The place is packed with weekenders, windows all fogged up, obscuring the view—not that there’s anything to see but clouds and rain.
“So what’s up with Portland?” Dawn asks, sipping her coffee.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I told them I’d take the weekend to think it over.”
“That’s a big decision for a weekend.”
“Tell me about it.” I think about my room in Brooklyn, all my stuff, the three thousand miles of red states between here and Portland. As much as I’m sick of New York, I also feel oddly insulated by it, protected and enabled in my isolation and anonymity, where none of my friends back home can see how hard I’m struggling.
Dawn brought along friends from the city, tall blond women in their late twenties with successful careers in the fashion world. Their names are Sarah and Tia; they both work for some big-deal fashion photographer and are in Montauk to celebrate her birthday.
“How long have you been in New York?” one of them asks.
“Three years, almost to the day.”
“Have you accomplished what you wanted here?”
I shrug, take a sip of coffee.
Outside, water pours off the eaves, the rain gutters failing.
And I’m embarrassed to say it. Three years in the city, only one accomplishment: learning to surf. The best thing that’s happened to me. The worst way to get ahead in New York.
After breakfast we drive out to a secret spot on the beach cliffs south of the Montauk lighthouse. Pulling up our hoods, we follow Kessler through an opening in the dense bramble and into a cavernous, dripping path toward the sea.
“If you move to Portland,” Dawn says, following just behind me, “I’ll probably come out and join you in a couple years. You can settle down there, buy a house. And they have actual trees there. A shitload of them.”
We emerge from the brush onto a knoll covered in thick, wet grass overlooking the Atlantic. The rain has tapered off, the sky quilted with a hundred hues of charcoal and gray. Some seriously formidable waves are rolling in a hundred feet below, creasing in off the horizon, then rearing up sharply to reveal cobalt faces—swelling with silver—before collapsing into white, exploding around rocky crags, fizzing and clambering toward shore. Dawn and I look out into the vastness, comment on the fucking amazingness of it. We put our arms around each other, pose for photographs, hold on even after the cameras are put back in purses. It’s already starting to feel like a going-away party.
By evening the storm blows over, just in time for the photographer’s catered fortieth birthday party out on the beach. Wooden tables and chairs set right out on the sand, flickering storm lanterns and a beach bonfire, dogs and children running around, all the fresh lobster and corn on the cob and homemade bread you can eat. I have a couple cold beers, then sneak off to my truck, where, feeling both festive and anxious, I do something I haven’t done in over a year—I dial Karissa’s number. According to program language, what I’m doing is acting out, or breaking my bottom line.
She picks up on the third ring.
“Karissa Vasquez?” I say. “Is that you?” It’s an old inside joke, one that we’d borrowed from her dad, who’d pretend to be terribly sick even if he just had a little head cold, mostly to garner sympathy and favors from Karissa. From his sickbed on the couch he’d reach out and grasp for her, ostensibly blinded with illness, and say Karissa, is that you? If it’s you, could you bring me some ice cream?
“Oh my God, is this Justin Hocking?” she says. “I thought maybe you were dead or something.”
It turns out she’s at work at her new job as a hair stylist and only has a couple of minutes to talk. But that’s all it takes for us to fall back into our old, easy way of relating—our buddy-buddy intimacy and all our inside jokes. I tell her about the job offer in Oregon and that I’m thinking seriously about taking it, and ask what she thinks about the idea.
“Will you be making a million dollars a year?” she asks.
“No, I’ll pretty much be making the opposite of a million dollars a year. I’ve always been better at making friends than money.”
“Well, that’s debatable.”
“I have lots of friends. It’s girlfriends I have problems with.”
“Yeah. Tell me about it. Hey man,” she says, “I kind of need to finish coloring this person’s hair. I’ll have to call you back.”
The sand chills my feet as I walk back to the bonfire where Dawn’s still sitting, drinking a beer. Embers spark from the fire, fare brilliant orange, then fade into tangled coils of ash.
“Did you tell her about the job?” Dawn asks.
“Yeah, definitely.”
“Her response?”
“Hard to say. She said she’ll call me back.”
“You think she still has a boyfriend?”
“I really hope not. Because if I move out there and she’s still with someone, I’m not sure I can deal.”
Dawn takes a sip of beer and stares into the fire, then looks over at me. “You know what? Don’t worry too much about Karissa. Do what’s best for you and the rest will work itself out.”
The next morning we arise to find that a clean swell has rolled in on the storm’s wake. I drive from Grodin’s out to Montauk Point, blasting the Rolling Stones again and savoring one short section where pines canopy the entire highway. Trees surround the Oregon coast roads for hundreds of miles, but here you only get a few hundred feet of forest.
I meet up with Dawn and Kessler in the parking lot near the lighthouse, just above a spot called North End that breaks only once or twice a summer during a rare north swell. And a rare north swell’s exactly what we have: line after line of five-to-seven-foot waves merge around the point and peel horizontally across the bay. The water’s a kind of charcoal blue, the dark color of clouds before they dump rain, but with an aquamarine hue—a residual effect from the tropical storm.
Dawn and Kessler and I suit up and walk barefoot down an overgrown dirt trail, then hobble across the stony beach to the water. The waves aren’t breaking close to shore, so getting out is fairly simple. After paddling ten minutes or more out into the lineup, I feel apprehensive—we’re way off shore, at a spot where technically surfing is illegal. It’s a major thoroughfare for commercial fishing boats; for this reason the shark danger is high. And Montauk was the setting for the original Jaws film—a commemorative sign reminds you of this every time you drive into town.
I’m actually comfortable in the water, though. The main thing causing me anxiety is this impending life decision. It’s now Sunday and I have less than twenty-four hours to chart the course of the rest of my life. Being out here in these beautiful waves, just south of the lighthouse, and all my closest city friends out with me—it makes the idea of leaving New York seem painful. I watch Kessler get a couple good rides; he blasts past me with his laid-back stance, knees bent slightly, back arched—the epitome of style, earned only after a lifetime of surfing in one form or another.
There’s something that happens between people who surf together, an alchemical bonding that comes from partaking in intense physical activity, from looking after one another out in the sea, and watching Kessler float by on a plunging wave I feel such warmth for him—the same guy who’d told me to get out of his town the first time I met him. More than any of his outer abrasiveness, he has what can only be described as soul—a word that derives from the ancient Germanic, meaning “coming from or belonging to the sea.” It’s in his surfing and his skating for sure; it’s in the way he cruises casually through life; it’s especially in the way he treats other people, looks after his friends, takes care of so many recovering addicts with all their endless needs, cravings, complaints. He’s the kind of person you always want to be around; if he shows up for a session you know it’s going to be good. But good isn’t a strong enough word—surfing and skating with Kessler are transcendent, because, yes, you’re in the presence of physical greatness—of one of the most stylish skateboarders ever,
a true originator of the rolling art form—but more than that, beyond the whole East Coast living legend thing, you’re also in the presence of an authentic heart. In my experience with yoga I’ve heard that devotees who meet certain enlightened masters never want to leave them; they’ll follow the teacher all across India just for a glimpse, just to experience the teacher’s gaze. There’s a living Indian saint named Amma who sometimes visits New York; people line up around the block, wait for hours just for a single, life-changing embrace from her. It would be a major stretch to ascribe this kind of guru status to Kessler—he definitely wouldn’t want it. And there are times when he comes right up to you on the street, usually in the East Village with a couple of recovering junkies in tow, and straight up heckles you for talking on your cell phone, or for wearing your square-looking work clothes and not having a skateboard, so that you want nothing more than to get the hell away from him, to shut him the fuck up—Kandy Hassler. But then again there are times like these, north of the lighthouse on a rare swell, when his presence makes you feel grateful, safe, fully inspired. In the face of all the shit I’ve been through in the past three years, these surf sessions with Kessler and Dawn are some of the best times of my life, and I never want them to end.
It takes a while to get in the proper position, but I finally score a wave, a long right-hander that I surf parallel with the shore for thirty or more yards, my first true point break ride. After the long paddle back toward the lighthouse, I spot Grodin making his way out toward us.
“So you moving to Portland or what?” he asks.
“I don’t fucking know.”
“Dude, your face looks really pale. You look like you saw a ghost. Actually, you look like a ghost.”
“It’s my sunscreen,” I say. After he paddles off toward an outside takeoff point, I wipe my finger across my face. It comes up clean. It occurs to me that actually, I’d forgotten sunscreen. What’s making me pale is the way I’m floating around between two worlds—the past and my unimaginable future, New York and Portland. A ghost indeed.
After we’re all surfed out, Kessler invites Dawn and me up to visit his friend Daniel, an assistant to Julian Schnabel who’s staying at the artist’s house for the summer, taking care of Schnabel’s pit bulls and working on paintings. The closest I’d been to Schnabel’s place was his caretaker’s quarters, where Casual Chuck lives and keeps his impressive quiver of vintage surfboards. I’d only caught a glimpse of Schnabel’s house from Casual Chuck’s, so I jump at the chance to check it out.
Following Kessler’s directions, we take a private lane through a tangled thicket of brush and ivy; around each bend spray-painted signs read Beware of Dogs and Keep Out: Private Property. We pull up outside an expansive wooden structure, which Kessler explains is Schnabel’s “surf shack.” It looks like an oversize log cabin, one of those multimillion-dollar affairs that movie stars build in Aspen and then inhabit for only two or three weeks a year. Daniel appears on the front porch. He’s a diminutive Irish guy, a chain smoker with curly, dishwater-blond hair that he keeps out of his face with a red bandanna. We follow him through massive double doors into the foyer, where the ceilings soar overhead, tall enough for Schnabel’s enormous canvases. One’s a line portrait painted on a large Kabuki theater backdrop that I faintly recognize from the Basquiat film. Then he leads us back outside through another giant door into an open-air painting studio. It’s the size of a large racquetball court, with wood-plank flooring surrounded by tennis court–green walls on three sides. There are a few colorful, weathered paintings in progress, executed on big canvas tarps—mostly Daniel’s work. Just off the studio’s open wall is a garden trellis with an arched entranceway leading to a diving platform. The large rectangular pool below has a small, overgrown island at the end with a twisted Asian tree growing up from the center, like something from a Japanese landscape painting or a Dr. Seuss book. The emerald water looks a little murky, but given the go-ahead I’m ready to dive right in.
The lawn around the pool is well cared for but shaggy; it’s slowly overtaking a set of antique chartreuse lawn furniture—two ornate, rusted-out chairs and a curlicue Victorian love seat. Old beach cruisers and a blue tandem with weathered white wall tires are strewn all over the grass, along with isolated patches of dog shit. The whole place has the aura of John Cheever’s story “The Swimmer,”8 but unlike the Swimmer’s world, Schnabel’s place speaks of a kind of casual, healthy idleness. Whereas you feel pity for the Swimmer and relief when you close the book on him, you never want to leave a place like Schnabel’s—you find yourself hoping for an invitation to come spend the weekend or the summer or, like Casual Chuck, the rest of your life.
After smoking a cigarette and making idle talk with Kessler, Daniel invites us back inside to tour the rest of the “shack.” On the north wall of the main room there’s a gigantic painting of a blond girl in a sailor blouse, a thick black stripe obscuring her eyes, an image that I recognize from the cover of a Schnabel retrospective art book. Above a long dining room table hangs an ornate red-and-green Venetian blown-glass chandelier. There’s a cavernous fireplace, so big that Dawn can enter without bumping her head. An electric guitar and a little amp sit in one corner; most of the furniture is rustic and obviously handcrafted. There are photos of Schnabel and friends surfing in Hawaii; up in the rafters hangs a stunning black big-wave surfboard, shaped by Schnabel’s pal Herbie Fletcher and painted by Schnabel with the words Blind Girl Surf Club. Surfboards, guitars, a massive fireplace: the place is essentially an enormous, tastefully decorated man cave.
Daniel’s cell phone rings; he excuses himself and takes the call in the kitchen. While he’s out, Kessler explains what’s going on: earlier that day at Ditch Plains one of Schnabel’s RCA-style pit bulls got away from Daniel and bit some guy right in the crotch. News of it is all over Montauk; even I had heard about it from Grodin but didn’t make the connection until now. The guy had to be carted off in an ambulance; animal control whisked the dog away, and now there’s a possibility it might have to be put down. Of course, Daniel’s worried he’ll be cast out of Schnabel’s bohemian garden of Eden. I feel sorry for him—I’d want to live there forever too. And given what he’s going through, he’s incredibly cordial to us; if I was in the same predicament, the last thing I’d want would be a bunch of strangers milling around.
While Daniel handles the dog situation, Kessler walks us up the road to the main house. It’s one of the most beautiful homes I’ve ever seen—a cross between a Cape Cod and a gabled Victorian, the second story done in shingles and covered with red-fingered ivy, the lower level painted dark green. Two towering chimneys, big cathedral-style leaded-glass windows, an elongated front porch. Kessler points out Schnabel’s expansive quiver—custom-built surfboards of every shape and size, stacked three or four high.
As I later learn, the house was designed by famous Gilded Age architect Stanford White, who contributed designs to Penn Station, Columbia University, the stunning Boston Public Library, and the iconic arch in Washington Park near NYU. He was considered a major force in the Renaissance Revival period. The Renaissance aesthetic, with its emphasis on ambidexterity and mastery across genres, seems appropriate for Schnabel, who along with painting dabbles in architecture, interior design, and film. As Kessler explains, at the present he’s off in France shooting a movie called The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.9
Though the house looks massive to me, White considered it a “fishing cottage”; it was modest in size compared to those he designed on the wealthier north side of Long Island. It was part of a colony of cottages, all designed by White and his firm. Andy Warhol was the first artist to buy one back in the 1970s, when he paid something in the ballpark of $500,000. Just adjacent to Schnabel’s, Warhol’s place is now worth $50 million—making it one of the most expensive pieces of real estate in the country. I wonder how much of that price is just for the history: it was a famous hangout for the whole Factory crew; the Stones recorded Black and Blue down in the ba
sement. Legend has it you could hear them rocking all the way down to the trailer park at Ditch Plains—our go-to surf spot when the North End isn’t breaking.
Something about this visit seems auspicious for me and my imminent life choice. On one hand, I feel assaulted by the level of Schnabel’s success. In a scene from the film, the fictional Basquiat pisses in the fictional Schnabel’s stairwell, maybe as a result of feeling similarly assaulted, as a minor insurrection against Schnabel’s magisterial presence. Or then again, maybe Basquiat was just an asshole; maybe the drugs made him that way.
And on the other hand, I want a little piece of what Schnabel has. I don’t need a giant beach house or a swimming pool with an island or my own four-thousand-square-foot man cave, but I do need some creative autonomy. To surf when I want, write when I want, answering to no one but myself—this is the wealth I’m after. Something needs to change in my life, and visiting Schnabel’s place crystallizes the feeling.
Forecast for the Manhattan Skyline: Small craft advisory. North swell 13 feet at 9 seconds. Winds from the south at 30 mph. Water temp 60, air temp 55. Surf: fair to poor conditions, with strong winds, dangerous rips, and sneaker waves.
Back in the city, I’m paralyzed with indecision. My hope is to hear back from Karissa, that her romantic status will help me decide one way or another, but Sunday and Monday come and go with no word back from her. Finally, on Wednesday, I get an email from the Portland people saying they need to know right away, that if I don’t want the job they’ll have to go with their second choice.
I have a long phone call with my best friend, Gabriel, who lives in Portland and originally sent me the job listing.
The Great Floodgates of the Wonderworld Page 18