GO
By Mike Hearon
Five o’clock, Friday night. Gotta pound these beers I think to myself, popping the top off of a cold bottle and chugging. Gotta pound them or they’ll go bad, my excuse. It’s been raining all day, the outer bands of a low-pressure system nosing its way up the coast from Florida. I’m beginning to feel like a frog after surfing all day, the damp air inside my apartment keeping my skin wet.
Six o’clock, Friday night. Something other than moisture is brewing in the air.
The waves are gonna be good in Florida this weekend, we should go, I say to my brother Jeff and my best friend Brian.
That would be awesome, they say.
Fuck it let’s just go.
Over the next fifteen minutes this idea began to materialize.
Let’s do it, we got nothing to do, Jamie can get his Volkswagen camper van, we’ll load that shit up and pile in, and we can camp. It’ll be an adventure. An adventure of uncertainty and danger, I say.
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Six-thirty, Friday night. My friends Jaime and Pat are now both in.
We start packing, slow at first then faster.
Boards.
Sunscreen.
Wetsuits, swim trunks.
One pair of jeans, one pair of shorts. One sweatshirt.
Sleeping bags, pillows.
Ramen noodles.
I pack a nice shirt; semi-consciously I think maybe I’ll meet some cute girl on the beach. I’ll meet her later that night and I’ll want to look nice. I always think like this. I fantasize it.
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Jaime is going to pick up the VW and then cruise over to my apartment. I finish off my last beer with a nice buzz going. Excitement and alcohol run through my veins.
Jaime arrives in a not-so-orderly fashion.
Took a couple pit stops, got some beef jerky and some water guns at the gas station, he says.
Jaime likes to skip all the bullshit and grab the bull by the horns. Always excited, always up for anything. His curly hair makes him a spitting image of Kramer. When you give him an idea, he always replies with a long ‘yeahhh’ then ‘I could be down’, even if in the back of his head he knows he means ‘naaa, probably not’.
The Volkswagen van was Jaime’s first car. His parents became nervous for him to drive it and made him buy a truck a couple years ago, but his dad kept it to use as a surf-mobile. This makes me nervous to think about his parents being nervous.
The exterior of the VW is a tan color, plastered with bumper stickers and rust spots. The front two seats sit directly over the front two wheels and since the engine is in a compartment in the back, there is no front hood. Nothing in front of you except a thin piece of sheet metal, glass and air. Sitting in the passenger seat is nerve racking at first, Jaime likes to pull up to things really fast and then stop two inches away. He knows how to do this well but I don’t know he knows how to do this well and think that he is insane and wants to kill us. The rest of the van consists of an open shag-carpeted floor with a bench seat in the back that folds down flat as a bed. A small table pulls out of the left side in between it and a small bucket seat directly behind the driver seat. Curtains adorn the windows and a small fluorescent light hangs from the roof over the pullout table.
We throw in our bags, junk food, and pile the boards to one side of the back seat. Somebody will have to sit under them. Even though we expect warm water, we throw in our wetsuits just in case. Better to be warm than cold.
Seven-thirty, Friday night. Pat, Brian, my brother and Jaime at the helm.
The whirr of the engine goes fffflllllrrrrrrrr. When you do this roll your tongue on the l’s and r’s.
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We roll out onto Oleander drive and cross the Cape Fear River out of Wilmington. I watch as the city’s lights fade into the distance and the darkness of route 17 south surrounds us. I smile to myself because I’m glad we’re getting the hell out of Wilmington and escaping my everyday routine. I feel free and it makes me feel good. The darkness around the van soothes me.
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Soothing feeling slightly diminishes. Jeff asks me if I brought my keys to the house. I say no and he says shit neither did I. We laugh because we know we don’t have to worry about it now, but we know we’re locked out of our house when we get back.
Maybe I left my porch door unlocked and we can climb up the roof and get in through there, I say.
My brother snaps, why do you even ever lock that door anyways, it’s on the second floor?
Robbers, I mumble. You never know.
I think my brother knows that it bothers me when he leaves that door unlocked and he does it just to hear me lecture him about it and then says whatever and looks at me like I’m crazy. My brother is more calm and collected than I am, not ever caring about what other people may think or what might happen if he does something. Sometimes I admire that quality.
Second problem. Brian lets out his first fart of the trip. We laugh, knowing more will come.
Brian is the shortest one of us all, with a little rumpety stomach and long blonde hair and has this amazing ability to control his bowel sounds. He’s also the funniest human on this whole planet. It’s good to be around him because he likes to entertain you, like he knows someone is always watching. He’ll run past you naked while you’re watching TV, he’ll eat a gallon of vanilla yogurt and leave his white shit sitting in the toilet for all to see and a note taped to the toilet that reads ‘what does this mean?’ He’ll take his mom’s new thirty five thousand dollar SUV out on the beach and get it stuck up to the running boards, or he’ll pour a gallon of water all over himself while driving. Just to blow your mind.
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We drive down the coast through cities and towns I’ve never seen. Traffic lights, fast food restaurants, gas stations, more traffic lights. This town has a freaking junk store on every corner. Waves, Wings, Bargain, Palace. The Gay Dolphin.
The Gay Dolphin? What kind of name for a beach store is that? This town could only be Myrtle Beach. Stunning.
We make it through the labyrinth of traffic lights and finally get some open road again. Brian is passed out on the back seat and we watch as he unconsciously loosens his belt. We all look at each other, our faces morph in disarray; eyes squint and foreheads wrinkle. Then he unbuttons his pants, still sleeping and his potbelly falls out.
Then he farts.
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Eleven o’clock, Friday night. The van can only handle about sixty-five miles an hour so we’re making good time but not great time.
Stop to piss. Jaime has an uncontrollable bladder, like a little kid. He stops to piss about every other hour and when he has to go it makes everyone else go. Like when someone throws up in front of you and then you throw up too.
Drive over scary ass bridge into Charleston, South Carolina. We fall silent as if our tongues have rolled back into our stomachs. I sit still in my seat like if I moved the van would tip over the edge. Two lanes made out of the width of one and the only thing keeping your car from plummeting a hundred feet into the river below a rusty rail and chain link fence. The bridge resembles a roller coaster, curving and rolling. Metal spacers in the concrete have loosened and clunk as the wheels hit. As we see land again and reach solid pavement, we let out the shock-trapped holy shits and what the hells that were stuck in our stomachs.
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Stop to get gas, piss. For some reason the gas machine didn’t stop when the tank was full and no one was watching it. Gas goes everywhere.
Charleston comes and goes a lot quicker than Myrtle Beach. I always wish I could stop and explore the different cities I drive through. Driving on the interstate often leads you around the boring edges of towns and cities and I wonder what they’re actually like, if there are any non-boring parts and what people do here for fun, what kind of people live here or if I could ever live here. I make up the answers and burn made-up images into my head.
One o’clock, Saturday morning. Made it through Savannah, Georgia. I wake up just as we pass through. Everyone except Pat is sleeping.
Sleeping is time warping on road trips. I warped through Georgia, happy because 17 south through Georgia is quite boring.
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Four-thirty, Saturday morning. Florida border!
Stop to get gas, piss. I purchase a gallon jug of water and a soda for some caffeine because it’s my turn to drive.
The clutch is kind of weird, you gotta get used to it, Jaime says as he shuts his eyes in the back.
Cool, I got it.
Crunch, I slam it into first and it sounds like I just stripped every tooth off first gear.
I slowly let the clutch out and it doesn’t let go until it’s almost all the way out and I’m revving the engine really hard so I don’t stall and it kicks into gear and bucks like a rodeo horse.
OK, definitely weird, I say.
Drive through Jacksonville and I get nostalgic. I went to school here at the University of North Florida for two years. It’s been almost a year since I moved away from UNF to go to UNCW and it’s kind of weird to be here again. Jacksonville isn’t the greatest city in America and this time I don’t really care if the interstate takes me around the edge of it.
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Six o’clock, Saturday morning. The sun begins to peek its head over the horizon and shine light onto the road ahead of me. I open my window and take a breath of the warm air and it smells different and good. A Florida smell not a North Carolina smell. Pat is sitting next to me in the passenger seat asleep and the wind coming through the window wakes him up. We call Pat ‘Dino’ because he likes to make dinosaur noises. He gives me a quick ‘raaaaaa’ to show me that he’s awake and excited we’re in Florida. Pat, at twenty-eight, is the oldest and wisest in our group and although very smart, his bushy hair and crazy ways give him a youthful persona. We talk about the times when I used to drive down from UNF to visit him at school in Melbourne. It always felt so good to get some familiarity in such an unfamiliar place.
Make it to Melbourne, a small little beach town in the middle of Florida, and pull up to the ocean. There’s a swell coming in but the tide is wrong for this spot, Pat says. We trust him because he lived here for five years and head south to Sebastian Inlet.
Make it to the inlet and as we drive over the bridge we see waves breaking a half-mile out to sea.
Monster Hole! I scream, jumping out of my seat and stretching my neck to get a good look.
Monster Hole is what they call the surf spot that breaks out in the middle of Sebastian Inlet. Known as one of the best waves on the east coast, on the right swell, the right wind, and right tide. In other words the window of catching it good is very small. This morning, our window appears to be wide open.
Usually, if you see any whitewater at all it means that Monster Hole is breaking.
Screw it; let’s just go out here, we all agree.
We run up to the beach and feel the water. We jump around in excitement, the day before we were surfing North Carolina in a fullsuit and booties and gloves and now all we need is shorts and a wetsuit top. Imagine getting your braces off for the first time.
We suit up and paddle out. The paddle-out at Monster Hole takes a good ten minutes. You paddle across a huge gully for about a half-mile until you reach the sandbar. This brings me to the other thing about Monster Hole. They don’t call it Monster Hole just because of the wave, they call it Monster Hole because on days when the water is clear you can look down and see sharks swimming along the bottom.
This day the water isn’t clear and I’m not sure if it being clear and me seeing the sharks would be better than me not seeing them and just thinking about them.
I paddle faster.
I can’t stop thinking about monsters and I wonder if no one else is speaking because they’re thinking about monsters too.
We make it outside and the waves are actually really good. Long lines rolling in from the horizon peel perfectly along the sandbar, allowing for each of us to get our fair share of good rides. I begin to get the feel of the wave, discovering its bumps and twists, its curves and sections and my mind focuses on nothing but surfing. All my earthly worries disappear. I’m in my own little world; I have complete and total freedom.
We trade waves for about two hours. Arms feel like spaghetti. Face feels burnt from the hot morning sun. The rash burning under my armpits from the seams in the wetsuit top. We start paddle back to the beach.
I hear a huge splash behind me.
What the fuck was that. I heard something but didn’t see anything. Of course it’s a huge shark. Of course it’s probably hungry and stalking me, planning its attack right now, about to breach the surface and bite a tasty morsel off my leg.
Paddle faster. Don’t meet the beast.
Where is it? I hear or see nothing as my tired arms use every last bit of energy to pull me to shore.
Jaime is still out there and I get nervous for him. He paddles closer and closer.
Faster. Faster.
His feet touch the sand. He makes it. Maybe the shark was just lollygagging with a buddy and isn’t hungry after all.
Two legs, two arms, one head. All limbs intact.
The funny thing is that nothing happened but the scary thing is that a shark might actually have been swimming around right beneath us.
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Noon, Saturday. Hungry.
We go to Publix and get subs. The sandwich artist globs on too much mayo. We go to Coconut Point to eat them and chill out for our next surf.
Brian breaks out his bottle of tanning oil and lubes himself up.
Time to get my bronze on, he says.
He moves a couple parking spots down and acts like he’s having a yoga session and needs to meditate. He knows we’re watching him but acts like he doesn’t and he throws his body into his signature tri-pod-scorpion position.
Once again, our minds are blown.
Everyone is napping except Brian and me and we decide to fill up the water guns Jaime got at the gas station and shoot everyone sleeping in the face. This leads to everyone waking up and my brother and Pat don’t have a gun so they just dump the gallon of water on us.
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Go to check the waves again and a cute girl walks up and sits next to us. We talk to her for a bit. Her name is Amy, she says.
Seems cool, definitely cute.
Then she starts talking to herself, mumbling as if we were never there and she never spoke to us.
Whoa. OK weird, so much for using my nice shirt.
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Just before sunset we go out for a surf again at a spot just north of Monster Hole called Spanish House. They call this spot Spanish House because there is a Spanish-looking house on the beach in front of it. The waves are fun and I feel like I caught enough waves to last me the rest of the winter. The water warm, the sun setting. I want to stay here forever, I want to always feel free like this. I sit on my board and look around at everything, the people on the beach, my friends catching waves and hooting, the reds, oranges, and yellows, palm trees swaying in the dunes. I look north and try to picture home and it feels far away but a good far away for now.
We decide to camp in the parking lot. We know we probably aren’t supposed to but we do, mostly because we have nowhere else to go.
Set the van up and camouflage the wheels so they don’t shine by the passing headlights. Feels dangerous and edgy, like we’re bandits hiding from the law.
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Ten o’clock, Saturday night.
We sip beers and walk down to the beach. The trail is narrow with jungle surrounding it. Dark.
On the beach the stars lull us into a philosophical mood.
We talk about how it’s crazy that there could be no end to the universe, how far away those stars are.
We tell stories.
Laugh.
Drink beer.
I think of the movie Castaway when he goes to take a piss in the middle of the night and it is silent except for the sound of piss hitting the water and dark except for the light coming from the stars.
We sip our last beer and go to sleep.
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Noon, Sunday.
Still high from yesterday’s fortune, we decide to head home while we’re still up.
I-95 north, we start a crazy eights tournament. Brian becomes the ultimate champion and I become the ultimate loser.
Brian farts.
Stop at T-shirt World and purchase some souvenirs. I score a tight blue collared shirt that says North Carolina on it. I thought it was ironic that I was in Florida, heading back to North Carolina.
We all take turns driving the van and find out that none of us really have the skills to drive it except Jaime.
Stop to get gas in Savannah, take a piss. I counted the amount of times we stopped so Jaime could piss: seventeen.
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By the time we get to Charleston it’s getting pretty late and the rap CD I put in starts to lull us to sleep. I’m driving and Jaime is next to me in the passenger seat so we decide to put on the Tom Petty anthology. Tom Petty is good music to sing to so we start singing every song loud. This keeps us awake.
Tom Petty rocks, I say.
Jaime is singing, had a good lookin’ mama, never was around, she grew up tall and she grew up right, with them Indiana boys on them Indiana nights.
Almost there, I say and Jaime takes over the helm.
Sign on the shoulder says Wilmington 29.
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As we get closer the city lights get brighter until we’re over the bridge and Wilmington to our left. Home I think, we’re home. Until we actually get home and we stop dead in front of our door with no key.
My brother tells me to check my door on the second floor and lifts me up to grab onto the balcony. Grab fragile wooden spindle on railing. Place foot on siding and push up. Please God don’t let that spindle break. I make it up only to find my door robber-proof.
Fuck, he says.
I get worried because I have a test at eight the next morning and need to study.
Jaime has an idea.
You got a credit card?, he says.
Jeff gives him a credit card.
Jiggle it. Push. Jiggle it. Push. Each push I anticipate the sound of whooshing air.
Minutes go by and just as I about to lose faith in Jaime and the credit card, whoosh. Air rushes past me from inside of the house and access granted.
We thank Jaime and give him and Pat high-fives.
Good times. That was fun, we say.
They drive off and we go inside. The house is dark and lonely. The air damp and musty. It feels like we’ve been gone forever. After the weekend of adventure, the house seems so familiar and normal. I climb the stairs and walk into my room and see my books and think about my test I have tomorrow. I have to study. Back to reality, I think, shaking my head and throwing down my bag.
Eleven o’clock, Sunday night. I crawl into bed. Fuck reality and fuck studying, at least for one more night.
