“If I’d listened to the people who said surfing wasn’t for me due to the melanin my skin possesses, I’d have a different existence.”
I doubt if there’s one person who’s ever met Selema Masekela, apart from Chas and Circe and I’m not exactly sure what happened there, some sorta heated legal poison although I don’t dare ask, who doesn’t walk away firmly under his spell.
Let’s take a snapshot of the first time I met the extreme sports identity. It was 2017 and, along with Chas, I was visiting the Kelly Slater Surf Ranch in Lemoore, California at the invitation of the WSL’s Dave Prodan.
Occupying one of the bench seats in the Surf Ranch’s heated jacuzzi aprés after our allotted waves was Sal, he was Sal back then, and just as I was about to enter the swirling maelstrom, heated to a pleasing one hundred degrees and offering needed respite from the winter cold and a possible cure for a dreadful hangover, his telephone rang.
Sal asked me to rummage through his colourful outfit which was bundled on a barrel, enough clothes to suggest, or was I hoping, he was nude in the tank, and to pick it up.
It was Kelly Slater.
“Answer it,” he commanded, which I did. Kelly remained silent when he heard my voice, an early portent of the blood feud that would simmer for the following six years.
After a howl of laughter and some chortling Sal hung up. Despite an expanded adiposity, he gobbled protein bar after protein bar, informing me of the health-giving properties of the foil-wrapped chocolate chip treats.
Stories flowed like a river of honey and I left, like everyone who spun in his orbit that day, a fan for life.
I didn’t heard from Sal again, only knew in passing that he’d transitioned to Selema, but today I saw that he had turned a ripe old fifty-two and to mark the occasion had written movingly of his life as a surfer.
Picture number one was taken 35 years ago by my Mom @b2bharmony. Picture number two was taken last week by @patstacyfilm. Today, August 28th, is my 52nd Birthday. The 17 year old in the first slide had no idea where the board under his arm would take him. All he knew was that the moment he stood up for five seconds on that first wave at Cherry Street in Carlsbad, California 1988, his life was changed forever. Addiction ensued.
Since that day, a relentless pursuit of ‘the feeling’ has taken me beyond my wildest dreams and transported me to oceans and seas across the planet. It’s given me deep, meaningful, life long friendships with some truly magnificent human beings and helped me create and evolve a storytelling career I continue to enjoy now more than ever.
On paper, none of this was supposed to happen. I’m from the St. Marks Apartments in Staten Island, NY with a brief cameo in Attleboro, Massachusetts. I’m the son of a South African political exile and a Haitian immigrant. Surfing wasn’t supposed to happen to me but it did. If I’d listened to the people who said surfing wasn’t for me due to the amount of melanin my skin possesses, I’d have an entirely different existence.
There is no box other than the one society works overtime to put you in. Get weird, try some shit that’s not supposed to be for you and see what happens. Oh, and while you’re at it… JOYFULLY TAKE UP ALL THE SPACE YOU CAN.
Ain’t that the truth!
Readers, contribute your Sal stories below. Chas, not you.
