The Beach Beneath the Beach

One day in 1992, Billy wakes up. He’s a young man floating in the ocean next to the Santa Monica pier. He has no memory. This hilarious and startling novel chronicles Billy’s first eleven days on earth. Friendship, love, sex, spirituality and violence are all redefined as Billy invents his own version of reality on a stretch of urban beach filled with odd characters and mortal peril.

It starts with an 18 year old boy in the sea next to the Santa Monica Pier. He has no memory of anything, not even how the world works, or even if it should work. Does it last a few moments, or forever? He’s so lost that it takes him an hour to realize he can walk up on shore, that he has legs, that he’s a separate being from the water and air. He’s wearing a Billabong wetsuit. Billy, named for his sole possession and only piece of clothing, experiences every one of his first eleven days on earth as an epic journey. He confronts the need for food and water and how to deal with the things that come out of his body. He discovers friendship and love and violence. He develops his own concept of what is good in the world. His neo-hippy love obsession, Elysia, describes him as having “the clearest poet eyes in the world.” Her smart and doomed alcoholic boyfriend, Roka, says Billy sounds like “a sad little robot that just got activated.” Who is he? Where did he come from? Is he an alien or a prophet? Why are women special, and men not so special? Why is pizza better than a hamburger? Why are there so many questions in the world? Read this quirky and mind blowing chronicle to find out.

Ted Michaels is a writer and actor who lives in Pasadena, California. He is an alumni of the Groundlings comedy theater and has been performing live improvisational comedy in Los Angeles for twenty years. He’s acted in some television shows, some indie movies, and written some television and things for the internet too. He played bass guitar in Cee Lo Green’s puppet band for the 2011 Grammys. He performed with Eddie Izzard in Mr. Izzard’s “One Word Improv” show at the Coronet Theater in LA. He’s also a regular performer in the Jim Henson Company’s puppet improv show, “Stuffed and Unstrung,” which has had runs in New York City, Edinburgh and Sydney. This is Ted Michaels’ first novel.