Skate club.

IN THIS THING OF OURS, skateboarding, we operate in the nighttime, in city alleys, suburban backyards--hidden away from the masses. But packed into a sardine can bus I sit among them, blended in with my store-bought disguise. My grey tie lies neatly over my freshly starched white shirt, which is tucked into my ironed grey pants. I am a model cut directly from a J Crew catalogue, pasted neatly on the bus with the other GQ and Glamour ads. I am constantly sizing the rest up. This thing has changed me. I look at the other passengers' shoes, their elbows, checking for a sign that they know, that they are members too. Through the window I watch as we stop and go through the city. Men with newspapers rolled under the arms close deals on cell phones as they hustle to the office. Commute. Work. Commute. Sleep. Repeat. I look past them, at the blackened edges of a curb, the smooth marble of a ledge, the angle of a rail. I count stairs. My mind is wandering to later that night when we'd be back. The rest of the bus hides behind newspapers or sipping at their morning coffee enema.

The computer screen stares blankly back at me, a blur of white and black characters. My job is to sort the lists of clients' addresses and clean them. Change all the "Aves" to "Avenues," all the "POs" to "Post Offices," all the "Rds" to "Roads." Real brainwork.

Jeff, the mail boy, stops by my cube. He is wearing a short-sleeved dress shirt and I can see the scab on his elbow. Jeff is a member. But, we don't talk about it here. Here he is a mail boy and I am a clerk. We drone through the day, mindless worker bees. But last night Jeff was a god when he ollied the Stacy's Cleaners gap.

I nod to Jeff as he picks up the solitary envelope in my outbox, correspondence to a client asking them to kindly provide a new telephone number. The hours slowly pass as I wade through the address changes. I alternate work with checking websites for new spots. A new park has opened in the suburbs. Perfectly good concrete ruined by the usual government issued bumps and quarterpipes--no flow and crappy coping.

Mr Jackson, my supervisor, warns me of his approach with his shuffling wing-tipped feet. Alt--Tab and the skatespot window disappears. The list of addresses appears back expectantly.

"WHAT IS THIS?" HE QUESTIONS OVER THE SHORT SIDE OF my cube. He is holding a piece of paper in his hand. "How to avoid a bust," he continues. Shit, I must have left it on the copier. "Number one, avoid going to spots during work hours. Two, remove evidence of sessions; stickers, trash and broken boards make security aware and irritate workers. Three, know the timing of security rounds. Four, keep sessions short, moving from spot to spot then back later. Five--is this yours? What am I supposed to do about this?"

"Well," I say, leaning back in my chair. "It's obvious that whoever wrote that is a dangerous person, capable of such violence as trespassing and skateboarding." The sarcasm is high in my voice. "If I were you I'd be worried about what else this disturbed individual is capable of doing," I say, yanking the paper from his hand. "Or maybe you shouldn't bring me every little, piece of trash you find." He turns slowly and walks away.

Commute. Escape.

I return to my home, an old two-family house on the outskirts of the city, to find my roommate hauling stacks of two-by-fours through the front door. "What are you building?"

"What are 'we' building?" he answers back.

"What does that mean?"

"You'll see." Gavin loved to do that, leave me in the dark. Supposedly he worked at a coffee shop, but I could never figure out when. He was always around. Not that it mattered; he never paid for anything. His clothes he lifted from the Salvation Army, his boards were hand-me-downs and he had various hook-ups at different shops.

Gavin and I had become best friends at the red curb that we both skated everyday after school. For 11 years we had lived skateboarding, raised by the surrogate parent of the board. Gavin escaped his alcoholic wife-abusing father. I forgot my miserable, neglected suburban life. We found family.

Gavin has always been the better skater. He's willing to threw himself down gaps that I puss out on. Not afraid to try padless roll-ins on vert. He would go all out, make or break.

"Now go change," Gavin instructs me with a twinkle in his eye. "We're going out. That hotel with the amazing kidney pool burnt down," he laughs.

We've been waiting for a chance to skate this pool since we first came across it three years ago. Now there will be no one to interrupt our session.

My body falls hard on the flat bottom; an overextended backside air has caught the pool coping and flung me down. I reach nirvana. My shitty desk job is forgotten, my non-existent love life is non-existent on a different plane. It is all just white pain. My body is everything, the pain is everything. I roll over onto my side and let it ride. Try again. I pull the air and now the pain is gone, too. It is just me and my board. Gavin clacks his deck against the coping. We are free.

Later that evening I'm watching Video Days when the front door's bell rings. Gavin is in the basement sawing away at his two-by-fours and a load of stolen plywood, so I answer it. Outside is a kid of about 15 holding a board under his arm, the latest Puff Boy model. "Can I skate the ramp?" he asks.

"I think you're at the wrong place," I say.

"If he can kickflip but can't ollie, tell him he can't skate until he can ollie," Gavin is whispering in my ear. "If he pushes mongo tell him he can't because he pushes mongo."

"What?"

"Don't let him skate the ramp."

"You can't skate the ramp," I tell the kid. "You can't ollie."

"Good," says Gavin. "Now do that for all of them that come."

I shut the door and turn to Gavin. "What is going on?"

"We're going to change the world," he says. "We're building a park."

Commute. Work. Commute. Sleep ...

Two weeks later and our house is completely swarming with skaterats. They're everywhere. I come home from work and they're learning to crooked grind. I come back from the grocery store and they're doing airs over the hip. I walk in and they're asking me if I'm pro. "No," I say. "I'm just old."

HOW HIGH CAN YOU OLLIE?" THEY RESPOND.

At night they gather in front of the television. A major network has picked up a contest circuit called Velocity X. Our underground family is out in the open now. There is a contest each night. The skaterats sit there with notebooks and scribble down what tricks they need to learn; imagine the lines needed to win.

I see less and less of Gavin. I don't know where he has gone. I'm still going to my job but it's becoming harder and harder to make it through the day. Mr Jackson's son skates now. I see him at the public park on Sunday mornings, sitting over to the side with the rest of the weekend fathers, reading his paper as his son rolls back and forth in the bowl--endlessly I think he likes me even less now. Before, I was just an idiot. Now I'm an idiot playing the same game as eight-year-olds.

I can't escape as easily. The daydreams are replaced with a queasy stomach. I worry about filming. I even worry that my style is outdated. I can't do hardflips. I can't do frontside flips. I worry that I'm getting old and regressing, my skating becomes less and less consistent. I've found a new ditch to skate, a half-mile run with hips and wallrides. Gavin isn't there to skate it; I struggle to find the motivation.

Back at the compound, as I've come to call it, all the kids are getting on flow. Boxes of boards in oversized UPS packages crowd the porch. They're coming for me, I can tell. I am broken. One night I come back to a pantry full of onion rings--boxes and boxes of onion rings courtesy of the kid's sponsor, Mel Brothers Onion Rings.

Gavin is back. I hear rumors that be is setting up similar compounds around the country, preparing. What he is preparing for I'm unsure--some sort of mass-participation in skateboarding. He pulls up in a 12-passenger van; he is taking us all on a street mission. I try to tell him about the ditch. "Later," he tells me: "This new rail just popped up. We need to get it filmed before it's played out."

He has two filmers and a photographer with him. Before we leave he gives some sort of speech to the kids. Make the most of it, go for the big stuff--something like that, I'm not really paying attention. I'm too nervous about skating in front of the kids and the cameras.

We head out and Gavin steers us straight to the rail, 14 stairs of nut-sacking metal. I push around the parking lot to warm up. Pop a few ollies. The kids swarm the rail. The film is rolling. Gavin is cheering from the side, getting the adrenaline going. He's not even skating.

Gavin is whispering with one of the filmers, so I roll up behind them. "Yeah, that kid we'll keep, and maybe trade the one in the red for that new kid on Zingle boards." It's then that I notice Gavin is wearing new shoes and clothes. He's never had brand new shoes in his life. He is the glossy magazine version of his former newsprint self.

"What the hell is going on Gavin?" I ask him.

"Haven't you figured it out yet?" he responds, staring blankly at me. "We're trying to make millions. This is my elite squad. I've been training them around the country, getting the best team together. Then we're going to sort them out to the creme de la creme, create companies and sell them off to my investors."

"Investors?"

"Sure, large multi-national corporations with an interest in cashing in on the success of the Velocity contests."

"What are you talking about? What happened to you?"

"Maybe I've just opened my eyes," he says. "We are not getting any younger. We need this. We just cash in and we're all set. Don't worry, I'll keep you in a share."

"You know what, keep my share," I tell him. "This isn't right. This isn't skateboarding. This isn't us." I wonder why I didn't see this coming. "In fact, that's it. I'm out."

"What are you talking about?" he says defensively. "We need to reach all the markets." This isn't the Gavin I know. This isn't the skateboarding I know.

I turn and skate away, headed for my ditch, my bunker to lie low in until this all dies down, until the 10-year cycle starts a new. I just hope Gavin makes it out.

Behind me Gavin yells at one of his progeny: "Hey! Don't skate the ledge--you're punk rock, not hip-hop. You're going to ruin your fucking imagine. And get some leather wrist bands or a studded belt, for chrissake." He doesn't even notice that I've gone.

I slappy a parking block, the metaphoric gunshot into Gavin's skate drone. It feels good.