“The enormity of what he is asking dawns on me. So this is how it will all go down. History in the making.”
It’s only my second day working with the WSL when Chris Cote summons me to his office.
It’s a sheer white studio, off to the side of the main communal working area. One of only three individually partitioned offices in the entire WSL Commentator’s Wing. A sign of his authority.
I may only be two days in at the Global Home of Surfing but Cote’s invitation couldn’t have come soon enough. Already I have:
seen three grown men openly crying at their desks
been offered the role of chief forecaster, chief of content, chief executive
I’m ready to leave the joint. But the pay is good. Damn good. Plus, this invite from Cote is intriguing.
His assistant quickly briefs me before I enter. Always refer to him as sir. Avoid eye contact where possible. And never, ever, touch his guitar.
I take a deep breath and head in.
The desk in Chris Cote’s office is white. His chair is white. The laptop and monitor, all white. The expensive looking work lamp, one of those big long extendable ones that you can hold down into somebody’s face like a dentist’s lamp – or a CIA interrogator – is off-white. There’s a white work bag sitting next to the white filing cabinet. A white coffee cup sits half drunk next to the latest copy of Senior Guitar Enthusiast. Everything is so white, so bright, you eyes take a second to refocus after being in the more natural lighting of the office proper.
But Chris Cote is wearing black. Black vans. Black track pants. Black Wu Tang goretex jacket. Black rimmed glasses and a plain black, peaked baseball cap. The deliberate contrast has all the subtlety of a grade 9 art project.
Cote’s on a call and it takes some time for him to notice me. He’s yelling into an unseen speakerphone.
“You tell that motherfucker, my name is Chris motherfuckin’ Cote, and if he thinks he’s getting one over me on this, he’s got another fucking thing coming!”
He leans right down into his white desk, though I can’t see any noticeable speaker or aperture on its surface.
“I. Will. Finish. Him.”
I clear my throat. Chris Cote looks up from the desk and at me. Dark, narrow eyes seems to grow even closer together behind the black rims. I remember his assistant’s instructions and avert my gaze.
“You. Who’re you?” he spits in his deep Californian accent.
“Ah, sir, you called me into your office, sir.”
“I did what? Why the in the fucken’ hell would I do that? What are you doing here?”
“Chris, this is your 3pm,” comes the soft voice of his assistant from another unseen cavity. “His resume is in your top drawer.”
“Oh… right.” He rolls his shoulders, kinks his neck, takes a breath. “Riiiiight.” He opens the draw and pulls out a printed copy of my resume. Small yellow post it notes hang from the pages.
“So, you’re the young buck that’s moved over here from Australia. Fancy yourself a surf trivia buff?”
I straighten my back, almost involuntarily. “Yessir. Yes I do.”
“I see here you grew up on the Gold Coast. Married into the industry. Got pretty close with some of the major players.”
I nod.
“Good. That’s good.”
I stand there in silence. The invisible phone line starts ringing again but goes ignored. Chris Cote sucks the stale office air through his teeth.
“Forget about whatever shitkicking task you’ve been assigned. From today, your job will be to feed me surf facts during the live call of WSL contests. I need my call to be witty. Insightful. Seamless. It has to appear….”
He stops to emphasise the point. “Has. to. Appear. That this is all my own knowledge.”
Chris Cote looks at me expectantly.
“I’m sorry sir, I uh… don’t understand,” I say. “I thought you were the king of surf trivia?”
He claps his hands. The blinds come down. The room darkens. I wonder for a second if he is going to kill me.
“Take a seat, son.” He gestures to the white chair behind his desk.
“Now, take a look at me. Take a real good look. Do I look like a surfer to you?”
Surveying him there in his all black outfit, his pale skin and accountant’s affectation, I have to agree that he does not.
“You think I like this hair, man? You think I like these clothes? You think i like this jovial fucking attitude I have to put on for the camera. This…”
He searches for the right word
“This… positivity?”
“Fuck, dude, I’m 56 years old. I like gardening. Making kombucha. Buying vinyl records based off Pitchfork best-of-the-naughties lists.”
He sits on the desk next to me, so that he is almost straddling me with his legs.
“Truth is, I gave up on the game years ago, and haven’t so much as stepped foot on a surfboard since 1995. All those clips you see of me surfing on Instagram are just mirrored clips of Megan Abubo wearing a wig. I certainly don’t keep up with any of the new school of surfing. I fucking hate this sport. What it has become.”
Outside the steady hum of the WSL office continues unabated. I’m lost for words. I look over anxiously towards the windows, wondering if anybody can see in. Wondering if I’m imagining the whole thing.
“But I need to stay,” he continues. “I’m deep state. Bringing these godless motherfuckers down from the inside. I might not care a lick about surfing nowadays, but that’s only because what they,” he motions his eyes to the office outside, “have done to it.”
I follow his hand to the window. The blinds are still closed. I wish somebody would come in.
“I gotta keep the appearance up. There’s a whole team of us working undercover, like them what you call its?”
“Secret agents, sir?” I offer.
“Yeah, that’s it. Secret agents. We got me and Strider here in the US. Ronald Blakey over there in Australia. And a whole network of staff just like you embedded deep within the halls of the WSL and other key institutions. Waiting for the signal.”
“Signal, sir? What signal? From who?”
Chris Cote doesn’t answer me. Instead he picks up his guitar and starts strumming. It sounds like the opening cords to Rage Against the Machine’s ‘Killing in the name of.’
For a moment, he is lost in his own reverie. Eyes closed, nodding his head along to the tinny, acoustic riff.
“We’re surfers just like the rest of you,” he says with his eyes still closed. “We see the lame ads. The greenwashing. The ass-backwards tour schedule. The final five at Trestles. The scandals swept under the carpet. And it kills us. Deep down it kills us.”
He thrashes a power cord and ends his riff.
“So we wait for the signal. But until that signal comes, I need to keep up the charade. And to do that, I need you to be my eyes and ears.”
He puts the guitar down. Hands it to me.
“Can you do that for me, boy?”
The enormity of what he is asking dawns on me. So this is how it will all go down. History in the making. But what is this signal? And who is it coming from?
All questions for later. For now, there’s more urgent tasks at hand.
“Yes sir, I think I can.”
“Well then, let’s get to work.”
