The sun was low in the east, just breaking through the clouds, and the sea was calm, with a small, clean swell from the south.  It was the second day of the Van’s US Open and the men in the Challenger Series would continue the round of 96 that had begun the day before, while the women would be starting their round of 64.  The south side of the pier was already crowded with photographers, but there were lots of benches open on the north side.  I sat down on one of them and watched two old Vietnamese men pass by, one of them swinging two hiking poles, as if he were cross-country skiing.

The day before I’d lucked my way into the VIP sections of the Van’s Village, but today I was back to being an invisible presence, playing my lonely ukulele songs on the pier, celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary of a record I’d made twenty-fears years earlier, Ghost on the Roam, that had bankrupted me and gone nowhere.

Ghost on the Roam had been a collection of the best songs from my nomadic 20s, and the title track was a song I’d written while living in Humboldt County, where the beauty of the redwoods was intoxicating, but I’d nearly been driven out of my mind by loneliness.  At the time I merely felt like a ghost on the roam, not realizing until years later, after a seizure I’d suffered during the height of the pandemic, that the reason I felt that way so strongly was because I actually was one.

Now that I understood that, I had no issue sitting outside, playing to the sky, playing to the sea, capturing the rhythm of the waves, watching the people pass by, all the different races and nationalities, many of them paying their first visit to California, taking their first steps on the pier.  Sometimes an adult would notice me and come over, like the old ukulele enthusiast who’d approached me the day before.   The children would almost always see me.  They’d hear the music and stop in their tracks, or stare over their parents’ shoulders, wide-eyed.  It was good to play for them.  One day they’d remember seeing a ghost on the pier, and wonder if it had all just been a dream.

At 7:08 the announcer came over the loudspeaker.  The Men’s Challenger Series would begin at 7:35 where they’d left off, at Heat 17.  That would be followed by the first of the women’s heats, 1-8.  The waves were small but expected to increase as the day progressed.  Thanks to Hurricane Frank off the coast of Mexico, the next day looked promising indeed.

The Vietnamese man passed me, going the other way, and by the bathrooms I saw a group of Vietnamese women begin the calisthenics I’d observed them doing the day before.  A tall man with headphones who obviously wasn’t a member of their group, was shadowing their routine, but that disturbed no one.  I sat and quietly plucked out a tune about a life that has turned into a street fight.

A family passed by with a child who went googly-eyed with wonder when he heard the flurry of bright little notes that were tumbling out of my instrument.  His father tried to nudge him along, but he planted his feet and refused to be hurried.

One of the biggest regrets of my life was that I’d never learned to surf, especially since I’d been born in Hawaii and had spent almost forty years in California, off and on.  My brothers had grown up surfing and would occasionally drag me out with them, usually when the water temperature was fifty degrees and the sea was throwing up frightening walls.  I’d cling to the board like a drowned rat and be carried two miles down shore before finally clambering out and trudging back to the car.

The truth is that good surfers make surfing look easy, when it is not at all easy to learn and get good at.  The waves look much different when you are lying on a board on a pitching, tumultuous sea, as opposed to standing on shore, watching the orderly swells come in.

My brother John had seen a good price on a second-hand longboard that he’d alerted me to a few years earlier, and I’d ended up riding three miles up Beach Boulevard with the hundred dollars they were asking for it in my pocket.  When I got there, I discovered it was a Wavestorm, one of the foam boards they sell at Costco for the same price new, but since I was already there, tucked it under my arm and rode home with it.  It had sat in my mother’s backyard since.  There was always an excuse not to paddle out. 

When I stumbled across the Gathering during the pandemic, what I noticed right away was a few ghosts appearing out of the sea every morning, dripping wet, with their surfboards in tow.  That’s when I met Jason and Buddy.  When they heard I had a board at home they urged me to bring it, and still I made excuses not to.

One week at the end of the summer, however, the sea and the sky were so blue, and the water temperature was so warm, that I took the Wavestorm down to Tower 7 an hour before the Gathering was set to start.  Buddy was sitting close to shore and started waving his arms and shouting when he saw me.  A few seconds later he pearled so badly that his feet went tumbling over his head.

I understood the basic principles behind surfing, but had a hard time putting them into practice.  The Wavestorm was so thick and buoyant that it was impossible to duck-dive on it.  That meant I bore the brunt of every breaker, unless I flipped over and did the turtle, holding the board over my head like a sheet of plywood in a thunderstorm.  I would usually manage to struggle out to the lineup, but on a lot of days that’s all I could do.

I chased after every wave, like a dog chasing cars, but either they passed me by, or I’d get too far ahead and they’d come crashing down on my back.  If I did manage to get to my feet, I could be counted on to do a stuntman, diving to one side like a movie stuntman leaping out of the way of an explosion, or my patented cat on a hot tin roof where I’d leap into a crouch and get stuck up on the roof of the wave, eventually just falling off the backside.

There was one freak day, where almost every member of the Gallows was paddling towards me at the same time and I took off on a monstrous, head-high wave at the last second, somehow staying on my feet on the ass-end of the board, and flailing in a way that made it appear like I was shredding across the face of the wave.  That earned me a reputation as a big-wave charger that I knew I didn’t deserve.  The truth is that Jason was a great surfer, Doc and Ezra were at least competent, and the rest of us were a clown squad. 

Were we having fun?  Jason assured us that was all that mattered.

When I got my father’s old bike back from JAX and mounted the surf rack on it, then I really went to town, expanding my surf patrol from Blacky’s at the Newport Pier to Bolsa Chica.  My priority was always Tower 7, however, and when I’d show up there at sunrise and see the other ghosts crossing the bike path, their boards tucked under their arms, it made me feel like I was one of the New Avenger’s.  It was the oddest sensation to feel like I belonged anywhere, much less to a tribe of supernatural soul-surfers.

Around the end of October, the water got cold and the north swell kicked in.  At that point the crew largely disbanded.  If I heard they were getting together I’d make a point to meet up, even if it meant getting up earlier and riding further than I felt like.  Gradually, it started feeling like I was the only one left.  New ghosts would sometimes show up with their boards and I’d regale them with stories about the good old days.

Outside of the Gathering, there is another group that I stumbled across around the same time the pandemic broke out, and that is the Drum Circle that meets Sunday night.  While the Gathering attracts ghosts who want to work through their issues and resolve their afflictions, the Drum Circle draws most of the poltergeists in the area, who are just looking to party and have a good time.  I feel at ease in both circles, but don’t know many of the poltergeists by name since they are often incapacitated and can be extremely antisocial.

The first time I happened upon the Drum Circle I was mesmerized by the beat and wanted to participate.  The only thing I could think of to do was to dance, strut, and point at the drummers.  They knew what I was talking about.  The next time I showed up, I dropped some gravel into a plastic coke bottle, screwed the lid on, and began to shake it like a maraca.  At last, I got my hands on a black djembe drum, never tightening the head, instead just thumping out the same low tone.

The second evening of the US Open, there was a smaller crowd of drummers than usual holding down their corner of the plaza.  Most of the hardcore regulars were there.  As far as poltergeists, I recognized one they call Big Steve, wearing a blue nylon over his face and playing a bass drum.  The Wizard was there, twirling a stick with a roll of paper streaming from the end of it, casting a spell over the proceedings.  Susan, a ghost from Gathering, showed up with Mark the Shark.  That probably meant bad news but I didn’t know her that well.  On one of the backwalls the White Rastafarian stood, screaming his head off in time to the music, that being his signature expression.

There was too much rhythm and too little beat, so everything felt off and disjointed.  I began to feel very alone, so got on the Cruiser as the sun was setting over the sea, and headed north on the bike trail.  At the Dog Beach I ran into Ezra, the dark prophet of the Gallows surf crew.  He was hunched over the railing, glaring into the sunset, the whiskers spouting from his face, which was drawn up like a shrunken apple.  He was contemplating the end of the world as he’d been known to do.

Ezra had been rooting for the destruction of society half of his life, yet here it continued to prosper all around him, and he remained squatting in his van, preaching mostly to his dog.   In a similar way, I had counted on the system being too wicked to survive.  Yet the winners continued to win while I sat playing my ukulele on the pier to no one. 

If there is justice in the world, where is the evidence?   The game that we’d been taught as kids was too rigged to want to play.  Still, Ezra reminded me that it could be worse.  How was that, I wondered. 

We could be in San Bernardino.

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.