Hell

So it's a nice sunny Saturday, I'm looking forward to a pleasant day of surfing and sunning. I head straight out from my house to the beach, to the spot where I always go.

As I'm setting my board down J. (one of the locals who's in contention for King of the Beach in terms of seniority, surfing ability, popularity, etc.) runs up to me with a look of utter hate on his face.

"No, no, no! Not on this sand! You can't come on this sand!"

I'm in shock. I say something like, This is my beach too.

"You're psychotic!" he spits out. "I don't like you! You're psychotic!"

He turns away and heads for the boardwalk. Wait a minute, I say. You can't just say shit like that and walk away. What the hell are you talking about?

He keeps walking. Now he's up the stairs and there is a group of about eight people watching from a bench, most of whom are people I know, surfers.

What are you talking about, I repeat, like it's going to make sense this time. What did I ever do to you? What's wrong?

He says again, "You're psychotic."

What did I ever do to you?

"You're stalking my friends."

Well, now I least I know where these lines come from: K., my former friend.

And then, in front of everyone, he says: "I wish I could pay someone to hit you!"

And nobody else says anything. Or maybe they laugh. But he's still King of the Beach, anything he says is cool. Everyone sticks together.

I turn around and go get my board and go surf, but how do you think I feel?

Because the thing is, last I knew this man was my friend. Or said he was. He was actually very sweet to me last summer and fall. I liked him very much. We didn't see each other over the winter. And at the beginning of the summer it was like, Hi, how are you. And there have been some weird vibes since then. But to have that kind of hate in him...I couldn't have expected that.

And why? I haven't changed. The only thing that's changed is K., as I've mentioned in previous posts, is now sleeping with his best friend. And K. now hates me viciously and has been working hard to get everyone else to hate me too. Almost a year after our breakup, her efforts haven't lessened.

K. and I had a bad breakup. No, we're not lesbians. But our friendship ended when I. decided she wanted the beach house I was sharing with K. and knew I'd never give it up unless she alienated K. from me. Long story short, she pretty much convinced K. I was the source of all evil. Ants in the house, I brought them in; no detail was too petty for her to work it into some picture of how evil I was. (While selling herself to K.; they would go into business together, they would take surf trips together, etc. etc. etc.)

The funny thing was that J. saw through all this, too, when it was happening, and sympathized with me. But that was before K. started sleeping with his best friend.

When K. decided to break up, she picked the word that, in her limited knowledge, was the worst thing you can say about someone. "Psychotic." She doesn't understand what it means, but no matter. It works instantly to turn people against me. It scares them. No one believes K. lies because she is superficially sweet, also blond and "hot." Do I need to tell anyone here that I am not psychotic? You know, it works pretty well to assume most people you know are not psychotic unless you have evidence otherwise, like they are walking down the street saying they are Jesus Christ.

The stalking thing was made up by I. She tells people I'm stalking and threatening her. Goes with psychotic, I guess.

Does this have anything to do with surfing? I've said this before and I'll say it again, and you might conclude the same thing if you've been reading here a while, it does. I know, I know, the myth of aloha and all that. Love, acceptance, eternal sunshine, bros and brahs, total strangers becoming friends in an instant. There may be such aloha, but doesn't it make sense that if there is there is another side of it, which I am unfortunately experiencing? Is there another community where one person says some false hateful thing behind your back out of spite and everyone believes it even and especially if they don't know you, and then spreads it around to everyone else they know, and no one, but no one, ever says to your face whatever horrible thing they're saying behind your back, and you can't guess because it's so outrageously removed from reality and anything you did or the person you actually are, whom no one cares to get to know, because they'd rather just be hating on someone they don't know, for sport, apparently...and the irony is that you're the least psychotic or violent or whatever they say person on the face of the earth and not one person will stand up and say that, not even the ones who know better, because they're afraid of being tarred with the same brush that tarred and feathered you...

After the J. incident, I. turned around and, later on that day, told some more lies, with the aim of getting someone who is a real, good friend of mine evicted from his house for associating for me. I think it's going to work, too; I guess she told his landlord I'm psychotic. Just for sport. Just for fun.

A friend of mine, from the real world, said this scenario reminds her of a small town in the 1950s, you know, the Jim Crow era.

It's more like high school, where everyone's afraid of the popular kids.

Would anyone but a bunch of high schoolers or surfers sit around and laugh when someone threatens to physically harm you?

It could be that these ignorant, insecure, immature assholes just happen to be surfers. That could be. But why does no one who is also a surfer, but not such an asshole, knowing and seeing, dare to call them on it? Isn't that mentality, that go along with the crowd no matter what the crowd does thinking, that fear of not being accepted, the inability to think for yourself, or to believe what you see what you see with your own eyes if your surf buds tell you it isn't so, the I hate Susie because Jill hates Susie thing...isn't that kind of tribal thinking the surfer mentality? I don't know what else to compare it to, the Mafia maybe? You take an oath to be loyal to certain people and band together against outsiders?

I have never had anything like this happen to me, ever, in all my life, with all the people I've known from various walks of life. What else can I think?

(Hmmmm...maybe I should generalize about alcoholics and potheads rather than surfers...the above initialed individuals are one or both. Not that I've heretofore had any reason to hold anything against alcoholics and potheads.)

Should be interesting on the beach next time. Hell no, I won't stay off the sand.