In the Malibu Parking Lot
by Jamie Brisick
In the Malibu parking lot, there were rules
Rule #1: Don’t drop in
Rule #2: Share your weed
Your wax
If you have a second beer, pass it along
Tomorrow you’ll be thirsty
Rule #3: Acknowledge Malibu Carl. Say hi to Parking Lot Teddy
Rule #4:
(Not so much a rule but an understanding)
There is no problem so big or complicated that it cannot be run away from
At the Malibu Wall, we chased nose rides, blow jobs, beer
At the Malibu Wall, we had no health insurance
At the Malibu Wall, a fin chop could take the whole thing down
As it had for Parking Lot Teddy
Not his own fin but a freshman from Pepperdine’s
Who’d been surfing less than a year
22 stitches
$3700 at St. John’s
Now Teddy sleeps in his van
In the alley behind Ralphs
At the Malibu Wall, there was blood
At the Malibu Wall, it was not Teddy’s
At the Malibu Wall, last we heard the Pepperdine kid had taken up golf
In the Malibu parking lot, I surrendered my virginity to a bronzed lioness of a regular foot named Ashley. Her skin smelled of Coppertone. Her left-go-right bottom turn was fierce. For a summer we lived in her beater van, subsisting on Jack in the Box tacos and Tecates stolen from the back of the liquor store. She called me dude, as in “Slow down, dude,” “Little to the left, dude,” “Try again, dude,” “Okay, D minus for today, now let’s go get a wave, dude.”
In the shimmering waters of Malibu, my mascara ran, my lipstick sprinted, my facelift pole-vaulted, my raw and unvarnished self stood soft and vulnerable across the three-foot peelers. The afternoon sun was a French kiss. The light onshore wind carried the wisdom of the ancients. Neptune three-pronged me the way a cattle rancher brands his cow. Magellan slapped me and said, “Not a 50-foot nose ride but a 360-degree odyssey, an entire life. So less of the rum and more of the captain’s log, if ya know what I’m sayin’.”
At the Malibu Wall, we hid behind dark sunglasses
And spoke with our hands
At the Malibu Wall, we traded sex
For a chocolate shake, large fries, and a double cheeseburger
At the Malibu Wall, it happened in the men’s room
At the Malibu Wall, Parking Lot Teddy guarded the door
In exchange for half the shake
And a couple bites of the cheeseburger
At Malibu Wall, we didn’t use fancy words like ‘transactional’
At the Malibu Wall, we were hungry
And we ate
In the Malibu parking lot, I wrestled with my masculinity, which spoke in a gravely, Scotch-and-Camel-non-filters tone, and at one point grabbed me by the shoulder in a way that my 2021 self found aggressive. I said, ‘Please remove your hand from my shoulder.’ My masculinity removed its hairy hand, cackled, shrugged its macho shoulders, and said, ‘What the hell happened to you?
In the Malibu parking lot, the rear hatch of a ’77 Econoline popped open. Out flew a Nike. Then a wetsuit. Then an MSA jacket. Then another Nike. Then an 8-foot Liddle displacement hull, which landed nose first, making it something like a 7’9” or 7’8” “And stay the fuck away from me you piece of shit,” shouted Ashley. I crawled out the passenger side door, retrieved my things, made my way towards the pier.
At the pearly gates of Malibu, I poured out confessions (hiding six-packs in my backpack, not sharing joints with Malibu Carl, borrowing Grossrider’s prized 9’ Yater without asking). There was a tribunal of sorts involving Bosco and Trace and Parking Lot Teddy. They told me to hold tight, disappeared into Teddy’s van, shut the door, re-emerged 20 minutes later. “Carton of cigarettes for Carl, bottle of tequila for Teddy. I’m on the wagon this week so basically I get to drop in on you every chance I get,” said Trace. I nodded compliantly. He pointed seaward. A sparkling head-high set peeled across First Point. “Carry on,” he said.
In the Malibu parking lot, I managed to locate my inner adolescent. He emerged from the men’s room with bloodshot eyes and beer on his breath. “I miss you,” I said. He looked over his shoulder then back at me. With a confused expression he said, “Do I know you?”
In the Malibu parking lot, I remembered Seaweed, who called it the workajerka.
“Every job I ever had just seemed to grab me by the back of the neck and drop me somewhere inland. I don’t do the workajerka.”
Seaweed lived out of his car, a ‘57 Comet wagon. He did not believe in deodorant (“That’s our body’s irrigation, you can’t block it up.”) He believed wholeheartedly in bongloads (“I like to put ice in there. End of a long hot summer day on the beach, an ice water bong, life doesn’t get any better than that”).
I remembered John, who’d go on to a successful art career. Malibu was part of his narrative, his education, the thing he left behind.
“One day I was pulling out of the lot and I just knew, you know? I drove out real slow, took it all in. I turned south on PCH and never went back.”
I remembered Charlie, a regular foot with a big frontside carve. Charlie was reluctantly sober. In a low ebb, nursing yet another hangover, I said, “Charlie, I think I might need to get sober.”
Charlie rested his hand on my shoulder. “Whatever you do, don’t get sober. The sober you will just be another kind of annoying that no one will want to be around.”
It was Charlie who also said: “You start hanging out in the Malibu parking lot…and you become the Malibu parking lot.”
In the Malibu parking lot, I spilled oil, blood, ink, semen, Mr. Zog’s Sex Wax
In the Malibu parking lot: ghosts
The ghost of Miki, Moondoggie, Tubesteak, Lance, Dewey, The Enforcer, Fruit Loop, Head and Shoulders, Seaweed
In the Malibu parking lot, beer was consumed, facts were muddled, words were slurrred
In the Malibu parking lot, summer’s ready when you are
In the Malibu parking lot, in the summer, in the city
In the Malibu parking lot, and the livin’ is easy
In the Malibu parking lot, boys in bikinis, girls in surfboards
In the Malibu parking lot, everybody’s rockin’
In the Malibu parking lot, an American songbook
In the Malibu parking lot, Woody Guthrie was a regular foot
JayZ a goofy
In the Ma
In the Malibu parking lot, sex in the back of Steve and Ashley’s ‘77 Econoline van, Bizarre Love Triangle by New Order on the stereo, wet wetsuits at our feet, the rail of Steve’s 8’2” Anderson pushing into my hip, the taste of Starbucks and cigarettes on Ashley’s lips
In the Malibu parking lot, we never plan these things
In the Malibu parking lot, Ashley says she loves me
In the Malibu parking lot, Steve comes back from Mexico on Friday
In the Malibu parking lot, I am not quite a red belt, but I’ve got a few tae kwon do moves up my sleeve
In the Malibu parking lot, Steve’s a jiu jitsu black belt
In the Malibu parking lot, I have an uncle up in San Francisco who keeps telling me to visit
In the Malibu parking lot, a west swell coming next week
In the Malibu parking lot, west swells like Ocean Beach
In the Malibu parking lot, a note slid under the windshield wiper of Steve and Ashley’s ‘77 Econoline van
In the Malibu parking lot: I was a hippie I was a burnout I was a dropout I was out of my head
In the Malibu parking lot: Two sides to every story
In the Malibu parking lot: Somebody had to stop me
In the Malibu parking lot: I’m not the same as when I began
In the Malibu parking lot: Punk rock landed with a splash
Clear boards/black wetsuits turned into leopard-spotted boards/pink and purple wetsuits
In the Malibu parking lot: Abracadabra
In the Malibu parking lot: Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, and Malibu Barbie
Puff a joint
Behind the lifeguard tower
Lots of sunscreen, dark sunglasses, wide-brimmed hats
In the Malibu parking lot: Development was arrested, growth was stu
In the Malibu parking lot: In the maw of Peter Pan
At the pearly gates of Malibu, I felt the black dog, the mean reds, the Nausea, the dark night of the soul at 3am, though it was 4pm, and sunny, and 81 degrees.
At the pearly gates of Malibu, I called upon the holy texts of Pema, I clenched my fist the way Tony Robbins would, I promised myself I’d study The Work of Byron Katie.
At the pearly gates of Malibu, Timmy was kind enough to lend me his 11’ glider, decorated in polka dots, and I paddled out on it, imagining that they were not polka dots but pills (Xanax, Zoloft, Wellbutrin) and that the waves were not oceanic waves but the blue waves of the Democratic party, scooping me up and gli
In the Malibu parking lot, I saw a Debbie Harry-looking woman wearing a Malibu sweatshirt. I said, “Where’d you get it?” She said, “Rule number one: Never ask ‘where’d you get it.’” I said, “Fuck off. Tell me where you got it.” She blew a bubble. As it popped on her Chapstick-glossed lips I was hit with a waft of grape Bubblicious. Nostalgia floored me. Coppertone. Wine coolers. A keg party in Woodland Hills. A Dead Kennedys show at the Whiskey. I said, “Didn’t we have sex in the backseat of a Volkswagen Rabbit behind the Jack in the Box in Agoura in, like, 1982?” She said, “Brothers Marshall.” I said, “You had sex with Brothers Marshall in the backseat of a Volkswagen Rabbit behind the Jack in the Box in Agoura?” She said, “No, idiot. I got the sweatshirt at their new shop, down there by Duke’s, next to the breakfast burrito joint, near the hardware store, a couple doors down from Malibu Divers, which, by the way, is also the title of a really atrocious porn film, made right around 1982. Maybe you know it?”
In the Malibu parking lot, tequila, vodka, Tecate, Diet Coke. In the Malibu parking lot, tomfoolery, Tom Curren, Thomas Campbell, Tomás the Argentinian parking lot attendant. In the Malibu parking lot, Marilyn and JFK, Gidget and Moondoggie. In the Malibu parking lot, graffitied on the wall: “Without art we are but monkeys with smart phones.” In the Malibu parking lot, an 8’6” Yater swapped for a 6’10” Skip Frye. In the Malibu parking lot, sea gulls attack a Jack in the Box bag. In the Malibu parking lot, high tide, high noon, high times, hi Mom. In the Ma
At the Church of the Open Sky that is Kiddie Bowl, I did not say three Our Fathers and six Hail Marys but rather banged seven lips and pulled into nineteen tubes
In the Cathedral of Forever Facing Seaward that is First Point, Nate dropped in on Randall, Randall called him a shoulder shark, and the N-word, and punched him in the face
They took it to the beach
Hurl a whole watermelon at the ground and that’s what it sounded like, Nate’s fists banging into Randall’s wet torso and face and head
Randall slithered free, punched the fin out of his board, held it up like a knife
Nate was fighting for much more than the wave
Or the bully that was Randall
Pinning Randall and his fin-wielding hand to the ground, Nate punched and punched
The next day Randall showed up with a gun
Guns don’t hide so well in boardshorts
In the Malibu parking lot, a row of cop cars
Randall in handcuffs
Silent applause from all of us who’d had run-ins with Randall
Randall disappeared for a few days
Nate, sadly, never came back
In the Wild West that was Malibu that summer
Frontier justice prevailed
But not really
