On the third morning of the US open, the swell generated by Hurricane Frank off the coast of Central America had reached Huntington Beach, and overnight the waves had gone from two feet to six feet.  From PCH, the muffled thud of them breaking could be heard and felt, as if the ocean were a field of land mines.  I took a bench right above the impact zone and stared into the breakers.  It felt like the world was falling away right below my feet.

Up until now, I’d been playing my ukulele for anyone passing by, but this day I decided to direct my music at the waves for the rest of the contest.  I’d spent too many years hoping that a life-changing break was right around the corner, instead of appreciating that any day you’re able to sit around and play music is a lucky one.

Just then I was approached by a man who went so far as to sit on the bench beside me.  Yes, another ukulele enthusiast.  There is no shortage of them.  Dick was also a surfer and fisherman who had spent twenty years living in Hawaii.  I told him the history of the ukulele I was holding, how my father’s first church had been in Waikiki, on the ninth floor of the only skyscraper at the time, and how he’d purchased it on a return visit to the islands and later given it to me.  I neglected to say anything about the anniversary of my record.

Although the waves were big, there weren’t many rideable sections, and there was a treacherous current from the south.  Indeed, during the first heat of the day, one of the women in the Challenger series ended up too close to the pier and couldn’t get out, paddling in place for the next five minutes, barely ducking beneath the murderous sets.  The lifeguards on their jet-skis hovered in readiness, 

At that point, Jiminy appeared over my left shoulder.  As usual he was all smiles, mangled smiles, but still smiles, even more so because it was women who were doing the surfing.  What he admired about their form wasn’t what the judges were looking at.   He’d become an icon, a symbol of all that’s right with surfing, the day he attempted to shoot the pier, flashing a peace sign at everyone looking down, before crashing head-first into one of the pilings.

He began to shout directions to the girl still struggling below us, and though the north wind may have already been blowing too hard for him to be heard, she seemed to sense what he saying.  She caught the next wave in and then ran down the beach to get in front of the tide while there was still some time left on the clock. 

There are three ghosts from the Gathering who’ve gotten so close that people refer to them, rightfully, if somewhat unoriginally, as The Three Amigos.  Hatch was in Desert Storm, Wilson had been run over by an ice cream truck, and Roy had fallen asleep smoking a cigarette and gotten so badly burned he ended up looking like a little devil, a cute little devil, once you get used to him.  Like me, they are totally dependent on their bikes, and had been talking for weeks about an excursion they were planning to Balboa. 

Since I make the ride every day, I took a hard pass on their offer to join them, but enjoyed watching all the preparation they were putting into their big outing.  Hatch had a backpack full of energy drinks and granola bars.  Wilson had thought to bring a few backup innertubes and a pump.  Roy went so far as to pack a flare, which I thought was really overthinking things.  By the time they set off on their adventure, however, the wind was blowing so strong from the north that they actually may have needed it for their return journey.

There are good days and bad days.  That is the universal rule that governs us all, and though the day hadn’t started out particularly bad, my mood began to slide as things dragged on.  Although I am usually able to accept responsibility for my situation, there are times when I want to blame everyone and everything, particularly the pandemic, for the state of limbo I’ve been waking up in for over two years now.  Some people wonder what I have to complain about, stuck in a camper at the beach.  Yes, but still stuck, and not every day at the beach is a good day

That afternoon I found myself in the camper, trapped like a restless genie in a bottle, realizing I had no idea who I was anymore.  Most of my life my identity had been defined by my wanderings, where I’d been to and where I was heading next, and when I got held up for any length of time it was obvious that there was no one inside, except, perhaps, a wounded and angry teenager.  The ghosts at the Gathering are taking steps to restore their humanity, but on certain days I remember that a human, having to carry around all that pain, is the last thing I ever wanted to be. 

Eventually, the despair mounted to the point, where I had to run out to the yard and jump on the Cruiser.  There was no chance of getting away, but I either had to burn off some energy or it was going to burn me up, like what had happened to Roy.

I’d been chuckling earlier, thinking about the Three Amigos making the ride back from Balboa, and now suddenly, inexplicably, I found myself riding straight into a wind that could not have been blowing any harder, on my way to Bolsa Chica.  There was almost no forward movement involved, only side to side lurching and a machine-gun stuttering of curses.

By the time I reached the turnaround at Warner, however, the trick had been accomplished, however, and the demons had been subdued.  Now came the payoff.  Circling around, with the wind at my back, I pedaled only two or three times and literally flew down the coast, my black shadow racing ahead of me.  The waves continued to pummel the sand and the seagulls screamed with laughter. 

Waking up in the middle of the night, it was dark for a long time, before a faint light began to nudge at the walls of the camper.  There’d been a dream about my sister and her daughters, and a room that was crowded with junk.  For some odd reason the mornings had been quiet lately, without the usual bustle of sounds.  What had happened to the crows?  Where were all the nerve-shattering caws that typically greet the arrival of the day? 

I looked at my phone on the table and frowned.  I’d rush-ordered a new charger for it and had been able to charge it, but the pictures still weren’t transferring to my laptop, which meant the phone was broken.  That’s the way it goes every time I’m in Huntington Beach; my phone breaks down, my laptop breaks down, my bike breaks down, my life breaks down, everything breaks down.

When I got to the pier, the sea was a roiling, boiling mess.  The waves were enormous, but offered little to work with, outside of annihilation.  I saw a surfer try to crouch into a tube and disappear, as if a hand had reached up from the bottom of the sea and pulled him down.  Thanks to Hurricane Frank, the US Open had waves this year.  The next few days would be some kind of rodeo.

I’d staked out a bench that would remain mine for the rest of the contest, beyond the bathrooms, perched right above the break, which on this day was thumping with such force that the whole pier shuddered.  It had originally been my intention to commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of my record Ghost on the Roam, by playing ukulele and handing out postcards.  In truth, all I was really doing by this point was playing my songs to the waves.

After the first heat of the day commenced, I made way down to the Gathering at Tower 7, and right away recognized the profile of Santos, with his lean figure, baseball hat, and walking stick, standing there talking to a few other ghosts. 

Santos has made it his mission to save all the hungry ghosts in the world, and approaches it with an evangelical fervor.  He regularly travels up and down the ghost, reaching out to the troubled souls he meets, but had made a headquarters down in the riverbed during the pandemic, and at one point had taken me through the 12 Steps of Hungry Ghosts Anonymous.  It had been more of a crash course than anything.  My plan was to revisit them later.

Raised in an extremely Christian household, I recognized the 12 steps for what they are, a distillation of the religious process:  the belief in a higher power, the surrendering of one’s will to that higher power, an inventory of character defects, asking that higher power to remove them. an attempt to make amends where wrong has been done, and finally, a commitment to be of service to others. 

Santos claims the Holy Ghost as his higher power and encourages other ghosts to do the same. The Holy Ghost is the most elusive figure in the Trinity, wide open to personal interpretation and representing the best qualities that a spirit is capable of.  The goal is spiritual evolution.  Only humans can be saved, so a ghost needs to not only have their humanity restored to them, they need to get to the level of a good human if they have any hope of escaping from this purgatory.

When the Gathering began, I sat just outside of the circle and listened to Santos share about his latest adventures and trials on the road.  He is the John of the Baptist of the Hungry Ghost movement, one who has gotten a glimpse of the bliss that is our potential destiny and wants to inject that promise into us all.  When he speaks, you get a sliver of that vision, and it can be enough to brighten a dark day and give you hope. 

As Santos stood there with his arms extended, two motorized parachutes were making their way down the coast.  It is a sport I have witnessed before, but never fully understood.  With nothing but parachutes and motors strapped to their backs, the parachutists were ascending and descending, going way up into the sky before dropping back down, only feet above the breaking waves. 

Their flight seemed to be charting my progress, either too high or too low, either too happy or too sad, rarely in the moment, almost never fully content.  Every morning I surrender my will, then five minutes later, snatch it right back.  I wonder if I’ve managed to change at all, or am just biding my time like the Joker in Arkham Asylum.  I’ve been told how to set myself free, but still want what I want.

My father’s last words to me were to look after my mother.  He didn’t have to ask.  Even before he passed away, I’d been haunting their backyard in a succession of broken-down campers whenever I was in town.  The pop-up is perhaps the fifth or sixth incarnation of the same camper set-up, more because my father liked to shop for them, then that anyone, outside of myself, ever occupied them. 

I was with my mother for a year and a half after his death, crashing in a disintegrating Toyota Dolphin.   The family had just managed to tow it away, when the pandemic broke out and, all of a sudden, there I was, back in her yard again.  I appreciate my brother finding the pop-up and setting it up for me.  If I didn’t have that to shelter me from the wind and the rain, I’d probably be joining Santos in the riverbed.

Being a ghost, not everyone can see me.  Sometimes people do see me, but it is never how I really am.  My mother sees me as the boy that I never was, a good boy, quiet and responsible.  She is a nice lady and the last thing I want to do is shatter her illusions.  She is lucky to live so close to the beach, but spends many long days by herself, all alone, with her hair turning whiter. 

I thought she might like to see something of the surf contest and suggested we walk down and get a hamburger.  It took her a half hour to get ready.  She couldn’t decide what shoes to wear.  Was it hot or was it cold?  I didn’t know.  Those determinations can be very subjective.  To me, it was kind of in the middle.

We walked down to PCH and just as we passed CVS pharmacy, Ezra, from the Gallows surf crew. passed by in his black van, his eyes set on the road ahead of him.  On the other side of the road, I saw a poltergeist who’d been missing in action for a while, Fresno Joe, along with his stumpy sidekick, the Frisco Kid.  They were usually at the Pier Plaza in the middle of the day, drinking out of paper bags, sometimes fighting other ghosts, sometimes fighting each other.  Fresno Joe likes a lot of attention.  It is impossible to ignore him.  His creates the kind of disturbance that causes people to sell their homes and abandon whole neighborhoods. 

My mother witnessed none of this.  All she noticed were the pretty blue banners, strung from every light pole.

We walked out on the pier.  By now it was very windy and the sea was impossibly rough.  Kamikaze fighters might have found the conditions favorable.  Even the top surfers in the world had to beware of being blown to smithereens.  At the same time, giant riptides were sucking huge swaths of the beach out to sea.  It looked more like intergalactic warfare than a surf contest.  We decided to head down to the Van’s Village.

Even with her cane, and the only one on the beach wearing a COVID mask, my mother managed to navigate the wooden sidewalks pretty well.  We walked through the main merchandise hall and then headed over to the craft and music booth.  There we both made buttons featuring a finger making the number one sign.  Her’s turned out colorful and bright, mine dismal and gray, the fingernail as black as the dead of night.

They were giving away free hotdogs, but we’d come down for a hamburger, so made our way over to Zach’s.  There were table outside with red umbrellas.  I told my mother to sit down and reserve one of them and I would order us the food.  It took forever.  The guy in front of me must’ve been ordering for a whole surf team or camera crew.  They kept stacking up chili- cheese fries on the counter. 

When I finally got the hamburgers, I took them back to my mother.  Normally not one to complain, she’d only taken two bites before she stopped eating and looked down at her burger in dismay.  The patty looked bright red, way undercooked.  Mine looked the same, but after waiting in line as long as I had, I was prepared to wolf it down regardless.  The line was now longer than it had been before.  Reluctantly, I took her burger back and asked if they could throw it on the grill a few more minutes. 

When I got it back, my mother started eating and then stopped again, showing me that the meat inside was still red.  I took it from her and that was the case.  When I stood up with it though and saw it in the sunlight it looked fine.  What had happened was that the sun shining down through the red umbrella had only made it look raw.  In reality, by now it was beyond well done.  It was a good thing I saw that before taking it back to the cook and asking him to put it on the grill once more. 

He might’ve jumped over the counter with a knife.

Some lunatic poltergeist had a box of cold french-fries and was throwing them at the seagulls, which were dodging them like missiles.  He got to the bathrooms that I was sitting next to with my ukelele and threw the whole box on the roof.  Then he turned to me, wild-eyed at first, but gradually seduced by the tune I was plucking.  Eventually, he ended up right in front of me, weaving back and forth like a cobra.

Royal had asked me to meet him for breakfast.  I had a half hour to kill.  I watched the sun come up.  The waves were projected to be six to eight feet, but cleaner than the day before.   The surf photographers were staking out their spots and setting up their gear.  Among them I saw Fresno Joe, infiltrating, standing there as if he were a colleague, shirtless, in tar-stained board shorts.  He was giving his opinion on the best angles to shoot from.  Good God.  One time I saw him get up and start dancing along with some Japanese Taiko drummers who were putting on an exhibition on the Pier Plaza.  Their manager came dancing out to intercept him and it almost turned into a sumo match.

Royal is a big-spender.  Evidently, at one point he’d owned a few casinos up in Reno.  I met him outside of the Mako Bar and found he’d already ordered for the both of us.  That was fine with me, as long as he was paying.  Once a prospector, always a prospector.

Royal wanted to check out the Van’s Village after we were done eating, and we ran into Daisy locking up her bike.  Daisy is a casualty from the Summer of Love, but since it’s love she overdosed on it wasn’t such a bad thing.  She wears her hair in blonde braids and still kills in a bikini.  She came along with us and we walked down to the sand like a band of acid-drenched siblings.  I would’ve had a seizure years earlier if I’d known it was going to introduce me to so many new friends.  What we have in common can’t be denied.  We’re all screwed up in the exact same way. 

Royal offered to buy us T-shirts when we got down to the village, and I hesitated because I didn’t want him to ask for a favor later.  Then I realized I’m broke and don’t have a car.  It was probably OK.  There were about three hundred shirts to choose from and Daisy and I both picked out the same one.  Was that a coincidence?  It was hard to say. 

As we walked out of the merchandise hall with shopping bags over our arms we ran into Lance.  He was smiling but still radiating the inverse charisma of a dead jellyfish.  He wanted to know what we had in our bags.  Not what he’d had in his bag five years earlier.  That had gained him a lot of notoriety and lost him most of his freedom.

Betsy had somewhere to be, so Royal and I walked out to the end of the pier to watch the contest.  He started getting nostalgic about the good old days when the boys from the Gallows would meet up and paddle out before every Gathering.   There was a memory he’d come to cherish about some kook dropping in on him and a bunch of us, his band of brothers, paddling over to back him up.   If it had happened, I hadn’t been there.  He recalled another morning that had been like the invasion of Normandy, a band of ghost surfers coming out of the fog, storming the beach, taking no prisoners. 

If that’s the way he chose to remember it, that was fine by me.  The fact that the nose of my board had probably been planted squarely in the ocean bottom at the time made no difference.  I was just happy to be included.

By the sixth day of the US Open, the men in the Challenger Series had completed their round of 24 and the women had completed their round of 32, and it was down to the bracket stage, which would lead to champions being crowned on the last day of the contest.  The Duct Tape Invitational was set to kick off, which was a separate longboard event.  I’d been sitting at the end of the pier with my ukelele every morning, watching the first surfers of the day, learning a little about how the competition was being run and judged.

Unlike football and baseball, where there are rulebooks and clearly designated ways to score points, surfing is a much more subtle and nuanced sport, not entirely subjective, yet sometimes a performance with enough heart and courage can make all the difference.  What the judges are looking for is a combination of commitment, aggression, willpower, innovation, a variety of maneuvers, speed, grace, and power. 

As a kook who’d only recently started surfing on a soft-top, before graduating up to my brother’s old longboard, the most I could ever aspire to was to become some sort of soul-surfer.  It was how I’d approached everything in life, especially my music, not to be the best, or at the top of the charts, but to follow my own muse and try to create my own style. 

On the south side of the pier there were surfers surfing for money and prestige.  On the north side there were surfers, just as good, who were doing it for love and fun.  My place in life had always been on the north side, but I was still enjoying the spectacle and carnival atmosphere of the Open.

One of the surfers in the Duct Tape Invitational was the son of a famous longboarder.  He came out on his first ride of the day, cross-stepping and walking the nose.  A few minutes later and someone’s board had already been broken.

When I got to the Gathering, one-legged Rudy was acting as scout.  It was a small group that morning.  The crowds were keeping a lot of the ghosts away.  Hatch, Wilson, and Roy were there.  Betsy was there.  Lydia was there.  Susan was there.  There were a few visitors I hadn’t seen before. 

The topic of the meeting was acceptance and living life on life’s terms.  Most of us had lost our humanity by running so far from the pain of life that we were no longer living it.   We’d poisoned ourselves in our isolation and instead of escaping from the pain, had eventually been consumed by it.  If there was a solution, it was to surrender our wills, which had led us so astray in the first place, to that of a higher power and help another ghost.

By the time I got back to the longboard event, the women were surfing in their first heat of the day.  One of the them, from Japan, had raised her own money to get to the event through crowd-funding, and the announcer was explaining how difficult it is for most of the surfers to come up with the money to compete in the World Surf League, flying to events around the world, paying for hotels and expenses, even a decent board can cost a small fortune. 

On this unfortunate day, the Japanese woman bravely surfed into a walled-out section, but then her board got away from her and broke in two on a piling.  I watched it happen on the big screen TV that was set up in front of the plaza.  Only a few hours into it, and the Duct Tape Invitational was already breaking hearts and breaking boards.

The sun was rising in the east, through rippled clouds that were the color of peaches.  It was quiet at the end of the pier. Despite the surf competition that was going on, the only thing getting attention at the moment was a black seal that was swimming between fishing lines, looking to snatch up an easy snack.  I saw Lydia in her uniform, the black track suit, her grey hair up in a bun, wrapping up her nightly ramble, in search of a son who disappeared in the waves years ago.  Another long vigil and still no clue, like so many of us who wander through life never finding the answers we seek.

The contest was beginning to wind down and so were the waves.  Although they had peaked out at six to seven feet midweek, the surf was predicted to be three to four feet during the finals.  I’d been out there every morning with my ukelele.  The idea had been to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of my first record Ghost on the Roam, but I hadn’t done anything to promote it, instead, mostly playing to the waves.

There is only one copy of the record that remains.  I tracked it down on E-bay after burying six boxes of it in a landfill twenty years ago, more to hide my disgrace than conceal any great treasure.  From that copy I’d created wave files that I transferred onto my phone.  Now, with an Anker Bluetooth speaker, I figured I’d sit and play the record in its entirety.  It had been a long time since I listened to it.

What I heard was an enthusiastic, unpolished burst of energy, and a young guy I didn’t even recognize anymore, wearing his heart fully on his sleeve.  He’d hoped at the time that it would open some magical door, when in fact every door had stayed closed and forced him off the map, in sheer desperation.  I sat mouthing the words at people who looked right through me.  Were they blind?  Were they deaf?   Who were all these people who’d never once stopped to listen?   I was used to it by now, but momentarily felt the pain of rejection come back and lash me like a stingray’s tail.

The area where Main Street meets the PCH in Huntington Beach has been called the Times Square of surfing.  You have Jack’s, with the surfing Hall of Fame, on one side of Main Street, and Huntington Surf and Sport, with the Walk of Fame, and statue of Duke Kahanamoku, the father of modern surfing, on the other. 

As I was leaving the pier, I saw that a big tent had been set right at the intersection.  It was an induction ceremony for the Surfing Hall of Fame.  The audience was made up of a lot of long-time locals and some of the titans of surf.  I pushed the Cruiser over and stood in back, listening to a couple of the speeches.  A famous board-shaper was being inducted, as well as a former Open Champion, and a popular band that used to play at the Golden Bear.  No matter how long I hung around my mother’s yard in Huntington Beach, I’d never belong to that club.  I would always be an outsider among outsiders, just another phantom blowing through.

At the end of the ceremony, a collection of surf-greats, past and present, all wearing Hawaiian shirts, got up for a group picture.  That’s when I noticed Fresno Joe climb up on stage and try to wedge his way into the picture.  That figured.  Where he’d gotten the Hawaiian shirt from, I have no idea, but it hardly matched his tattered board trunks and dirty, bare feet.  If there was attention at all to be had, he was sure to be there.  He was going around shaking hands, trying to pass himself off as one of the Big Kahunas from the 70s.  Later, he even signed a program for a kid.  That was just messed up.