Scratching the Horizon

by Izzy Paskowitz

  We were all bummed about the weather, of course, but we found our kicks where we could. One highlight: running into Chad Smith, the drummer from the Red Hot Chili Peppers. His bandmates Flea Balzary and Anthony Kiedis were longtime friends and supporters of Surfers Healing, so we’d gotten to know Chad over the years, and he was in Cabo sitting in with Sammy Hagar on an Alice in Chains gig, so he hooked us up with tickets.

  Didn’t exactly make up for the storm, but it certainly didn’t suck.

  We were all a little off our game, because of the weather. Got a late start headed home, but we were determined to take our time. You could do the drive straight through, takes maybe twenty-five hours, but it’s a killer, draining drive. You’re on high alert the whole way, on a two-lane road with no barrier and some serious drop-offs. So our thing this year was to take it slow, and it worked out that once the weather broke we were itching to get back in the water, to make up for all those lost surfing days.

  The Bobs and non-Bobs had gone home at this point, so it was just me and Caleb and Nick, who we all called Nick-I. On a whim, we decided to take a detour, ducked off the “main” road and took a long, winding side road we knew that would take us to a spot we’d surfed in the past. Took us over an hour out of our way, but we didn’t care. By the time we got to the beach, the sun was hanging low. There was about a half hour of daylight left in the sky, but the waves were absolutely beautiful. Intoxicating.

  I knew Danielle had gathered a few pals for a mini-celebration back home, but I’d called ahead and told her we couldn’t make it. Just wasn’t happening. Felt bad about it, but it’s not like we were running a couple hours late; we were going to miss it by a couple days, so I figured I might as well get in the water on my birthday. Something about turning forty and wanting to have that touchstone to remind you what you’re about … what you’ve always been about. So we scrambled to get the boards off the truck before the sun dipped below the horizon. Couldn’t find my board shorts in our mess of gear, so I slipped out of my jeans and thought I’d surf in my briefs, but then I thought better of it and left my shirt on—a funky, buttoned-down dickey-type shirt, with a collar, no sleeves, which left me looking a little like a crocodile. It was a lot of effort and silliness just to catch a couple waves, but it was totally worth it. Felt supervalidating, sustaining, to be able to ride on my fortieth birthday, even for just these few moments. Felt like it’s what I was meant to be doing all along, for always and always.

  We decided to camp right on the beach. We had no money for anything else; even if we did, there was no place to stay; anyway, we were long past hurrying, or worrying. We had tents and sleeping bags. We had some canned food. Most important, we had a giant cooler we’d just filled with ice, and about four cases of Pacifico. The ice could be a precious commodity in remote Mexico, so those cold beers were a luxury.

  Couldn’t really find any wood for a fire, so we burned some cholla cactus, which did the trick well enough—then, to feed the fire, we’d add little scraps of driftwood we took turns collecting by flashlight. When my turn came, I reached for a piece of cactus and caught a quick glimpse of a tiny black scorpion tail. I don’t think I saw it fully enough in my sliver of flashlight for it to register, but as the tail swung around to hit the tip of my finger it came clear. Didn’t really hurt—just kind of stung—but it scared the shit out of me. I screamed like a girl. (Also not the most politically correct choice of words, but it makes my point.) Then I pulled my hand back, stuck it under my flashlight. Couldn’t really see any blood, any redness, any swelling. I tried to shake it off, put it out of my mind, but I hung back after that, left it to Nick-I and Caleb to finish foraging for stuff to burn.

  I was completely creeped out, but I wasn’t in any pain. Just nervous and jittery. We sat around the fire for a while, eating canned beans, drinking our icy cold beers, remembering all the Bobs and the misadventures of the past couple weeks. In almost every way, it was a pleasant, perfect way to spend a milestone birthday, other than the back-of-my-mind worry about that scorpion sting. But then the worry went from the back of my mind to front and center. My finger started to numb. After that, my whole hand went numb. And after that, my thoughts started running all the way away from me.

  Nick-I could see I was freaking out, so he tried to calm me down with whatever bullshit scorpion facts he could come up with. “Don’t think the ones in Mexico are poisonous, Iz,” he said.

  This might have been helpful, if I had reason to believe Nick-I knew what the hell he was talking about. Best I could tell, he was just talking.

  Caleb, too. “’S all good, man,” he said, between pulls of Pacifico. “No worries.”

  Essentially, these guys had no useful information on scorpion stings, which I could add to whatever I thought I knew on my own, and at the other end we all had absolutely no fucking idea what we were talking about.

  Meanwhile, the numbness crept towards my upper arm, ever so slowly, and by now I was absolutely convinced I was about to die—and not a quick, easy death, but an agonizingly slow, painful one. I started imagining every worst-case scenario, and I’d put them out there for Nick-I and Caleb to consider, and they’d take turns laughing and dismissing each one, telling me to just have another beer and chill. The back-and-forth felt a little bit like Beavis and Butthead discussing nuclear physics; we were clueless on top of clueless, and underneath I was trying to figure an appropriate next move. I thought about driving back to La Paz, but it would have taken two hours just to get back to the two-lane dirt road, and then another couple hours from there.

  Instead, we took turns talking me out of the idea that scorpions were poisonous. In this, the beers surely helped. Drink enough Pacifico, you can convince yourself of anything. The numbness I was feeling, we all decided, was just some type of allergic reaction. Wasn’t any kind of sign that I was shutting down, and yet even as I tried to convince myself of these things the numbness seemed to take a turn at my shoulder and move towards my chest, where a part of me felt certain it would give me a heart attack.

  After a while, I decided to step away from the fire and crawl into the truck, to wait out my fate. Nick-I and Caleb stayed by the fire. Don’t think they even bothered setting up a tent; they just slept on cots, while I stayed by myself in the truck—a Ford Crew Cab, where I threw down some pillows and made myself comfortable in the backseat. Before settling in for the night, we lifted the cooler into the bed and set it up so I could reach it from the backseat, through the little slider window in the back of the cab.

  Would have been a nice little setup if I wasn’t half out of my mind.

  * * *

  Didn’t sleep that whole night. I was afraid if I drifted off I wouldn’t wake up, so I kept sipping beers and thinking. Sipping and thinking, that’s all. Nick-I and Caleb, those guys were out. Don’t think they came by to check on me even once. Or maybe they did and I was too deep into my own thoughts to notice.

  At some point in the middle of that long, long night, I went from going quietly insane to feeling washed over by an absolute calm and clarity. I went from being afraid to die to being absolutely okay with it, to thinking I’d lived a rich, full life and was leaving behind a meaningful footprint. I thought back over my childhood, to when we were in Hawaii, going to school barefoot; to moving from house to house in California; to finally lighting out for the open road and living by our wits on beach after beach.

  I thought of my parents, living in an apartment on the beach in Hawaii—still surfing, still fucking like teenagers—and the wild, wacky lives they’d built for us kids. No, they hadn’t done absolutely right by us, keeping us out of school, leaving us dreadfully unprepared to face the wide, wide world, but they’d done right enough; their hearts were right, at least.

  I thought of the Paskowitz Surf Camp, which I’d been running for the past couple years, after taking it over from my brothers, and reimagining it, and then wresting it back from my oldest brother, David, and reimagining it all over again.

 
I thought of all those unopened boxes of Paskowitz Apparel merchandise, sitting in some warehouse or gathering dust in a storage shed at my Auntie Grandma’s place in Paris, California.

  I thought of the rift that nearly derailed my family over that $1 million Tommy Hilfiger deal, and how we’d each found our own way to get past it and settle into a kind of groove in and around San Clemente, in each other’s midsts.

  Mostly, I thought of Danielle and the kids, and the time I’d wasted on the tour after Isaiah was born, the good thing we were starting with Surfers Healing. I thought of the ranch Danielle and I had managed to build, on that beautiful spread in the hills of San Juan Capistrano where we’d lived like settlers back when Elah was born; I thought back to how the gods had finally smiled on one of our business deals and allowed us to catch a break, when we bought a nothing-special house in San Clemente at the bottom of the real estate market and flipped it a couple years later when the market was hot, and how with the proceeds we bought the land from Danielle’s folks and put up a comfortable house, a stable for Danielle’s horses, a foundation for our future.

  I thought of Isaiah, and the way we’d almost lost him just the year before. It was February 2, 2002. I’ll never forget the date: 02-02-02. He was crossing the street with his great pal Jennifer Tracy when a catering wagon happened by and caught his attention. We used to call those wagons roach coaches, and Isaiah knew there’d be something good to eat inside, so he kind of spun on his feet and moved towards it. Somehow, he let go of Jennifer’s hand, just as a young marine driving a Mustang came careening down the street. Ran right into Isaiah, who rolled over the hood and landed on his back on the pavement.

  Jennifer raced to Isaiah’s side as she called 911. Gave the dispatcher her location, told him the situation. Then she called me. All she could say was Isaiah had been hit by a car. She couldn’t tell me if he was okay. She was too hysterical to talk, so I got their location and raced over there like a madman. I was four exits away on the interstate—Estrella, Hermosa, Pico, and Presidio. Must have been going a hundred twenty miles an hour. Got there ahead of the EMS guys, and the whole time I had no idea if my boy was dead or alive. I was flat-out frantic.

  I double-parked the car as close as I could to the scene, swung the door open, and ran the rest of the way on foot. For whatever reason, I was barefoot, and as I raced over to Isaiah I could see he was completely still. Completely cute and chubby and silent and still. When I got to him, I could see there was some head trauma. There was blood at the back of his head, but there wasn’t any pooling, so it wasn’t supersevere. And he was breathing! Thank God, he was breathing. I sat down on the street next to him and stroked his hair, talked to him, tried to soothe him, comfort him, however I could. At that point, I didn’t know if he was going to be okay. I didn’t know if I was saying good-bye to him or helping him to hold on.

  I wanted to cry, but I didn’t want Isaiah to hear me crying. I didn’t want him to worry.

  Seemed like an eternity before the EMS guys rolled up, but once they did they kind of took over. One of them tried to talk to Isaiah, and I tried to explain to him that he wasn’t going to respond—because he was autistic, not because he was injured. This confused the EMS guys mightily. You’d think they would have come across an autistic patient in some distress or other, once they’d been on the job for any stretch of time, but I had to try and explain it—and just then I couldn’t find the words.

  “He’s autistic,” I finally shouted. “He’s wired a little differently, that’s all.”

  In my blind panic and frustration, that’s all I could come up with, but now that I think back, it wasn’t such a bad description. That about covered it.

  Somewhere in there, Isaiah started screaming. Like a banshee, he started screaming. Like bloody murder. And underneath his wailing and kicking and screaming, I knew he’d be okay.

  Danielle met us at the hospital, but not before I had to climb on board the gurney and sit on Isaiah’s chest to pin him down so the doctors could work on him. It was a freaky scene. They tried to get a needle in him, to start a catheter, and he was just going completely ape shit. Finally, they had to intubate him, which was pretty horrifying—me straddling his chest the whole time. They had to inject him with some drug that shut down his system, stopped his breathing for a moment so they could take some pictures, run some tests, and once again I thought we’d lost him. Nobody had thought to tell me what they were doing, what to expect, so I started going a little ape shit myself.

  After a long while, things seemed to calm down. Isaiah came back around and started to breathe normally. Danielle showed up in time to hear he’d suffered a concussion, that’s all. No broken bones. No internal bleeding. No long-term damage. He’d have to stay the night in the hospital, for observation, but he was going to be fine.

  And so there I was, backseat of the truck, trying not to drift off into sleep, thinking back on these terrifying moments—me standing in the hospital, listening to the doctor’s good prognosis, staring at the ID bracelet some nurse had slapped on my wrist when we rolled into the emergency room, with my name, Isaiah’s name, and the date: 02-02-02.

  It’s like it was burned into me, like a tattoo.

  * * *

  At some point, fighting off sleep, I started talking to myself, just to give voice to all these different thoughts flying through my head. Actually, I wasn’t talking just to myself but to Isaiah as well, as if he was some kind of spirit guide with the power to see me through. I was getting loopy, I guess, but I have a distinct memory of this, of asking Isaiah for strength. And—get this!—of feeling strengthened by my special, special boy.

  With each beer, it became more and more of a celebration. If this scorpion was meant to kill me, it didn’t seem like such a bad way to go. I wasn’t in pain. My house was in order. My relationships were all in good shape. I’d go out on a high note, with my cooler full of Pacifico.

  I was a good son, after all; I was a good brother, after all; I was a good husband, after all; I was a good father, after all.

  No regrets.

  There was no cell service out by the beach, otherwise I might have called Danielle and invited her into my racing thoughts. There was no way to record what I was thinking. I was lost in the stillness of my mind, alone, but in those loose, lost moments I looked back at the whole of my life—where I’d been, where I was—and it made me smile. Really, I would not have traded a single thing about my life at just that moment, all the way down to the still-real prospect that I might not make it through the night.

  Soon, the morning sun started to brighten the sky, and I knew I’d be okay. The slow creep of numbness seemed to retreat back down my arm, back towards my hand, back towards my finger. Whatever it was, it wasn’t about to kill me. It would take about a year for the numbness to completely leave the tip of my finger, but by then I’d gotten used to it. By then it was a warm reminder of this loopy night on the beach in Mexico, when I ran through the stuff of my life and came back whole.

  When I could greet the sun and down the last of my beer and think, Fuck, I’m good. Really, I’m good.

  THANKS AND SUCH …

  A giant Mahalo Nui to the folks who helped me set my thoughts to paper. First and foremost, I should probably thank my parents, Dorian and Juliette Paskowitz, for sending us off on the mad adventure of our lives, and to my brothers and sister for sharing in that adventure. Doc also helped shake loose a couple of memories and share some stories that made their way into these pages. My lifelong pals Ian Reeder, BK Reynolds, Moe Tracy, and Michael Tracy also sat with me and reminisced about the good ole days, and Kevin O’Sullivan, Arty Tan, Jeff Ekberg, and David Buss read over my shoulder and helped make sure I was getting it right. A nod, too, to the coolest literary agent in New York, “Uncle” Mel Berger of William Morris Endeavor, for thinking there might be a book in here somewhere. And to Nichole Argyres at St. Martin’s Press, who’s pretty cool herself, for thinking the same and for taking such good care of my sto
ry. Also at St. Martin’s, big props to Olga Grlic for designing the sweet cover, Kathie Parise for the kick-ass page design, Nadea Mina for getting the word out, and Laura Chasen for helping with the pics.

  Also, a tip of the pen to my buddy John Pike, who first thought to push me to write a book. He even put me in touch with Dan Paisner, who helped with the heavy lifting on the writing front. I’d say more nice things about Dan, like he’s brutally talented and disarmingly handsome, but he’s writing these acknowledgments on my behalf, so it’d be kind of awkward for him to blow too much smoke up his own ass. Not cool.

  On the home front, I want to thank Jennifer Tracy for helping out with Isaiah so I can have a life and find time to actually write a book, and to my in-laws, Danny and Sharon Brawner, for eventually deciding that they didn’t hate me and that I might be good for their daughter. (Or, not too bad.)

  In the water, an Aloha Nui to all of our Hawaiian, Californian, and East Coast surf warrior volunteers for making and keeping Surfers Healing a reality, especially the “original six” who helped Danielle and me get this effort started—Joshua Froley, Puna Moller, Josh Tracy, Nick-I Hernandez, Skippy Slater … and, I can’t quite think who the sixth one was. (Oh, crap … it was me!) Also, can’t forget my buddies Scott Ruedy and Roy Gonzalez, Renaldo Lopezy, Bob Bueno, and John Meade, who’ve been real diehards. And the dozens and dozens of big-hearted, world-class surfers who’ve thrown in with us over the years.

  On the beach, I want to honor some of my personal heroes and great buddies from the world of surfing—“Tubesteak” Tracy (and his wife, Phyllis); Dale Velzy; Joel Tudor; Skip Frye; Uncle Herbie Fletcher (even though I kind of trash him in the book, but I’m hoping he won’t read that part); the Keaulana, Froiseth, Downing, Hobie Alter, and de Soto families; the Aikau ohana; Chris, Keith, and Dan Malloy; Makua and Eddie Rothman; Glen and Noel Minami; and, natch, Kelly Slater.