The Closest Thing To Being Born

"I don't think I do anything unusual at the Wedge. I don't free-fall all that much. I ride. It's not a philosophy. It's just my deal. I'm not erratic like they say, either, although sometimes I think my brain is slowly being destroyed. You ask a lot of questions, don't you? You get me uptight, you know it? I feel like I'm taking the third degree from a cop. I was a freaked-out kid when I was younger, but that's all in the past. I'm just trying to grow up and be a human being."

Virgil's carefree style at the Wedge appears to have emanated from some escapades in his younger days, such as the time at a party when a young lady approached him and asked where she might find an ashtray. "Why, my dear, right here," said Virgil, taking her lighted cigarette and extinguishing it in his mouth. He also won a small bet one time by burning a hole in a dollar bill that was resting on the back of his hand. In the process he also burned two holes in his wrist.

"I couldn't read anything at all for a long time," Virgil admits. "Cherilee has taught me since then, and now I can read like a 10th-grader. Still, last year I was studying for an English exam at Orange Coast College when I suddenly figured out that it wouldn't do any good to learn the answers if I couldn't read the questions.

"The first time I went skiing my friends had to kidnap me and tell me they were 'taking me to the river.' I went to sleep in the back of a VW bus and woke up at the top of a mountain. I hated snow. They said, 'There it is. Do it.' I went down the mountain on my side, on my back, on my front, completely wiped out, destroyed. I absolutely tore up my knees. Ruined them. I loved it. I quit my job, left home and moved to Mammoth Mountain. At the ski lodge there one night I dove headfirst down a flight of stairs—just because. Because why? Well, there were these chicks all around. I thought it would be groovy. Was I drunk? I think I might have been."

"You know you just wanted to impress those chicks," said Cherilee.

"What?" said Virgil. "What? Impress what? These were radical chicks. What's so hard? I used to dive downstairs all the time as a little kid. Also later.

"Every summer I'd work construction and dive off billboards to hurt myself or drop loads of lumber on myself to collect unemployment compensation so I could surf at the Wedge. Would I fake injuries? No, I wouldn't fake them. I'd be damn injured. But I would recover. I guess I used to live a pretty reckless life. I think I might have been drunk most of the time. I fought a bull in Mexico and got knocked down, destroyed. I signed on with a rodeo and rode a Brahma bull for six seconds. I loved it. I worked on a tuna boat and got down in the nets to throw out the sharks that we had collected with the tuna. No, the sharks didn't bite me. They were unconscious. I love tuna fish. Eat it all the time. I do what feels good. That's the way I live my life. If it makes me feel good, whether it's against the law or not, I do it. I'm not sure a lot of the things I've done weren't pure lunacy."

Cherilee says, "Mike also eats spiders and other insects and things."

Virgil says, "Neither of us eats meat. It takes up too much energy. Besides, it isn't good for you."

About the Wedge, Virgil says, "I've always been determined to find a sport I could be the best in. I was always aggressive as a kid. You know, competitive, mean. Real mean. I bit off the cheek of a Negro in a six-against-30 gang fight. They had tire irons with them. But that was a long time ago. At the Wedge, there are a lot of individualists. Guys who do one thing better than anyone else. I take the biggest waves. I started out by being way up there at the top. I could see over the jetty and watch the boats in the harbor and the people on the beach. Then I'd go down. Way down. Fast. Was it bitchin'? I don't say 'bitchin'.' That's juvenile, a teen-age word. I don't say any of that high school stuff. I say 'groovy.' It was groovy. The side-wave guys think free falling is just a hoax. But it's a ride for me. I'm riding and doing spinners and everything. Once I got socked to the bottom and lost my false teeth. The whole beach was looking for them. Now I take my teeth out before I go in the water.