Montecito Lad Odyssey

Page saw his old friend Jud the first day he got to RLS. Jud was a junior transfer from Laguna Blanca. They chatted a while. Jud was in another dorm on the other side of campus. He seemed to be wanting to keep his distance from Page. Page had thought of Jud as his best friend in the middle of junior high. Page always felt like he had the upper hand in the friendship during this period. Being from Montecito, Page knew all kinds of partiers older than himself. Many of these partiers were cito rats, the real rebels of the one of the richest towns in the world.

Page and Jud had had some adventures together. The long weekends up in Big Sur surfing Sand Dollar, scoring major buds, Esland. There was also the crazy bike rides. Page and Jud would get stoned and ride these grama bikes with narrow tires through trials in the trees. The bikes were the kind that are made for old ladies to ride with dresses on and a basket in front. They would eat shit constantly and laugh at themselves and each other. Once they tried to ride on top of the sage brush to see how far they could travel on the top of the thick brush before falling through and eating major shit. On the side of PCH there was a hill side with thick sage growing and they road fast and furious in their stoned frenzy off the asphalt on to the sage, went maybe twelve feet, then crashed through the branches into the dry hard dirt. Scrapes and dirt and sage leaves down their pants and shirts. They laughed and laughed. They were chaotic little idiots and didn’t care, but getting themselves back up to the road, not to mention getting the bikes back on the road was a real bitch. First of all, the bikes were tangled up in the sage brush. Second of all, the hill was steep, and the dirt was sandy, giving way with every step. Third, there was no trail up to the road, just a wall of thick sage brush. But they loved it, cuts, bruises, poison oak and all.

Back at hopeless ranch, at Jud’s mom’s house, they would get stoned and take an old beat up surf board with out any fins and try to ride down this thirty foot long hill covered with ice plant. They would go ten sometimes fifteen feet and eat it. Their clothes would get ice plant stains everywhere, which never come out.

When Jud stayed with Page, they would find road way up in the mountains of cito and skate down them hoping no cars ran them over or that they got speed wobbles or hit an acorn which would cause them to eat it. They often did, getting huge raspberries on their legs and pebbles implanted into their palms. They loved showing off their wounds and stories to everyone when Monday morning recess came. None of the other kids were as crazy or into partying as Page and Jud.

Page’s house in cito was a huge pink mansion on the highest road in the mountains, Bella Vista. It had a quarter mile driveway which was twenty feet wide and ended in a big circle with palm trees in the middle. There was about twenty acres of undeveloped land immediately surrounding the house. Only about four acres belonged to the house, but all the other houses had huge parcels and so the open land was there. On part of this land was a lemon orchard which had an old huge pool which used to be used to store the water for the orchard. It was empty now and some older kids had cleaned it out as a stake park. It was about twenty feet deep and sixty feet wide with big transitions. Page would go and watch the older kids rip this place up. There were some guys in their twenties who worked at Powell that could really skate it. Page got to be friends with some shady characters much older than himself this way which led to status in his eyes and those of his peers. Page and Jud learned to skate this place and got really good, but when they bit it, they really paid the price. It hurt to hit the concrete bottom of a ditch after dropping in on a seventy degree grade twenty foot wall. It was a huge slap of flesh on smooth cement you heard when it happened. Then the body would just lay there motionless for a while until a moan eventually arose and someone would ask, “Dude are you alright?” “Yea”, would be the response and then everyone would laugh, even the injured party with tears of pain running down his face.

Page was able to buy an old Vespa scooter near the end of the seventh grade. The parental units were totally unaware. He kept it on the neighbors property in the bushes and would ride down on his BMX bike to the spot and trade off. He loved the feeling of riding it on the mountain roads. It was so freeing and exciting to him. He felt like a part of the scenery around him. No helmet, no license, no insurance, no permission, he kept a low profile as much as possible, only taking small curvy roads, always on the look out for cops and his folks.

It was great on weekends because he and Jud could sneak out after the parentals were in bed and ride the scooter looking for parties. Because Page knew some key high school partiers, he and Jud could get into cito parties no prob. Jud would ride on the back and complain of Page’s driving. Jud had a off road motorcycle in Big Sur which he never let Page ride. He felt he was an accomplished rider and Page was amateur, placing both their lives in danger, which was true. Once they were going down East Valley Road trying to turn up Romero Canyon, the same turn Page almost later died on with the Mercedes, and Jud was all “Dude, we’re going to fast man, you’re not going to make this turn! Dude there’s gravel on the road. Fuck! Shit!” and they were sliding on the road on top of the scooter. Both incredibly escaped without a scratch. The scooter didn’t fare so well, but was only damaged ascetically. Jud freaked on Page, “You fucker! I can’t believe you, man. I’m walking the rest of the way. I am never driving with you again.”

Page just laughed. “Relax dude, we’re both fine, I just took the turn too fast.”

“Ya, I’m fine only because I jumped on you. You’re just lucky that you stayed on the scooter. I wasn’t going to get all scraped up because you can’t fucking drive.”

Both were wearing shorts, had no helmets, and were stoned out of their minds.

“Alright, man, get over it,” was Page’s response, but inside he was hurt that Jud didn’t care about his safety and had so clearly stated that he was willing to sacrifice Page for his own survival. He understood why Jud was angry and that it could be said he wasn’t looking out for his friend by driving recklessly, but that was their gig. They were reckless and ate it and laughed. Jud had been the cause of wipeouts Page always felt like he had other’s best interest in mind and would sacrifice for his friends. Page thought Jud had the same philosophy, but now Jud was pulling some new shit Page had never heard before and venting anger toward him that he was totally unaware of causing. It wasn’t the last time Jud would get mad at him.

Jud freaked again sometime latter when Page was at his house. They were skating in the driveway. Jud had built a quarter pipe with a platform, and it was alright for doing little tricks. For some reason, Page was riding on Jud’s board when he lost his balance and the board went shooting off and smacked into a retaining wall nose first. Jud just picked up Page’s board and skated it fast toward the wall and launched it, smack right into the wall.

“Dude, why did you do that?” Page asked.

“You fucked up my board, so I fucked up yours.”

The damage to Page’s board was more sever than that to Jud’s and now Page was pissed. He had messed up Jud’s board unintentionally. Jud had hurt his intentionally and more severely. Page could have articulated his feelings and been over it, but instead he grabbed Jud’s board and intentionally skated it to the wall and launched it as Jud had done to his. “There dude, now we’re even.”

“Fuck that man!” Jud grabbed Page’s board and placed his foot on the trucks and pile drove it into the driveway.

“You fucker! Your board wasn’t even damaged as much as mine was!” Page picked up Jud’s board with two hands and slammed it in the driveway three times as hard as he could. Jud responded by pile driving Page’s board three times. Both boards were totally fucked up now, but Page still felt like Jud had gotten the upper hand since he had intentionally started the conflict. Jud’s bike lay in the drive way, and Page ran up to it, pick it up, threw it up in the air and let it crash down. Jud did the same with Page’s bike. This would have continued until both bikes were totally thrashed and may have turned into a huge brawl, but Mrs. X, Jud’s mom, came out to see what the racket was. When she saw what Page and Jud were doing she had a fit. She bitched them out for a good twenty minutes, made them sit down in the living room and everything. Page and Jud laughed about it latter that afternoon when they got high again. They called each other fuckers, talked about how funny it was to see Jud’s mom freak, but neither was willing to accept that they were the cause of the conflict. Outwardly they were at peace now, but underneath, they both held a grudge.

Half way through his eighth grade year Jud started get in with the older cool crowd of Hope Ranch, the second richest community in SB. Hope Ranch was on the other end of SB and was where the junior high, Laguna Blanca, was located. Laguna went from K to twelfth. Jud slowly started to distance himself from Page. They were still friends but Jud now had a cool crowd he felt he belonged to in Hopeless Ranch. Jud wanted to have the upper hand in the friendship and let Page feel it. Jud would have friends overnight in his house in Hopeless and not invite Page. Jud now had stories to tell Page on Monday mornings about the wild adventures he and his hopeless buddies had done that weekend and which Page had missed out on, just like the ones Page used to tell Jud about cito rats.

Page was sent away to boarding school for ninth grade to an all boys boarding school in New Hampshire called Garfield Mountain. It was coat and tie and hard core discipline. Everyone was up at six am and in class by eight. All classes were finished by twelve. The rest of the day after lunch was spent on sports. The way they school pulled this off was by having class six days a week.

Page would call Jud sometimes from this semi-reform school during that year. He would tell Jud how much it sucked. Jud would tell Page about some of the new cool friends he had made and the crazy parties he had been to. Page was out. He was lame. He wasn’t part of the scene in hopeless. Jud didn’t care about the cito scene any more, and even if he did, Page was out of that too now.

Page did well at Garfield since it was so disciplined. As a result, he got into Kate for his sophomore year as a day student. The summer between he tried to rekindle his friendship with Jud. Jud was distant. He was in the in crowd and Page was out. Jud could have introduced him to everyone and made him in, but Jud didn’t.

They did hang out one time the summer after Page finished Garfield. Jud had his license, and his father bought him a VW van. It was blue and white and had a spare tire on the front. They cruised around cito with some other mutual friends, Bill and Jack. Bill had stolen some pipe bombs made out of PCB pipe stuffed with match heads, and they had good firecracker fuses. They were driving around cito blowing up mail boxes for fun. They also had M80s and bottle rockets and would light and through them out of the sun roof of the van as they drove around. They saw some other friends driving around, Rick and some other guy. Page lit a bottle rocket and held it out the sun roof and let go, shooting it at their friend’s car. A car chase resulted in which Page and Bill lit bottle rockets and M80s and tried to hit Rick’s car. They were all stoned. Page was riding shotgun. Bill and Jack were in the back with Page’s bike. Page had rode his bike to Jud’s, and they had drove to Bill’s where Jack was hanging out. Then they decided to go out and rampage through cito in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon summer day.

Page lit another bottle rocket to shoot at Rick when Jud came to a stop sign. Page hadn’t been paying attention to the road, looking back at Rick’s car instead, so when Jud made a stop, the rocket fell out of Page’s hand into the bus. Jud started freaking.

“Get that damn rocket out man, right now!”

The rocket was ricocheting all over the van. Everyone but Jud, was laughing uncontrollably. The rocket finally logged next the emergency break between the two front seats. The rocket was still going blowing fire, burning a hole in the van carpet. The van was stick shift, and Jud was a new driver. He had put the van in neutral but forgot to keep his foot on the break trying to get the rocket out which was right next to him now. The rocket blew up right as the van hit the old oak tree right across from the stop sign.

“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” was all Jud could say.

Everyone else just laughed and laughed. Bill and Jack were tangled together with the bike in the back almost in the front seats now. A Mexican gardener looked at us from the front driveway of a big cito house. He was about ten feet away.

“Oh shit man, sorry about that!” was Page’s response once the smoke from the exploded rocket started to dissipate out the window and sunroof of the van.

“This is all your fucking fault Page! You mother fucker!”

“Dude, I’m sorry, but you’re the one who took your foot off the break.” Page was having a hard time keeping from laughing. Bill and Jack just kept on going. They thought the whole thing was so funny they were almost crying.

“Come on guys, its not that funny,” Page was trying to do damage control. They quieted down. Then they saw the old Mexican gardener staring at the van, watering the plants, and they started cracking up again and wouldn’t shut up. Page started laughing again. He couldn’t help it, the gardener’s expression was too much. “What he must be thinking man, its too funny!”

Rick had driven around Jud and taken off before the crash. He had missed a classic sight.

They got out and surveyed the damage. The spare tire in front had taken most of the hit. Underneath the tire, the van was dented, but you couldn’t really tell unless someone pointed it out. But Jud never really got over it.

Page forgot about Jud after that. They were still friends kind of, but Page concentrated on his cito friends. Drugs, drugs, drugs, trying to bag kicks, music, skating, surfing, and drugs that was what all these relationships and the in crowd was all about. Page reestablished himself in cito with Bill as his wingman and latter a guy named Jeremiah.

But now both Jud and Page were transfers at RLS and there was an implicit rivalry between them subconsciously. Page had hoped that they would unite as best buddies again and rule this school as they had ruled junior high together. But Jud wanted to be cool and make it into the established crowd, leaving Page to fend for himself. So Page decided to rule the school without Jud. They were still friends, but they were competing for pole position in a new social arena. Both were getting to be known on campus as major partiers.