Feed The Rave

He said: "feed the rave dude."

"Feed the rave?" I asked.

"Yeah, for sure."

I had arrived at noon and they were already on the beach. Some were drunk on wine coolers and Miller High Life. Others on themselves.

"Feed the Rave," he kept saying.

I'd been down there once or twice before but not with this many of them. They were junkies of a revolution of science and luck. Luck, I'd thought, didn't exist and to them it didn't either. But, that's not how everyone else saw it.

"Whoa," the guy would say, watching a friend wipe out in the surf, plunge and then stand upright with his mouth open wide and sandy-Pacific water dripping down his back.

Everyone's hair out here was bleached by the sun but mine wasn't. A poor midwestern boy in their eyes; an outsider with no idea on life.

And all the while: "feed the rave! "feed the rave!" "feed the rave!"

I'd come down from the street for a closer glimpse at them. Produced of an era of good genes and brilliance, they didn't know anything but themselves. Products of the Silicon Valley tech-explosion, they'd never struggled with anything but staying upright on a surf board.

Everyday the same; wake up at 11 a.m. and surf.

Houses up here cost about a million bucks, if you were lucky. And these guys woke up with the smell of ocean in their nose and the pinch of brilliance in having slept in them, the night before.

I was an outsider to them and I was paid no attention. And as the waves rolled them up, I'd just sit in the sand and watch, knowing.

Knowing them, not knowing me.