Those aren't your memories. They're somebody else's.
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“Your feet are bleeding."
You looked down at your bare feet on the concrete seawall and a pool of crimson was, in fact, expanding in two circles, flecked by raindrops. You felt nothing, no pain, and turned the right sole up to reveal jagged slices in the flesh that continued to burp up fresh blood like angry little mouths with the rhythm of your heartbeat, even as the rain washed it away.
Only moments before you were being battered and bashed, like so much jetsam, locked in the washing machine centrifugation of a cement vault, just off the seawall, lost in the crashing waves of a tidal pool whipped into a frenzy by a coming tropical storm. There wasn’t even a beach. You had just flung yourself in with a $100 piece of orange and yellow fiberglass you had no idea how to even wax properly, let alone ride.
You were on a school-approved trip down to Galvseton for a look at the college there, which you or may not have done. You had brought her there with you and stayed at a two-star near the central beach. You found an affordable plastic plank, a leash and some Sex Wax at some shop in a lush, tropical area off Montrose in Houston and, without any training or experience whatsoever, had believed you’d be able to simply walk on water without so much as a single lesson. You’d seen it done in the movies and on television and had assumed that would be enough to catch your first wave. It was not.
As a fairly violent storm blew in and you drove along the seawall where the rubbery locals were out in droves shredding the break with their pointy beak shortboards; where someone could have at least given you a begrudged pointer or two; you proceeded to find the worst possible point along the entire seawall to sail your maiden voyage with your girlfriend looking on from the car.
You stood poised with rain bullets slapping your face, the wind whipping your hair and creating torrents of seawater and garbage in the concrete ocean sepulcher. With only a glance of consideration, you leapt into the vortex tethered to your untextured and slippery speed egg. You were up to your neck or more in the turbulence and random crashes of saltwater and scum and drinking enough of it attempting to quickly swallow some air. You attempted to flatten out the board enough to crawl on top, duck dive beneath the coming waves past the break, turn around, wait for a choice wave, begin hurriedly paddling as the momentum lifts you up, rise to a crouch and then begin sailing forward, catching the proverbial wave, and you soon realize the futility of your situation. The deck is too slick and the water is too rough and you have absolutely no idea what you are doing or how to actually surf.
You gave it the old college try even though you were still in high school.. It was a valiant effort and now it was time to stop by the drug store for first aid supplies. Back at the hotel, she, like the angel Florence Nightingale, dutifully and lovingly cleaned and bandaged the many lacerations on your feet(you would’ve made a Jesus joke here if you were older), which healed quickly enough that you could make another attempt two days later at an actual beach. You purchased some aqua socks and headed out with your more thoroughly-waxed board this time, but the waves were calm and flaccid now that the storm had faded.
You came back later that same year with your buddy, Frog, and though you eventually caught your first wave, Frog beat you to the punch and did so many times before you were able to. But then again, Frog was skilled at anything athletic. You reminded yourself that you, unlike Frog, had the brains instead of the athleticism, and you would’ve certainly had that as well had it not been for the scoliosis.
Eventually, you were accepted at the University of Houston and moved to Clear Lake, home of NASA, to be near Galveston and the ocean. You grew out your hair, purchased surfing gear, wet shirts and wet suits and later a hand-shaped 6’8” hybrid you forever regret having sold, and began regularly riding waves.
You were once again shone up by another friend, Vinnie, a skater who would later turn pro. It took no time at all for his wiry tattooed frame to not only ride a wave, but to decently carve it, something you had not quite managed to do yet. You had been pleased just to time the launch, stand up and stay balanced until the momentum faded near the shore. From now on, against all advice, you surfed alone.
Headed to Galveston in another storm, your little silver CRX was rear-ended by a cargo van, sending your deck whizzing from the hatch past your ear and through the windshield. Another time, despite the overcast, you had been so badly sunburned you ran a fever with icy chills and the skin of your forehead peeled off like strips of overcooked bacon. One day, having wiped out, you turned to locate your board just as another wave sent it whacking you in the head. Luckily you managed not to pass out.
Finally, the last time you remember surfing, you were first surrounded by jellyfish that looked like giant medicine capsules. You have always regretted your decision to punch one. It felt like stone. That wasn’t a very nice thing to do and you still feel guilty. Soon after, you noticed some sticks tumbling end-over-end in the break ahead. The sticks grew larger and larger and larger until you realized they were not sticks, but very large planks of wood that were now rapidly approaching. You turned and paddled to the beach, ran as fast as you could with your deck up the hill to the dirt sea wall just as the enormous curved flotsam of several wooden sections of an old ship’s rotted hull from Galveston Bay crashed onto the shore.
You eventually left Houston and sold that beautiful hand-shaped 6’8” hybrid at a surf shop in the Woodlands where your new girlfriend, a Swede, had lived before moving north with you. You have never surfed again, but the magical feeling of skating on ocean waves has never left you. But you have only returned to the ocean twice since and never to surf, though the waves would continue their adversarial role.
After having been landlocked for a decade and a half, you returned to the gulf with your latest flame on Padre Island. One beer-soaked afternoon, while she fell asleep sunning, you went for a swim. The tide had just the right momentum for you to glide effortlessly toward the horizon and you were literally and figuratively carried away. Before you knew it, you had swam so far away from the beach, that, when you turned your head to look back at it, you could barely make out where she was lying.
‘Okay, calm down. We can do this. Don’t panic and don’t use up any unnecessary energy. Don’t freak out’, you told yourself before immediately freaking out. You held steady though, reserved energy by gliding, and then kicking and attempting a modified American crawl against a diagonal tide that was pulling you to the right and back away from the beach.
The situation began to feel more and more futile and you considered crying out for help to some distant figures that materialized in front of you. They were likely out of earshot and you weren’t even sure if you had enough oxygen left anyway. So, you decided, if worse came to worse, it would be best just to be swept out to sea and lost forever like some nautical poet of old.
You hadn’t given up quite yet, though, and as you began to lose steam and could not keep your legs horizontal, your right big toe made contact with something below as your leg dropped in fatigue. You were unsure what it could be and continued on until, once again, you just could not continue kicking and your foot touched something again. You were beginning to give up and accept your fate and this weariness allowed the bottom of your foot to flatten onto what was first a soft texture, then a solid one. It was the sand bar, which was an extension of the beach into the sea, which eventually drops off dramatically to great depths beyond its reach.
So, you lowered the other foot and simply stood up. The water came up only to your waist. How long had you been struggling against a death by drowning in only four feet of water? It really didn’t matter because you began laughing the most joyously you ever had as you ran to the beach and collapsed breathlessly next to the still-sleeping girlfriend, relieved.
The final time that you went to the sea was on a gray and rainy day in Washington. You were staying with Wendy and Tony and had enlisted them to help you shoot a music video that you’ve never completed. Tony was in the back seat with the camera, Wendy lying in the passenger seat and you were driving. The concept was a take on the Godard film Breathless, with Wendy and you on the lam following a failed heist of some sort. Hinted at by your sloppily bandaged hand and grimaces, and later revealed with some errant currency floating away and the corpse of Wendy.
On the way, you almost ran a stop sign you didn’t see, but were able to brake at the last moment as another car sped and a collision was narrowly avoided. You drove Wendy’s little car right onto the beach, shot the reveal, then the slow, tragic wandering of your character toward the sea as he strips himself of his trademark acid wash Male brand jean jacket and flings it into the ocean and then walks farther and farther out until overcome by the waves.
The water was freezing and after you changed the three of you realized that the car was stuck in the sand. You had driven off the solid section of the beach into the soft, wet sand that Tony did his best to dig out. You were really no help at all and you remember why that was and why you had almost crashed earlier.
And as you remember it all now, you can see it all as one big metaphor pertaining to the ocean. The ocean called to you. You came to it and slowly learned how to catch and ride its waves, despite the dangers. Later, it was the danger itself that called to you; pure oblivion. You had lost the lift of the wave crest, crashed and was carried out to sea. You were lost and wanted so badly to sink down and drown and disappear forever. But the ocean would not allow it and pushed you back to the beach, back to life.
Now again you have paddled out. You are waiting. You are waiting in this liminal space for a wave that may never come. You know that, but still you wait patiently. In the meantime, you are grateful just to be in the water once more, alone, staring out to that distant line where the sky meets the sea like a great and eternal mirror.
Finally, however, you are reminded that these are not your own memories, but implanted ones, either belonging to someone else or simply fabricated altogether. For a moment, you are relieved as though waking from a nightmare. But then, as the memories begin to fade and, like a dream, you can no longer remember what happened in them, just a dull feeling of what may have been, you feel melancholy at having lost what seemed, for a fleeting time, a part of yourself.
You push over one of the crystal pieces and lay your head on the dimming game board and close your eyes.
ee07 • Implanted Memories: On Some Faraway Beach