Warm Boy Report;

 The New Gay Rights Movement

 It's Come Out Of Left Field

        I work, I'm a worker.  I am retired and thanks be to the Gods, I am in decent shape for my old age so I cashier in a gas station to maintain my life of luxury.  As the corporation I work for owns over half the gas stations in New England, and that I actually work when I am on the clock, gives me a chance to go to other stores when they need positions filled.  I recently had an encounter with a young man whom I knew well and had worked with closely. For being a very young man he was quite mature, responsible, and (a rare quality) gentlemanly.  These virtues got him into management with a strong recommendation from myself.  

   Now, can I confess that I enjoy the company of young men without being labeled a dirty old man?  Well, I guess I not.  Most people do not immediately assume I am gay.  After a while when they find out that I have never been married, I am single (I did have a partner who died of AIDS in 89) and not much of a family....well.... they figure it out.  One time this young man told me in confidence he swas bisexual and was madly in love, and living with, a transgender.  

   That was no big deal for me. He had been a high school football star, he was a natural born leader.  We got along well.  I made him laugh and he was occasionally shocked by my stories of San Francisco in the 70's and Hollywood in the 80's and 90's.  He liked me because I worked and he never needed to actually manage me or tell me what to do.

   If I like and trust someone, regardless of who they are, I am an affectionate person.  With his new position they took him off the only shift I worked at that store.  So I messaged him to tell him that I'd miss him and joked; 'don't leave me baby' and apparently he and his pronoun whatever had a shit fit and hate mail was sent to me....via Meta....but someone got to these massages and recalled them, leaving an empty message box sent from this young man's Facebook telling me it had been recalled.  When I confronted this young man he seemed surprised, but acted cold and monotone to state to me, I had sent an inappropriate and lewd message that offended him and his pronoun person.

   Well Okay....I take into consideration the enormous generation gap.  Gay men (male Identified) appears to have vanished from the general identification of homosexual men. Especially a senior citizen. I thought this young man was smarter than that.  I console myself with figuring out it was probably the pronoun (drag queen? tranny? chick with a dick?) having a meltdown over a statement meant to flatter the bloke, not to take him into the barn for a roll in the hay.  And although he never went to the upper management to lodge a complaint about my harassment, I terminated my employment there because I didn't actually need the job.  This could be taken as an admission of guilt but seriously....if I was younger I'd have stood my ground, but my blood pressure is already too high and I'm not having a stroke over this.  I'm way too old for this shit.

    But I've said it once and I'll say it again; I've never met a homophobic man who wasn't homo themselves.  I back down to nothing when it comes to being a male identified homosexual man and will resists the currant progressive liberal doctrines, like chopping some kids dick off because testosterone is out of fashion, or being a biological female because you say so. There was a time in my life I wanted to be a cowboy, that's the beaks kid, life is not always fair.  I didn't work all my life as a proud gay man to bow out to whiny woke eunuchs. This whole ordeal took a bat to my pride, I felt embarrassed in the light of neo-Victorian values which seems to be taking hold with this strange breed of children today.  

   After all the fighting, death and tears shed, the progress won since June 1969 seems to have been forgotten.  The male identified homosexual appears to be on the chopping block.  And the public now views gay men as what in reality is a tiny segment of the gay population.  

   I stand outside the rainbow flag now. This was a flag I helped along with Jessie Jackson but it's symbol has gone way out in wacko ville .  Because I am a Warm Boy it seems that I am expected to parrot neo-progressive ideas that I think  

Warm Boy Report; The Stonewall Warm Boys.

    I am old, I never thought I'd live to be this age....and now I'm old.  Old, old, old, older than Sonehenge.  In my young years I'd ponder senior citizens in glib amusement; Poor old sod, I'd tell myself....out of fashion, out of ideas, out of time. Then I awoke one morning to cocky chuckle-heads addressing me as sir.  I awoke that morning and I was old. 

  When I was thirty, I briefly encountered a young Native American guy.  He worked in the oil fields outside Duchesne Utah.  I do not remember the conversation we had but I remember it was contentious.  I was there out of lust for another guy....his roommate.  

See....I got dragged off an east coast bound Greyhound bus and lured by a twenty year old roughneck suntanned and hard as stone with a smile that brought about my demise.  I fell so in love/lust with this boy.  Like brave Ulysses, lured my to the blue collar shores of of the bluest balls I ever had.  He was so fucking hot....he sat next to me when he got on the bus....he was friendly and (I had perceived) hot for my bald head, my murder one sunglasses and straw cowboy sun bonnet I sported across the American west.  He worked in the oil fields....youthful, solid, in shape.  He'd been visiting his parents a few towns down the bus route, heading back to Duchesne where the oil field was at. We talked, we enjoyed each other's company.  I was dead tired from riding the bus.  He invited me to shit shower and shave at his apartment in town....meet his pet scorpion too (he never mentioned his roommate).  But I was invited to get off that smelly bus and stay over....at his place....to see his scorpion.

   Holy cow, what a dream come true.  I was thirty, mountain biking, I back country hiked in the mountains in those days, lots of swimming, I was in shape.  It was pre-AIDS,  Everybody all across the nation was fucking like bunnies  And this was the dream boy.  A roll in the hay with a roughneck, an American icon!  James Dean, Steve McQueen all rolled in one. Then his roommate came home.

   A contemptuous and mean youngster, I thought perhaps he was more than a roughneck roommate, that there was something more. He was a spectacular example of native American beauty.  But it was then that it came to me that my mad love scene invented in my mind was merely an infatuation with being away from San Francisco, off the beaten track.  A hot porn film scenario was not going to happen this time. His roommate eyed me with suspicion.  I do not recall where my host was but he left me alone for a minute when this guy who came home carrying a 20 gauge shotgun slung over his shoulder.  He'd been out shooting birds.  

  He asked me how old I was....I said I was thirty....he sneered, 'kind of old to be hitchhiking'....he told me.  He was like eighteen.  I told him I was on an eastbound Greyhound, I wasn't hitchhiking He acted as if I was the oldest man he ever met....I guess somebody your age, was this, I guess I'm too young to know about that.....I wonder where he is today?  But thirty was an old man to these guys. Maybe these two guys were having roughneck love but I remember my sister chastising me because I thought everyone was gay.

  I thought that oil roughneck might not be gay, but he sure was close to me.  What magnificent love I could have had.  But rather than be the predator, I decided it was all too foreign to me and let the young man go to his bed.  The next morning his roommate had gone to work.  My lover boy told me he hadn't slept all night.  Neither did I. 

  There are not many gay guys from my generation  my street, my neighborhood in San Francisco that survived the eighties and the AIDS epidemic.  I heard Dave Chappelle talking about 'the Stone Wall gays. Homophobic as he's made out to be he stated his admiration for the Stonewall generation.  That was my generation as a gay man....hell!....I was there!  On Christopher Street....that summer.  I marched in the first ever Gay Liberation March....up Seventh Avenue to Central Park the following summer.

  Being old makes one irrelevant if you're not careful. I cannot figure out if this whole WOKE deal is a harbinger for some social revolution in the late part of this century, or if it will go out of fashion. Perhaps when the hypocrisy and mislead facts become known, perhaps better educated liberals, cooler heads and not so crazed to the point fascism might hopefully prevail. The hippies of sixty years ago had a lot of crazed ideas too, and yes, I fell for it too.... hook, line and sinker.  Then I grew up so I pray these children do too....soon.   But when I'm listening to all these left wing do's and don'ts, things you can't say, things you are obligated to say.  Otherwise....you are expelled, canceled, cast out of the 'inclusion' vortex....but I still believe in human rights, I still believe in good healthcare for everyone and free education, I believe what, I would imagine, dated liberalism is....working with the conservative party (who can be just as partisan and reactionary as the WOKE nuts)....get the two party's to stop all this vitriol and compromise on policy....and children?....compromise is necessary to maintain a workable democracy.  

   Lesson number 1; Other people think differently than you, with different values than you

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

Make your own decisions, think critically 

Read books, still the most informative

But hell who wants to hear that?;  I'm old....out of fashion, out of ideas, out of time.

McCallen Bio # 1;The Porn Star

From the Matthew McCallen Memoirs

1.

The Porn Star

   
    June 21st 1989;
 
    I love this town.  I come from San Francisco where loving Los Angeles is a capitol crime.  When I told my friends I was moving to Hollywood they snorted, making sarcastic and deriding remarks, being mean about. They said; I'm so sorry that's happening to you darling, do you really want to move to LA LA Land?  and  They'll chew you up and spit you out down there and You'll be back, everyone tries to go there and they all come back, I give you six months - that's what they all said but I wasn't so sure about that.  Only John Marcot thought it was a good idea.  He told me Los Angeles was a glamour city and he was sure I'd love it.  There are only a few glamours cities in the world and as pretty as it is here San Francisco is not one of them.  He told me this!.  He told me New York was glamours, Paris was too, Rome was, Tokyo was and LA was, despite what bitter San Franciscans say.
    The glamour hit me on the 405 creeping over Sepuveda pass; late afternoon sun was a blood orange behind a coastal fog bank and with the smog the sky glowed in travel poster shades of that great west coast dream and the palm trees silhouetted against it with fragrance of sagebrush, ocean and car exhaust.  Distant mountain home windows many miles away were reflecting the summer western sun, real futuristic!.  This is the shit!  It is so cool to live here.  Four million living souls residing on hills and flat lands, the worlds most expensive neighborhoods and the poorest all spread out, ribboned with freeways, earth tones, green and white with trashy neon lights.  Glamour is hamburger stands, burrito joints and doughnut shops, offices and used car lots intermingled with Rodeo Drive and Bel-Air It's the best.
   Around Santa Monica Boulevard an old song came on the radio and made me think of my good friend's description as the whole Los Angeles basin glowed in sun washed glamour. There needs to be some funk to make glamour.    
  I moved to LA to be an actor.  It's a hard row to hoe but I keep an eye on the prize.  I was up late last night at the Beverly watching a Robert Mitchum double feature.  Then at five thirty AM Mary calls and says the guy who got the part in that TV show was in a car accident and for me to be in Simi Valley by ten.  Now I have the part.  It was a long hot day on location but the food was great!
   I had a late dinner with Manny at the Blade Runner Cafe.  It's not really called 'The Blade Runner Cafe'.  I have no idea what the place is really called.  Everybody calls it that and I don't think they know the real name either.  It's up on Vermont Avenue in Los Feliz and reminds everybody of the opening scene in the movie Blade Runner where Harrison Ford is ordering Sushi.  It serves seven different kinds of maki, hand rolls too, rice and miso soup and Tea.  If you want beer with your sushi... or even Saki....you got to go to the liquor store on Franklin and bring it with you.  You pay an extra two bucks for a byob.
   I thought it was a clever idea meeting Manny at the Blade Runner Cafe because I was not in the mood for a crowd and The Blade Runner Cafe does not have AC and it was a hot sultry night.  Plus there is no patio at the Blade Runner Cafe either.  Just a big cavernous storefront with a greasy window looking out on Vermont Ave, dull lights with sticky benches and tables and the air of raw fish and nori permeating.  I thought it would be empty but there was actually a small crowd having supper there.
   A couple of doors down the street from the Blade Runner Cafe is a bookstore where I saw Manny in there rummaging through stacks piled on the floor.  He spotted me outside, I stuck my head in the door and he told me to get us a table.  Manny and I are in the same acting class.   He lived in San Francisco before he moved here and we recognized each other from the bars in South of Market, another refugee from the AIDS plagued dying scene up north.  He originally comes from Pittsburgh though and he believes in all that nonsense about the theater and how training for the theater makes you a great actor.  I like Shakespeare and Chekhov but that doesn't get you a Screen Actor Guild card in Hollywood.  I was called at the last minute this morning because they needed a rough looking shirtless white boy in a biker scene out in the desert after a nuclear bomb.  Kind of a 'Mad Max' rip off. I only had three lines which is all that is required without a SAG card but that's the look I'm selling, shirtless white boy on a motorcycle.  A diamond in the rough and all the Chekhov and Arthur Miller doesn't get you noticed in Hollywood.  Shirtless, rough looking white boy who knows how to act, that's marketable.  I keep my eye on the prize. But I take a scene study class so the right people see I'm serious about 'the theater'.  And it will just be a matter of time before I get a four word line and my SAG card too.
   I bought two large Asahi's and a couple of Sambuca airplane bottles for later at the liquor store on the corner and took a table at the Blade Runner by a fan blowing hot fishy air in the dining room.  Manny showed up with an old book he bought but I didn't ask to see what it was, He's a bookish guy all dressed in dark gray slacks and an expensive linen button down cotton shirt, pastel blue, always elegant.  Very different from the halls of The Slot where we met some years ago.  He was glad to see me and in a bright mood.
   I hope that beer is cold, what a day!  Nice outfit, Banana Republic?
   Thrift store. I told him
   See?  You make salvation army look like Saks fifth avenue.  I just don't have it.  He said.
   What do you mean?  You're gorgeous sweetie!  I told him and he is.
   
   We ordered hand rolls, Manny ordered a Yellowtail spicy and I ordered spicy tuna with watercress and rice.  The beer was ice cold and tasted good after a hot dry smoggy day sitting around in Simi Valley waiting for my scene.  We ate in silence for a little while until Manny started up;
   How do you feel about porno?
   What?  I was spotted at Circus of Books or something?  I said.
   No!  I mean making porn.  Doing porn.
   Big mistake!
   Pays good and you know I got the equipment.
   Manny you get good pay with the job you got.
   I'm getting sick of it Matt.  I met Brick Collins the other night.
   Who?
   Brick Collins!  You know 'Ball Busters'  'It's in The Jeans'?  He's a porn star!
   Where did you meet him?
   Met him at the Bunkhouse.
   Porn stars at the Bunk House!  I muttered
   He's a nice guy. Really hot, really muscled!
   If it's who I think it is he's about five foot three.  Muscle Munchkin more likely.  I take it you didn't have to pay for his service?  
   I don't know why I asked that.  Obviously he was out on his own if he was at the Bunkhouse and I doubt he needs the money to have to resort to Prostitution, the porn star Brick Collins that is.
   Hell no!  I don't have to pay to have sex.  We went to his place and partied.
   I ordered him to spare me the sordid details.
   But he said I'd be good in movies cause of my all American look. He said I looked ivy league.  You should have seen his place Matt.  Really beautiful, up in the hills, mirrors on the ceiling.  
   Wait, wait. I interrupted Your ivy league look?  
   He can get me in the door Matt!  I'm sick of living on the edge.  I go to these calls and I get nowhere.  Every asshole in town has the 'ivy league look'.  
   I told him that it was a bad idea.  I told him that it was a dangerous move.
   They test everybody every month and they have to wear condoms, it's actually safer than being drunk at the Bunkhouse.
   That's not the danger I'm talking about old darling but you might consider that too.  After all there he was and the there was you at the Bunkhouse, a little drunk, right?  But no.  Word gets around you're doing any kind of pornography let alone gay pornography and you can kiss your acting career goodbye.  You'll never do lunch in this town again, straight up!
   I don't give a fuck about lunch.  I want to make some money.  
   Manny told me this wolfing down his yellow tail hand roll and swigging his Asahi beer.  He was a brother from the city up north and I felt a camaraderie, he was  'a transistor sister' from South of Market.  He really did look ivy league though and dressed in leather the dichotomy could be a turn on.  And he was really handsome at the bars up north where he used to dress in leather but this wasn't Folsom Street, this was Hollywood and that kind of extra curricular activity was OK as long as it does not come anywhere near earshot of the wrong kind of ear somewhere around Studio City or Burbank.  And the AIDS epidemic was not helping. So I told him;
   My darling, darling, darling Manny; if you want to make some fast money then do a little escort work but don't get blackballed or risk early retirement hustling drinks and selling what's left of your youth to the junk man in ten years time.  You'll screw your life up because you thought making fuck films would bring you fame....  you have a great job making drinks for execs and asshole lawyers downtown and from what you always tell me you make out pretty good.  You're a decent actor too.  I might not seem like I'm paying attention to your scenes but I thought you're getting someplace with Mamet.  You're totally starting to get that lowlife persona in your character portrayals and that's no easy accomplishment with your prissy upbringing it's hard... 
   ....My prissy upbringing? You bitch!  And I guess you're the next James Dean Huh?  
   I laughed and then I told him I didn't speculate about what or who I'd turn out to be.  I just keep my eye on the prize.  I'm superstitious too, James Dean died a hot looking stud but it was an early, sudden, and violent checkout after only three films.  As Morrison said 'The future's uncertain and the end is always near.'  and I just show up, I'll show up for any audition.  Any audition except porno that is.  I won't degrade myself to such a level.
   I'd do better as a leather daddy in a film and make some bucks whipping twinks asses.  I'm serious Matt!  Buck Collins says I'd get a lot of work, he gave me his number and said for me to call him.  I could pull this off.
  Well if you feel you must.  I hope you know what you're doing.  I thought you were going to save the American theater.  Instead you're going to save the gay porno industry with AIDS  all over the place.  Polish off your beer and lets go next store.  
   I had those couple of airplane bottles of Sambuca Romano in my pocket so we went to the Onyx for coffee and ordered americana's so we could sneak some Sambuca in it for dessert.  They were playing  music in there I thought was exceptional so I asked the coffee bartender what it was.  He told me it was some band from Seattle.  Then I asked Manny a question;
   Everybody's going to Seattle I mention when I got back to our table, pouring Sambuca in my strong black coffee; You really going to try porno?  
   I'm giving it sincere consideration.
   Are you going to fuck that muscle midget for a job?
   He's not a midget.     
   He's five foot three and I seen him all over the place.  
   You don't see him...
   Yes I do my darling, I saw him the other night at Okie Dog hanging with the tweekers.
   Fuck you, you did not!  
   Did too. Well it looked like him....Really? You're going to do porn?  Once you do that, that's it, your out!  Why don't you try modeling?  You're tall, you're good looking with that all American look.
   I'm half Mexican.  
   I knew this.  He was adopted by white American parents but he was half Mexican.  A bit of a touchy subject but I think that is what was so extraordinary about him with his drop dead handsome looks, thick black hair he spent good money to keep groomed and a very conservative aura.  He'd give Kevin Bacon a run for his money.  Now he wants to ruin it all by dressing in leather and making porn.  Disgusting!  I tried to talk him out of it.
   It's a trap Manny! Listen up!  About six months ago I'm having a beer at one of those places up in Malibu along the PCH.  And I see William Fredkin sitting there having a cocktail.
   Fuck that!
   Seriously!  William Fredkin!  I  seen him by himself having a cocktail. I usually don't go up to celebrities but hey!  It's William Fredkin having a cocktail by himself.  So I get some courage and I go up to him.  I says; Look man, I want to make it in this biz, I'm not much good for anything else. If I don't make it I'll wind up being a bum.   I'm a huge admirer of your work.  The French Connection is one of the greatest flix ever made.  And he just sits there and listens, nursing a cocktail.  I'm thinking....fuck!  I should of just minded my own business, he's gonna dis me.  So I says....I'm sorry sir, it's just that I have nothing to lose and I'm up against incredible odds and I'm not good for anything else.  He just sits there holding his drink. "Three things!"  He finally says to me.  "First; endurance.  An overnight sensation takes ten years.  Second; Don't take anything anyone says or does to you personally.  Third; When you get a call back audition and they tell you to do it the way you did it last time...don't believe them."
   You liar!  You would have told me this a long time ago.
   I'm not lying Sweetie.  I'm just superstitious, something like this is divine intervention. I don't go around blabbing about divine intervention.  
   You blab about everything else!  So what happened after that?  
   Bitch! I'm trying to give you advice.  How many times do you go into a bar and have a half drunk ace movie director gives you pointers.
   You think he gave the same advice to William Defoe?  Manny glibly asked.
   How the fuck should I know?
   So maybe Buck Collins was divine intervention.  Maybe god wants me to be a porn star, he was in a bar too. 
   Oh christ almighty! I moaned.

   It was ten when I got home.  I called my message service and Mary lined me up for Thursday and Friday for tryouts and auditions  I have to be back in Simi Valley in the morning too  That's a good sign.  Mary puts me out there.  It's good to have good an agent.  I'll probably not get any parts from all this but she puts me out there anyway because everybody see's my face.  See my face and remember.  And yes, I am packaged like a tube of toothpaste or a box of cereal. I don't care. But I own my own product.
   I hope Manny changes his mind.  He'd probably be great in porn but porn can chew you all up if you're not careful. And there is always that stigma.  He swims and even surfs, has the body, has the hardware and that upper snuff arrogance that old queens covet.  But unless he's smart.  Smart enough to control it and not have it consume his very soul.... he might pull it off.   It's a Faustian bargain!  He's got real breeding. He has a noble and honest soul too and not that hard of an exterior like me.  I would never do it, I've been down there and I know what it's like to get chewed up and spit out.
  It's hot and I don't use AC so I have my window open.  I can hear somebodies sound system in a car over on La Brea.  The traffic lulls me to sleep.  I love this town.

J.W.G.

07/05/2020

 
 
   

OUT ON THE LEFT COAST.

                                                                    

Pappy Rant # 589 and a half; I had a comfortable flight home which was a surprise as my trip out to the coast was pure torture. I don't like flying anymore. it's not the physical action of flying I object to. It's the state of commercial flight that I find annoying but I'm getting old and grumpy I guess. It used to be fun back in the day when they flew wide bodies to the coast and most of them were half full and the food was substantial and complimentary. It's more like taking the bus now The planes are smaller and they seem to be always completely full. I thought about upgrading because I had sufficient funds and had no objection to spending it on a little luxury and comfort and leg room but 1^st class was full. It wasn't too bad though. I was tired and I got some sleep.

After 6 years living in Vermont I went back to LA for a two week visit. Even though I was born elsewhere I usually identify Los Angeles as my hometown. I've lived in other cities in my life but it was LA where I lived for most of my years. I schooled there and careered, I grew there and produced what my life had to produced through my 30's, my 40's and my 50's. I don't regret one minute living there. I loved it.

People either love LA or hate it. Even though I lived there as long as I did, living in rural New England for 6 years, gave me a cultural shock. It helped that the temperature was soaring up in the 80's and 90's. After taking one of the last flights out BDL as a snowstorm was moving in and about to bare down on New England here I am standing outside my hosts house in shorts and flip flops on a cul de sac in Glendora listening to lawn sprinklers and birdies chirping. Southern California with it's suburban quality, it's neat landscaped yards with citrus trees laden with their fruit, the air filled with the scent of orange blossom before me in warm golden winter sun while oblivious of the rest of the country suffering cruel and unforgiving winter. I felt far away from where I embarked. Winters in Southern California are the best.

People either love it or hate it. It's not like San Francisco at all. San Franciscans traditionally hate Los Angeles but Angelinan's are just too busy to hate them back and besides, people in LA like a good weekend getaway. But hell! I felt like a country hick in LA. All this style and fashion, and cars and music and variety all moving 80 miles an hour down a ten lane freeway. I had to have a cigarette and I was worried about my heart because I was smoking too much and everything was moving so bloody fast, and it was so hot and dry from Santa Anna conditions that when offered cold water, cold beer, cold soda I gratefully accepted. After about 4 days a friend offered me his late brothers car. I was once roommates with this late brother and I knew something about this guy and his style. And I was not disappointed. I had a flat black torqued up 18 year old Honda civic with a 5 speed stick for the rest of my visit which made it nice for me because all the people I wanted to visit were spread out by miles and miles of megalopolis in 2 counties. It didn't take too long to get back into the So Cal mode and hull ass down the freeway, sun roof opened, sucking on a an Arrowhead water bottle and playing rock and roll on the radio. I had a neat old baseball cap from some Vermont stock car team and wearing my murder one wraparound shades..damn!..I was back!

Now LA has troubles, the traffic is not funny at all. When not going 80 you're going 15 if you're moving at all which is about half the time. And as it sits on the Pacific rim and globalizes it is being converged on by the world so they are building enormous apartment complexes to house thousands of people in one building, bringing denseness to an already densely populated situation. LA has no respect for its past and tears down it's history. Something built in 1948 and still standing is considered historical. It is a city that changes with the wind. It's rich and colorful history is getting obliterated to make way for it's global 21^st century debut. The Los Angeles of Chandler, Bukowski and Diddion is almost unrecognizable. The LA I saw when I first moved there in 1986 is fading fast too.

But LA has something going for it, it's cool. Coolest major city in the USA. It's takes the pulse of our nation and it just seems as if when you're there and looking at this poorly planned mishmash of glassy skyscrapers, suburban tree lined streets, junked up boulevards with gas stations, liquor stores, auto repair shops, Mexican restaurants, Chinese acupuncture clinics, 5 star eateries, Thai fast food, crack whore motels, luxury hotels and baseball diamonds one feels like they're at the center of everything. If I were 19 or 20 and wanting live in a big city with a lot going on in arts and music and education, I'd be there again. It offers a reasonable sticker price (for California) and a quality of life. They are in the process of building a practical transit system (they tore the old one up in the 50's and built the freeways) and in 10 years or so one will be able to travel great distances on light rail and train.

As for me? I loved it. It takes a certain character to love LA. People dismiss it as superficial and glitter with false people and yes it does have that element. But if one looks hard enough one sees through the lines and discovers that it really is a city of unexpected secrets and intellectual prosperity. And I was heartened just how many old friends wanted my time, I thought they'd forget me by now but no!  Hell they even named a surf break after me!

 But I was happy because I knew I was going back to Vermont where there are 60 people per square mile, the water is clean and delicious, the spring is hard at the door and it will soon to be green and the fishing holes will have trout and bass, where life is as simple as a summer afternoon napping under a willow tree.   I don't have to drive morning congestion from the beach to be in Washington Heights at 9 and then to Burbank for lunch at 12:30 and battle freeways to Culver City for a 3 O Clock and battle afternoon traffic home again. It sure was fun for 2 weeks though.

It's colder than Hades here in Vermont today. Every place has it's minuses I guess. But I went from flipflops and shorts to overcoats in a day, flying surprisingly comfortable on USAIR back to my uncluttered and lazy life up in my Green Mountains, you know, that place where Ben & Jerry's comes from. And I'm good with that.

Thank you patient readers.

B.C.B Memoirs. The Adventures and Misadventures of Pappy and Ryan The Ripper Part 2 - Road Rage and the Mysto Slabs.

The way Captain Eric told it, it was a mystos slab and location and name not to be given away to any kook...especially kooks from Beer Can Beach. Its location was a long drive up to the next county north and hidden behind affluent beach front property, snuggled in against some orange groves and mountains. It was kind of close to and kind of like Rincon but maybe not as defined and certainly not as prestigious, but it was fun anyway. The truth was Captain Eric liked the idea of a mystos slab because he was a traditionalist with a romantic imagination about surfing and surfers (if he was in a good mood) But in any reality check....mystos (a mysterious and hidden surf break that no one knows about) have been long discovered and trampled from the Southern California landscape but it was also fun to make believe. But I did abide Captain Eric's mums the word when I was getting out of my Wet suit, or getting in to my wet suit, or sitting against my car and watching the water behind murder one raparound shades against the sun when Beer Can Beach people started talking up surf trips to San O and C Street and Swami's and I never piped up to say - Hey I was at this place up north and blablabla.....no way, not at Beer Can Beach AKA Kooks Cove. The last thing I needed was to see all those barnies polluting the aloha vibes when good surfers congregate which was a rare and blue moon happening as is, because aloha in the south lands was becoming as rare as a mysto slabs.
The truth is...this break I will call Little Rincon to maintain it's anonymity as not to piss off Captain Eric who I am sure still imagines it the way he last saw it....The truth is...Little Rincon is not really that unknown at all but rather a real pain in the ass to get to, especially at high tide.
Now Ryan The Ripper was getting good. He stood up not long after the morning of the dead chickens and he was starting to rip. The only worries I had about Ryan The Ripper was that he was expressing a strong interest in shortboards. Not that I had any thing against shortboards but I was a longboard guy, most people over 40 are longboarders unless you were raised on shortboards and are quick to get up which I am not. And I liked the glide and the dance of the longboard culture. Hanging ten comes from longboard culture, nose walks and all sorts of balancing acts are al longboard culture. You can ride pretty big waves on a longboard, just as big as you can with a shortboard if you have the skills. Its the speed of the shortboard that differs. Waves break at different speeds. Some roll in and take their time and that is great for a longboard because longboards are slow and easy. Some waves break fast and furious, steeply over reefs and on sand. Shortboards are shaped for that speed, longboards are not. And Ryan The Ripper was gravitating towards this speed and I was sorry to loose a Longboard buddy but I could see his point.
The longboard revival started in the late eighties, early nineties. It started with a few surfers, tired of the whole competitive and aggressiveness that dominated the surfing scene in the 1980's. There was a time in the sixties when longboards were all they rode and then around 1968 some Australian surfer named Nat Young came to California with a board cut back to eight feet, In a world of ten foot plus boards this was unheard of, but it opened up possibilities in surfing to a whole new realm of wave that until then could not be ridden on a longboard. Then things just got shorter. By the eighties the longboard had pretty much gone the way of the Dodo bird until some skinny kid from San Diego County named Joel Tudor and another young guy named Tom Wegener and some of the old guys revived the Longboard style and put a whole lot of new technology into the shaping of them and suddenly longboards were back.
Back in a big way at Beer Can Beach and getting out of hand. Surfing has never really gone out of style but it has waxed in waned in popularity since the first Gigit movie in 1959. In the beginning of this new century everybody in the whole world realized that they could surf with one of those new longboards and everybody from the whole world (and their brothers and sisters) decided to live the dream, The Endless Summer etc, etc...and with the help of Internet surfcams they could be in Palm Springs or London UK and be able to tell if there was a swell at Beer Can Beach or not.
So about five years into this new century it got to the point that if one wanted be original, and what surfer didn't...they'd have to go short again and distance themselves from everybody from the whole world (and their brothers and sisters)! This caused flatlander's and desert rats from Rivertucky and new rich beach front ponces with their $1,500.00 longboards to be terrified of shortboarders because they had seen Point Break and Surf Nazis Must Die and tried to pass rules at Beer Can Beach to forbid shortboarding but no shortboarder would want to surf Beer Can Beach anyway accept to throw buckets at longboarders and vandalize their BMW's just for the spite of it. Ryan The Ripper liked the idea of terrorizing longboarders and I didn't blame him even though I was a Longboarder myself.
Anyway I decided to tell him about Captain Eric's mystos surf break and made him swear to secrecy because if it got out and all that riff raff showed up the ocean would lay flat and me and Ryan The Ripper would never surf again because the surf gods and Captain Eric would be pissed.
So I told Ryan The Ripper about mysto slabs in Ventura County and we loaded up his SUV in predawn March weather and headed up. It was a cold and cloudy morning and coffee and sweet rolls and stories about Pappy's adventures of the sea rolled of my poetic tongue and I showed Ryan The Ripper all the places up the PCH that he would soon dominate and he watched the shorboarders at County Line shut down the longboarders and he was impressed. he liked the shortboarders style and wished he had one. - Why do you want to become a shortboarder? I asked.
- Because I want to go fast, Because I want to rip, because, even though you and Christian and Jeremy are good people...and Pappy...even though you have taught me the secret of surfing, and I am eternally grateful for that, I want to chase those Kooks on longboards out of the sea...and besides...Kelly Slater is God!
- Oh! I answered. And I held back tears.
Mysto Slabs was one blown out sloppy mess. We stood there staring at it.
- Lets go to Rincon...says Ryan The Ripper.
- It would be the same...I tell him.
We went to C street that morning and it was good. Crowded but good. I had this Tyler 9.5 with a super rocker and although it was a stellar board...me and it just didn't hit it off. I had a crappy session. Ryan The Ripper still riding the piece of shit over sized thruster, had a ball but all he could talk about was the purchase of a 6.3 Al Merrick. The most aggro board one can buy.
And aggro it and he was. On the way back we hit traffic on the PCH in Santa Monica and some lady cut Ryan The Ripper off and he got hot under the collar and shook his fist at her and tried to spit on her tail light, and when the light turned red he started to open the door and go to her car. To do what I have no idea.
- She can't get away with that, that stupid bitch! He ranted.
I grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him back in the car. - Dude!...Says I - This is LA...She could be holding a Mouser in her glove box for all you know. He sat for a few seconds and thought about it and as the light turned green he said; - I hate LA!
And like tell me something I never heard!
I was saddened by Ryan The Rippers decision to go short. I went home and could contain myself no longer and washed my 1966 Volkswagen Beetle with my tears of sorrow.

Beer Can Beach Memoirs. The Adventures and Misadventures of Pappy and Ryan The Ripper Part 1 Santeria & The Secret of Surfing.

Spring has brought the hardwood trees back to life here in Vermont. Maple, oak, ash and birch. I live above The Connecticut River. It is a mighty river. The house I live in is on a hillside above it. Fog shrouds the valley in the morning and it reminds me of the California coast that sits in a fog on most mornings.
The miracle of spring after five months of winter is so pronounced here. It is a time to celebrate, there are geese flying north, all the hibernating animals are back and the robins too. I haven't seen a northeastern spring in many years because I lived in California for most of my adult life.
People say California does not have seasons but I disagree. Even in the middle of Los Angeles on a balmy foggy spring morning one can sense the fragrance of sage blooming on the coast. It drifts into the basin kind of like the smog does, not much air moves in the Los Angeles basin. But the sage blooming on the coast and that mentholated scent drifting into L.A. with the gentle ocean fog always told me it was spring. That and the wild flowers in the hills, poppies! California poppies leaving a blanket of gold along the highways and roads. All this reminds me of mornings, sitting in the ocean, always colder in the spring because of the wind upwelling the depths of the sea and bringing the chilly waters to the surface.
Wind! Surfing in spring on the California coast...not a good time to surf California. Strong onshore blasts start like clockwork at ten each morning and increase with the day. Sometimes it's blowing at six in the AM and it's time to go back to bed. The water is chopped, the waves blown out, the winter north swells have subsided and the tropical winter storms have not started so the summer south swells are nil. It isn't till some time around the last week of April that a southie meets us at Malibu and other point breaks. Beer Can Beach gets it too.
I first met The Ripper on some crappy spring morning at Beer Can Beach in early April. It was a sunny morning. The onshores were threatening to blow out what little wave action there was. It was cold spring surfing and here's this guy out in board shorts and a surfing jacket, short sleeve. A real total ripper I thought. - So what are you doing? I ask this wise guy...- trying to get hypothermia?
- It's all I got, he says and I'm thinking either this guy is total hard core or he's nuts. I see big Hawaiian guys out there in the winter dressed like they're on Maui in the tropics with their flower print shorts and bareback, don't know why they do it. maybe they don't want to spend money on a wet suite because they're flying back to paradise that afternoon or maybe they're just big, Hawaiian and bad ...maybe this guy is a mean ass Hawaiian white boy.
He was not a mean ass Hawaiian white boy. He was a newbie from somewhere in the Northwest. He was so new that he couldn't even get up on the board but I didn't loose all respect for him like I do for the other kooks at Beer Can Beach. I mean a good surfer has to start sometime. He had kind of a attitude. I could tell he wasn't a person who was learning to surf, he was a surfer learning to surf. How I knew this I cannot say. His name was Ryan. Soon to earn the nickname The Ripper.
It was a week later. It was dark in the AM at Beer Can Beach. The Pacific Coast Highway was already coming alive with early commuters dashing by as I stood there in the predawn looking in revulsion at dead headless chickens floating in the stagnant tide. Beer Can Beach had two personalities, one in the night, one in the day. I never wanted to know what the night time was like. There was gang graffiti sprayed on the sea wall and what with dead chickens riding small waves in to the trash polluted tide pools, victims of Santeria and sacrificed to a fearsome evil god in the guise of Jesus and The Virgin Mary and God only knows what else! -Jesus Christ! I sighed - where the hell am I living anyway? And who was going to make that water safe for surfers after dead chickens (not even plucked) floated around in them for some hours.
- So whadda ya think Pappy! I hear a voice ask. I turn around and there's Ryan (soon the be The Ripper) looking like he stepped out of Point Break as one of Bodhi's sidekicks all dolled up with his spanking new wet suit and looking all pro and stuff. I look back at the miserable conditions, the wind is out there, the fog is in and as long as the fog remains then it will keep the wind at bay, but as soon as the sun breaks through...Oh hell! I think. The ripper is standing over me with a look like...what the fuck and I say - Sometimes you just got to get wet. and he looks at me like I'm an asshole and I problem am and the other Beer Can Beach regulars are showing up and looking at the headless chickens glumly and resigning themselves to the fact that sometimes they just have to get wet.
It was a bad session. The waves sucked and Ryan (soon to be The Ripper) was trying to stand up on on some over sized thruster that reminded me of a 1973 Ford Pinto on 2 foot pieces of shit and getting extremely angry and frustrated and cussing like the Irishman he turned out to be. The dead chickens remained as visible as a turd in the punchbowl , victims of Santeria, still rotting around the garbage strewn tide pools and nobody seemed to want to deal with it. Last week there was a dead cat in the water, the week before there was a dead whale but I don't think that was Santeria. Could have been all the garbage that Gladstones Seafood and Hamburgers right there above the point throw out there and the whale couldn't digest the deep fried breaded fish and french fries. There always seemed to be something dead at Beer Can Beech.
So with nothing else better to do I decided to reveal the secret of surfing to Ryan (soon to be The Ripper.) I told him; - Surfing is like playing pool, the less one thinks about what they intend to do the better the chances. I told him; - Once you commit to a wave you had better follow through, hesitation is fatal. That's how great surfers die, I told him. I told him; - The more you surf the better you get and if you stop for a while you loose ground, it is like the game of pool, it is a little geometry, perception. guts, intuition, and boldness and he looked at me like I was an asshole and I probably was. But it was the beginning of a true friendship and in the surfing world one had beeter be grateful for it.
Mary showed up with her red hair on fire and eyes like daggers as she waded out in the garbage strewn tide pool to retrieve the decomposing chickens, victims of Santeria. giving us all her contempt for none of us having balls enough to do it ourselves. I knew she wouldn't talk to me for at least six weeks and I was right.
Ryan soon got up on his 1973 Pinto thruster and went on to better equipment and in a remarkable time became a legend and a California household word. But more about that later.

Beer Can beach Memoirs; Part 1 - Slaying Dragons In The Green Room and Look Out For Dolphins

I watch the snowboarders going to the Green Mountains for a day on the slopes. They remind me of surfers, kind of cocky, slightly outlaw individualistic. Of course they are all bundled up with the same watch caps that surfers wear before and after sessions and they have the same wear wrap around sunglasses, and on the street they sport t shirts and knee length Dickie shorts with sandals. And they've got the same vibe. They sound like surfers when they tell me that I would enjoy snowboarding because it's gnarly, like riding a 700 ft wave of snow dude, you'll love it Pappy, if you surfed you will snowboard!
I don't know about that. I have physical disabilities now and wiping out on ice and snow is not the same as wiping out in water. Besides, I am water. My home will be the sea always. I live one hundred miles from the sea now. That's OK. My spirit is salt water...Pappy sleeps with the fishes....Pappy! That's what the folks in the line up named me and it stuck, everyone at the beach called me Pappy, there is even a section of Beer Can Beach...a take off zone where a long right handed break reforms and continues another few hundred feet to the shore. I used to claim that area for myself. My old buddy Christian The Dominator named that section Pappy's. What an honor to have a take off surfing zone named after me!...even if it is Beer Can Beach.
My minds eye is always on the shoreline...It is always a bright morning on the beach, even while I drive through northern hardwood forests, Blue Jays perched in the wintering trees, warblers sing a haunting melody, woodpeckers jackhammer on the side of the hardwoods, it is the song of the forest, it is an ominous predator foot print in the snow, there are lairs in the woods where bears hibernate till spring. I feel like Siegfried in this forest, on my way to slay the dragon in it's cave. I have a dragon to slay up here in the great north woods. Like St George, like Siegfried, this dragon sits in the back of my unknown thoughts and here I am, sword in hand ready to lobotomize the beast. But enough of my dragons. I am in the forest but the sea awaits. I will return to the sea...always...and if my memory serves me well;
I go back to another winter, a winter of some years ago in the sunny southlands of California. Balmy air but cold water and a swell from the Alaskan Gulf...always a zoo at Beer Can Beach when the waves get that big, what with all the newbees out there and then suddenly there's these overheads coming in and these guys are crapping in their wetsuits. Me? I got one life to live. I figure if this waves takes me...I've gone out doing what I like to do best. But that doesn't happen, Not even close. I'm sliding down liquid mountains and I do come close to running someone over that does not realize the power of the sea this morning, guess he'll learn the hard way. I ride all the way to the shallows and stand in knee high surf. The waves are powerful and nearly knock me off my feet. I am waiting for a lull to paddle back out to my take off section. There is a riptide where I stand. That's good. I just wait for the lull, get on my board and let the rip take me out to the line up which has to be two football fields out there this morning. Boy! The waves are at least twelve feet That's pretty big for here.
Too bad about Beer can Beach though. It really gets overused in swells of this caliber. All the hipsters and extreme locals from Porto and points south have invaded it You see... all the movies you see about Los Angeles County as this surfer paradise is bunk. Ventura county is more like it, Orange and San Diego Counties are a lot more fun. So there's all these hardcore shredders who usually wouldn't be caught dead at Beer Can Beach in fear that someone they might know, might see, or might get their picture taken and put up on the Internet. Beer Can Beach has this reputation...it's the place where all the kooks go. It's an old folks break and a place for kooks. Kooks and old farts, just lame ass waves and Barney's galore I was glad it had that reputation...I supported that stigma...don't surf here, you will be the laughing stock of of first point Malibu. Don't surf here...anyplace but here! Dudes in the know don't surf here!
Of course my dissing the place only went so far. After all it was the easiest place to check out the surf without even getting out of ones car to do so. It was right in full view of the PCH so when the waves were breaking as good as they were this particular morning it was hard to say go some place else! And besides, the surf was big and all the beach breaks down south were closing out. I thought that was odd, it must be a huge swell if that was the case. El Porto, about ten miles south, could hold a six foot wave, Venice is trash above four feet, Topanga up the coast about half a mile, AKA Crime Scene was probably working but can't hold the crowd and then the locals get cranky and fights break out. That's why we called it Crime Scene. County Line was too far to drive and some of us had to work for a living some time that day, Point Dume was probably good but the locals take over on a swell this big and again the fights.
I had to face it. There was not enough room or everyone so everyone came to Beer Can Beach because when the surf was this big, Beer Can Beach could hold the twelve foot swell and my laughed at surfing hole becomes a world class surf film classic with every hipster, shredder, hotdog and noserider as far south as Palos Verde converging. I would have been pissed off but the waves were too big to do anything but try to get out there and ride.
It' s called the Christmas swell. It happens every year around the second half of December when Alaskan winter storms start to do their churning in the north Pacific. The storms make land fall in the northern part of California, Oregon and Washington. Southern California stays sunny and warm but the waves from the storms making landfall send waves down along the southland coast.
The sea is not a place to be if one is not prepared to give ones self totally to her. I always tell people; never say never but never turn your back to the sea. Surfers always face the horizon waiting for their ride. It's fun when dolphins and sea lions come up and check you out. Dolphins are friendly but sea lions tend to get a little testy. Especially if your around their pups. And there are hazards aplenty out there and on a morning with twelve foot waves coming in because one gets very aware of the prospects of getting held down on a wipe out or knocked on the head with someones runaway board in the soup while your trying to get out.
I guess I've always been trying my luck at slaying dragons. A wave can be a dragon and they were certainly great beasts out at Beer Can Beach that morning. But everyone has a wave just for them. I saw mine coming at me. It was a beauty...it wasn't the biggest wave but it had style, form and power. But there was a problem....
There was a little young lady with a huge voice on a shortboard just to my left. She was pissed off. She was complaining about all the longboarders and kooks that frequented this beach and how they should stay out of her way. She was here because the nasty locals at Crime Scene up the road had driven her off her turf because she was always whining about how she was training to be a pro and that everyone, because she was little and cute, should give her waves. nobody was giving her waves that day at Crime Scene because the guys there are a serious bunch of hard core hard asses and that kind of temper tantrum gets people persona-non-grada up there when the space is tight and the waves are big.
Now at Beer Can Beach it's a love fest, all accept for me and Christian The Dominator and Ryan The Ripper, and we got our own ways of letting all the Faux-pas chuckle heads that come to our break to show us how it's done just who's doing what out there and we do it with savoir faire! Now this little lady with the large lungs was out there when my lover wave came rolling in. Surfing rules say that the person to your left on a right breaking wave has the right to the wave. And I clearly committed a capitol sin by dropping in on her but sometimes I just get ornery.
I couldn't help it...it was my perfect wave and I dropped down on it and the waves lip curled over my head and I was suddenly in the green room on a stand up barrel. (If my readers do not understand the green room than I say you should go to Surfline.com and look it up in the terminology page of that site.) It was the wave of my dreams, It was the wave of my life. It was me in total Zen, living in the total here and now, me, the wave, and a loud little lady on the shortboard behind me in the barrel screaming; 'ITS NOT FAIR! YOU DROPPED IN ON ME...IT'S NOT FAIR, THIS WAS MY WAVE!'
The two of us wound up in the shallows once more and I thought she was going to cry. I told her I was sorry...I told her I would give her the next one...I told her not to let it ruin her day. She said she was a pro and that I was a kook and to learn to surf. I didn't let it ruin my day. And I was stoked that I made it into The Green Room, just like videos I saw of Indo and Hawaii and it was all right here at Beer Can Beach.
I should have gone in on that ride, but I stayed out and maybe I should have really gone in with a ride like that. but I wanted the green room again, this time to myself. it was a sunny December morning. It was getting seriously crowded and the sea wall along PCH was lined with cameras. Here came my dragon! It was a mountain of a wave. It was the biggest wave I have ever seen in a lineup. As it approached in silence the glassy mountain was suddenly breached by four dolphins riding it. They were to my left and it was a right but I figured they knew what they were doing and I knew what I was doing. I had a dragon to slay, I had a dream to peruse. There was no one going for this one. It was a monster. All the hipsters were out on the point and the Barney's around me were frozen with fear and I had found my own take off point was deplete of riders so there I sat and waited. I quickly did a hail mary and and paddled like hell. I was suddenly in the wave and dropping down on the face. Just then a dolphin breached the wave right in front of me. It's body was sleek and blueish, he looked as if he was having a good time, he was made for the sea and he was on that wave like no human could. A strong offshore breeze hit me in the face and the water sprayed a rainbow in the suns light. The dolphin was so close to me that I thought that I was going to run into it.
One never knows just how big a dolphin is until you are face to face. He was a big serpent and I learned fear and went down, into the depths of the sea, into the belly of the giant wave that rolled turbulent over my head. I was sent to the bottom, I bounced off the sand and I headed up. Up, up and up until the sun I could spot above the surface. I had lost my board, I got to the surface and gasped for air just in time for another wave to crash on my head, sending me back to the deep. Now I didn't know which way was up and which was down. I was struggling, my breath was getting short, I needed air. I stopped swimming and floated to the top, I saw the light and I came up gasping only to be tossed to the bottom once more from a third wave in a set.
I survived it. I dragged my half drowned body to the beach, my board waited at the shore line, I sat down to take stock. That was enough for the day. And as I was walking to my car the little lady with the big voice passed me and gave me a victorious look. I don't know if she saw the dolphin incident or not. If I had been cut off by someone and then saw a dolphin, in return, cut them off I would certainly have felt a certain amount of justice administered. But I tried not to let it ruin my day.
That Christmas swell lasted about four days. I went out on all four days. I caught some great waves but I never returned to the green room. I hoped and I prayed and I wished upon a star, but the green room stayed aloof. And I never saw the little lady again either.