When we arrive in Forest Grove I pull in behind the vans. As they get out, some of the cooler-seeming teenagers appear to admire my car but they don’t say anything to me directly. I note that this is a street-heavy park, a plaza, with a good amount of open concrete and I decide I’m going to push myself. Thus far I’ve progressed to the point of being able to spin the 360-flip but haven’t yet been able to land it cleanly. I can get my back foot on it, easy, but not my front, which is always off to the side, to the left. There are a few other tricks that have eluded me, too.
I take to the concrete and after thirty minutes my muscles have warmed and I have a nice perspiratory lather going. Can the kids can smell booze on me? I wonder. Am I sweating out the night? If only it were possible to dispense with one’s past like that, to excrete it from one’s pores and be done with it. Loose now and with growing confidence, I have my kickflips on lock, as they say, and then land several halfcab kickflips and fakie frontside flips. We’re at over an hour in and my T-shirt is drenched. It’s pretty much an entirely different color. One of the teenagers, a small and quiet Asian kid whose name or nickname I haven’t caught, rides over and says, “Man. You really got a sweat on, huh?” And I just laugh and he laughs, too, and we start skating together. His earbuds hang loose from the neck of his T-shirt and helicopter like demonic clock hands when he pops a trick. He matches everything I do. I land a regular frontside flip and then a hardflip and these are not easy tricks and though they were a little janky, a measure of the old pride comes over me. He does them like they’re nothing. And though I know it’s lame, I ask him how old he is. Fifteen, he says. I don’t know what I hope to prove by saying it, but I tell him I landed my first hardflip before he was born.
“Word?” he says, unimpressed.
“Word,” I say. Word.
I spend fifteen minutes or so trying the 360-flip. It’s late afternoon and I can tell the session’s coming to an end. More campers are sitting around watching than are skating. A couple times I land on the board and it slips out from under me or my heels hit the ground and I stumble off the board. I’m close. I can feel it. And then on one pass I crouch and pop my board and I couldn’t tell you what I’ve done differently on this try but it spins perfectly under me. My feet are there when it finishes and they land over the bolts and I ride on. The Asian kid and a handful of the other teens watching knock their boards against the ground and cheer and call out “Sick!” and “Tight!” and “Dope!” The trick feels nothing like I thought it would, nothing like I remembered. It’s way, way better. It is the real thing.
I call Jamie over and ask him to film me. He’s using the camp’s fancy HD camera and high-fives and hugs me when I stick another one clean. This is enough to get my hopes up that I will make the edit of Session 2. Months later, when I call the video up on my computer and watch it, I will relive Boston’s hardflip and many of the other improbable things I witnessed, and I will be convinced that my 360-flip is coming up next, that surely they’d put it in for the other prospective adult campers to look on with respect, fomenting a desire of their own. But no. I will sit in disbelief as the clip ends and I have not seen myself.
As a fail-safe, I ask Jamie to get some extra footage on my phone and he says for sure. It takes me a few tries, but when I land another one I take my phone back and immediately shield it from the late-afternoon light and watch. There I appear on-screen, rolling almost laughably slow toward the camera. The trick itself looks labored and the landing’s a little sketch but I don’t care. It’s still pretty fucking dope.
The campers begin to pile back into the vans and I share a few parting words with the one I’ve hit it off with.
“Later,” he says.
“Yeah. Later,” I say, and wave what I realize is not only Dad’s air piano wave, but mine now, too.
Then the vans peel away. Because I followed them here, I wasn’t paying attention on the way into town and so didn’t orient myself, didn’t register any landmarks or record how to get out of here. So when I attempt to leave, I get turned around in the neighborhood behind the park and end up right back where I started. I stop and laugh to myself and then pull out my phone to get directions, but first I sit through beaucoup viewings of my 360-flip. I can’t wait to show Alexis, can’t wait for her to share in my pride. Then I call up Google Maps and as I start to plug in my address, the app finishes it for me—it’s almost like my phone knows before I do that where I’m headed is home.
Acknowledgments
Upper rung gratitude goes to Daniel Loedel and the Whole Sick Crew at Scribner. Likewise to my argus-eyed agent, Bill Clegg, whose enthusiasm buoyed me through nauseating chop. For their unwavering support, profuse appreciation is due Win McCormack, Holly Macarthur, and my entire Tin House family. And I have benefited immeasurably from the wise and generous counsel of the following folks: Christian Shiflett, Garth Swanson, Ryan Boyd, Scott Binkley, David Shields, Tony Perez, Lance Cleland, Alex Morris, Kyle von Hoetzendorff, Karen Russell, Jim Guida, Thomas Ross, Emily Bliquez, Rob Spillman, Elissa Schappell, Wells Tower, Ben Percy, Jon Raymond, Michelle Wildgen, Sarah Burnes, Pauls Toutonghi, Tony Doerr, Pete Rock, Arthur Bradford, Curt White, Chris Yates, Scott Phelps, and David Smith—to all of them I extend a fist-bump of thanks.
My family has supported me through all of my identities, especially Lee Knapp, who gave more of herself to these essays than she had to. The invaluable example of her life kept me from becoming a feckless stockbroker with iffy taste in neckties. Or something.
Finally, without Alexis Knapp, well, nothing. Period. This book is as much of as for her.
About the Author
© ALEXIS KNAPP
CHESTON KNAPP is the managing editor of Tin House magazine. Up Up, Down Down is his first book.
MEET THE AUTHORS, WATCH VIDEOS AND MORE AT
SimonandSchuster.com
Authors.SimonandSchuster.com/Cheston-Knapp
@ScribnerBooks
We hope you enjoyed reading this Simon & Schuster ebook.
* * *
Get a FREE ebook when you join our mailing list. Plus, get updates on new releases, deals, recommended reads, and more from Simon & Schuster. Click below to sign up and see terms and conditions.
CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP
Already a subscriber? Provide your email again so we can register this ebook and send you more of what you like to read. You will continue to receive exclusive offers in your inbox.
Scribner
An Imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com
Certain names and characteristics have been changed.
Copyright © 2018 by Cheston Knapp
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Scribner Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.
First Scribner hardcover edition February 2018
SCRIBNER and design are registered trademarks of The Gale Group, Inc., used under license by Simon & Schuster, Inc., the publisher of this work.
For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-866-506-1949 or [email protected].
The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event, contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com.
Interior design by Kyle Kabel
Photographs in “Faces of Pain” copyright © Scott Binkley
Jacket design by Anna Laytham and Jaya Miceli
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
Many thanks to Harvard University Press for the permission to quote from The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Variorum Edition, edited by Ralph W. Franklin, Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Copyright
© 1998 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Copyright © 1951, 1955 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Copyright © renewed 1979, 1983 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Copyright © 1914, 1918, 1919, 1924, 1929, 1930, 1932, 1935, 1937, 1942 by Martha Dickinson Bianchi. Copyright © 1952, 1957, 1958, 1963, 1965 by Mary L. Hampson.
Earlier versions of “Faces of Pain,” “Beirut,” “Learning Curves” (nee “On The Journal of Jules Renard”), and “Mysteries We Live With” (nee “True Enough”) appeared in Tin House. Brick ran an excerpt of “Far from Me.” I’m grateful to the editors of these magazines, whose taste is patently unassailable.
ISBN 978-1-5011-6102-5
ISBN 978-1-5011-6104-9 (ebook)
Up Up, Down Down Page 26