The Surfing Penguin

The Surfing Penguin

I just don’t want to go back.

Now anyone can understand that, can’t they. I was done with my summer plan. Finished UCLA, did some summer theatre, took a solo trip to Europe. Now I’m back. Back where I started. What will I do. What prospects do I have? I just know that I don’t want to go back to the farm. Where even the full moon is dark and untrustworthy.

I’m pedaling behind the Catman. My Rossin’s spinning smooth. We’re training for a biathlon. What else is there to do, you know? Where Western Avenue meets the ocean, we make a right turn onto 14th Street heading in the direction of Portuguese Bend. Home of the big W from It’s a Mad, Mad World. It’s a long downhill grade. A good time to build momentum for the upcoming climb. We begin to pick up speed. I reach down toward the metal gearshifts with my right hand and move the right shifter forward. The gear cable tightens in reply, I hear the chain slip, carry and climb from one sprocket to another, and my calves and thighs tense up for the push. I tuck in tight to minimize wind resistance, and wiggle my Diadora’s making sure my feet are tightly clipped into the pedals

Brancusi and Bilko, Buster Keaton pratfalls and Jimmy Durante’s nose. Tinny scents of pink cotton candies and spilled pepto bismol. An edge of a shovel slices through the tendons of a cows back leg. A penguin surfs a towering opiate wave off the coast of Portugal courting death and aiming to reverse time. A skull bone separates, rejecting its own integrity. A taffy pull machine mesmerizes with its gooey pink and white infinity loops. A can of red paint lies on its side, its red blood spreading across Mars. An aging Chinese countess flips tarot cards off a curb on Gower. She smiles a steely liquid smile through an opium haze. Somewhere, a worm sizzles like bacon on blacktop as the ghost of Dorthy Provine looks on. “Stairway to Heaven”, the worm screams. “I’ve never seen the movie.” The Chinese countess flips the last card and dies, crumpling into the gutter next to a tired Scientology handout. It’s the Hanged Man. Christ and crucifixion reversed. Rouge begins to cloud the vision. Brancusi licks his fingers. Bilko throws snake eyes. There is rouge everywhere. Why am I listening to blacktop? The sting from my shoulder nudges me through the opiate haze. Eartha Kitt coos through a Puget Sound mist as she pulls a blood stained Afghani rug off my head. I sleep the shaman’s sleep of 10,000 years between here and there. Between Kama Sutra, Kenna Garness, and Kareem’s sky hook. I lie on asphalt. The Puget Sound mist breaks. I feel the churning screws of a Washington State ferry crossing the Strait of Juan de Fuca. I pull the towel off a second time. I want to see. I want to see again. The tendonless cow bellows in pain. Maybe I’m reborn. Maybe I’m born again. The rolling thunder of Catmans voice cleaves through the dissipating mists.

“Leave it on,” he says. “You’ve crashed. You’re really fucked up”