Urethane Logic no. 2
selfishly going skate rat marnell on kento yoshioka
Urethane logic f.t.s, with all apologies to Cat …
My books are all fucking wrong, wrong order wrong place wrong position except for Rihanna, Cat, Colette, and The 100 Best Great Lakes Shipwrecks vols. I and II are living on the top shelf. And while I knew what I wanted to tell you I didn’t know where so I’m kneeling on a pillow in front of my desk at the foot of my bed like I’m in S******’s room so lets try before my legs lock up …
What I saw was death, and bc all the research for the book proposal was top of mind …
I came to see M**** before things changed bc I knew they would bc I had chapters on coronaviruses, had read all sorts of white papers and memoirs and journal articles and journal commentaries and news reports and epidemiological reports and had traced the chains around Amoy Gardens. So I knew what they were, this group of friends sitting in the booth, the large booth right in front of the door of the place M**** managed then and is dead now: they were fuel.
They were dressed up, smiling, laughing, shoulder-to-shoulder — CoV’s duh-ream — and if it had been there right then, it would’ve spread. It would’ve spread so fucking easily. And I knew, but the NBA was still playing and the bars still buzzing, just before Gobert and sirens in Milan and my popularity. So I was worried when I couldn’t find M****, k-pin level anxious until I found them, in front of the ice machine. And we said hello and I held them tighter than usual — could they tell? — and I knew.
Oh my fucking god, for real. I hear you. Ugh, yes, sorry and surprise!, this skate essay is a COVID essay. Ha! You dumb sluts. But in my defense it didn’t start out that way it just worked out that way, and it’s 5 years since many of us shut down. It just lined up right; don’t you need to hit that kind of spot? Isn’t a marble ledge and smooth runway basically this?
And really, this all started because of Madars Apse. He’s got a short documentary series called Skate Tales via Red Bull and he did one about Kento Yoshioka, aka Japanese Super Rat.
Look, like a lot of skaters of a certain age I too was born again, brought back to the board, to the Nine Plies, at the point of the spike protein. I wasn’t always devout; I took breaks and wandered from the flock, being, say 200m Made Up Conference champion or Freelance Journalist or completely unmedicated talking to dead celebrities, or any number of things aside from skater.
But I needed outside.
Outside was safe, like, in all sorts of ways.
Outside we could be together; we could breathe and expand like our rib cages. So why not go outside with intention, as the Tinder profiles say. I’d been skating a bit, to and from, A to B, here and there, but not really going for tricks, or with eyes open. I’ve also always been awful at the actual act of skating — pathetic but passionate, that’s me — and back as a young buck when I was trying tricks, even then they were few and fickle. But the idea of trying again kind of held on. So I started to watch stuff, search for stuff, find folks, pay attention. Wake up.
And saw Kento. Perfect timing, really, bc his Evisen part came on with COVID.
Remember when people were spray painting neon green LV stencils on things?
So I see the Japanese Super Rat — what a name, right? They’re apparently poison-proof and haunting Shubiya. He’s all spray-paint-pest-print painter’s pants and those naughts-hot-green Louis Vuitton logo stencils on griptape and just runs up on spots unafraid of contact and working in forbidden tricks I can’t even name and I’m obsessed with trick names, witchy stuff.
Mobing fucking furniture, baby.
So I went to the monument with E* in a snow leopard print Topshop mask and some thrifted black bomber and low cut lakais in oxblood and cream. And since I didn’t have any of my old tricks I did a new one. A dumb fun one — fakie fs side rock; think about it, it’s not that hard but it does look neat on the right spot. I darted across an intersection for a dirt ride, hit a 2 down under an aqueduct, just looking for things, little things and I knew.
Got his board, all chrome and hot pink and Gulf War green; I put black rails on it.
During question time at the dentist I say I have a kind of weird one.
If I knock a tooth out skating, can I get a gold one put in?
She instantly brightens. I _love_ that question, she says. That she suggests it to all her patients, but they never do it.
I will, I tell her. If it’s skating, I will.
Praying it’s an eyetooth.
