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I’d taken a fresh GoodNite with me to the shower so I could redress after I was washed clean. When I came out of the bathroom fully dressed, I found Destiny and Meek both sacked out on the beds; only then did I realize just how long I’d been in the shower. The water had felt so good, and I took time to condition my hair several times to soften it, as it felt rather hay-like from all the bleaching. I mean, they were completely out of it; neither of them so much as stirred from the noise of me coming out of the bathroom.

Oddly, I wasn’t the least bit tired. I was wide-awake because I was home again! I didn’t want to sleep, I wanted to get out and see Chula Vista again! So, with a fresh GoodNite, I stepped into my shoes and quietly slipped out of the hotel room, my bleach-blond, wet hair hanging like dreadlocks because I hadn’t taken the time to comb it.

So where did I go? I’m surprised you have to ask. I made a beeline for the ocean. I had no surfboard, but that was a minor technicality. More times than I can count, I have ended up on one stretch of beach or another without a board. I’ll share a little secret with you… all you have to do is know how to talk with other surfers and in no time you’ll be catching waves on a borrowed board.

I hit the beach and couldn’t believe how crowded it was. Man it was like a sea of beach towels and un-tanned people.

“Yep, it is for sure the start of summer!” I said aloud.

I pulled off my shirt and tied it around the metal pole of the boardwalk sign along with the other thirty or more shirts and such that were tied to it. That’s what we surfers do with our clothes, we either burry them on the beach or tie them to something. Surprisingly, few people ever take what isn’t theirs.

“Do I know you?” this one half-baked dude asked.

I looked up into the bloodshot eyes of a guy who looked to be seventeen or eighteen. It was clear he was well on his way to fully baked… uh, I mean stoned. I could even smell it on him like stink on a skunk.

“Possibly!” I said forgetting that I look completely different than I did when I left here last year, and that I was supposed to be lying low.

“How long you been coming here?” I asked.

“Oh not long, year or so.” He said as he pulled off his shorts and accidently pulling down his speedo too.

I saw his junk and nearly laughed at the size of it. Heck, my penis is even bigger than his was. He was so stoned that he didn’t even realize what he had done until someone whistled at him.

“Woopsie-dassies!” he laughed as he caught his board before it fell. He’d been trying to balance it while taking off his shirt at the same time.

“Want me to hang on to that while you get your suit back on?” I asked and he passed it to me.

“Where’s your board man?” he asked while using one hand to hang onto the sign to keep from falling over and the other to pull up his shorts.

“Don’t have one.” I said.

“No way.” He exclamed with too much emotion. Stoners are so funny.

“But hey man I got an extra board if you want.” He offered.

See what I mean about surfers?

“Oooeee that would be choice!” I told him.

“You light up?” He asked after he got his speedo back on.

I had helped him tie his clothes to the metal pole as he was so wasted he couldn’t even manage to wrap the darn things around the pole, let alone tie ’em there. I also tied the laces of my shoes to it before following him back to his car.

“Nah man, but help yourself!” I said and then asked while holding his extra board, which wasn’t a great board, but it was better than most rental boards.

“Mind if I get this wet while you light up?” I asked.

Wordlessly he waved his approval as he was taking a hit of his roach clip.

“Thanks bra!” I crowed as I tucked the board under my arm and took off toward the sandy beach.

I didn’t run, but walked with slow pensive strides while looking out at the point where the earth curves and the ocean and sky meets.

The ocean… my old, dearly missed ocean, it was still there, and it was breaking for me. It was as though it saw me walking toward it and like a faithful dog, was jumping and rolling with excitement.

“Oh yeah! You’re glad to see me too. Aren’t ya?” I asked it.

I cannot properly express to you the pleasure I felt as the scorching sand fried the bottoms of my feet with each step. You might think that pleasure is the last thing I would feel but to me, the burning hot sand was like the beach telling me, “Welcome home Alvin!”

I will say that with one year away from the beach, the bottoms of my feet have become softer. If I actually were to stop on the sand for any amount of time, I probably would have started doing what vacationers always do. A sort of tiptoe dance to the water to cool their burning feet.

I stopped at the water’s edge. The waves rolled up and touched my feet like a dog licking its masters face. Down, level with the water, I could see the waves were more than gnarly. They were the kind of waves people draw on the backs of school binders; as in the kind, you only dream about. There was only one thing to do, go in for a closer look!

There was no checking the water temp or getting used to the colder ocean water. I ran all the way out jumped on the board and paddled like mad.

Now you might have noticed that I’d managed to forget something very important. I was wearing a GoodNite under my board shorts and they were already completely water logged. This is actually going to be a reoccurring event in the coming days.

“Alvin you idiot!” I said aloud as I duck-dived under the first wave.

I came up on the other side and didn’t stop paddling and duck diving until I thought my arms were going to fall off. I had to dive under eight waves in total and paddled so far out that when I sat myself up and turned to look back, I couldn’t see land or anyone else. I was alone, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. I was finally back where I belong!

As peaceful as it was out there in the middle of my own big, blue water world, I didn’t stay out there too long, maybe ten minutes or so; long enough to shimmy out of my shorts and the GoodNite and then shimmy back into my shorts. I’m immensely ashamed to tell you this, but I dropped that GoodNite right into the water and watched it sink into the blackness of the ocean depths. I was no sooner getting my board shorts back on; when I spotted, what I knew was going to be a great wave. However, I was behind it already.

Using a trick I’d learned from a Hawaiian surfer, I grabbed both sides of my board and flipped myself right over so that the bottom of my board was facing the sky and I was danging beneighth it in the water.

My body acted like sail and the current actually propelled me so fast that when I righted my board and myself, I was in perfect passion.

Boy was I right on the money with that wave. It was almost a perfect wave.

“Oh yeah! Check it out!” I cheered, “The water was chucking a major fish, but I was in complete control.

I cut left!

I cut right!

I pulled a nice exit and re-entry!

I was ripping up that face!

I rode it in about halfway alone then at about that point several other surfers had caught the wave too. However, they didn’t know that the wave hadn’t reached full maturity and were soon swallowed up. I had been riding high and hanging ten, however, knowing that it was going to begin breaking soon I dropped low and then did a sharp left to put myself into position. My timing was spot on as the wave began to break above me, creating a stellar tube.

There was a moment where I couldn’t see anything but water all around me and having not surfed a tube in about a year, I actually got a little scared as it closed in on me. In that instant I had a brief and incredibly scary thought, like someone screaming in my ear, that this was how I would die. However, like I said it was brief, like a nano-second and then instinct took over. I slid my left foot a couple inches nearer the nose of the board, lowered myself, and soon fired myself out the other end before the wave could consume me.

Still riding the dying wave, I was punching my fist in the air and cheering. “NOT THIS TIME!” I felt like I was back and hadn’t lost anything at all.

Several surfers and vacationers were ‘ooing and aweing’ as I came up on shore. A few asked who I was but I didn’t answer. As I walked up the beach, I found the stoners car and placed his board in the back, which was still wide open. As I was walking back past the car, I found the stoner passed out on the front seat and laughed as I headed for my shirt and shoes.

Yeah, it would have been great to surf for the whole afternoon, but I hadn’t left Meek and Destiny a note or anything telling them where I had gone. Therefore, I wanted to get back before they woke up again.

I walked into the room to find both of them awake and active.

“There he is!” Meek said smugly, “Told you he wouldn’t be gone long!”

Destiny was helping Meek… uh… I mean Mindy-Lynn to be re-dolled up by touching up his, uh, her eye shadow.

“Where’d you wander off too?” Destiny asked. Her tone wasn’t strict or that of a mother-hen. She simply sounded curious.

“Wasn’t tired so I went to see if the ocean was still where I left it.” I said while retrieving a fresh GoodNite.

“How was the water?” Meek asked.

“Perfect! Caught a gnarly one.” I said while kicking off my shoes by the door.

“Just one?” Meek asked.

Forgetting to be embarrassed, I dropped my shorts, exposing myself to Destiny as I stepped into the GoodNite.

“Yeah, didn’t want to worry either of you so I hurried back.”

“See, told ya he couldn’t wait.” Meek said to Destiny.

“Yeah, you got that one right!” I said as I pulled my shorts up over the fresh GoodNite.

“Alvin sweetie, you might want to get cleaned up and put on some of those new clothes.” She pointed to a stack of clothes on one of the beds, “Momma Destiny is going to take her boys out to paint the town in rainbow colors!”

“Oh? Where’s that?” I asked but I wasn’t told.