Skydiving has never been on my “bucket list.” If anything, it’s been on my “shit list,” since I’m so sick of friends of mine prescribing it as some sort of magical cure-all for all of life’s woes.

Whenever I meet some faux-alpha male who smirks about his 1,000th jump, I can’t help but wishing a tree branch snags his nylon and he partially splatters on his 1,001 drop. “Whatever, you trust fund baby! You pay people to jump out of a plane! Big deal! Just because I don’t do it, doesn’t make me a fucking pussy! IT DOESN’T!”

At about the point when I was starting to question whether or not I was, indeed, vagina-laden, my friend Rita Roy — who would wax like Walk Whitman about the miraculous, universe expanding, mushroom trip of a “life-changer” skydiving is — had a horrendous, bone-splintering accident and almost died doing it.

Apparently, Rita was on her 15th jump or something and got caught up in the beauty of planet Earth that was hurtling towards her, and so — with a big, blissed-out smile on her face — she missed the checkpoint to pull the cord. Awwwww, she thought, look at the glorious bounty of Mother Nature!…. Whoops!

I asked her how that was possible. She said it was actually quite easy, that it was “the equivalent of spacing out and running a stop sign.” I thought about it for a moment and then assured her that no, she was just retarded. (I strongly suspect Rita had been texting during it, but I digress).

Rita lived because of some new fancy failsafe that automatically opens the chute if you “forget” to do it manually. Basically, it was invented for pantywaists who pass out, not spiritual thrill junkies who think each dive is a tantric fuck session with the essence of Krishna, but all the same, it saved Rita’s life. Now, despite severe injuries, she’s fine. Well, at least fine enough with the help of multiple pain pills and booze — the breakfast of champions!

I mean, it sucks for her, but it reaffirmed my belief that skydiving is a stupid activity for bored, white adrenaline-whores who need something absurd to fill up the void in their souls.

“I’m perfectly fine with the gaping hole in my soul, thank you very much!” I said to the mirror during my daily affirmations.

Two weeks ago, my good friend Cat was in town for a day. We were thinking of things to do and I flippantly mentioned skydiving. Surprisingly, she took to the idea like a teen to bj’s. Like most ideas that involve effort, I said “I’ll look into it” and then proceeded not to. This time, however, Cat followed up and forced a list of phone numbers on me.

The first number I called, some older woman with a twang answered. It sounded like I was inadvertently patched through to a double-wide in the Appalachian mountains. You could feel the lack of teeth in the timbre of her voice. She mentioned a reasonable price and offered a time that fit perfectly with my schedule. FUCK! …. Okay, fine, I’ll make a reservation, but that’s okay, it’ll be too windy or something else will come up. I mean, it’s just a reservation. Nothing solid. Right?

The next afternoon, I found myself driving to Camarillo Airport, wondering what the bejesus I was doing.

When we arrived to the address at the diminutive airport, it seemed barren. Nobody was around and all the planes appeared to be grounded. I meandered around and yelled “Hello” a lot, like I was in some bad 80’s horror flick and there was a heavy-breathing POV shot through some nearby bushes. It was windy so they closed it down, I thought triumphantly.

Finally, a cop appeared on the premises.

“Excuse me, do you know where the skydiving is?” I asked.

“Sure. It’s right there!” he said, as he pointed up to the sky.

I looked up for a nanosecond until I realized I was a fucking moron. He stood smiling with the success of his joke for about 3 seconds too long before he finally offered:

“Just kidding. Haha. Yeah, just cut through that restaurant and you can find it on the far end of the tarmac. It’s a brown plane.”

Cut through the restaurant? That sounds really on the up and up. At one point Cat remarked that I was “unusally quiet.” I told her it was because she’s a shitty female driver and that she made me car sick. In truth, I usually get “unusually quiet” when I’m contemplating my imminent death.

We cut through the cafe and looked around at all the pristine white planes on the tarmac. I couldn’t locate a “brown” one, so I asked a Mexican mechanic tinkering on a nearby cessna.

“Do you know donde the skydiving facility is?” I said, in perfect Spanglish.

The Mexican pointed towards the opposite end of the tarmac and then chuckled. Why the hell are you laughing, Jorge? I was too nervous to ask, so I crossed the runway, crossing myself the whole time.

And then I saw it. The plane I was going to jump out of.

The Carlos Mencia hack joke response to someone’s declaration of wishing to sky dive is often the following:

“Why would you ever jump out of a perfectly good plane?”

That’s a cute response. Unfortunately, it seemed frighteningly in apropos after I got a peeksie at the mottled brown Cracker Jack toy of a plane that lay on the lot in front of me like a giant turd. It looked like an evil Transformer had taken a dump on the runway. And now this Decepticon doo-doo was beginning to rust.

I crept up to the taped-on windows and peered inside. The silvery duct tape was frayed wherever it was applied, giving the impression that the whole contraption was going to precipitously unfurl and collapse like some ACME product Wile E. Coyote might get hoodwinked into purchasing. The chocolate pleather seats inside were ripped and creme-colored foam stuffing seemed to be squeezing out at every right angle. The interior beige paint was chipped and everything smelled like spiders, kerosene, and old pennies.

It was like a rape dungeon with wings.

I half-expected to see a naked girl in the corner of the cockpit shivering and crying for “mommy.”

I looked towards the entrance to the office near the plane and couldn’t help but notice that the “Skydiving facility” was actually an “UPHOLSTERY STORE/SKYDIVING” facility. I’m not precisely sure why that freaked me the fuck out, but it most definitely did.

Undaunted, I walked in, announced my arrival to the crew, and plunked down my Capitalone “NO HASSLES” card like I was ordering a cheesecake. I was surprisingly halycon… well, except for one strange development….

I had been home for hours, feeling fine. But, for some reason, the second I walked into the UPHOLSTERY/SKYDIVING facilty, my ass launched into protest. Although my digestive tract had been perfectly content all day, suddenly my sphincter started spurting out staccato farts. It was as if my asshole was desperately trying to tell me something.

Even in the strict onomatopoeic sense, the flatulence sounded like my asshole had launched into an angry litany of blubbery “Noooo’s” that wouldn’t stop. I found myself wandering around the small building, trying to adroitly boomerang the farts far away from me every time I made a swift 180 degree turn.

Brandon, one of the ‘jumpers’ — a jovial, heavyset, frat-guy type — got my gear and put me in a crotch harness that felt like a summer camp Atomic Wedgie. It compacted my balls and taint, which unfortunately, did nothing to stem the sputter of methane rocketing out of my bowels; which, in turn, caused Brandon to give me a sideways look that implied, “Bro, I know what’s going on and I won’t bring it up, but fuuuuuuck, get a grip.” Brandon opted to take Cat up instead (later admitting he knew I was ‘busting ass’ and wanted to avoid it by taking her).

Before I could say “Rolaids,” I was strapped and brought back outside to board the alleged “plane.” Brandon proudly announced that the nickname of the plane was the “TURD BIRD.” Everyone seemed to find that hilarious…. except me, of course.

The pilot came out of the office and boarded the plane with Chuck Taylors, baggy corduroys, and a Shaggy-from-Scooby Doo hairdo. ZOINKS, our pilot is A FUCKING STONER, my head screamed! It didn’t help my confidence that our jump was occurring only slightly after 4:20pm.

I instantly thought of the movie “Fandango,” when Judd Nelson goes up in a similarly slipshod prop/death-trap plane and the burnout pilot says “It’s better to die like this than in some senseless tragedy!” and proffers Judd a joint at 10 thousand feet. When Judd jumps, it turns out the stoner pilot had inadvertently packed Judd’s bag with dirty laundry instead of an actual parachute. The first cord Judd pulls releases a stream of soiled t-shirts and underwear. I couldn’t help but picture some mix-up in the “UPHOLSTERY/SKY DIVING” facility wherein my cord is tugged and out floats rich Corinthean leather all around me as I plummet to my demise, sheer terror making me unable to enjoy the delicious irony of my death.

Suddnely, my jumper appeared next to the plane with a crisp smack on the shoulder. He was stretching and trim and wearing pipe-lined short shorts, like he had just jogged a 10K in 1978. He smiled broadly, seeming smugly Evangelical. We then all crawled into the turd, Cat and I both cuddling up against our respective jumpers. Short shorts sidled up behind me and engaged straps and clips until we were connected like “Avatar” smurfs.

“Back up against me!” short shorts said in my ear as the “TURD BIRD” stubbornly sputtered to life. You could hear the rubber bands groan as the propeller beat against the choppy air. I tried to back up, but apparently it wasn’t good enough.

“NO, REALLY BACK UP ALL THE WAY AGAINST ME!!!” he yelled louder as the rattling increased and the plane began to take flight.

It suddenly dawned on me that “TANDEM SKYDIVE” is basically the “PRISON RAPE” of sky dive! And, of course, I would be playing the role of the Rapee. I had no choice in the matter. As prison bitch from the top bunk, I had to do everything he told me. I felt like screaming, “Just take the cigarettes!”

Finally, we spooned in a way that was satisfying with short shorts, and we sat in stony silence as the plane bumpily began its climb to 10,000 feet. He lazily draped an arm around my waist at one point. Ugh. I looked at his macho altimeter. He was the alpha male here, in control of everything. All I could do was breathe and try my best not to fart into his balls.

My face must have looked like I just had a staring contest with a Gorgon, because Brandon, strapped up with Cat, pointed and laughed at me and asked me, too loudly, if I was “okay.”

I nodded but found that my Adam’s Apple had temporarily disconnected from my voice box, so any sound I wished to emit was still buffering….

I guess Brandon found my state of paralysis hilarious, because he then decided it was time to try his hand at some standup comedy.

“Hey Bill,” Brandon said, “Whatever you do, just don’t fuck with the duct tape.” Brandon then began fucking with the duct tape. “Bro, if you pull too hard, the wings will come off… AGAIN! Hahahaha! We don’t call this piece of shit the TURD BIRD for nothing!”

I nodded and grinned toothlessly. For some reason, Brandon thought this was an invitation for more psychological torture.

“Hey, Bill,” Brandon started again, with his disarmingly jovial demeanor, “What’s the difference between a golfer and a sky diver?”

He then looked at me for an answer to, what I assumed, was a rhetorical question. My Adam’s Apple tried to shimmy down my neck to allow a modicum of air to vibrate my constricted vocals into phonation, but to no avail.

Instead, I just gaped silently like a carp to cue Brandon to continue.

“A GOLFER GOES ‘THWACK!’… ‘SHIT!’…. AND A SKYDIVER GOES ‘SHIT!’… ‘THWACK!’”

He then guffawed, his amiable face caked in flaky wind burn.

Fuck, that’s a good joke, I thought. A grammatical mirror reverse that is still dark and funny. I realized then that I will never be able to write as good as a joke book in the 80’s. Damn.

The plane began to level out, and, with only a nudge of warning, my jumper began to open the door…. and my world became very present….

WHOOOOOOOSH! Suddenly, the door opens, shattering the stillness of the sacrophagus. It feels like smelling salts or an injection of pure adrenaline in my Achilles’ Tendon, Keith Moon style. The wind fills my nostrils. I slide the goggles down over my eyes and feel a confusing chemical cocktail coursing through my veins.

Unlike most people, I don’t shake or hyperventilate or talk like at coked-out Persian in a night club when I’m terror-stricken. My reaction is quite the antithesis. I find that my body and thoughts go into some slo-mo Matrix “bullet speed” realm. It’s almost like I step a half-foot away and look at everything with a sort of Taoist neutrality.

I hold up my hand and look at it. It is surprisingly still. There’s the duct tape curling around the edges of the open door like a wild loose comma. There’s a man behind me rattling off a safety harnass checklist. The sky is blue behind us. The plane motor sounds dry and angry, like an octegenarian farting as he runs down stairs. The pilot wears corduroys. The sky is blue with smears of white. Duct tape peeling off. My hand is still.

“It’s better to die like this than in some senseless tragedy!” I think to myself. I know I am nervous, but only as a concept. I don’t really feel much.

I feel myself, without any effort on my part, moving to the open door. The wind funneling into my ears is drowning out any reflexive part of me that might resist the puppeteering of my limbs I am experiencing.

“THROW YOUR LEGS OUT!” short shorts screams.

Like a crippled war vet, I yank at my pants to move my legs to the edge. I look down and notice one of my shoelaces is unlaced and flapping. I rack focus to the earth about 10,000 feet below, gridded up like a gray electronic circuit with buttons.

The man, once effeminate, is steering and pushing me with steadfast assurance. I exhale consciously and look at the maze-like squares and silos on earth. And then another slight push. We are in free fall. Tumbling in the sky. I am clueless as I flip and trust this man with short shorts, who literally has my life in his hands.

Like a choreographed dance, our bodies suddenly catch the air like a wind sock. A tap on the shoulder cues me to stretch my arms wide. I see the earth coming at me quickly, yet seemingly and remarkably stagnant. It’s the mythical moment of Terminal velocity. My face surely is flapping around like a Shar Pei puppy, but all I am aware of is wind and distant grids and white noise. He takes my arm and moves it a little, causing us to horizontally pirouette. I feel like Lois Lane to his Superman….

Then SHOOOOOOP! The chute opens abruptly and the moment of disconnect is over. We are now sinking slowly down as the harness tugs at my armpits. Ahhhh, I sigh a breath of relief… It is over… or so I thought….

For some reason that utterly baffles me, my jumper feels that I want to twirl and twirl like a ballet dancer now. He keeps telling me to pull down on the opposing levers in order to cantilever the chute in different directions. My colon is about to declare jihad on and through my asshole, so I stop pulling, opting for a quiet descent instead.

But my jumper decides he wants to spin more. I forgot to tell him earlier to not to fucking do that because spinning around like a retard in a rumpus room makes me projectile vomit. He starts yelling “WHEEEEEEE!” as he wheels the chute around more and more.

I connect my voice box back together long enough to scream, “I’m going to PUKE!”

“YOU LIKE THE VIEW?” he shoots back, misunderstanding me. “WHEEEEEEE!!!!”

“NO, DUDE, I’M GOING TO FUCKIN’ PUKE!!! PUKE, not VIEW!”

“Ohhh,” he says, seemingly crestfallen. “Well, bro, if you puke, please puke on your shirt. I don’t want to get any on me! Seriously!” he says.

“I won’t puke if you go down gently,” I manage. I am not puking, but I KNOW that if I do puke, I will most certainly do my best to puke upwards into this face and nostrils.

We sway down, pukeless, and I land hard in a grass field with completely uninterested migrant workers only a few yards away. “Crazy gringos!” they are probably thinking as they pick away….

And they would be right….

************************************

POSTSCRIPT

A couple of weeks have passed since my sky diving experience.

Am I glad I did it?

Of course. It was cool and unique and I highly recommend it. Despite the ribbing in the blog, the people at the Camarillo SKYDIVING/UPHOLSTERY facility were amazing, and I wouldn’t have wanted to have my first jump with anybody else (short shorts included).

Brandon has come to see me perform at the Laugh Factory twice already, and, in exchange, I’ll get a discount when, and if, I go back. I might even fix the interior of my Honda Civic while I’m at it.

The thing that is nagging me is all the stuff I had heard leading up to the dive….

Am I a new man now?

Am I now one of those annoying converts that preaches that the miracle of existence can only truly be experienced through the wonders of free fall? Did it change my life?

Well… fuck no.

I still have taxes, I still have annoying text-fights with girls I know in LA (what did she write? CAPS LOCK! IT’S ON NOW, BITCH!), and my penis is stubbornly holding at its locked-in size. My mind doesn’t seem more open … nor have I been gifted with extra powers or experience points like it’s some RPG video game.

In retrospect, It’s just a thing to do in life. Like other things.

Big deal….

That being said, if you don’t do it, guess what:

you’re a fucking pussy.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 1st, 2010 at 9:09 am and is filed under All blog entries. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.