Candid: I love stand-up bodyboarding!

So does Tom Curren! Brad Domke in a roundabout way too… 

I spent every Summer, from ten to sixteen, condemned to the daily hell that was junior lifeguards.

I hated it with a passion. Ride my bike to the beach in the early morning gloom, run and swim and run again. Desperately try to hide my ever present boners from the swiftly developing girls in my age bracket. A tiny patch of exposed tan line, the way a one piece suit would ride up their pubescent little asses, a light breeze brushing my trunks against my tiny pink member. They’d force us to wear those elastic waistband/mesh underpants combo nightmares, nearly impossible to hide an erection in those things. Spent a lot of time lying on my stomach feigning confusion while an instructor berated me to get up and start running.

When we were finally set free it was a mad dash to retrieve my surfboard and get in the water before noon, when the black ball flag flew and hard boards were banned by the same fascists who’d been torturing me all morning.

A tiny patch of exposed tan line, the way a one piece suit would ride up their pubescent little asses, a light breeze brushing my trunks against my tiny pink member. They’d force us to wear those elastic waistband/mesh underpants combo nightmares, nearly impossible to hide an erection in those things. Spent a lot of time lying on my stomach feigning confusion while an instructor berated me to get up and start running.

Because it was the early 90’s, and leaving children unattended was yet to be declared criminal, I had a lot of time to fill before whichever parent I was living with came home. Surfing was my first choice, but lacking that option I was happy with setting fires, shoplifting, prying open the newspaper pay boxes that contained those old porn/prostitution pulp rags that have long since disappeared.

A Summer friend, TJ Jenkins, a kid who went to a different school but was my best bud three months of the year, eventually turned me on to stand-up bodyboarding. TJ was head and shoulders beyond me, ability wise, eventually became an amazing aerial surfer, by 90’s standards, then dropped off the face of the earth around the time we turned eighteen. I often wonder what happened to TJ, social media searches don’t turn up squat. He had a drug problem for a bit toward the end, really hope he’s still breathing.

It was fun, not surfing, but close enough to scratch the itch. I began lugging my bodyboard with me each day, a tattered and waterlogged Mach 7-7 wider than my arms were long. Couldn’t do a turn, just get in trim, maybe manage the occasional end section bonk. But I was having fun, and that was all that really mattered.

I backed off around thirteen, when I realized how badly it was fucking up my style. Keeping the rail in the water requires an off kilter stance, actual bottom turns are nearly impossible without an amazing level of ability.

But I still own a boogie, an oversized fat boy model Custom X I bought fifteen years ago, that occasionally gets dusted off and put to use. I eat shit on the takeoff nine times out of ten, but I still have as much fun today as I did back then.