I’ve been trying to come up with ideas for random surf musings for my Shark Bait blog. I’ve been digging in my crusty brain for ideas that don’t involve being alarmist. Or whinging. Which is hard to do, because every time I think about a new blog, I only come up with things to complain about. Crowds. Pollution. Etc.
Eish.
But I digress.
It’s also time to inject some badly needed humour into this humble here beelog.
Then I remembered, the time I beat Kelly Slater: kicked his ass royally.
So here it is...
The Time I Beat Kelly Slater...
Like many stories, it started in a bar. It was actually old Baron Stander’s Surf Museum in Durban (RIP). I’d been doing some mission or other for a blunt magazine deadline when I was editor (RIP) and arrived late to an industry function, for one of the big brands. It was something like an annual barbeque spit roast or whatever, during what was then still the Gunston 500 (I think it was the last one before it became the Mistah Praace Pro).
Apparently Kelly Doesn't Do Endorsements but my snowboarder friend Chris Cab ambushed him at J-bay and I got the shot...I was stoked because it was the first function like that I had been to and I was frazzled and hungry and keen on a free drink or two and a fat nosh. (I will digresh here again, but it has bearing, so stick with me). As I walked in I saw couple of surf industry heavies, and walked over with a big magazine editor suck up smile to say hello.
Everyone, greeted me back.
Bar one guy who completely dissed me (his name we can leave out). Stared straight at me for a second and then through me with such a look of disgust on his face I might as well have crapped on his bare foot and mashed it in between his toes. Then he turned his back on me, so I was staring straight at the sweaty spot between his podgy shoulders, inches from my big old Irish nose.
It seems, I later found out, he was miffed for some reason. Ironically, it later turned out to be a misunderstanding that had nothing to with me my magazine.
So, anyway, I thought, screw him and ........... Walked up the bar and ordered a triple brandy and Coke, a beer and tequila with my colleague Short Short and proceeded to get ripped on this oke’s dime.
Full of Dutch courage we then plopped a two bob on the pool table and hailed another round... or was it two?
Only then did we realise whom we might be playing doubles against. Kelly Slater. THE KING. So flummoxed and bummed was I with the whole diss scenario that I hadn’t noticed HIS PRESENCE and that he was shooting pool with new Pier local Shane Thorne.
They beat the other guys.
So we were up, and Short and I were well on our way by then. CLACK. I broke and sunk four bigs (well, it might have been only two, I was seeing double by then). They then played (I can’t remember if it was Shane or Kelly) and missed. Short stepped up, CLACK CLACK. Sunk two more bigs.
Game on.
Time for a durrie.
As Shane (or Kelly) missed again, and Short stepped up to pot a couple more, I fumbled with a lighter as some spunk wandered toward me. One of them skinny well bred, white bread, white-hot little brunette Durban surf groupies with a cleft chin, perfect white teeth and a flat chest. But she made up for it with a trail of glitter from her face down her neck.
and I looked up into her big green eyes, smiled and, to my surprise, got a smile back. Maybe it was because I was beating her boys at pool, I don’t know, it sure wasn’t my good looks. I said something mildly lecherous and to my surprise she smiled again, all coy, like...
Then Kelly Slater appeared in my blurred vision, looked at me sternly, half grinned and said, “hey, you tryna chat up my chick?” I was so taken aback at the absurdity of the entire situation all I could do was make like I was an Inca worshipping the sun deity, sarcastically scraping and bowing like the lowly scum I really felt like I was.
I might have even said “Sorry, God.”
I can’t remember.
Obviously though Kelly didn’t take kindly to this sweaty, red-eyed ciggie smoking kook beating him at pool and trying to woo his groupie and mocking him. But by then I was the proverbial 10 foot 4 and more bulletproof than a Pope-mobile. Jeez, I thought, feeling just the right combination of horse’s ass and belligerent drunk, screw this Slater ou, this chick and this whole scene.
And potted the remaining three bigs and the 8 ball.
I think we all shook hands after we won, again I don’t really remember (Short will probably say he sank the black). In fact most of this could be complete BS but I’m sure it kinda happened like that. I think Kelly shook Short’s hand but not mine, but I could be making that up too, or it might be because I was on the other side of the table or back at the bar. I dunno. Shane was gracious in defeat, that I do remember.
I do also remember that Kelly passed me on the way out a few hours later, and though I tried to catch his attention in a no hard feelings, see you later kind of way, he dissed me too, book ending the evening for me nicely with another embarrassing cold shoulder (though I don’t really blame him and probably would have done the same thing if I were him, which I am, of course, patently not).
What I do know is that Kelly got knocked out of the contest the next day, and I heard later that he always gets freaked out if he loses at pool the night before his heat, messes his mojo up or something.
And that’s why, some said, he also lost that day.
Kelly won this heat so maybe he won at pool the night before. I didn't play him ever again, of course.So this is my stupid little story. I beat Kelly Slater. Not in a surfing comp, where he could whip my butt by surfing on a pool cue, but in a humble game of bigs and smalls.
And I’m probably only one of a handful of surfers that could say that, even if it was at sticks and not on a shred stick.
Whatever. At least I’m not whinging about crowds or pollution.
Yet.
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