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.

Work hard, save your money, buy a piece of paradise and watch life crap on you. A weekly online serial.  

Five days a week, fifty two weeks a year, for thirty years is seven thousand, eight hundred days. Eight hours a day for seven thousand eight hundred days is sixty two thousand, four hundred hours.

This is what I paid for my security, for a chance to finally relax and live a life.

It was a close thing. The whole WorldCom fiasco set me back a few years, and an ill advised dalliance in day trading set me back a few more.  But I beat the race against social security and I can finally tell the world what I’ve wanted to for the last thirty years.

You can go fuck yourself. All of you.

Decades of busting my ass, eyes on the prize, and what do I get? A wife who leaves me. Leaves me because I’m not willing to cripple my future to put a junkie son through rehab, again. That boy had been a disgrace since the day he dropped from his mother’s womb. Even as a child, he was a liar, and a cheat, and a thief.  So, why am I the bad guy? Why, after feeding him, clothing him, and educating him, why should I be willing to try and save a dirt bag drug addict who’s just going fall off the wagon the moment he gets out? It’s his whole generation, a bunch of entitled, spoiled brats who think the future should be handed to them on a silver platter. That they shouldn’t have to work, to suffer.

Bullshit.

And, of course, when the police finally pulled his corpse out of some shooting gallery deep in the ghetto, who’s fault was it? Not mine, I’ll tell you that.

Dead son, dead wife. To her credit, she remarried quickly, at least sparing me the indignity of supporting some withered old hag’s descent into dotage. When her new hubby flipped the their car on a wine tasting excursion to Napa, his reflexes muddled by a combination of room temperature Brie and piss yellow Chardonnay, well, I wasn’t happy, exactly. More like relieved.

But, it’s all come together, finally. Decades of work, a couple hundred thousand dollars, and a sheer, blind commitment to my goals has paid off. The condo is finished and I get to take possession of the place I will die in.  Alone, if I have any luck left.

Two bedrooms, Spanish tile in the kitchen, blue tile in the bathroom, creme colored walls. Exactly as specified. My balcony looks down on a head-high swell unfolding across the pointbreak I’ve coveted all these years.

Those were the best days of my life. Late teens, early twenties, surfing the Point until my arms were rubber, until my eyes were on fire. I told myself that, one day, I’d own a piece of her. And now I do.

The rest of my boards arrive with the furniture tomorrow. In the meantime, I retrieve my longboard from the spare room, and paddle out, into my wave. It’s steeper than I remember and I’m having a hard time making the drop. I can hear the snickers of spoiled Orange County day-tripper brats as I paddle back out. One of them blatantly stuffs me. I kick my board at him and miss.

“I tell him to watch his mouth, that this is my wave, that I’ve been surfing since his parents were children. He spits in my face and pushes me off my board. I take a swing at him and he ducks it.”

He paddles back out and starts screaming at me. “What was that about, old man?”

I tell him to watch his mouth, that this is my wave, that I’ve been surfing since his parents were children. He spits in my face and pushes me off my board. I take a swing at him and he ducks it.

Suddenly, I’m surrounded by his little pack of cronies, all splashing, laughing, mocking “go home old man”,”don’t break a hip”,”where’s your walker?”

I’ll kill them.

Later that night I’m sitting on my balcony, drinking from a bottle of tequila. My cell has ten missed calls, all from my realtor.

“Hey, um, we’ve run into a little problem here, can you call me back?”

“Hey, I really need you to call me back, it’s urgent.”

“Listen, I know you’re retired now, but you need to call me as soon as you get this message.”

“Alright, I didn’t want to tell you this via voice mail, but we’ve run into a problem with the condo…”

And so on…

I take a swig from the bottle and dial his number.

“Jesus, it’s about time, listen…”

“Look, just tell me what the problem is.” I slur out the words.

“Well, it’s like this, you know you own the condo…”

“Damn straight I do…”
“Yeah, well, it turns out that’s all you own. The land belongs to someone else.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The land owner is claiming he never sold the property, that the condos were built illegally. That you have to either pay him five hundred thousand, or vacate the premises.”

“What about my condo?”

“He says you’re welcome to move it.”

I hang up the phone and throw it off the balcony. I don’t see what it hits.

I’m going to finish this bottle, and then open another. I wonder where you can get a gun in Mexico. How hard would it be to smuggle one down from San Diego? I gulp down more tequila, too quick, too much, and retch it back up.

God damn it.