“First the 'Surfpas" teach our new masters how to
surf. Then they take their payroll pals to the latest, greatest
surf spot—Indo, the Mentawais, Costa Rica—and colonize it!”
Point Douche is a work of fiction. Names, characters,
businesses, events and incidents are all the products of my
imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or
actual events is coincidental.
$
Al pedaled his rickety mountain bike down the oak,
eucalyptus, and Tesla-lined street towards Point Delores, where a
full-blown class war between billionaires and millionaires was in
its final throes. With the same ferocity that Hulagu Khan
once sacked Baghdad, the Tech Mongols were now conducting their
final, brutal, mop-up operation of the world’s most expensive
private beach enclave. Not even the Hedge Fund Visigoths were safe
from their predations.
As the disheveled, dark-skinned bicyclist got closer to a
guardhouse with “POINT DELORES ESTATES” emblazoned on it in neat
block letters, he noticed a fit man with a shaved head walking a
muzzled Belgian Malinois. Without taking his eyes off the
bicyclist, the man began to mutter in Hebrew into the lapel of his
Navy blue blazer.
Al returned his stare, then bared his teeth at the dog and
growled. Without making a sound, the fur missile
launched. The bald handler grabbed the leash with both hands.
As he wrestled with the attack dog, his blazer fell open, revealing
the handle of a Glock 27 in a Kydex holster, a taser, and a pair of
zip tie handcuffs.
“What? I owe you money?” snapped Al as he coasted past the last
Telsa sleeping on its charger.
Al stopped at a formidable steel security gate. It began to open
and out stepped a short, plump, older woman who looked like an
Inca. She carried a brown paper bag full of avocados covered
in concrete dust in her arms. The woman smiled warmly at Al.
“Que Onda Alejandro?”
“Not much Carmen. Is my mom home?”
“Si. Be careful. She’s angrier than usual. The
Cabrón next door knocked down her avocado tree. I left some
food for you.”
“Thanks, Carmen.”
“OK! Adios!” she said, and then rushed to catch the last Metro
534 bus that would take her to her home near downtown LA. There she
would eat, get a few hours of sleep, wake up in the dark and do it
all over again the next day. Carmen had been Al’s mother’s maid for
the past three decades and was more of a mother to him than his own
mother, Alice.
Al pushed his bike up to the guard house. A buff, broad
shouldered, white haired man, with a Fu Manchu mustache, leathery
wrinkled skin and pterygiums that covered the corneas of his
perpetually bloodshot, blue eyes, opened the door. Despite
the ill-fitting uniform that could not contain his massive biceps,
he was more surfer than rent-a-cop.
“Evening, Al,” said Jimmy “The Joker” Jones.
“Wsup, Joker,” Al said, as he pulled five twenty-dollar bills
from his Levi’s jacket pocket and handed them over.
“The Southern Hemi is starting to fill in at the outside
point. What’s the spread for SC-Notre Dame?” Jones said and
took a long pull from his cup of coffee.
“I’m only giving SC 7, because it’s in South Bend.”
“OK. I’ll put $50 on the Trojans.”
Al took a pen and small spiral notebook out, scribbled in it,
nodded affirmatively, then pointed conspicuously towards the bald
man with the dog.
“What’s with the new help around here?”
“He’s part of Prince Kip von zur Lichtenstein’s security detail.
After ‘the incident’ with Kirby Cotrell, the Prince, his wife, and
children are now shadowed by armed security 24-7. The guy with the
dog first claimed to be former Mossad, but Cotrell forced him to
admit that he was just a conscripted border policeman!”
“What did Cotrell do?”
“He let the guy continue his hustle, but let’s just say that his
wages have been garnished. Now he and the others have to answer to
Cotrell.”
“The others?”
“The other security guys. Ned Reboot’s security are
actually retired Navy Seals. They also acted like pricks until they
ran into Cotrell. It turned out that he was their BUDS instructor.
Now they answer to him too.”
“Who’s Ned Reboot?”
“He owns Sahara, the world’s biggest online sweatshop. He
offered Slim Jim, the rapper who owns the big white house on the
cliff, a million dollars a month to rent his place for the summer.
Not only would the house have to be completely empty, his wife,
Luci, added a contractual stipulation. It actually said in the
rental agreement that ‘there should be no evidence of the human
hand.’ Reboot, I mean his wife, Luci, wants to be a surfer now too.
I guess it’s the new golf. Now Luci surfs every day with her new
‘besties,’ Contessa Clink and Lori Mausenberg. Thanks to you, all
of them think that Hades is Barry Kanaiaupuni!”
“I know. I created a monster,” Al said, then shook his head and
stared wistfully out to sea. When Al thought of his long, lost
love, even three decades later, it still hurt.
“Guess who is teaching them?” the Joker said with a mischievous
smile.
Al did not respond and instead continued to stare out to
sea.
“Al!”
“What! I mean who?”
“Jim McVane!”
“He’s from the fuckin Valley!”
“Yes, but remember Al, he was once a professional handsome
guy. Got a little long in the tooth for modeling, so Surfpa’s
his new hustle.”
Confused, Al cocked an eyebrow like John Belushi and said,
“Surfpa?”
“You know how rich people pay Sherpas to drag their sorry asses
to the summit of Mount Everest?” the Joker asked.
“Yeah,” Al replied, but was now more confused than ever.
“They’re like the Indian guides who helped the settlers win the
West. First they teach our new masters how to surf. Then they
take their payroll pals to the latest, greatest surf spot—Indo, the
Mentawais, Costa Rica—and colonize it!”
“Jesus,” said Al, shaking his head in disbelief.
“First Contessa Zink hired McVane to teach her twins, Athena and
Aristotle, how to surf. Those hopeless little blobs hated the
ocean, so he ended up teaching her. One thing led to another
and now he’s not just her Surfpa, he’s her indoor man too.
Not to be outdone, Luci Reboot got herself a prize Surfpa.”
“Who?”
“Kavika Kona!”
“What?”
“Yeah, his sponsors didn’t renew his contract. Gave it to
a blonde real estate developer’s son from San Clemente
instead.”
“How the mighty have fallen,” Al said, and sighed.
“Look, Kavika’s got a wife and four kids to support back in
Hawaii. Beats mowing the golf course at the Four Seasons with his
dad and brothers. Next week, Luci’s flying him to Rancho
Nirvana, home of the world’s greatest man-made wave. Costs $100,000
a day and she rented the whole place out.”
“I heard that each wave produces more carbon per wave than fifty
Chevy Duramaxes blowing coal!” Al said.
“But if you drive your Tesla to your private jet, you get carbon
credits!” the Joker laughed. “Instead of going to spas, the ladies
who used to lunch now go to Rancho Nirvana.”
“I miss the old days,” said Al.
“Speaking of the old days, Bowden’s back from New York. He’s
trying to convince his parents not to sell their house to Lester
Mecontente. The prick called their house a fire hazard and an eye
sore. He made them an absurd offer! Generational wealth!”
“Does Hades want the Brown’s house?”
“She’s too spun out to care,” said the Joker. “By the way,
she’s been looking for you.”
“Gina, I mean Hades, can wait,” Al said, smiled malevolently,
then he pulled a pill bottle from the pocket of his jacket.
As he was riding away, he shook the pill bottle and shouted,
“Malibu mating call.”
$$
While Point Delores had always been home to actors, rock
stars, and professional athletes, COVID changed
everything. Hours after California’s handsome, blow-dried,
boy Governor Sebastian Truestone announced the strictest lockdown
rules in the nation, locust like swarms of Gulf Streams,
Bombardiers, and Boeings descended on Van Nuys Airport. Waiting on
the tarmac, in temperature controlled SUVs and luxury sedans,
anxious real estate brokers gave their breath a final check.
As the Tech Mongols, their satraps and courtiers deplaned, the
brokers greeted them with symbolic offerings of coconut water, fair
trade coffee and fresh squeezed juices of every variety. Next, they
bundled their prey into cars and the convoy sped down the Ventura
Freeway. After they exited at Delores Canyon Road, they wound
their way up and over the hill to find their piece of private
paradise. No price was too high and there was no such thing as “not
for sale.”
Minutes after escrow closed, construction workers descended on
their new properties like the Viet Minh at Dien Bien Phu. Frank
Lloyd Wright, Charles Gwathney Frank Lautner, Matt Kivlin, Richard
Meier—new, old, architecturally significant—it didn’t matter. They
were all bulldozed and replaced with post-modern, concrete and
steel fireproof bunkers that would have pleased Reich Minister
Albert Speer himself.
Next, the Tech Mongols attempted to appropriate Southern
California’s waterfront culture, but that was proving to be much
more difficult. Unlike the merciless pounding waves on the north
side of the headland, the waves in Point Delores cove were so easy
to ride that even children and the most uncoordinated, unathletic
adults could surf them. Still, not even a house on the point and a
Surfpa could guarantee you a wave, much less respect, in Point
Delores’s ruthlessly stratified surfing lineup.
Unlike the hyper-competitive Hedge Fund Visigoths who tried,
albeit gracelessly, to surf, most of the Tech Mongols didn’t even
bother. Not only was the sport too difficult to learn, the surfing
hierarchy, even now, was just too brutal for their frail egos.
Although their money could buy them a seat on the board of
Stanford, membership to the Council on Foreign Relations, or an
invitation to the annual plutocrats’ summit in Sun Valley, it could
not buy them a set wave at Point Delores.
Even worse, SurfSerfs like Al, the Joker, the Cotrells and their
kin not only ruled the waves at Point Delores, they boiled with an
incandescent rage not dissimilar from that of the displaced
Palestinian olive farmers on the Gaza Strip. Gates, guards,
cameras, keys, fobs—no amount of money, technology, or private
security could keep the SurfSerfs out of their ancestral
waters.
The Tech Mongols and Hedge Fund Visigoths understood the
SurfSerfs rage all too well. They, too, simmered with resentment.
Life for them was also an exercise in revenge and
schadenfreude because they had never tasted glory and never
would.
Despite their vast fortunes and trappings of power, until
recently, they had been life’s non-impact players. They never got
to score the winning touchdown, fuck the cheerleader, save a life
in the sea, or kill a man on a battlefield. No amount of MMA
training with UFC champions, yoga retreats with Ashtanga gurus, or
Ayahuasca trips with Peruvian shamans could ever change that
fact.
Their wives, however, were a different matter. They loved
surfing, and especially their Surfpas…
(Editor’s note: Peter Maguire is a surfer, war crimes
investigator and author ofThai
Stick: Surfers, Scammers, and the Untold Story of the
Marijuana Trade (movie rights optioned by Kelly Slater), Law
and War, Facing Death in Cambodia and
Breathe, a biography written with jiujitsu icon
Rickson Gracie. Ain’t much ol Petey can’t do. The following story, which
is an excerpt from an upcoming novel, appears on Pete’s substack
Sour Milk, subscribe, it’s free etc.)
