Having moved from the richest suburb in America to a plantation in Florida (which his father dreams of recreating as Tara, the mansion from Gone with the Wind), George Tabb enters late adolescence with a black leather jacket and a penchant for punk rock — quirks that don’t sit well with his conservative Southern classmates. In Surfing Armageddon, Tabb shares his painfully funny recollections of teenage rebellion, family turmoil, and an abusive father with black humor and real humanity.

From chapter 1:

Goin’ South

So there I was, just having finished the tenth grade at Greenwich High School, in New York City’s richest suburb, when I found myself driving a motor vehicle for the second time in my life.
The first time had been about a week earlier, when I had driven my father’s brand new Suburban to a local supply store to pick up some moving materials.
After my youngest brother Sam and I loaded up the mini-truck, the first thing I did was back the thing up into a stonewall fence.
Probably built at least two hundred years earlier.
We both hopped out of my father’s newest toy to survey the damage, and assess the beating I was bound to receive.
But to our surprise, the only damage done was to the strewn about stones, and a tiny scratch on The Surburban’s trailer hitch.
Now, eight days later, as Sam sang along to “Sweet Transvestite”, from The Rocky Horror Picture Show and “Sonic Reducer” by The Dead Boys on a cassette my mom and stepfather, Nick, had made for us, I felt my father’s brown and tan vehicle pull back and forth and from side to side along I-95.
South.
It wasn’t like I hadn’t felt it do that before.
The fact was, it had started doing that pulling thing about one minute after I had smashed down that rock wall.
But I sure as shit wasn’t saying anything, and Sam never even knew.
My father, Lester, upon driving The Suburban a couple of days after my “accident”, felt the problem and brought it to the shop.
He was told the beast had a fractured A-Frame.
Surprisingly, he blamed my stepmother, Cybill, who swore up and down it wasn’t her who did it.
But the two black eyes she received made her look mighty guilty.
In the Tabb family eyes, anyway.

*

As Sam, me, and The Suburban swung back and forth through the state of Delaware, so do did the horses we were towing.
Every few seconds I could see one or two of them stick their heads out their tiny uncovered windows in the trailer behind us, and shoot me dirty looks.
And Sassafras, our aging two hundred pound plus Great Dane, seated in the back seat, wasn’t very happy either.
She kept throwing up the kibble and canned meat she’d eaten for breakfast.
So the car smelled like rotten dog food.
And piss.
Because our father, who had installed Citizen Band (CB) radios in all the Tabb vehicles traveling south demanded we not stop for hundreds of miles at a time. So I found myself trying to pee into coke bottles.
The first few times went okay, while peeing to Susan Sarandon singing “Toucha Toucha Touch Me”, I found myself getting excited, and my penis getting stuck in that tiny bottle opening.
“Take the wheel, Sam,” I tell my brother, as we travel at seventy-five, at the slowest, trying to keep up with our stepmother the speed-queen.
“I don’t know how to drive,” yells Sam, thirteen years old, and takes the wheel anyway.
I try to pull the head of my penis out of the coke bottle, and the more I yank on it, the stiffer it becomes.
“Holy fuck,” screams Sam, as a Semi almost hits us from the right side.
I peer in the rear view mirror and now there are two horse heads, both with burning flames in their eyes, staring at me.
After an almost second crash with another Semi, this time on the left, I grab the wheel back from Sam, and just let the coke bottle hang between my legs, hoping it will fall off soon, and not caring about the piss that’s going to spill all over the newly carpeted mini-truck.
“Breaker one-nine,” I suddenly hear my father’s voice yell at Sam and I as I finally gain some control of his stupid car and horses.
Sam picks up the CB radio handset and talks back to my father, “breaker one-nine, go ahead King Chief”.
King Chief.
My father’s chosen name for his CB “handle”.
Ours was “Sweet Transvestite”, which, of course, drove the rest of the family nuts.
But I wouldn’t answer to anything else.
“Breaker one-nine,” my stepmother, Cybill, would say on Channel 19, to which we were all tuned into, “George, try and keep up, you little fuck.”
Of course I’d ignore her and blast the tiny cassette player that was going through batteries we’d stolen from my dad’s desk faster than Sassy could eat her vomit back up on the back seat.
“George,” my sister Diana says, from our orange Datsun 510 wagon, that would later become mine through a series of unfortunate occurrences, but had started with a hot girl in short-shorts licking an ice-cream cone, “It’s Diana, can you hear me?”
Sam picks up the handset and tells her of course we do.
I, of course, hit Sam.
We only answer to Sweet Transvestite.
In tribute to our newest hero, Dr. Frank-n-Furteer, frrrrrom The Rocky Horror Picture Show, a movie my mom and Nick had taken us to see in the ccity’s West Village, where it had started running at midnight only shows.
Of course we didn’t understand much about the movie, but the one thingg we did get was the naked girls.
All over the place.
On the screen, and in the aisles of the theater. Changing from one outfit to another.
At first it felt like my mom and Nick had taken us to some porno show, where they were finally going to sell us into a child-sex ring, like my stepmother and father had always promised they’d do.
But soon we began to really like the movie, and now, as we sang along with the Ampex cassette, we dreamed of wearing leather underwear and fishnets, never mind the high heels.
Yup.
Healthy American boys.
“This is King Chief,” we hear my father yell at us again, as we turn over the tape and listen to “Caught With The Meat In Your Mouth” by The Dead boys, which is midway through the first album. A record Nick had found at the New York public library on Tenth Street and Sixth Avenue, that he thought we’d like. He was wrong.
We loved it.
It was Sam’s idea to turn the tape over.
He figured if I stopped hearing Ms. Sarandon’s voice, maybe the bottle would fall off from between my legs.