Chapter 5 - Contact

The Hollow Bell — A serialized memoir, published chapter by chapter

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School came easily.
Being smart was the one place I felt safe.
It gave me something to hold onto—something the world couldn't take or confuse.

Then Barry built a computer.

It was one of the first home computers from a kit—metal housing, exposed boards, eight toggle switches. He taught me the boot sequence. When the green cursor blinked on the screen, each blink was an invitation. A doorway.

Computers didn’t exist in homes. But this one did in mine.
And I got to be its master.

I could tell it what to do—and it would obey. No guessing. No confusion. Just code and consequence.

I played Lunar Lander for hours. Text prompts. Numeric inputs. Soft landings.

Machines made sense.
People didn’t.

I spent more and more time in the computer lab—rows of terminals, the mainframe behind glass. I took every class offered. Won science fair awards. Wrote programs like they were spells. By graduation, I spoke half a dozen computer languages.

I didn’t live in that lab. But my mind did.
That’s where my attention went. My energy. What captivated me.

But the other language—the one inside me—was still foreign.

I had met Mike in seventh grade over a Rubik’s Cube.
He was walking down the hallway, nearly six feet tall, athletic, moving with effortless grace. But his head was down—locked in on the colors of that little magic cube. The same cube I had spent weeks mastering.

I said something—I don’t remember what.
But I remember how he looked up.
Contact.

Shared circuitry.

The quiet recognition of how our minds fit—turning the same way, catching on the same ideas.

Computers, weights, puzzles, basketball.

Something in us just synced—intellectually, athletically.

We spent hours on the phone, tying up the single house line like it was our own private channel.

By sophomore year, the connection felt solid. Familiar.

Like two frequencies coming into phase—clearer when we were in sync.

Surfing was the next thing. The one thing Mike brought me into. Nobody surfed at our high school. It just wasn’t a thing.

Except for us.

We lived on the placid North Shore. No waves. The real surf was an hour away, on the Atlantic. Mike convinced me to try. For my birthday, I got a board—a rainbow streak of fiberglass, too small, too sleek. I didn't know that then. I just knew it was beautiful.

What I remember most isn’t how it looked.
It was the smell.
That thick, sweet coconut scent from a puck of surf wax—Dr. Zog’s Sex Wax.
Heavy. Foreign. Like it came from some tropical place I’d never seen. It clung to the board. To my fingers.

A smell that promised something warmer, wilder, far away from the strip malls of Long Island.

The first day: I couldn't sit upright. I tipped over. I couldn't paddle. Mike offered his leash, to tow me out past the sandbars.

By the end of that summer, I could sit on the board. Paddle. Sometimes, stand. I wasn't really surfing. But I was beginning.

That fall, we drove to Westhampton. A jetty we loved. The swell was perfect. No crowd. Warm water. I paddled out.

I don’t remember the wave approaching.
I remember standing.
The board dropping beneath me.
It was happening.

My foot dug into the wax.
The board turned.
I didn’t think—I just moved.
Not like I was in control.
More like I was in tune.

Then—magic.
I was being carried.
Up.
Up.
I was soaring.
Not fast. Not frantic.
The energy wasn’t mine.
But it surged through me.
Just… lifted.
Held.
It was quiet.
And alive.

Something had shifted inside.

Driving home, crisp air, red and yellow leaves falling. I replayed it again and again. The color of the water. The feeling in my chest. Peace and electricity at the same time.

I was seventeen. Still running from something I couldn't name. I kept surfing. Through fall. Through winter. Thick wetsuits. Frozen fingers. It didn't matter. That feeling was worth it.

But the waves were rare. The season was short. And I wouldn’t truly begin to learn until I left.

I kept chasing that feeling.
In different ways. For different reasons.

I chased adrenaline. I chased control. I chased knowing.
But the wave taught me something else.
Not power. Not escape.

Just presence.
And I thought it was mine.

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