I've Always Been Crazy

I've always been one step over the hill. One foot on solid ground, the other standing in my grave. There's been many a moment that my foothold has shifted, and I didn't think I'd make it out alive. Some of those time, I think I was too out of it or drunk to really care of the significance of the situation.

In Half Moon Bay, California, 2006, I was a youth of 15, doing what most 15 year olds did. I was getting into trouble with my buddy, Val. (And Val, I love ya man.) My parents had bought a bag of wine that came in a large box and had a nozzle on it. Val and I filled up a Gatorade bottle full of this stuff to hold our drunk over for the day. We started our bike trip at noon on our BMX bikes, heading out to the cliffs that overlooked the Pacific Ocean.

We met up with this kid named Paul, who was a bit older than Val and I, but acted a year younger. Val was 16 at the time. Paul had short hair and a punk attitude. A typical rebellious youth who had something to prove and nothing to gain. He would later become a meth addict like so many people I knew there. It's a sad tale to see only a skeleton of someone you had once known very well. The hollow eyes of yesterdays gone by as the nightlife has taken its toll on their bodies.

Paul and Val and I ended up drunk by 2 in the afternoon. We also had rolled up a few joints filled with Salvia Divinorium, which grew everywhere in that area. If you go to the cliffs above Mavericks, California today, I am sure you will still be able to find the sweet tasting herb that does so much to your mind.
After we picked some Salvia and had a swagger, we drunkenly rode our bikes off to the southern cliffs of Half Moon Bay, which were parched and cracked from the erosion of the waves and seismic activity. We must of looked like the mess we were too, boy. The three of us all had on black eyeliner and red lipstick, having just gotten into the "I'm a rebel and I wanna raid momma's make-up drawer" stage of life. We parked ourselves there, laying down our bikes and lit up a Salvia joint.
After a hit or two, my mind was twisted. I pulled out a Confederate hat, and a rebel flag. I put on the cap and wore the flag as a cape. I got up on my bike (a Haro Dirt BMX) and took off, turning around to get a good head start on this jump I had talked myself into as I was getting my drunk on and stoned. It was a 4 or 5 foot gap, which went straight down to the beach below, around 50 feet. Wearing my regalia and make-up like a drunken fool, I blasted over the jump like superman. Val videoed it. I made the jump!
After that initial jump, spending that time in the air being able to see the beach below me, my heart raced. I wanted more. I was intoxicated enough to not be able to understand that below me was certain death if I had missed even a split second of the gap. I raced toward the gap and took the jump a second time. Time itself stood still. I saw the waves break on the beach as I looked to my left, I saw the trees to my right, the gap below me as I passed over it, seemingly in slow motion. My front tire touched the hard dirt on the far side of the gap. I was safe. My mind never knew the danger.

My friends cheered, as though I had just cleared the Grand Canyon. I left them to take a piss while they were rolling a joint. Paul was better at it than Val, who had only recently started smoking Salvia. I walked across the cliff top a few hundred feet out of sight of the main road and unzipped my fly. I whipped my cock out and took a long hard piss, filled with wine and bile. While Val and Paul were rolling the joint, I got hit with a back-wind that threw me over the cliff. Where I was standing, the incline was graded just enough that I rolled down most of the way, minus the 5 foot drop off at the bottom. I landed on the hard compacted sand on the beach below me. My body was sore, my mind was sobered.

Val and Paul stood high above me on the cliffs, passing a joint between the two of them and laughed. "DUDE! How the fuck'd you get down there?!" Val yelled.

"The trail down is about a mile that way!" I yelled up and pointed up north along the beach.

"Fuck dude!" He yelled back. "Get up here and smoke the joint with us."

This is a true story, and can be verified by both Paul and Val, though they tell it slightly different I am sure. The video of my heroic jump can no longer be seen, because the phones they were taken on have long since passed onto the land phones go to when they are dropped in toilet bowls or smashed on concrete.

I've always been crazy, and both feet were in my coffin that day. Little did I know then, that was only one instance of many, where I was insane within my mind, and I took life by the horns.
I feel as though I am a lost outlaw, just getting by in society. One of the last of a dying breed. An old cowboy at heart. And I dedicate this tale and the others like it to that ideal.