I was back in Los Angeles, and back on rollerblades. I was in the Silverlake neighborhood on a steep hill that overlooked downtown LA in the not so distant distance. It was a bright perfectly sunny day bathed in that Southern California light. Lawns were green, the streets were clean, very clean.
I was with a group of people, we were all skating—but that wasn’t odd for us. We were always skating. We had been skating all day, actually, it felt like we’d been skating for many days, maybe always; and this day had never ended or begun again.
But on this hillside, on this steep street, we had all stopped. We were scattered around in a loose large circle, random resting points. I had my hands on my knees trying to catch my breath. My old creative partner, David, was in the intersection just below us. The street was momentarily level there before it descended again down down down toward the 10 freeway. David was talking to us.
David was proudly pointing in the direction of each best restaurant. He pointed that way for best sushi, that way for best Thai, and that way for best Mexican, etc. Each was in a very different direction. It made our mission seem all the more impossible because we had such a wide area to cover.
I knew I was the best of us on skates, and over this terrain there was no doubt. But I was with a woman. She had dark long hair. She was confident and strong but she didn’t skate. I had to carry her when we moved, but I was only slightly disabled by this. She felt like an essential part of me that I could not let go of. She didn’t say anything. She stayed securely wrapped around me, our chests pressed against one another and her head resting on my shoulder.
Then it was time to go.
The steep descent in front of me, in front of us, led downward then transitioned to an equally steep uphill ascent that I could not see over the top of. I couldn’t remember what was over that hill but it didn’t matter. I decided that I could use the g-force at the bottom of the transition to generate enough momentum to float up and over the ascent of the hill. This would require an enormous amount of g-force at the bottom. I wasn’t certain about pulling that off.
I didn’t have time to think about it, everyone was moving. I tucked the dark haired woman closer to my chest and we moved. We were descending and gaining speed. Suddenly, there was a small wall that I needed to drop off before the transition at the bottom. This was a problem. The pressure of this drop at this speed, and with our combined weight, could break my skates. It was too late to do anything different and I just went with it. I landed the drop and the skates flexed and complained but held together. Now I had a brief moment to load them with yet more weight before lifting up at the exact right time to make us weightless up the face of the hill. I wanted to essentially fly up the face of the hill.
It worked, and we were floating an inch off the ground and at great speed over the surface of the road. In my arms she was weightless, her long dark hair suspended upward and gently waving with our forward motion as we slowed, then slowed some more. All I could do was wait and see if our push was enough.
We weren’t going to make it. We weren’t going to make it all the way to the top of the hill on our momentum alone. I was saddened by this, I really wanted to make it. I wanted it to be a perfect beautiful thing, but we came up short.
As I started to make the motion to skate again I felt someone push me from behind. Someone not carrying another person had the momentum to catch me, and push us, and with that the three of us glided over the top of the hill and began to descend. It was fucking beautiful. I could almost see us from outside us, this person’s long fingers pushing on my back, my woman’s hair flowing weightlessly over my shoulder, my feet poised to put power down but all of us frozen in this clutch pose as we came over the top of the hill. I made a mental note to remember this, I thought to myself it might never be better than this.
And we descended.
The backside of the hill was steep. I was surprised how steep it was. I was also surprised that I was being followed. I was being followed by a human sized plushy toy, a multicolored plushy robot that was also skating. I noticed that each section of the robot was a brightly colored patch of deep plush. The robot plushy followed us peacefully and skillfully. It just followed. I didn’t feel threatened by it.
Then I realized that the surface below my skates had become plushy material and multicolored, similarly sewn together sections of bright plushy colors. I became aware that I was skating down the front side of the robot plushy that was just following me.
The deep soft material offered the resistance of snow, of powder, like powder skiing. I switched into powder skiing mode and made my way down the steep surface by descending into its natural resistance. This was deeply familiar to me, a skill it was easy to recall from years of experience. I thought to myself how great life is, how beautiful these movements are. I’d forgetting how much I enjoyed this.
I could feel the dark flowing hair of the woman I held tight against my chest. I could feel her sharp chin pressed into my shoulder as we navigated through the unknown plushy sections of dark red, then bright blue, then purple, then orange. I didn’t know when we would get to the bottom of the robot. I tried not to think about the bottom of the robot. I just kept making turns as precisely and perfectly as I could—uh.. huh.. uh.. huh… I was perfect in each turn. This was bliss.
In my ear the beautiful dark haired woman whispered to me that we can live in LA for now, but eventually she wants us to live a different life. She said she was happy we are together but she has specific plans. I listened to her breathy voice warm in my ear and I skated, and skated, and skated—precise turn after precise turn through the deep plushy.
No one is better at this than me, I thought to myself. No one is better at this than me.