Surfing's most desirable 20 year old on psychic traumas and Oedipus complexes…

How much more pleasant are the simple, straightforward intense emotions of a dog? He wags his tail or he barks his displeasure. But for a young man on the make, like Creed McTaggart, lately seen in the Joe G/Globe film Strange Rumblings in Shangri-La, existence is more complex. All those stray impulses!

Here, over two separate interviews, BeachGrit attempts to unspool, via psychoanalysis, the labyrinth of Creed McTaggart’s unconscious.

FEARS: I freak out about stability. I feel like in this surfing game, you don’t really know how long it’s going to last and what’s going to happen. I see so many fucking good surfers and really amazing people that just get dropped and within months they’re just gone. I always freak out about that. I feel guilty if I’m doing fuck-all at home or partying too much. I feel like I don’t want to waste it. When you think about it, it’s like living 10 lives in one.

ON BEING UNIQUE: I don’t strive to be unique. I strive to fucking be myself.

ON COURAGE: I wouldn’t call myself a brave person. I’ve done a lot of dumb things. I fucking quit school. I wish I didn’t quit school. I really liked school.

ON THE FATHER-SON RELATIONSHIP: When I was 13 I wanted to be strong like him so I’d have two protein shakes a day and I went boxing training for six years. But it never really worked. By the time I was 17, I just went, fuck that.

DRIVING CARS:  It’s really scary for me. I feel like I don’t belong on the road. If there’s someone tailgating me, for example, I freak out and speed up. I’m semi-dyslexic and I always to forget to fucking turn on the lights and the windscreen wipers. All that pressure! Once you’re on the road, you’re part of a family, a whole family, but no one likes you and everyone gets road rage. It’s this one giant seething organism trying to get to this place and that place and  I’m stuck in the middle cutting people off, totally oblivious, just trying to learn. I just fuck with my own head, really. It’s probably not like that. I get really nervous and anxious.

ON COACHES: Coaches fucking piss me off. I did four ISAs and I just fucking hated it. It’s such a weird vibe. So intense. It didn’t feel real. It felt fake and I hate coaches telling you where to put your arms when you surf. I’ve always want to surf how I wanted to surf.

“I feel like I don’t belong on the road. All that pressure! Once you’re on the road, you’re part of a family, a whole family, but no one likes you and everyone gets road rage. It’s this one giant seething organism trying to get to this place and that place and  I’m stuck in the middle cutting people off, totally oblivious, just trying to learn.”

ON MARIJUANA: There’s a time and a place. Coming from Margaret River there’s a lot of kids I went to school with who got into it too hard and they smoke billies all day and do fuck all. That’s really sad. I don’t rate that.

ON HEAVEN: There’s a heaven I enjoy by myself where I’m lying in bed and it’s thunder storming outside and I’m all cosy and I’m reading a book or listening to music and there’ll be moments where I think, fuck this is heaven. And then there’s the other type of heaven with your friends, having beers in the afternoon. I get a lot of flashes of heaven. More heavens than hell, I try to make it.

 

When a surfer gets old it ain't golden pussy and endless summers anymore. A weekly online serial.

Fucking ukuleles. Fucking rich baby shits with their straight white teeth and trust funds lives. Strumming some faggot song with their little bitch birds hovering around a store bought campfire. Playing at being soul boys for a few days until they pack up and head north to their dorm rooms and credit cards. All a man wants is some peace and quiet and what does he find? Poseur brats with lifted trucks and boutique huaraches. Lank blonde dreadlocks woven with plastic beads, pseudo-progressive bullshit spewing from their idiot mouths.

I got fucked in Mexico. Swindled by two bit beaners, left to scrape together what I could. Sold off the condo piecemeal.  Fixtures, tile, plumbing, molding, furniture… twenty fucking grand. Twenty grand for my life’s saving. Combined with what I had left there might be enough to live off. If I’m lucky enough to drop dead in half a decade.

Listen to their little sing a long. Stupid fucking children, whole waste of a life ahead of them. I can’t wait for them to live it. The little blonde in the corner. I hope her husband beats her. I hope her womb drys up. I hope her dreams rot. I wish she was fucking dead.

I slunk back to San Diego and bought a shitty van and a sleeping bag. Found a nigger on Craigslist who was willing to sell me a shotgun for eight hundred bucks. For fifty more he tossed in some shells. It’s wrapped in blankets in the back of the van, under a board I don’t ride. I keep it loaded. I’ve never fired it.

You don’t get searched going into Mexico, not when you’re a broken down old man heading south to die. Tecate stinks, Tijuana’s nothing but filth and frat boy faggots looking to get their cocks sucked by some dried up beaner whore. A beggar brat steps in front of my van and I’m tempted to run him down.

“I read about a man named Kehoe. They took everything from him. Left him broken, destitute. He burned his farm, wired his horses’ legs together so they couldn’t escape the flames. He’d hidden bombs throughout a local school. Killed thirty-six kids that day. He filled his truck with scrap metal and dynamite and drove to the scene. Blew himself up out front, killed six more people.”

I filled my cooler in San Quintin and drove until I felt alone. Took a dirt road west and tucked in above an empty cove, nothing but desert scrub and rotting seaweed to keep me company. I had an entire day of solitude. They came roaring in. Music blaring; laughing, smiling, naive little shits with no sense of decency or respect. They made camp not twenty yards away and had the gall to ask if I had extra firewood.

I read about a man named Kehoe. They took everything from him. Left him broken, destitute. He burned his farm, wired his horses’ legs together so they couldn’t escape the flames. He’d hidden bombs throughout a local school. Killed thirty-six kids that day. He filled his truck with scrap metal and dynamite and drove to the scene. Blew himself up out front, killed six more people.

Won.

I could leave. Tuck my tail like the good beaten dog and scuttle away. Spend every day running, hiding, living like a shadow of a man. No reason to live, no reason to care. Dry up and blow away.

But I won’t, I can’t. This is mine. Here, now, mine. I let these brats beat me, where does it end? I’m worth something. More than them.

I cook dinner in the fire, canned food in the coals. I don’t bother with a light, just grab what’s at hand. When it’s ready I burn myself picking it up, and drop it into the flames.

Motherfucker. I can hear one of the brats laughing. At me. Because I’m a joke, the big funny loser joke, nothing and no one, eating his canned garbage in a shit van in some fucking desert hell hole. They make me sick.

I can’t eat. I can’t sleep. I watch them play their stupid little pubescent games, nothing but hormones and hope and trust in the future. They’ve started to pair off, no doubt a few of the bitches will fill themselves with greasy little cocks before the night’s done.

One of them notices me watching. Starts to stand, then sits back down and waves.

“Hey buddy, what’s up? You want to come join us? There’s plenty of room.”

Fucking brat.  Fucking stuck up, silver spoon, daddy’s boy prick.

“Man, you okay?”

“Just leave him alone.  He’s creeping me out.”  That little blonde slut.  She’s got her hand on his leg.  Little fucking cunt.

The shotgun’s where I left it.