Montecito Lad Odyssey

After getting out of Juvenile Hall and getting chewed out by his parents, Page got a call from Cate about his future with the school. At the meeting with Mr. McCloud, the headmaster at Cate, it was decided that Page should find another school for his junior year. The rest of the week was spent contacting second tier prep schools to see about getting Page in at the last minute. It was early September and all the schools were just weeks away from beginning their fall semesters. It seemed odd, to be switching from a top school to a second tier school at this stage of the game to most admissions offices. However, Page had good grades and Mr. McCloud had promised to give excellent recommendations, not mentioning any of the trouble Page was continuously in. Basically, Mr. McCloud wanted to save face for Cate. Cate had a reputation of success and Mr. McCloud didn’t want Page to ruin that. Mr. McCloud was also a very human man. He knew that people screw up. He himself was having an affair with a teacher at the school at the time and was trying to have mercy on a sinner knowing that he himself was in need of mercy.

There were two schools that Page and his parents started to seriously consider after going through several school catalogs. One was Mountain Springs Academy outside of Bolder Colorado. Page had heard about this school from his partner in mayhem Bill. Bill had been kicked out of Cate in the spring of the previous year for getting caught in the act of doing drugs. He was smoking a fat spliff on the balcony of his dorm, which overlooked the ocean. It had a beautiful view and the residences of this all male dorm were quite appreciative of its location on the campus for it was on the edge of the mesa. It was fairly safe to smoke out on the balcony since no one could see you doing it unless they were on one of the balconies. Unfortunately for Bill, the Dean of Students, Bonning, made a house call on him while he was enjoying the view with his spliff. Bill was packed and on a bus to home the next morning. He spent the rest of his junior year at the public school in his hometown near Lake Tahoe and applied to boarding schools during this time.

Page knew if he went to Mountain Springs, he and Bill would have a blast partying. They had done acid and coke several times together while at Cate and these experiences had always involved adventures. Most recently, they had hung out together in August of that summer in New Port Rhode Island. Page had gone to Rhode Island School of Design “RISDy” for a summer program in oil painting. A few other Caties were there as well because the art teacher at Cate encouraged students with an interest in art to pursue it seriously and RISDy was considered one of the best art schools in the country and had a summer program for high school students.

Bill was hanging out in New Port because his older brother lived there and it was considered a cool place for high school aged people to spend the summer. There were tons of teenagers who were in New Port all summer just to hang out. Bill was an insane skater and soon became one of the most popular guys in town among the crowd. Page was also a skater and Bill would come into Providence to visit Page and skate the downtown. Downtown Providence had great banks and railings to slash on a board and there was a small group of skaters there who could really skate. Bill and Page would go out with this group on occasion, but usually would just skate alone.

One night when Page was staying in New Port visiting Bill, they couldn’t get any smoke or any other illicit mind altering substance so they went to a supper market and stole Robitussin DM cough syrup. The both drank a full family size bottle and chased it with a coke. It tasted sick, but they knew the result would be worth it. An hour latter they were booth quite high and decided to break in to an old fort just outside of town. It was located on a point on the bay and had been built at least two hundred years ago to defend New Port from attack by tall ships. Page and Bill and a few others who Bill had befriended spent the early hours of a Thursday night running around this old fort pretending that they were in a castle inhabited by vampires. There was a full moon and they had flashlights. The old cannon chambers were dark and musty and reminded one of a dungeon, so the effect of snooping around looking for a vampire was quite frightening, especially on mind altering substances.

Bill had the most over active imagination of the group. It was he who had suggested the quest of finding a vampire, and he was rushing off ahead of everyone else through the labyrinth of the fort structure. He was basically running ahead of them and was several chambers in front of the pack. Suddenly we heard him scream and started to run in the direction of the scream. In a matter of seconds we saw his light coming toward us. Page asked him what the matter was and he replied that he had run into the Devil in one of the chambers. “It is the Prince of Darkness himself and he is hideous”, Bill yelled in a very convincing and excited voice, ”lets get the hell out of here!”

This was enough of a triggering event to send the rest of us into a panic to get out of the fort as fast as possible. We all started to yell and scream as we ran through the dark imagining that at any moment something would leap out of the dark and grab us. Several minor injuries were contracted in the expedited exodus. Primarily scrapes from the barbed wired fence that had to be climbed to get out of the fort grounds.

When we all were back on the road to town we stopped running and started to laugh as we caught our breaths. Page slapped Bill on the back and said, ”that was hilarious bro, what a rush.” Bill laughed and agreed and then said, “but I wasn’t joking about the Devil. I really saw him in there, and he, it began talking to me.” This caused a chill to run down Page’s back, but Page quickly reminded himself and Bill that, “Dude, your hallucinating, there is no such thing as the Devil, we are on mind altering drugs, remember that!” and they both started to laugh again. Then Page started running again to get back to town yelling, “the Devil is coming after us, I hear him coming” and Bill and his cronies followed.

Page reflected on this experience and thought, ”what a nut Bill is, he is really one crazy fucked up guy but that’s what makes him so fun to hang out with. He and I will rule that school if I go there. We can skate during the fall and snowboard through the winter and party all year long, but what about surfing? I’ll never get to surf much if I’m going to school in Colorado and surfing is better than anything else. Well that settles it, I will go to school there only if I don’t get into a school where I can surf.”

Page further reflected on the last time he hung out with Bill. It was the same week that he had the adventure involving the fort. Page’s mother had grown up in Rhode Island and two of his uncles still lived in the state. Page had been staying with his Uncle Mike who was ten years younger than his mother and was hip. The two of them smoked out now that Page was over sixteen. Now his parents were in town to visit and Page would leave with them back to Santa Barbara since summer was coming to an end. After having dinner with the parental units and Uncle Mike, Page took his board and skated down to the main square to meet Bill. He had mentioned to his parents that he might stay the night at Bill’s but left it ambiguous.

It was dark around ten thirty when Page met Bill in the square where all the kids hung out. They stayed out skating around the square and flirting with the girls. Bill was being propositioned by this one little nectar who was hot, but he had a girlfriend who was incredibly beautiful and smart, so he wasn’t interested. She was a year older than him and had just got into Harvard from Cate. Page had nothing going and wanted to jump this little hoe’s bones but the girl wasn’t interested in anyone but Bill at the time.

That night they drank some beer and skated and passed out around three at some guy’s house Bill knew. The next morning they went to the square around eleven a little hung over and met up with the crowd. There was a punk local band playing at some café in the afternoon and everyone was going. They got stoned, skated and then went to the gig. The music was loud and industrial and Page wasn’t that into it. But he and Bill did mosh in the pit with the rest nonetheless. Afterward, one of Bill’s accomplices said he had access to a car and that they should go to third beach and drop acid. The car was a Volkswagen bus that the guy’s hippie mom had. Bill and Page and three other guys poured in with their skates and they took off to third beach. As soon as they were on the road, one of the guys pulled out a sheet and tore off a hit for everyone. “Five bucks”, he said. Page pulled out a five spot and Bill told the guy, “I’ll get you later.”

On the way to the beach, they passed by the bird refuge. Page’s uncle had lived in a little cottage by this place in the past and Page had spent some time exploring it. It was a large piece of land, at least a hundred acres if not two or three hundred. It had a very diverse topographical terrain including marshes, a tall crag, forests, meadows and lagoons. It had a mystical quality about it to Page who loved walking in it alone and meditating about life there. It had a little wooden pathway that allowed one to walk through the marsh reeds without getting one’s feet wet or muddy. This path led to a gazebo at the edge of a lagoon, deep in the middle of the refuge. When the ocean mist covered the coast, this place seemed especially mystical to Page as he would watch the mist role over the surface of the lagoon and through the reeds, which rose out of the water. He had smoked out there before alone and longed for something deep and spiritual, but did so, so intuitively that he did not cognitively articulate it to himself. Something within him wanted to jump out and fuse with the mist as it swept over the face of the water.

“Hey Page are you there, bro? Hello space don’t go vacant on us yet, the acid hasn’t even started to take effect.” Bill was always hyperactive. He couldn’t chill for too long with out going nuts and he was always engaging people in conversation. “Dude we have to go to the bird sanctuary latter, it is a crazy place man.” The acid was starting to take its effect. Page could feel his mind and body swept over by an euphoric sensation. Everything around him seemed to be crisper in outline. He looked down at his arm and could see clearly into the pores of his skin. He looked at Bill and saw his big dilated eyes staring back at him with a Cheshire cat grin on his face.

They spent the rest of the day tripping on the beach. It was a beautiful summer day in New England, too hot and humid everywhere but on the beach where the cool wind blew on shore from the Atlantic. The one thing Page didn’t like about it was there was no surf. Sure a few places did get little waves once in a while. But the beach they were on was pretty much flat. They had some beer and buds and spent the day kicking it in the sun, looking out into the horizon and watching the big cumulous clouds sweep across the sky. The scene reminded Page of a famous Monet painting of a women standing on the edge of a sand dune or bluff of some sort in a white dress cut in the style of the nineteenth century with a matching open umbrella to shield the sun. The clouds in the sky this day looked just like the clouds in the painting and the huge of the blue of the sky was just as intense. Being a painter Page wished he had his equipment but everything was at RISDy. But he sat and questioned with was more beautiful the actual view in front of him on acid or the painting of Monet. He decided that no matter how great the artist, there were natural beauties that could not be beat but could only reflect the beauty by imitation. Then a thought occurred to him, “Nature is a work of art. If there is a God then this view is his or her painting, but there is no God so how can it be a work of art since there is no creator but only matter and random chance? If there was a God then would painting nature be a sin, or wouldn’t all art be sin because it would be a form of idolatry?” Page’s train of thought was broken by the passing of a bowl. “I’m trippin man, enough of deep stuff...”

He jumped up and ran into the ocean. The water felt good on him, every sensation was intensified.

All in all they were having a good trip. When the sun set, it got a little cold and they decided to go back into New Port to hang out at the square, skate and eat.

Bill talked to some of his friends there and then came up to Page. “Dude, you’re not going to like what I have to tell you man. Your uncle was cruising around here looking for you a little while ago. I guess your mom’s freaking because you didn’t come home last night.”

“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Dude, I can’t hang here. If my uncle or parents see me right now they will really freak!”

“No shit dude. Your eyes are as dilated as hell. We got to bail this place now.” Bill said this with his characteristic big grin. He wasn’t stressing. Page was, but Bill new he wasn’t going to get busted. His brother couldn’t care less that he hadn’t come home for a night.

They skated away from the square to some loading docks behind a big K Mart. These always made for some exciting skating. They stayed there launching off the docks trying to land their airs off the three and a half foot dock. After doing this for a couple of hours they were exhausted and thirsty. It was a little after one AM.

They went to the Circle K that is open 24 hrs. Outside a couple of their friends were hanging out. Bill did all the talking. “Hey, you guys got any money?” Bill asked.

“Some, but not for you,” was the reply.

“Hey, you guys feel like doing something crazy?” Bill asked.

“What?”

“It’s crazy man. You got to have some balls, I don’t know if you guys are psycho enough for it. I know Page is, but I not sure about you.”

“Fuck you, what is it? Probably some pussy shit like skating down Oak Street, right?”

“No, man. I’m talking about robbing this store. You guys in?”

“What! Dude you’re wack! You go to jail for that shit.”

“That’s what makes it exciting! Look, I’m not talking about armed robbery or anything dangerous. We just all run into the store together and grab whatever we want screaming as we do it and then rush out and skate away. The guy behind the counter won’t know what the hell to do, he’ll just shit there freaking.”

“You are one crazy fuck, Bill,”

“That’s me. Page are you in?”

“Sure, if these guys don’t pussy out.”

“Well, guys?”

“You’re on!”

“Alright, on the count of three we go in, britscreig style. Ready, one, two, three… Yeaz!!!, Komokazy!!!, Mother Fucker!!!”

The six of them ran in yelling and grabbed what they wanted and ran out. They were all in and out within less than a minute. The guy behind the counter was in daze. Then they all skated away in different directions. Page staked toward his uncle’s house in the pitch-black night. Bill was gone.

That was the last time Page had seen him. It had only been a few weeks ago, a month at most. Page knew Bill and he would raise hell in Colorado, but maybe that wasn’t such a good thing. After all, what about his future and getting into a good college. He couldn’t afford to screw up again.

If he got into Robert Louis Stevenson, he could continue surfing, and the waves were big up there in NorCal. Also, Jud was going to go transfer there as a junior.

“Yea, if I get into RLS, I think that’s where I should go,” Page finally decided.