Our boy wonder turned into a man yesterday. Come revel!
Here is a present! The first 1/3 of the award-winning Surfer’s Journal story Look at John John! It won many awards and was great. And huge. It was the most award winning story ever published. Rigged. SAD.
Look at John John! Look at John fucking John! Look at him roll all loose into that wave sucking and ledging and scary! Look at him pump without any effort and his face all bored and look at that speed! Like a racecar! Like a rocket ship! Look at him hit the section and soar like a kite up up up and look at him land! Can you believe he landed? Look at that too-cool-for-school lack of emotion. Look at the lack of claim, the narcoleptic yawn. Where did he learn to surf like that? So totally cool. His mom? His brothers? While we’re at it, look at his mom and brothers and a house right on Pipeline’s sand and childhood with that long bleachy hair and Monchichi face. Look at him get barreled at Pipeline as an eight-year-old. Look at him get barreled today, dragging is bulbous bottom into the wall and disappear for…..ever. He’s gone. He’s not coming out. There’s the spit. And there’s John John! Look at him! John fucking John.
And when was the last time anyone ever looked at you for anything at all but specifically for something you did physically? When you were one and started eating by yourself? Four and tied your own shoes? Six and made a three-pointer from the college three point line? For me it was four and tying my own shoes. Those bunny ears, bunny ears were playing by a tree before crisscrossing it, trying to catch me. Those bunny ears, bunny ears, jumped into the hole, popped out the other side beautiful and bold. And that was it. I have proceeded to wade through the rest of my existence corporeally insipid. I don’t fall. I don’t fly. I am like you. Are we jealous? Do we despise John John for his extraordinary skill? Do we look at him defy the laws of human locomotion and cheer, roar, praise because mankind needs John Johns or do we look at him with eyes tinted green, wanting to take what he has for ourselves?
Oh, I am a sick man. I am a spiteful man. I am not a physically gifted man. I believe my liver is diseased. However, I know nothing at all about my disease, and don’t know for certain what ails me though it might be jealousy. I don’t consult a doctor for it, and never have, though I have a respect for medicine and doctors. Besides, I am extremely superstitious, sufficiently so to respect medicine, anyway (I am well-educated enough not to be superstitious, but I am superstitious). No, I refuse to consult a doctor from spite. My liver is bad, well–let it get worse. And John John, yes, somehow John John is getting better with each and every passing month.
Look at him! Just look at him! John fucking John. Look at him on tour, as part of the World Surf League. What? You don’t watch the World Surf League? Oh, sure, maybe not when it’s Nat Young vs. Caio Ibelli or Jack Freestone vs. Joel Parkinson but when it’s John John? You can’t help it because even if you don’t catch it live someone will inevitably pull out a phone at a party or work or dinner and say, “Look at this! Look at John John!” And there you will stand, squinting into a 4.7 inch screen looking at him take off under the lip, free-falling to the trough, barreled, barreled, barreled. He’s gone. He’s not coming out. There’s the spit and there’s John John! And would be impossible to believe if you hadn’t seen it with your own green tinted eyes.