Skate club

Thrasher Magazine, May, 2004 by Reed Kellman

IN THIS THING OF OURS, skateboarding, we operate in the nighttime, in city alleys, suburban backyards--hidden away from the masses. But packed into a sardine can bus I sit among them, blended in with my store-bought disguise. My grey tie lies neatly over my freshly starched white shirt, which is tucked into my ironed grey pants. I am a model cut directly from a J Crew catalogue, pasted neatly on the bus with the other GQ and Glamour ads. I am constantly sizing the rest up. This thing has changed me. I look at the other passengers' shoes, their elbows, checking for a sign that they know, that they are members too. Through the window I watch as we stop and go through the city. Men with newspapers rolled under the arms close deals on cell phones as they hustle to the office. Commute. Work. Commute. Sleep. Repeat. I look past them, at the blackened edges of a curb, the smooth marble of a ledge, the angle of a rail. I count stairs. My mind is wandering to later that night when we'd be back. The rest of the bus hides behind newspapers or sipping at their morning coffee enema.

The computer screen stares blankly back at me, a blur of white and black characters. My job is to sort the lists of clients' addresses and clean them. Change all the "Aves" to "Avenues," all the "POs" to "Post Offices," all the "Rds" to "Roads." Real brainwork.

Jeff, the mail boy, stops by my cube. He is wearing a short-sleeved dress shirt and I can see the scab on his elbow. Jeff is a member. But, we don't talk about it here. Here he is a mail boy and I am a clerk. We drone through the day, mindless worker bees. But last night Jeff was a god when he ollied the Stacy's Cleaners gap.

I nod to Jeff as he picks up the solitary envelope in my outbox, correspondence to a client asking them to kindly provide a new telephone number. The hours slowly pass as I wade through the address changes. I alternate work with checking websites for new spots. A new park has opened in the suburbs. Perfectly good concrete ruined by the usual government issued bumps and quarterpipes--no flow and crappy coping.

Mr Jackson, my supervisor, warns me of his approach with his shuffling wing-tipped feet. Alt--Tab and the skatespot window disappears. The list of addresses appears back expectantly.

"WHAT IS THIS?" HE QUESTIONS OVER THE SHORT SIDE OF my cube. He is holding a piece of paper in his hand. "How to avoid a bust," he continues. Shit, I must have left it on the copier. "Number one, avoid going to spots during work hours. Two, remove evidence of sessions; stickers, trash and broken boards make security aware and irritate workers. Three, know the timing of security rounds. Four, keep sessions short, moving from spot to spot then back later. Five--is this yours? What am I supposed to do about this?"

"Well," I say, leaning back in my chair. "It's obvious that whoever wrote that is a dangerous person, capable of such violence as trespassing and skateboarding." The sarcasm is high in my voice. "If I were you I'd be worried about what else this disturbed individual is capable of doing," I say, yanking the paper from his hand. "Or maybe you shouldn't bring me every little, piece of trash you find." He turns slowly and walks away.

Commute. Escape.

I return to my home, an old two-family house on the outskirts of the city, to find my roommate hauling stacks of two-by-fours through the front door. "What are you building?"

"What are 'we' building?" he answers back.

"What does that mean?"

"You'll see." Gavin loved to do that, leave me in the dark. Supposedly he worked at a coffee shop, but I could never figure out when. He was always around. Not that it mattered; he never paid for anything. His clothes he lifted from the Salvation Army, his boards were hand-me-downs and he had various hook-ups at different shops.

Gavin and I had become best friends at the red curb that we both skated everyday after school. For 11 years we had lived skateboarding, raised by the surrogate parent of the board. Gavin escaped his alcoholic wife-abusing father. I forgot my miserable, neglected suburban life. We found family.

Gavin has always been the better skater. He's willing to threw himself down gaps that I puss out on. Not afraid to try padless roll-ins on vert. He would go all out, make or break.

"Now go change," Gavin instructs me with a twinkle in his eye. "We're going out. That hotel with the amazing kidney pool burnt down," he laughs.

We've been waiting for a chance to skate this pool since we first came across it three years ago. Now there will be no one to interrupt our session.

My body falls hard on the flat bottom; an overextended backside air has caught the pool coping and flung me down. I reach nirvana. My shitty desk job is forgotten, my non-existent love life is non-existent on a different plane. It is all just white pain. My body is everything, the pain is everything. I roll over onto my side and let it ride. Try again. I pull the air and now the pain is gone, too. It is just me and my board. Gavin clacks his deck against the coping. We are free.