Dog Days

Typically, a surf session during a New England winter is cold. This day was excruciatingly cold. The kind of cold that makes a fifth generation Maine lobsterman say, "Holy crap, it facking cold!" But I was excited. There was surf. The wind was offshore. And I was going surfing for the first time in almost five months. Plus we were going to one of my favorite places, Long Beach in Gloucester.

In Cape Ann, at the end of a long road, far from anything yet somehow right next to everything, sits a point break. Jay surfs it alone in the middle of the winter a lot. I just happen to check it one day when he was going out.

During the painfully flat and arm-pit-hot summer prior to this day, I took alcohol a lot. There were many occasions that Gutterboy and I drank the Spaldings from the previous night's activities as soon as we got to the surf shop. This was just to keep from being sick. Which sounds sick, maybe even retarded, but hair of the dog is a good option when you plan on drinking all day anyway. May as well go ahead and have a drink, right? So as we were cleaning up broken hangers, Jager empties, Goldschlager glittery spills, and funky half ashtray/half beer cans from every crevice of the surf shop, we drank. So what if you haven't been sober for a minute in something like 40 days? There hadn't been any surf.

I had met a girl during this run of debauchery. Actually, whore is more appropriate. Well, no, I never paid. Anyway. It should have been a red flag that this girl thought that my lifestyle was fun. But like I said, I was drunk, so why would I care? In order to ply this female with adequate intoxicants to make me more interesting and her clothes easily detachable, I set up a evening with my friend Mike, the heavy metal-ist, drug ingesting, English teacher. We ate. We drank. Everyone ate pills of some sort except me. Not a fan. Really.

We found ourselves at a bar at some point. When the bouncer stopped my companion for i.d. I could see this not working out as I planned. She was just shy of drunk to perfection. So I questioned the overzealous fellow about his reasoning. Bad idea.

As I laid in the gutter waiting for a cab to take me to the hospital I saw down her shirt as she comforted me. That was when the pain really set in. I should have eaten some of those pills.

There are characters in every beach town who rip balls. You have never heard of any of them. Kadri Kurgun owns it. Now you know.

Fastforward and here it is, winter. Surf season. Crutches gone. Rehab almost finished. And I was sitting in a crowded car full of gear and cigarettes and New England surfer stink. Staring at the perfect head-high tubes. There was one car in the lot and it owner was out solo. He's a nice enough guy who has a couple dogs he takes with him everywhere. And I love dogs. So this guy is cool in my book. Everything looked perfect. Except…

I gotta shit.

Just like that. Good surf gets me fired up and a lot of the time the tirds just start rushing. I have no options. Gotta go. Now. I opened the door and everyone cursed the cold, or more specifically, they cursed me for letting cold in the stench-mobile. I dashed around like a mad man looking for cover. The beach houses were empty so I ran behind them and backed up against a snow drift about six feet high. I actually felt bad to be crapping on someone's back patio, but fuck it. They wouldn't be around for another few months. I think my shit should be gone by then. And I had no options. I dropped my pants, squatted and the adrenalized fun-factory pumped out yesterday's New York Pizza at high velocity. As I ached through the intense cold of being pantless squating in a snow drift while 20 mph northwest wind stung my balls I started to get bummed. It was intensely unpleasant and I was already frozen. I hadn't even paddled out yet and I was cold. I started to dwell on it when the dogs ran around the house and trotted up to me for a sniff-and-greet. I struck myself clean and patted the dogs hello as they went about dog stuff unaware of how fucking cold it was. My attitude began to change as I pondered their attitude. They didn't give shit that it was 10 degrees out. They just want to…

Wait.

They just ate my shit!

Holy crap. They saw a steaming hot tird and gobbled it up in a nanosecond! My eyes almost popped out. I had to do the look away and look back to see if it was real. Holy shit balls, the dogs ate my poop! I gagged back whatever was left of breakfast and hustled back to the car. I told the boys what happened and we all laughed until the foul smells of wetsuits, feet, booty sludge and cigarette butts snapped us back to reality.

Jean Pierre Knight's Long Beach floater on the shorter, closed-out-but-punchier right. Kadri hacking the shoulder inside the rocks at the end of the left at the far right.

The session was short but nice. The waves were a bit soft but a good first day back after a long stint dry-docked. As I sat aching in the water between waves my mind jumped back and forth between the shit-eating dogs and my needs to get my own shit together. I hatched grandiose plans to self improve. No more all-day drinking, no more lighting each other on fire, no more wine tastings for 3 hours during work, no more… But it was just too brutal. After changing out of a wet wetsuit in 10 degree weather with numb appendages, I said fuck it, stopped at Taco Bell, then grabbed a 12 pack, a pack of smokes and headed back to Boston.