A Writer's Memoir and a Tale of a Lost Surfer's Paradise
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Can't You Get Along With Anyone? a writer’s memoir and a tale of a lost surfer’s paradise Allan C. Weisbecker Published in 2007 by Bandito Books www.banditobooks.com © 2006 Allan C. Weisbecker. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. Allan C. Weisbecker asserts the moral right to be established as the owner of this work. The views and opinions expressed in this memoir are those of the author, and his quoted subjects. They are not neccessarily the views and opinions of Bandito Books Ltd or any of its employees or directors. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publishers’ prior consent, in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Cover design by Allan Weisbecker, John Benedetti and Scott Massey Front Cover photograph by Walter Iooss. Back cover photograph by Warwick Saint. Interior design by Peggy LeTrent and iluminada design. ISBN: 0-9797117-0-3 ISBN 13: 978-0-9797117-0-1 Printed in the United States D contents Author’s Notes & Backstory 9 Part One At Age 55 21 Part Two Big Turkeys 95 Part Three The Max Dalton Investigation 165 Part Four On the Run 217 Part Five The Real Thing 309 Part Six Package Deals 373 Part Seven Butterfly Effects 427 Young and Wild and Beautiful Once* Odd the way a moment returns, a life-occurrence apparently lost through time’s neglect, the mental resurrection the end result of a sequence of recollected images, a one-to-the-next process ruled by the arcane illogic of the subconscious, but then, unexpectedly, the procession climaxing with perfect sense -- the summoned moment as clear, flawless, and inevitable as the finale of a well-wrought tale. I daydreamed a seascape of long ago in a foreign land, blurry but for a certain wave my old surf-chum Christopher rode upon it, which image then segued to a remote shore-side campsite the two of us shared at another faraway place, which in turn conjured a certain risk we took, a law we broke, a laugh we had at the certainty of our invincibility. I see the logic of it now: the shared laugh, the lawlessness, the invincibility, the endeavor of wave riding in foreign lands; how they all connected and culminated in the resurrected moment, so long lost. It was the south of France, near Biarritz, in the summer of 1970. The European surf scene was in its infancy back then. All the good surfers on the continent were foreigners, primarily Americans, Aussies, and a few South Africans. Christopher and I had made friends with a cadre of beginning but stoked French surfers who were hell-bent on staging a contest, up the coast at a little town called Hossegor, which has since become famous for its fine beach breaks. I didn’t believe in surf contests in those days, still don’t, but these French had been very nice to Christopher and me, had taken us into their homes and so forth, so I agreed to enter. Christopher, who felt even more negatively about contests than I did, finally acquiesced at the last minute. Well, I won the thing, or at least that’s what the judges said; aside from Christopher, there were some pretty good surfers in the finals, all serious foreign travelers. (Christopher placed third or fourth, I recall.) After the awards ceremony, Christopher and I paddled back out for a sunset session. I came in first and was walking down the beach toward the parking lot when she approached me, this exquisite young French girl whose name has been (truly) lost to me over the years. Although we had no common * Written on the road in Central America in 1997. i language, we’d smiled and flirted a bit that day. Now it was dusk and the beach was deserted and the image is so clear of her sliding off her bikini top in the warm glow of that perfect light, her wide, slightly crazed eyes daring my response. This is the resurrected moment I refer to, real and true these many years later -- as if just a heartbeat ago I’d shut my eyes on that distant beach, perhaps the better to contemplate the simple perfection of my young life,* as it was there and then. The French girl had never been with a man before and decided to give it up to a foreign surf bum. Whether she’d picked me earlier in the day or waited to see who would win the contest, mattered not at all to me. Confronted by this vision -- part designing woman, part naughty child, part female animal possessed by some deep biological imperative -- I was suddenly and completely overcome with pure lust, mindless and unencumbered. But how beautiful she was… It seems incredible that she’s in her fifties now -- although I’d bet a valued possession that she’s still beautiful. I can imagine her in a few years, that physical beauty fading now, talking to a granddaughter, and the adolescent girl asking who her first lover was. Oh, this young American surfer, she’d say, then, smiling at her own resurrection of the moment, she’d describe the evening on the beach at Hossegor in 1970 when she threw off her bikini top and drove herself and that young surfer mad with desire. The granddaughter would laugh and scold her jokingly and then they’d hug and the grandmother would say that she was young and wild and beautiful once too. * Italics added for my purposes here. ii Writing is easy. You just stare at the blank page until your forehead bleeds. Gene Fowler A (Brief) Note on Veracity The people and events described in this book are real. What I mean by real in the above claim is a good question, and will be dealt with. Suffice for now to say that I haven’t misrepresented anything. At least not anything important. What I mean by anything important in the above claim is a good question, and will be dealt with. Suffice for now to say that this book is nonfiction. What I mean by nonfiction… And so forth. ACW 9 Author’s Note First, there’s something I have to get off my chest in this writer’s memoir. If you’ve ever said or even thought the words “I’m going to write a book,” you may eventually do so, write a book. But if you tacked on at the end the word someday, as in “I’m going to write a book someday,” you never will. Trust me on this. I’ve done the research. Along the same lines: If you’ve ever said or even thought the words “I could write a book” – with or without the emphasis on “I” – you never will do so, write a book. This is just the way it is. It’s annoying when people who’ve never written anything make these statements to people who actually do write. And it happens all the time, at least to me. One time this guy, in finding out I’d written a book he read, said, “I could writethree books.” I wanted to pop him then and there. That writing is difficult is best exemplified by the Gene Fowler quote I use as the opening epigraph: Writing is easy. You just stare at the blank page until your forehead bleeds. Someone could write a whole book, a good book, let’s assume, about how difficult writing is and it would not come close to saying as much as Mr. Fowler does in that second sentence, and I very much hope you agree. If not, it may not work out between us. But what’s my point? If you’re one of those non-writers who has said, or has thought of saying, or is capable of saying, “I’m going to write a book someday,” or “I could write a book,” maybe now, knowing my attitude about these sentiments and with the imparted image of your forehead bleeding while you stare at the blank page, you’ll shut the fuck up. But I doubt it. You’ll say it anyway. You and I happen to meet somewhere, you’ll probably even say it to me. In one ear and out the other is the expression that comes to mind. 10 Another Author’s Note Aside from the actual writing of a book, titles are tough too. In fact, I sweated over the title of this book. Publishers consider a title to be no more than a marketing tool – point of sale and all that – so they don’t much care what a customer thinks of the title once he’s finished reading the book, since by then he’s already bought it. A writer, on the other hand, wants the title of his book to make sense, be satisfying, after the book has been read, especially then. It’s nice when a title has a couple meanings and they both make sense. A great example of this is Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air, which is about a doomed ascent of Mount Everest.