Sailboat Story Part 1

Thursday, December 31, 2009

Marathon, Florida Did I ever tell you my Sailboat Story? Well, it was 2004 or 2005, I forget which. I was riding high on the crest of a tsunami of Ebay success, and I was lovin’ it! Those were the days, I tell you. Tax free income. I was exceptionally successful buying and selling Porsches and Porsche parts, as the venue was not yet over-saturated with others. I was in a unique position: I knew what I was doing, I had some money, and I did not have a wife, girlfriend, mother or family to tell me I could not part out cars in my driveway under a canopy of blue tarps. I don’t know if you people know it or not, but women HATE blue tarps in the front yard. I do not understand why. That is another mater altogether though, I know. So. I was flying high, one of the few members on Ebay ready and willing to purchase any ‘good deal’ of a car or part, and flip it for a handsome profit. This was working out very nicely for me too, I must add. I had accumulated a very handsome shoebox full of twenty, fifty and hundred dollar bills in my closet. It was like a ChangeJar some people have, but mine was a Box full of foldable. I would usually not know how much was in it, it would be a surprise to count it only every so often, and then rubber-band off $500 chunks at a time. I averaged about ten thousand bucks in that thing every month or two, I shit you not. As a result of my cache of cash, I could impulsively buy most material items I would want to buy. This was usually limited to the occasional non-op Porsche Product or stainless steel commercial restaurant gadget. Or, popcorn machine. Or, unusual cars I had never owned before. I love machines! I truly do. I understand them. I love to learn about new machines. I love to see them for the first time, scrub them, make them work properly, operate them, gaze adoringly upon them. I am very fond of machines, vehicles in particular. One day, quite by accident, I came upon an advertisement for a sailboat. The reason was the ad must have had a term I usually search for in the body of the ad, you know – ‘Porsche’ , ‘Citroen’, ‘Sweden’, ‘Russ Meyer’ , one of those things, I forget which now. The point is : A sailboat! It too could be considered a vehicle, if ‘only’ a vehicle of the sea. They have engines too, I was surprised to discover. They can also cross seas. I had heard that rumor before regarding sailboats. This rumor was supported by the ad copy I read that day. Unfortunately, this particular sailboat was seventy thousand dollars, which was more than I had in my shoebox at that, or any, time. But, the important development here was, I discovered there were ‘sailboats’ out there, and they had engines in addition to sails, and you could sleep in them. Some of them you can even poop in. I was hooked. A thing to know about me is, and those who ‘know me’ will attest to this : When I want something, I get it. I make it happen. Throwing caution to the wind, risk-taking, or slow and steady, I do it. I DO IT. Once I decided I wanted a sailboat, it was after a very brief online courtship I found that vessel I was to love, and love dearly. Although, for the life of me, I can not remember ‘her’ name right now. (In case you don’t know, boats have names, and those names tend to be ‘girl names’, or ‘effeminate names’). About four days into my researching of watercraft on eBay, I found my boat, to be sure! And what a bargain it was – 55 feet of ferro-cement engineering for only twelve thousand dollars! Never ye mind that the diesel engine was seized and it ‘needed some work’ and was four thousand miles away, it was to be mine. I examined the seven tiny low-resolution pictures of what was to be my first foray into watercraft. A hull (that is the word for ‘body’ of the boat) painted red! Three mighty masts! (The things that the sails are strung up from) The engine, albeit ‘seized’ , or ‘broken’ , or ‘fucked’, whatever adjective you choose to describe it, was the least of my concerns. I am a master of those things mechanical. I was bringing my toolbox, and was certain I could fix it. What is a 6-cylinder Caterpillar industrial diesel engine when compared to the technologically-superior engine of the evergreen Porsche 911? Child’s play, I was confident on this point more than any other. So, bid I did, and as usual, I was the victor in the battle of the bids. Oddly enough, there WERE no other bids. I found this a tiny bit concerning, but chalked it up to the seller marketing the thing with misspellings in his ad and lack of good pictures. I was shrewd enough to ask for additional photos, which although equally tiny and grainy, there were in fact more. I felt good about this. I soon owned a boat. Very Very soon after, in mid-April, I was on my way with a brand spanking-new white ‘captain’s hat’ aperch my globe and fantasies of getting an anchor tattoo on my left bicep, just to be ironic in the whole business. I was on my way! I loaded my duffle bag, shoebox somewhat depleted of cash (I had already sent a wire transfer for half the purchase price already) , My Heckler & Koch .45 caliber handgun, my laptop, seventeen protein bars (I was on a diet) into my 1995 black Range Rover, and butterflies in my stomach, yanked the transmission lever into ‘Drive’ and stabbed at the gas pedal with the newly-purchased flip-flop on my right foot. Fuck, YEAH. I don’t know how much you know about Geography, but Eugene, Oregon is a very very far distance from Key West. I thought it may be - what?- three thousand miles? Isn’t that what people say about ‘coast-to-coast’? Right? Three thousand miles? Well, I suppose it is. The thing is, that dangling phallus of Florida is about another nine hundred miles from ‘The East Coast’ - AND – If, let’s say, the computer-controlled air suspension on your Range Rover fails in, I don’t know, MISSISSIPPI, that is a very long way to drive with no buffer between road imperfection and your spine. I can still remember every single expansion joint in the freeway from Biloxi to Marathon. Hurtling along the freeway at eighty-five miles an hour, even the tiniest of imperfections in the surface of the road with actually cause your vehicle to leave the terra firma entirely, and return with a teeth-rattling landing. These imperfections are engineered every two hundred feet. That is 26 times in every 5200 foot mile. That is once every second and a half at eighty miles an hour. I can tell you, from a perspective of experience, it is not entirely pleasant, and you never get completely desensitized to it, like someone shooting at you with an assault rifle. I need to move this story along, I need to get you ‘on the boat’, I know this, so I will spare you the part of the story where I pull off of the freeway somewhere in Mississippi to investigate why my vehicle is suddenly shaking violently and collapsed to within three inches of the actual road itself. I will not tell you the part about how, immediately off of the freeway, the pavement ended and turned into sand, and even though on my map it showed the Gulf of Mexico RIGHT THERE, I could not find it. I will not tell you there was water, sure, but no ‘beach’, but only chain link fence and mammoth, stern and somehow unpleasant grey gigantic warships floating menacingly just beyond these fences of galvanized steel. This is superfluous to my original story. I will also not share with you the part where I, who considers himself very ‘urban’ and has lived in Los Angeles, and can take care of himself, and has seen it all, gets a bit nervous when he finally finds a convenience store where he thinks perhaps he can pull over and raise the hood of his vehicle and investigate what the problem is. I will not tell you how, when he finds what appears to be a convenience store, but all of the windows are made out of plywood, and there is a (literally) BURNING 1985 Honda Accord in the parking lot, he begins to worry a tiny bit. I will also, in the interest of moving this story along, not tell you how as soon as I got out of my Shiny Range Rover, a gaggle of Negroes dressed in football jerseys and with afropicks sticking out of their mushroom clouds of nappy locks began to march directly at me. I will also not tell you how I, for once, found myself actually, truly, frightened by the completely foreign Mandingo scene before me turned around, jumped back in my car, and quickly pressed the door lock button, and frantically began to try to stab the ignition key into it’s home, missing it maybe seven times, and then, in a panic, forced life into my wretched vehicle, and then flooring the accelerator pedal, got straight back on the freeway, and did not get off again until I absolutely had to, as the low fuel warning light had been illuminated for the last half hour. I will not tell you any of this. I do not want to bore you with ‘the little stuff’ Let’s just get to Florida, shall we? .. I wish it had been that easy in reality.

Another Reason To Live

So this is it, the end of the decade, the end of the experiment, the end of this madness. Two more days, I can not wait! Things are really starting to unravel here now. I hope I can last that long. To quit now, so close, would be a travesty of monumental proportions with a significance that would spawn aftershocks throughout humanity. I can hang on. I think. I took a look in the mirror today, and what I saw there was not pretty. Except for my ‘Hair Pretty’, that is. I have not shaved or showered since Christmas Eve. My eyes looked like sunken flat pieces of glass, the button eyes of a snowman that were pressed in too deep by insensitive thumbs. My hair was sticking up at some crazy angle on the side, but flat on the back of my head. There seemed to be a new scab just over my right eyebrow. I have been wearing the same thermal undershirt for a couple of days, and it was pocked with a variety of stains, coming in almost every color imaginable, and a good number of shapes as well. I had to look away quickly. I could get away from my reflection, but I can not get away from my aroma. I tell you this not to brag, or to attempt to amuse you, but I most surely am beginning to smell funny. And as the saying goes, ‘Not funny Ha Ha’. I would take a shower, but I feel I haven’t the strength or interest. My next meeting with my editor is not until tomorrow night, and I would prefer to just lay atop my filthy pile of blankets, pull my knees up to my chest, and rock back and forth moaning. So I shall. I would take a nap if I could, but my stomach is too upset to allow me to fall asleep. And then there is the issue with my knee, but that is another story for another time. I hope you people appreciate this, what I am doing for my art. My medium : The Human Life! I can make it, break it, bend it, fold it, I could even end it. I almost had, a good number of times during this particular project, but whenever I would get near the edge, I would only have to recall my mother’s face and voice, and I would remember why I’m here and what I’ve been doing all this time. I could almost hear her speaking to me : “Can I microwave you a waffle, Hon?” as she sweeps the cat litter off of the kitchen counter with the grey, sad dishrag. I could almost see her, the strong maternal figure clad entirely in plaids, hunched over a dark steaming kettle of broccoli and Brewer’s Yeast in the kitchen, bandana tightly wrapped over her precious skull like some antebellum black mammy gone somehow awry. It is to earn the pride of sweet dear mother that I continue to do this, and it is for this reason, if not for any other, that I shall see this through to whatever wretched ending is in store for me. For my story too is hers, and hers mine. Just as I have her high blood pressure and crooked arthritic fingers I also have her desire, need, to make the world a better place, if even only a tiny bit. Where she brings joy to the people at the homeless shelter with her boxes of fudge, I will bring happiness to the masses with my gift of literary mastery. It’s the same thing really, when you think about it. Fudge, fiction – fiction, fudge. It’s the philanthropic high we both get helping people. Where she is a sorceress of the saucepan, I am a wizard of the word written. I always felt like she should have written a book herself. Could she ever tell a tale! I used to wake up early on Saturday mornings to sit by her side while she plucked a chicken in the living room just to hear her tell her fascinating stories of life in the big city! Little Rock, Arkansas in the forties! What a crazy time it was, sure, but the way SHE told it, it was just like you were right there in the front of the bus with her, as she asked her ol’ grandma, her darling, innocent little face sending confused glances towards the rear of the vehicle, "Why are niggers so stupid"?! I know she could fill volumes with her recipes too. Her carrot and black bean tofu dip is to die for! I suppose that will be another project I’ll take on as soon as I can : cataloging all the exotic ingredients in that food before she is dead and drags the secrets with her into that grave. She would do it herself if she could, she is very proud. Unfortunately, she is entirely illiterate. I am happy to help, and this will be a very rewarding collaboration for the both of us. Plus, like I always tell her - "You can still go back to school and learn to read and write! Surely you can't be the oldest student getting her GED - You're only 82 years old, for Pete's sake!" She may just surprise us all and write her own book yet. So it was with the mental framed, glossy three by five of Mother proudly displayed on the fireplace mantle of my consciousness I began to wonder: Is the liquor store open for business yet? I decided to say ‘fuck it’ and just keep wearing my dirty clothes another day longer. What difference could it make at this point? I was not attending Fashion Week in Milan. Not for another month or two. I had nothing to lose, and nobody to impress, but I went ahead and put on my pants anyway, I could not afford another indecent exposure charge, even in the name of fine literature. As I began to insert a toe into the leg of my rancid jeans, I had a brilliant idea: My Snuggie Sack! That’s the ticket. Then I will not have to bother with those troublesome buttons, or a shirt at all, for that matter. I kicked my pants away in disgust and found my onesy right where I left it, under the program to the opera I had attended a few weeks earlier with Jennifer Connelly. As her panties drifted out of one of the leg holes of my furry pink jumpsuit I wondered: What was she doing right now? I also guiltily reminisced for a moment – What a fine evening that was! I promised not to kiss and tell, so faithful readers, my journalistic oath dictates I must leave your imagination to fill in the blanks. I can however tell you this: Several trips were made to the local Farmer’s Grange for D-rings, a blue tarp, and live baby chicks. I was thus clad as I stumbled down my stairway, made my way to the front door, and took a deep breath before opening the door and allowing the light of day to illuminate my horrible face.

The Reality Of Last Decade: Pt 2 of 17

The idea was very simple, actually, and I would have been all on board even if I hadn’t lost a coin toss: I was to report on the state of American life, I was to try to describe what it was to be an American, white, happy subject. And we agreed on one thing: the only way to do this right was from far away. It is a Gestalt thing: You can not see the whole picture if you are focused up all close on a fine detail here or there. Like I have always said - You can not possibly cover the war in Afghanistan embedded as a war correspondent, or a member of the press corp. Just the way you can not observe any organism, a seal, a snail, a Golden Retriever from under a microscope – all you could see would be cells and vessels and nuclei, you have to take a few dozen steps backwards and look at this thing through a telescope, or with squinted eyeballs, hand over brow, shielding the sun. As the cliché saying goes, the forest for the trees. This is exactly the sort of thing that makes me physically ill. I knew I would not possibly be able to report on the state of being in mainstream America if I was a participant therein. I would have to get back, back, back, and look at it from afar. I would have to alienate myself from those people I was going to write about, I would have to be cold, alone, uncomfortable in order to have any perspective whatsoever. I knew this. I learned this. I executed and stepped into this with total submission. I was going to do everything I could possibly do,wrong, for the next ten years, and as I accepted the four one hundred dollar bills from my publisher/ friend a few days later, I began to worry : Just what the fuck was I thinking? I had behaved like a mongoloid in the past, to be sure, but this went way beyond the tip: this was not just acting like a retard any longer, but actually becoming a retard. My throat ached. The year was 1998, or 1999, I forget which, and there was a lot of talk about this ‘internet’ thing. There was talk it was ‘the future’, that it would make an impact on our lives. I, for one, felt like it was not going to catch on at all. This being ‘connected’ with other people, ‘going online’ ? A mess of ballyhoo and poppycock, in my opinion. It would never take hold, just like Rap music. I was sure of this. This shit is just for kids, and will never amount to anything in the real world...

The Reality Of Last Decade: Pt 1 of 17

Just over a week to go. I can hardly believe it. This torture is almost over. It is with what could only be described as a gargantuan amount of optimistic enthusiasm that I look forward to January first, 2010. I find it hard to believe, but ten years has passed since my publisher and I first sat down to discuss my going undercover for what we were sure would be the boldest journalistic experiment conducted to date. It began as a laugh, really, a bet, a handshake barside during an Oregon Duck football game. I had just returned from my first real assignment, going undercover for nearly nine months pretending to be an actor trying to break into the movie background extra scene in Los Angeles. For this piece, I had agreed to shave off my beard, cut my hair to an American-Mainstream length, and lose 110 pounds to become a svelte 158 pound aspiring actor. I was to attract and capture a talent agent, become eligible and subsequently join SAG (The Screen Actor’s Guild(of America)) and then be paid good hard American cash for my work as an actor in real Motion Pictures. I achieved my goal, completely surprising the preconceptions of both publisher and public at large, as portrayed in the upcoming Focus Films production ‘Extra, Extra!’. We were celebrating my success, having a few drinks at a nearby purveyor of alcohol, and as we drank, spoke, and then drank again, we wondered : How far could we take this madness? He told me what I had done was ‘Not that big of a deal’ , that I had spent ‘Only eleven months’ working on the piece, and if I had ‘Any real balls at all’, I would be able to tolerate ‘Ten years working on a real piece’ . I, of course, told him he was completely out of touch, and a homosexual to boot. The logic began to degrade from that point onward, with name calling and such, until an unlikely field goal was to be attempted by the rookie kicker of the Huskies of Washington, at which point we became polarized: “ If this piece of shit makes this field goal, you have to spend the next ten years wasting your life and then writing about it “ he slurred. “fuck you!” I replied “This guy is awesome! Buy me a drink! I’ll accept your challenge..” - Drinks were passed between us. The field goal was kicked. The field goal was good. “ What do I get?” I asked. “You didn’t say whatchoo wanted. You just said you didn’t want me to win” My publisher hiccupped. “what would you want”? “I wanted to lose” I admitted. “I want to be part of the boldest journalistic exercise known to date. And, I want you to buy me another G&T” He slammed his pint glass down on the bar top, and squinting his eyes together in what he thought was a menacing fashion, he pointed a finger at me : “You wan well gin or that fancy shit”? Well, some some time later, after a series of challenges of strength (which I won of course) wit (I won) and ultimately luck (The flip of a coin – I lost) I agreed to do it. I was going in , and going in deep. I had no idea at the time just how deep. I would become participant and observer in a fishbowl of monstrous proportions. I was to become an outcast – A suicidal, self-employed mechanic bachelor who would waste his best years living under the radar. I would become the most un-eligible bachelor to sport a soul patch, making friends in order to get close to the action, and then swindling, burning, both close friends and nameless corporations with equal enthusiasm. I was to make a living entirely on my own (My publisher at this time had very limited resources, or so he tells me) as well as letting NOBODY in on the secret, what was happening. In all this time, ten years, I told only one friend about my true intentions here. He paid the ultimate price for this knowledge. His story too became fixed in my manuscript, and one of great pain and anguish. I was to become a nobody, a netherman, an anti-Midas, everything I was to touch was to turn to shit, and I agreed, and signed a pact with the very Devil. I had no idea what I was in for. The next ten years would prove difficult, to describe it lightly, I was to become the addict of a number of drugs, the object of ridicule and derision, the target of an assassination attempt, the recipient of a paternal lawsuit, as well as the object of hatred of dozens of close ‘friends’ in this new drama. Even my own parents were to become victims in this ugly game, losing tens of thousands of dollars across the breadth of the experiment, as well as losing something greater : the belief that their very own progeny was ever going to amount to anything greater than a nowhere ex-con oil changer at the local Pep Boys. .. Now, looking back, I realize the sacrifice may have been too much. I thank God that they lived to see this thing through to the end however, at least if they can hang in there for just a few more weeks, until I get my Christmas bonus. Even now, I can not believe the depravity of the last decade. The women I let believe that I love them, the friends made out of convenience, the actual family ignored and abused, the money wasted.. I nearly lost myself entirely. There were times, weeks, that I had to hide from all the new people I had met and revert back to my true self, my old self, and stop with the drugs, and stop with the booze, and run 5, 6 miles a day, do my push ups, my sit ups, in secret, to not drift too fucking far from reality. We began, thinking, how can I make enough money to live all this time? I knew he would back me up, ultimately. I had a degree from the University of Oregon in both Literature and Psychology. Neither of it mattered, a degree in anything was enough to get a job teaching. I chose to get as far away as possible to gather my thoughts; Taiwan would be the perfect place to compose myself, I thought. I could earn dollars while thinking about what I was going to write in the next ten years. I agreed. I nodded my head and thrusted my person into the uh-huh of the day.

Withering Tip

I will vomit, straight and true, into that toilet. I know I can, and I shall make it so. How did I get here? What is that stain? My god MAN! Look at that. I may be bleeding?, I can’t tell. I can tell you this: I don’t feel so good. Jesus Christ, last night seems like it was so long ago, I have only glimpses of the facts, a pool table, a Chocolate Face, ABBA, impressive amounts of drinking, what is wrong with these people!!? What is that? I heave one or two more times, I wait, I dangle my face over the water, head nearly entirely ensconced in porcelain, and wait for another heave. Will it come? Sweet Jesus, I can not do this anymore. Promises are whispered into the filthy bowl, incomprehensible mutterings as fingers are crossed somewhere behind my back. This is all the fault of that wicked woman, I curse her now, I speak her name into the fetid cloud of stench that surrounds my face in the toilet. I say her name three times, three times exactly, then extricate myself from the bowl, I lean back arching my neck, try to touch the back of my head between my shoulder blades, and let out a hearty laugh – HA! Then I flush the toilet, and with the contents of the bowl go the canon of warm feelings I have ever had for her. Swirling, I watch it all disappear. I stare for a few minutes even after the toilet refills with clear, clean water, trying to calculate just what it is that I witnessed there. Fuck it! I think, and almost  immediately afterwords I think Damn Her.   Damn her straight to Hell. I suddenly feel slight stirrings of hunger. I need something. I need something bland, something cheesy, something greasy and maybe salty. This reminds me of someone I met recently .. Do I have her number nearby? Jesus, God : What was her name? I use the wall to guide me back to my room, my bedroom, I lean against the wall as I walk back to my room, I push against the wall, I hold myself upright as I step step step my way back to my nest of warmth. I feel sick, and I feel like I want to eat hashbrowns and scrambled eggs with cheese. Maybe I just want to go back to sleep? To sleep would be gorgeousness made flesh. To sleep would be a narcotic dream. To sleep would be multiple orgasms. Maybe I just need a nap?