Tampa Am Tour
[ photos by hutchison ]
 I have an older brother and a younger sister, but I like to think that my mother loves me the best. I know my grandmother loves me the best, she told me so, but I'm not 100% sure about my mom. But it's pretty safe to say. I mean, shit, I'm awesome. Who wouldn't love having me as a son? I'm handsome, semi-successful, and I don't steal porcelain unicorns from my neighbors or aunts. My brother Dave is quite successful in his own right, and he was the first to have a kid in the family, but I still think that, despite my excessive belly fat, I am the better looking of the two of us. My mom most certainly agrees. And as far as my sister, well, she's a girl. And no parent could possibly love a daughter more than a son 'cause, you know, they suck. They're just way more headaches to deal with, therefore I win over her by default.
But sometimes, usually in the mornings or right before bed, as I stare aimlessly at my perfectly chiseled, manly face, wondering who could be a more perfect specimen of ravishing beauty, I start to wonder, "What if there were two of me?" What if just seconds after I slid from my mother's vagina, an exact duplicate of myself followed me out? A perfect carbon copy, perhaps only different in that a birthmark decorated his thigh and not mine. Imagine if that twin so confused my mother that she couldn't decide whom she loved better. The contest between my older brother and sister no longer an issue, she must now choose between two images of total excellence. Whom would she choose? How would she even know whom she was choosing? Would she expect us to somehow compete for the coveted first place, the closest place to her heart? Would she love one of us more if we struck the other down like Cain did Abel, or would the dead be revered as a martyr and loved a hundred times more? I think about these things, and they make me sad. Even though I know I am one of a kind, the thought of it all makes me sick and want to hide under my bedsheets.
Once a friend of mine emailed me a photo of what I thought was me in the backseat of a small, compact car, wearing a pink Izod and my sunglasses with a note that said, "I found this in some kid's portfolio, is this you?" It had to be, I thought, who else could it be? But when did I take it? I've only worn a pink Izod once, for a trade show with Carnie and Tremaine, but I don't recall any photos being taken in the car. I do forget a lot of things, and drinking sometimes erases whole days, and I assumed this was just one of those cases and dismissed it. But two days later she emailed me again and said, "I emailed that photographer, he says it's a self-portrait." And then to drive the fact home, without giving me a chance to reason things out for myself, she wrote, in big, bold, capitalized letters, "YOU HAVE A TWIN BROTHER AND HE LIVES IN CHINA!" It was as if my mirror nightmares had become reality. I called my mother and asked her if there was anything she'd like to tell me, anything she might have omitted about my birth and, I don't know, a doppelganger sibling. But of course she denied it all. That's when I began to really panic. What if my friend had told this twin who I was and that we were twins? What if he learned where my family lived and flew from China to New Jersey one day, showing up on my family's front door claiming he was me and that he was there to pick up all my Star Wars toys and old issues of Playboy? What if he called my girlfriend over and had sex with her in my bed and decided he liked my bed and stayed in my bed and never left my bed until Thanksgiving when I came home and rang the front doorbell and yelled, "Anybody home?" like I do any time I show up at home, knowing all too well that someone was home, but that everyone would be like, "And who the hell are you?" And he'd be sitting there at the head of the table, my chair, smiling, knowing he had fooled them all and that they loved him the best now? And I would have to go buy some pizza, instead of enjoying turkey and pie.
 I've been good about not letting these bad thoughts get the best of me. Actually I hadn't much thought about it since Christmas. Then I went to Tampa Am, and it was over. All I could think was that that son-of-a-bitch Chinaman is probably halfway to Jersey by now. It won't be long now! I think the first time it had even crossed my mind was when I was watching one of those silly entertainment "news" shows where they report useless, stalker-type information on America's favorite celebrities and so-called dirt on upcoming films, the likes of: Cameron Diaz wears extra-absorbent tampons, guess we know what time it is! Is Brad Pitt an alien or a moving jungle gym? Eddie Murphy spent two weeks wearing a saddle to research his part for Shrek 2? N'Sync: Jedi knights or jelly doughnuts? I don't know why I find myself watching such crap, but I often do. I think because they occasionally update me on the has-been stars of my childhood. And when they're truly hurting for material they interview the surviving members of M.A.S.H., which gets me super stoked. Like really stoked. You don't even know. Usually, though, it's all bullshit, TV versions of the Enquirer, but that night the thing about the Jedi knights piqued my interest. And it turned out that the story, which is actually factual, is that George Lucas's kid is such a huge faggot fan of N'Sync that Mr. Sellout Lucas thought, "Well, maybe if I cast N'Sync in the next Star Wars people will get off my back about that Jar Jar Binks thing," and threw them in the next episode, titled "Attack of the Clones." They never said what they meant by the jelly-doughnut reference though. But when I slept, I had nightmares of N'Sync attacking me with light sabres.
I awoke in a cold sweat, then walked over to the Skatepark of Tampa. And it was like I was still in a dream. As if it were an actual attack of the clones and me with nothing but a cooler of cold beer to defend myself with. Everywhere I looked I saw kids that looked like someone else, mostly ams posing as pros and pros posing as ams. At first I felt as if I had been drugged in some way so that I could be taken advantage of, but someone forgot to have sex with me. I was hallucinating like all those times we'd trip right before gym class and just stare at the multicolored, zig-zaggy fly balls hit to the outfield where we stood.
 The sun was sweltering hot, and my mind was reeling, so I sought shelter under a tent with Ethan Fowler. "Hey, Ethan," I said to Ethan. And he responded with a queer look. "How's the new place," I asked, 'cause last I spoke to him he was moving into a house in San Diego. But still he gave me this cool-guy stare and ignored me. I was like, what the hell? I've spent time with this kid on tours and whatnot, getting to know him, and I've always thought we've gotten along rather well, but now, maybe because so many people were watching, he was suddenly too cool to talk to the fat kid. "What's your problem, Ethan?" I asked him. And finally he responded, "I'm not Ethan, my name is Billy." "Oh, sorry," I thought. But then I was like, "No. No, it's not. Your name is Ethan." That's when I was sure I was drugged and stumbled off. But this kind of shit happened to me every day, everywhere I turned, right up until Caswell Berry won it all on Sunday. I saw Wade Speyer chilling, and he just laughed at me. Pat Duffy tried to tell me he was a filmer now from like Baltimore or some shit. Joel Meinholz completely dissed me too. I was like, "Dude, I just gave your amateur ass a full interview, and this is how you treat me?" Everywhere I looked I swore I saw pros that I knew, and every time I approached them, they denied not only not knowing me, but even who they were. I tried telling Hutchison about it, but he didn't believe me.
"Andrew, did you see McCrank? Why is he wearing a Think shirt?"
He didn't seem to understand. "Something weird is going on here, Andrew. I saw Tommy Guerrero, and he has a mullet now that is shaved underneath, and no one will respond to their real names."
"Maybe you're wasted," he suggested.
"Maybe you're just afraid to deal with the situation, Ann-dreew." I said it just like that too. Ann-dreew. Real condescending and smart-alecky so he knew I didn't appreciate having my fears dismissed as simple drunkenness. So I walked off, leaving him to stare at my ass as I trudged back to the hotel. Where I picked up my Polaroid camera, with hopes of taking photos of Ethan, Wade, Daewon and all the other pros who were claiming their names were Billy Marks or Tino Razo or who the hell knows what.
The last day of the contest I was totally drunk. I'll admit it. And the things that I saw that day I don't really believe, but the other days I was only slightly wasted, and I'm sure that what I saw was what I saw. But Sunday, when Caswell won, I stopped trusting my eyes completely, which I blame fully on 5 Boro's super-skater, Josh Maready, a.k.a. "Stormin' Mormon." He was the one who ollied the pyramid to back lip on the rail on the other side. But he took so damn long to stick it, like a hundred tries and two hours, that I was forced to drink an entire 12 pack and repeatedly fell off the quarter-pipe. And every time I fell, some kid who looked like Fred Gall helped me up. And every time he did I'd say, "You wish you were Fred Gall, you little fucker!" or something equally life shattering, and he'd just laugh and say, "I am Fred Gall."
"Sure, you are. Sure, you are. And my name is Kelly Bird." Whatever.
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