The State of Johnny Utah

Johnny Utah has a good life. Actually, it’s a great life, especially considering it probably should have ended a dozen times by now. Utah, former Ohio State quarterback turned FBI agent, long had a flair for the ultrahazardous and life-threatening. A former adrenaline junkie in a constant search for his fix, Utah’s now (mostly) kicked the habit. Today he sits pensively on a stool in Angelo’s, the bar he owns 200 yards from the Pacific Ocean, as the sun’s last rays from a pristine Saturday afternoon illuminate a golden arm that looks like it can still throw a football through a brick wall, about as content as he’ll ever be — a man named Utah, sitting in California, contemplating Ohio. Johnny Utah has a good life. So why is he haunted by the memory of a dead surfer?

Johnny Utah grew up in suburban Columbus, Ohio, the apple-pie-eating, 4.0-earning All-American football player who was an emblem of Middle America and custom-made to grace the cover of Parade magazine. A moderately prized recruit, he went to (where else would he go?) Ohio State, where he took the reins from his predecessor after a string of forgetful Buckeye teams from the mid-80s. Utah started at quarterback for two years, improbably leading Ohio State to the Rose Bowl in his senior all-conference season.

In the Rose Bowl, Utah played probably the best 50 minutes of football of his life, leading the Buckeyes to a lead over the heavily favored USC Trojans. Then in the fourth quarter, what should have been an innocuous hit from a defensive end sent Utah’s shooting star on a different trajectory. On a quarterback sneak on second and short, Utah sustained a blow below the knees that turned lower leg at a 90-degree angle … the wrong way. The fluky hit resulted in a torn ACL — surgeons promised Utah he would never play football again.

Having always planned on playing football in the NFL, Utah faced the first of many personal identity crises after doctors told him wouldn’t play football again. Following his parents’ wishes, he went to law school (of course), the perfect full-time distraction for someone who no longer knew what he wanted out of life. Because Utah was the obsessive type who gravitated toward the most demanding and competitive pursuits, he thrived in law school (of course) and sought a career in law enforcement; and no donut-huffing, Big Gulp-guzzling local cop (of course), but the FBI. After law school, Utah joined the FBI Academy, where he thrived (of course), graduating at the top of his training class and demonstrating marksmanship scores that embarrassed his conference-leading completion percentage. American Dream still intact.

From the academy in Quantico, Virginia, the FBI assigned Special Agent Utah to Los Angeles, where he would investigate bank robberies in the bank robbery capital of the U.S. “I wasn’t welcome right away,” Utah says. “Like a highly-touted incoming freshman, the rookie agent at the top of his class gets labeled a ‘hot shot.’”

For this reason, Utah was seen as a threat by the established L.A. agents no longer moving up the FBI’s career ladder; as someone who would outrank or replace them in the near future. Utah was simply a newer, better model. A recipe of one part jealousy, one part seniority, and one part Los Angeles brashness, Utah was met with open hostility by his new coworkers. A “real blue flame special,” Director Harp called Utah. “Young, dumb and full of come, I know,” no doubt assigned to L.A. due to a perceived “asshole shortage.”

In an apt illustration of how Utah was received in his unit, take when Utah first met his new partner, Agent Angelo Pappas. Blindfolded for a training exercise, Pappas complained to a coworker about the “indignity” of being “saddled with some blue-flamer Quantico cat, some quarterback punk. Johnny Unitas or something.”

“Punk. Quarterback Punk,” Utah introduced himself.

Because envy is frequently a poor judge of character, most people are inclined to try and hate Utah upon meeting him, like Pappas. No one should be blessed to have great brains, looks, athleticism, and personality — it’s just not fair. But Utah’s overwhelming sincerity soon neutralizes the prejudice many harbor against him, Mr. Perfect. Pappas wasn’t invulnerable to Utah’s charm, as Utah befriended him by supporting Pappas’ hypothesis that most of the department had dismissed as an “it was the one-armed man who did it!” theory of a crackpot.

When Utah joined the unit, a gang called the Ex-Presidents had been terrorizing the consumer banking scene in Los Angeles. They dressed like high school pranksters on Halloween — wearing suits and masks made in the likenesses of former presidents Johnson, Nixon, Carter, and Reagan — but robbed like professionals; looting 27 banks in three years. Their stoke of genius was to forego the big safes in lieu of the cash drawers — they would be in and out of the banks in 90 seconds. This smash-but-mostly-grab style allowed the Ex-Presidents to evade capture. Never let anyone get shot. Never get greedy. Never go for the vault.

Pappas’ crackpot theory was that the Ex-Presidents weren’t from the crop of usual suspects, but a group of surfers, of all things. Imagine that: a group of juvenile slackers in wet suits outsmarting Quantico’s finest and making asses of the entire FBI. Detective Pappas’ theory originated from what scant evidence they had: the location of a tan line on one of the conspirators whose calling card was exposing his buttocks to bank patrons; a soil sample from a bank counter that revealed the presence of Sex Wax; and a dormant period that coincided with the non-summer months. Utah challenged Pappas to help him catch the Ex-Presidents in a heated confrontation, cruelly urging Pappas to “get some rent-a-cop night security job, tell ‘Nam stories.” Pappas, enraged, responded with anger, which Utah channeled into renewed enthusiasm for the job. Pappas shared his theory with Utah, which Utah was willing to pursue as a valid lead.

Soon afterward, Utah was walking around a Southern California beach with a surfboard under his arm, a perfect place to find a wave and an improbable place to find a crew of mastermind criminals. “Act stoned, ask questions,” Pappas advised Utah.

For a group of purported free spirits, surfers can be very insular, very territorial. Ingratiating himself with that community proved more difficult than Utah initially guessed. His breakthrough introduction was made by an undertow.

While ignominiously attempting to surf without the slightest idea how, Utah beefed on a wave. While the current beneath the surface churned him up, a delicate but strong hand pulled him out of the water. A young girl with short brown hair stood over Utah as he emptied his lungs of seawater. Short on patience and even shorter on compassion for ignorant outsiders, Tyler Endicott berated Utah for attempting to surf and nearly killing himself while doing so, and walked away. But Tyler had what Utah needed: the keys to the surfing scene and to his heart.

The ever-persistent Utah eventually persuaded (well, pestered) Tyler into teaching him how to surf. Utah’s affinity for riding waves grew rapidly, and his focus on the “mission” became obscured by the froth of loins and sea foam. But that’s when Utah and Tyler crossed paths with Bodhi, a former lover of Tyler’s whom she described as “a modern savage, a real searcher.” For what? “The ride. The ultimate ride.”

The union between Johnny Utah and Bodhi (last name unknown) was like two stars from different galaxies colliding with one another. Both had always exuded enough vibrant energy to light an entire solar system, but at great distances from one another. Now they were in the same zip code. There was tension at first, as each regarded the other with caution. But a game of beach football changed that.

After the wary pleasantries between Bodhi and Utah, the group unwittingly invited Utah to play a game of football. On a beach lit by the headlights of a handful of jeeps with an audience smaller than Utah was accustomed to, Utah and Bodhi’s competitive spirits were on full display. Before long, Utah was trying much harder than an all-conference, big-time college quarterback ought to for a game of leisurely beach pigskin. After an hour or so, with the competitive juices flowing, Utah chased a scrambling Bodhi towards the ocean, tackling him into the surf.

Bodhi’s friends immediately came to his defense, ready for a fight. But Bodhi, his suspicions now confirmed, stopped it before it began. “Don’t you know who this is? This is Johnny Utah. The Ohio State Buckeyes, all-conference, remember?” Bodhi recounted Utah’s heroic effort three years earlier against ‘SC, as Bodhi called it. A complex and fiery friendship was born.

*****

The dual personalities of Utah’s lives continued to grow more distinct. There was the day job with the FBI — which increasingly involved Utah showing up late with a surfboard and shorts — and the social life that was supposed to be an extension of his day job that was instead consuming it. Utah and his partner Pappas grew closer, as did Utah and Bodhi. One pair of friends became involved in shootouts with meth dealers and ate meatball sandwiches on stakeouts, while the other pair went night-surfing and contemplated universal truths around campfires. It was only a matter of time before one life destroyed the other.

One afternoon while working undercover/hanging out with his friends (who could tell anymore?), one of Bodhi’s surfer crew showed his rear-end to another of the bunch as a childish joke. But this indecent exposure cracked the case, which instantly shifted into focus for Utah: the adrenaline junkies, the same pair of butt cheeks that mocked Utah and Pappas in security footage, the career surfers on an endless quest for summer. Utah and Pappas were on the hunt for Utah’s own friends.

Things escalated quickly from Utah’s discovery that his buddies were the most notorious bank robbers west of the Rockies. The next time the Ex-Presidents made an executive order to bank patrons to get on the floor and to bank tellers to empty their drawers, Utah and Pappas were there. Bodhi (playing Ronald Reagan) and his crew acted so quickly that Utah and Pappas were unable to apprehend them upon their exit from the bank.¹ A furious chase ensued. As fate would have it, Bodhi would be forced to flee on foot, Utah hot behind him — a game of two-hand touch between two competitors with the highest of stakes.

The chase took the two of them through nearly a mile of SoCal side streets. When Utah followed Bodhi over an embankment into one of the L.A. aqueducts of cinematic fame, he re-aggravated the knee injury that ended his football career. Climbing another fence opposite the end of the big ditch where Utah lay in pain, Bodhi, from the cover of a silicone mask of Ronald Reagan, looked directly in Utah’s eyes. Unable to bring himself to kill the friend who liberated him from the confines of the working stiff, law-abiding world that Utah’s parents had dreamt for him, Utah pointed his sidearm straight into the sky. Screaming in emotional and physical agony, he discharged 14 shots at the clouds passing overhead.

Knowing that Johnny Utah doesn’t just miss, Pappas confronted Utah on his mysterious and inexplicable misfiring of six shots. “I believe you’re either scared, or you’re getting too goddamn close to this surfing guru buddy of yours. … I don’t believe you’re scared.” Pappas could have ended Utah’s career right there. But he thought Utah would ultimately do the right thing.

Foolishly, Utah didn’t seek safe harbor in the meantime. Tyler and Utah had a nasty fight, leaving Utah distressed. In the morning, Bodhi and the Ex-Presidents showed up, recruiting Utah for their “one last job” before the end of summer, leaving Utah little say in the matter. Utah tried to talk sense into his friend, reminding him that he is an F, B, I agent. “Yeah, I know man. Ain’t it wild?” responded Bodhi.

Bodhi’s idealism had transformed him from a recreational surfer looking for a good time into a possessed sociopath who fashioned himself a revolutionary, a symbol of a movement in the fight “about us against the system. That system that kills the human spirit.” He handed Utah a shotgun emptied of its shells. Utah wasn’t given a Bill Clinton or Gerald Ford mask, but was going in naked from the neck up.

The bank robbery went smoothly, at first. Then, in a dramatic deviation from everything that had made the Ex-Presidents successful, Bodhi demanded that they go into the vault. A shootout ensued, resulting in the death of an off-duty cop, the death of the gang’s Lyndon Johnson stand-in, and Utah being knocked unconscious. He was left behind for the cops. By the time the police arrived, the time to catch Bodhi and his cronies before they disappeared for the summer was quickly expiring. Pappas and Utah headed for the Santa Monica airport.

While attempting to creep up on the Ex-Presidents, Pappas was ambushed, taking a fatal shot to the abdomen. Utah was taken prisoner on the propeller plane that doubled as the escape vehicle for the remaining Ex-Presidents. Bodhi narrowly escaped after a ‘chute-less Utah jumped out of the airplane in a suicidal attempt to capture Bodhi, losing his gun in the process but accompanying Bodhi and his parachute the ground.

*****

Several months later, torrential rains pounded a small town on the Australian coast. The locals fled, fearful of the wrath of what was being called the “50 year storm.”² A bedraggled Utah parked his car and meandered down to the beach. Some of the boldest surfers in the world passed him seeking shelter, wondering who the crazed fool was heading down toward the ocean violently exploding with thousands of megatons of TNT. Utah had ten minutes before FBI and Australian authorities would be swarming the beach. Down at the water’s edge, Utah found what he was looking for: a crazed daredevil in a wetsuit, staring at the ultimate ride that he had spent his whole life seeking.

Utah gave Bodhi one chance to come quietly, one that he knew Bodhi would never take. “Special Agent Utah,” Bodhi greeted him. More than anything, Utah wanted Bodhi to know that he had won. No longer friends, but still competitors and equals — after delusion had corrupted Bodhi’s spirit, Utah wanted Bodhi to know that in the world’s most daring game of cops and robbers, Utah had followed him to the end of the earth to win. A struggle ensued. It wouldn’t have been too different from two brothers wrestling on the living room floor if it weren’t for the Pacific Ocean pitching and rolling in the background and enough law enforcement to invade a small country bearing down on them. Utah finally locked a handcuff on Bodhi.

“Look at it!” Bodhi shouted, gesturing toward the ocean. “It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity, man! Let me go out there and let me get one wave, just one wave before you take me in. I mean, come on man, where I am I gonna go, man? Cliffs on both sides! I’m not gonna paddle my way to New Zealand! My whole life has been about this moment, Johnny. Come on, compadre. Come on.” he begged.

Utah let Bodhi go, in one last act of compassion. He knew that Bodhi would never return to shore. Bodhi had found the ultimate ride, and he hitched it all the way into the afterlife. When asked why he let Bodhi go instead of allowing him to rot in prison for the rest of his life, Utah’s eyes narrow, reciting an answer he’s given much thought.

“Although his lust for thrills — for the ultimate ride — eventually turned him into a monster, I still owe him my life. He opened my eyes to a new world, a new way of life. When everyone around shunned me, saying things like I was ‘from Kansas or something,’ Bodhi knew where I came from, who I was, and what I was about. When people would say, ‘Lawyers don’t surf,’ Bodhi would tell them, ‘This one does.’

“There was a deep mutual understanding and profound respect. I only wish his vision hadn’t been corrupted at the end. After all he had done, it was justice for him to go that way instead of having him spend the next decade in and out of various courts. So I let him go.”

Bodhi had always had a death wish, and Utah merely granted it. While walking away from Bodhi as he was crushed by towering waves no mortal could survive, and an international police force overran the beach, Utah pulled his FBI badge from his pocket and realized that he no longer wanted that life. He cast the badge into the ocean. Why would he do such a rash thing?

“You know, I just decided I didn’t want to play the cops and robbers game anymore, man. I got my best friend killed and nearly the love of my life, too. I just said, ‘Fuck it,’ you know?”

*****

After the FBI, Utah tried to fill the void in his life. He contemplated a football comeback. He trained tirelessly for months, hopeful that new treatments would allow him to play with his former knee injury. He went into training camp with the Cleveland Browns, but the team eventually cut him prior to the season, apparently satisfied with their quarterback situation. Other teams expressed interest in Utah, but Utah snubbed them. He wanted to play on a team for which he had some allegiance; he wanted it to mean something, unlike just throwing a ball for a paycheck.

Soon after, an investigation into Utah’s Ohio State teams would reveal that several of Utah’s teammates had committed infractions by accepting free drinks purchased for them by fellow students while frequenting Columbus drinking establishments. Investigators called the complimentary beverages an “improper benefit,” vacating all of Utah’s wins and his Rose Bowl victory. The university distanced itself from Utah’s teams, so that you won’t find Utah’s number 9 jersey anywhere, or his boyish face on any promotional materials. “Sometimes, it’s almost like I never even went to Ohio State,” says Utah.

For years after the aborted return to football, Utah engaged in odd jobs with an element of danger to make ends meet and to keep from becoming mad with inactivity. He did some private investigator work. He spent a few years doing commercial crab fishing in Alaska during the peak season. The danger and the possibility of death seemed to be the only thing keeping him alive. Tyler and Johnny had been married and later divorced, as Tyler settled down in a 9-to-5 job; some administrative role for a nonprofit organization (or as Utah dismissively calls it, “settling”). They had a daughter together, Dakota, who Johnny says is a natural athlete, and is starting on her varsity volleyball team as a freshman. Utah hopes she sticks with team sports. Be challenged externally, because being challenged internally can drive one crazy.

Five years ago, Utah bought a bar in a sleepy town on the central coast of California, and named it after his deceased partner. Angelo’s does solid business, for being run by a quarterback punk anyway. It attracts a strange blend of locals and tourists; casual folks looking for a beer and a beach. Surfing and football memorabilia line the walls and, if one looks closely through the glare from sunlight, you can see Number 9 on some dusty, framed magazine covers from decades past.

Is he happy? Johnny Utah squints, thinking. Were he not older with wrinkles (only a few) and some stray gray hairs, he would look like a stoner in a teenage buddy comedy. “Absolutely. Eventually, I learned to stop going for the vault. Not to get greedy, and just let life come a day at a time. Sometimes it’s crazy, like my life was lifted from the script of some action movie.” Utah sips a Corona, and stares toward the sunset. “Deep down, I’ll always be the overachieving football player from Ohio who dreamt of winning the Super Bowl. When that was taken from me, Bodhi opened my eyes and showed me a new life that could help me fill the void.” A man constantly in voluntary exile, Utah’s never far from home. He still surfs everyday.

1. Why Utah and Papps didn’t have backup present is unclear. [↩]
2. As in, it was roughly 50 years between storms of that severity. [↩]