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Outside magazine, May 1999

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The Workaday Adventures of a Barefoot Boy Millionaire and His Girl Next Door (cont.)

IN 1992, SHORTLY AFTER THE YOUNG SURFER had been named one of People's 50 Most Beautiful People, Taylor got Slater a recurring role on Baywatch, playing Jimmy Slade, who lived in his yellow Chevy van and surfed a lot when he wasn't battling international jewel thieves. Slater brought a certain stoicism to lines like, "Hey, Summer, if I hot-wire my van, can I park it at your mom's trailer tonight?"

"All the stories were pretty stupid," Slater says, popping grapes into his mouth. "They showed me waking up in the morning in my van, and the sun is setting over the water, with an onshore breeze, when in the morning it's always glassy—ridiculous. Though watching myself and trying not to think of it as me, I thought I wasn't that bad." He glances over shyly, and then hurries on."But overall it inspired me not to act. Don't tell Bryan that."

"When Kelly modeled for Versace," his mother says, "all the surfers said he looked like a fag. But I told him, 'You watch, they'll all be modeling,' and now they all are." Taylor is equally scornful of the purists: "Every one of Kelly's so-called peers who were riding him would have cut off his own left testicle to do Baywatch."

Still, Slater says, "I begged to get off the show. The motivation was 30 percent me just wanting to be a serious athlete and 70 percent surfers saying, 'Slater made a mockery of surfing, there's no forgiveness, fuck him.' That hurt. In fact, that was probably 95 percent of my decision," he adds ruefully. His face firms up. "But I used that grudge against those guys to drive myself harder, and I won my first world title that year."

Slater has always stood a little apart from his fellow surfers. "A lot of guys are like, 'Fuck contests, surfing is about loving the waves, about the community, man,'" he says. "But they're also the first guys to kick you out of the water at their break." (A Baywatch plot, as it happens.) He parses the distinctions carefully: "What's life for? I don't think it's for smoking pot"—Slater is famously antidrug—"but I do think it's for sitting around on the beach all day.

"I mentioned the whole Spicoli thing once to Sean Penn"—Penn played stoned surfer Jeff Spicoli in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and Slater does a nifty imitation of his "tasty waves, a cool buzz, and I'm fine" speech—"and he was like, 'Oh, no!' He was concerned I'd say, 'You fucking gave us a bad image!' But surfers love the movie; we gave ourselves the bad image and we keep on doing it."

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Slater believes surfers simply goof around too much. "The overall level of surfing should be 20 percent higher," he says. "People should focus more on basic form, the shoulder line and balance, which no one talks about, and study board shaping and wave and wind patterns."

He plans to write a book and make a video on surfing technique, if he can find time. "Right now," he says, "I enjoy everything I do and I want to keep it that way. I wake up, make a few calls and check the wave situation, then either head down to San Diego to see friends and surf or maybe up to Santa Barbara to see my board shaper, play some golf or go fishing with him, surf.

"My goal this year is to read one book a week, but I'm behind. I've only read three so far: The Man Who Listens to Horses, The Art of Peace, and a Ben Hogan biography. Looking forward to Pimp: The Story of My Life, though. It's supposed to be juicy."

"Kelly's lived in this little protected world," Judy Slater observes. "And he's still got some of that surfer stuff in him. I used to say, you ever talk that surfer stuff to me—bitchin' and gnarly—I'll smack you. He better do more than just hang out this year," she continues, affectionately, "or I'll kill him."

Slater is just hanging out—but with a higher purpose. He has begun spending time with his two-year-old daughter, Taylor, the fruit of a brief relationship, and took her surfing for her second birthday. "The board was so big she thought it was a boat," he says fondly. "She was hanging on to daddy." He also took Anderson surfing as a gift for Valentine's Day. "She was a little scared at first, but it was chest-high, slow-rolling waves, and on a big, floaty board. I calmed her down.

"Originally, when we dated in '94, I associated Pam with being on Baywatch and I hated that part of it." Slater says. "When people ask for autographs, if they're getting hers they're not getting mine, and if they're getting mine they're getting hers too. But Pam is really sweet, and if her fame is part of the price, so what? I love being with her. And surfers seem kind of stoked that I'm going out with Pam," he adds, "because she's known as a hot chick."

WHEN THE PHOTO SHOOT IS DONE, SLATER says, "I just want to catch one wave." He wades into the 58-degree water and stands on a small rock about 30 yards from shore. There is no swell at all, but he holds his board and stares intently at the horizon for ten minutes, frozen like a stork waiting for a fish to swim into view. The sun is low, and it's gotten quite chilly. At last a two-foot wave burbles up; Slater rides it in on his belly, slaloming among the rocks. He pops up and tucks the board under his arm. "Great wave," he says, sincerely.

Then we're back on the highway in Slater's SUV, listening to "The Wave, 94.7, cool jazz," Slater informs me, mimicking the deejay's mellowness perfectly as he blows by everyone else in the diamond lane.

So, does he have the ideal life?

"I do have the ideal life," Slater says. "I have maybe 30 good surfboards, a Mercedes M Class, some guitars, some golf clubs. I almost have enough money put away, a couple million bucks, where I can live off the interest, fly anywhere I want, maybe get a house in Hawaii, keep my condos in Florida and Australia, be in the water, be warm all the time.

"What else do I need?"

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