pullover. The women have on classy slim-fit black dresses cut to just above the knee and pinched in at the waist. I wondered if this place could be some kind of holding yard for models between photoshoots or "fashion weeks" or whatever pretty people do when they are not working at a trendy London Hotel. But what model would choose a servile life over Cocaine & Cigarettes, if even for a moment?

My first time in London, a place that I've always wanted to visit, now that I have, I very much wish that I hadn't. It's a city defined by heritage, where the past and present-day co-exist in a modern-day Dickens novel...minus the romance and fancy costumes. Old listed buildings line its narrow streets, statues of the much-vaunted line its sidewalks. Boudicea, Admiral Nelson, Winston Churchill and everyone in between. How many people does a person need to kill to merit having a statue erected in his or her honour? 

Since arriving, I've been consumed by a melancholy, a sadness without reason. It could be the constant grey cloud coverage which stops the sun from shining....maybe a lack of Vitamin D could be the cause for my un-ending discontent?

Faces of strangers reflect my own feelings: solitude amongst a never-ending sea of people. We share a commonality in our collective misery; we're a community of sadness.

I came here with a vain hope of mending a "broken heart", erroneously thinking that bright lights and chaos would be my saviour, a distraction from my thoughts and a constant pain in my chest. Instead, my saviour came in the form of an editor of a surf magazine for whom I freelance, calling to offer me a quick gig- "Go to Cornwall, write a story about the surfing and the Surfers...of its waves, of its 'stoke." I accepted...any job would have been an attractive proposition by way of respite from this overpopulated shit-hole of a city. 

This is not that story!

London has a redeeming quality after all. It's a many-hour drive away from Cornwall. Long car rides are for me; much coveted, for no other reason than for the opportunity to play endless music. This fragmented life seldom offers a moment long enough to listen to a band's album in its entirety. My car journeys are short. Plane journeys are interspersed with flight attendants offering peanuts and blankets, and there are albums that should only ever be played from start to end. Those albums make a person wonder as to the existence of a "higher power"; listening to them in part would be sacrilegious. Pink Floyds -Wish You Were Here & Dark Side of the Moon, Quadrophenia - The Who, White Album - The Beatles. I'm not the pious type; I'd even argue against the ridiculous notion of a God, but whenever I hear "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", I pause... for it does give cause for consideration to a divine intervention. Good music has the power to either shorten the longest road or make it so that you do not want it to end. So many times, when reaching a destination, I have felt the urge to keep going so that the music keeps playing.

Porthleven was unremarkable, old and smelt of fish. I wonder when was the last time anything had been built here. There's a pier that was built in 1826, Old buildings seem to be repurposed with modern businesses inhabiting them. There's old pubs, old boats in an old mariner and lots of old people walking around on its cobbled streets. It seemed a happier place than London, people looked at me and smiled...I felt less alone. 

For my surfing needs, my editor had arranged for me to meet Alan, 6'6", rotund. It seemed that he modelled himself on "Vegas Elvis"- dyed black hair, combed back in a quiff style, sideburns and that bloated look that Elvis had just before he died on his toilet; it took the extent of my willpower not to ask him for a rendition of "Unchained Melody". Alan also had a proclivity for same-sex relationships, an irrelevant fact and one I usually wouldn't care to mention if not for him, alluding to it constantly by way of innuendo and subtle suggestion.

There seems to be an overwhelming need for gay guys to bang straight guys. With the rejoinder, "You can't say that you don't like it if you've never tried it", once their advances have been rebuffed. I've never "tried" Ramen! There's something about noodles in water that, to me, is just unappealing. It's all so very wet. If I die having never sampled it, I most likely wouldn't be sad about the fact. 

Alan is a likeable chap though and if I ever my curiousity was "sparked" and I fancied to"try it"...it would most definately NOT be with him...he'd be punching way up! 

I met "Alvis" the following morning; he provided me with a wetsuit that would be suitable if a person had the inclination to break the pack ice on some arctic tundra for some cold water diving, and a surfboard with the same dimensions as a minivan. I was beginning to think that staying in London may have been a wiser choice.

I found myself sitting in a "line-up" amidst a group of men all resembling "The Gimp" from Pulp Fiction. Within minutes- feeling in my feet and hands ceased, my testicles ascended far into my gut and were now mixing with my breakfast. My penis took a look about, then decided this was no place for him either (it would be three days before I saw him again). Self-preservation was urging me to vacate the water, my survival instinct calling me names that I've only ever heard from my ex-wife: on a weekend when it's been my turn for the kids and I’d made other plans. Surfing is meant to be a fun thing! It's not meant as a test of one's moral fibre. 

"It's under duress when a person finds out about his or herself." It was here that I found out that my ego is bigger than my need to not die from hyperthermia. As I sat there waiting for a set amongst these freaks. Every part of me wanted to paddle back for shore. But the thought of them thinking that I'm just a "blow-in" only able to surf warm water in boardies and little else, would not allow me to do so...which is all true, of course, but I could not allow them to think such a thing. The shame I'd feel to have these guys watch me paddle back in within ten minutes of paddling out could keep me up at night, so I endured. They sat waiting for sets, it seemed, with no care or mind to the cold; they were unaffected; Inuits would baulk at such conditions.

Finally a set decided to show its face. I sat back on my board to turn and paddle but felt as if I was moving in slow motion, an Oil Tanker could make a one-eighty in less time as I struggled to manoever this mobile pontoon.

I knew that I was paddling as I saw my arms were moving, but all feeling in them had now been lost. Numbness had overcome me. Cold seeped into my brain, too; a dream state ensued, and everything slowed. I felt the wave lift the back of my board, and I began climbing to my feet. In my mind, I had "want" and "Intention," but devoid of any motor skills to back up such desires. It seemed as though that my brain/body connection had been severed and were operatingindependently of each other. No sooner had I made it to my feet than I came crashing down, face-planting the expanse of fibreglass, on which moments ago I stood atop. Underwater for what felt like way too long, at the same time with no care for my imminent drowning. Engulfed by a serenity and an absence of any panic or need to survive, in a state of suspended animation. I wondered if this is what Limbo might feel like, no longer alive nor dead. I'm not sure if it was the grace of "God" that rescued me or buoyancy from the ultra-thick wetsuit. But I found myself back at the surface, climbed aboard the behemoth and paddled for shore with no concern for anyone's thoughts of me.

Travel to Hawaii, Australia, and most other places where surfers collect. You'll find guys with sunbleached, unkempt hair and boardshorts. They may come across as a little dense, and they use words like "Dude" and "Gnarly". Cornwall tends to "throw up" the more discerning Surfer: Bookish types that wear Aaron Jumpers and Courdroy Trousers. They spend their days on tractors, their Sunday afternoons tinkering with train sets, but what else would one do here?

I'd come back again if, by some miracle, all of the world's oceans dried up and Cornwall was the only place in the world left to surf...even then, I'd have to think about it.