jackassworld

After years of dislocating my shoulder, I finally had surgery on it in December. It was popping out once or twice a year and it’s one of the most painful and awkward injuries I’ve ever experienced. I’ve broken both legs, experienced multiple concussions, etc., but dislocating my shoulder is by far the worst pain. Hemorrhoids is a close second. Over the years it’s just gotten steadily worse. The shoulder, although the hemorrhoids have also gotten worse. I did my best to avoid activities where it was likely to fall out, but it still happened. I even stopped skating because if I’d so much as look at the thing, it would pop out. (Besides the pain, the lifestyle adjustment wasn’t difficult, because while I make a living in skateboarding, I don’t actually make my living riding the thing.) The ligaments and the muscles had gotten so stretched out that there was nothing holding it in. It got so bad that late last summer it fell out of the socket while playing croquet. Yeah, I sustained a serious injury while playing fuckin’ croquet. And we were camping up in the woods. Far from any hospital. I have trouble getting it back in sometimes. It was at that moment that I decided, “I have to get this fixed.”

The first time I dislocated it was in 1997 at Jim Theibaud’s ramp in Oakland. Skateboarder magazine had just reemerged and Thomas Campbell wanted to do a profile on my photography in the premiere issue. Of course in order to be a “skateboard artist” you actually need to be a skateboarder, so they required a photo of me skateboarding. I was more than happy to oblige because not only have people questioned my abilities, but whether I even skate at all.

Ethan Fowler (my roommate at the time) and I drove over to Jim’s warehouse where I gave Ethan a crash course in skate photography. With a fish lens and b/w film, it’s hard to fuck up. You just point it at the subject and press the button. I figured an invert was the best way to showcase my skating, plus it would be easy for Ethan to shoot.

So I started doing inverts on the extension. It was a tight transition, so it was easy to get whipped upside down and into an invert real quick. Inverts have always come easy to me, but there was something about that ramp that day that allowed me to get into some of the best inverts I’d ever done in my life. I felt like Neil Blender. No one does inverts like Blender, and mine surely looked nothing like a Neil Blender invert, but that’s how good they felt that day. I was getting fully extended, stalling them out, and pointing my feet in weird directions. I did dozens of them, each one felt better than the last. But then I really did do my last invert ever.

I went up like every one I had done before and got inverted. But I kind of caught a little more air than necessary so that my palm was a couple inches above the coping. My arm was stiff and straight and my entire body was already upside down. So when my palm finally came down on the coping, so did all that weight above it. It was centered on my shoulder. POP!

I kicked my board away, scampered out of the invert and crumpled to the flat bottom. I wasn’t sure what had happened, but I knew something was very, very wrong. Jim got me into a chair on the side of the ramp and kind of felt me up. He didn’t know what had happened either, but upon inspecting my shoulder he said, “Oooh, that’s not right.” I went into shock and Jim drove me to the hospital.

As I said, I’ve suffered a lot of injuries, but that first dislocation might have been the worst pain I’ve ever been in. They knocked me out in the emergency room, put my shoulder back in place, gave me a bunch of pills and sent me on my way. I went and saw Cannibal Corpse that night in a sling. (I always insert that detail to appear tough. And while I really did go see Cannibal Corpse, there’s nothing tough about a metal show. Metal crowds tend to consist of smart, shy, introverted boys dressed all in black-ala the Trench Coat Mafia-who are there to witness the musicianship of the band and/or revel in the comic book horror of the lyrics. Nerds. Slayer shows are the exception because there it’s more of a prison riot.)

That first one was a pretty bad, and a lot of my future problems probably arose because I didn’t rehabilitate it properly. I’m lazy. Drink wine on the couch, or go work out the shoulder? The choice is obvious to me: wine. But after ten years of it, it was even more obvious that I needed it fixed. So I went under the knife and now I got some little ropes in my shoulder that hold it in place. I believe the doctor called it a “remplissage.” It’s a fun word to say.

This time, I dutifully attended rehab twice a week. It’s not 100%, but it’s good enough. I haven’t tried to do an invert yet, but I can throw things and go swimming. I can even put on a bra. Best of all, I can ride that damn toy again. Not very well, but I can ride it.