CB Blues
I sit on the ocean waves girl-body like a feather legs like a jellyfish as they dangle off my board skin pale as snow. The sun rises a variety of colors and I know it’s not just a ‘pretty sunrise’ but one with smog because I’m on CB and even the air is poisoned. It’s still beautiful. I still love it. God, I love it. It’s my poison, but at least I chose the right kind of poison.
CB is poison. Every person who has touched that beach has got it too. There are two kinds: the kind that saves the kind that kills. The latter is almost always the case, and I am reminded over and over again with the stories or the stragglers on the beach or Mark who asked: “save me?” but he was already too far in it…the poison penetrated his eyes and showed in those marks on his arm. He’s still around but not really only a phantom of him. It’s imminent with that kind of CB poisoning.
The other kind of poisoning, my kind, is rare. It’s not numb like Mark. It saves CB saves. CB says, ‘Ok, take care of me. Spend the night under my sect of stars. Feel my soft sand between your toes. Sense the sun infiltrating your skin. It’s my sun. But make me something more, and when you’ve done that, get out.’
If you stay too long, even that saving poison turns bad. As the old man by the pier that zombie guardian says, ‘temptation is a killer.’ It’s the only thing he really says. He was raised on that CB poison. His daughter escaped to some West Coast college but came back and now only sits beside him just as dead. She’s so beautiful. So lost.
Everyone in CB has a choice. The poison works its way through like water, engulfing anyone in its path. It’s inevitable. I always hope for the best, surfing with the CB kids there is hope sometimes. The beach calls out to its lost citizens crying ‘save me and I will save you!’ but most of the time it’s calling to the living dead.