Sailboat Story Continued

May 18th, 2004
Day ---4?
Fayetteville, Arkansas
Almost Noontime, Central TZ

So here I am, on a front porch swing, just sitting, on my way to the boat.

Drove about 950 miles yesterday to arrive here around 12:30 AM or so, to be greeted to a little "party" type situation --

I like the uncomfortable awkward experiences. So here you go!

Within an hour I am doing lines of coke off Anna's bed with her brother, some other guy, and two semi-dimwitted coeds.

No one would be quiet or give a man his rest of course, but finally, 4 AM or such a pad was placed at the side of the bed, and after a small debate between Jone's siblings as to whether Xanax or some other drug I havent heard of may be more effective, and appropriate to my beginner status of medicance, tiny pills were supplied and a short time later I slept.

One visit to the restroom at night to drain (trying as hard as I could to be quiet, including bouncing my spray off the back of the bowl as to not splash(like at Willow's a few weeks before)), and up at an early 10 AM (well that's 8 AM Pacific!) Anna went out to look at a house or something so I sponged off, walked to find an espresso shed, bought my coffee, and returned.

Pacing a few moments later I began doing dishes, and unclogged the tub (producing with my thrusts, a plae, blue, nitrile glove, just one, that surfaced through a miasma of brown rusty water and tiny scraps of a plastic bag.) Cool. At least I fixed something today.

Did some curls, now catching up with some "writing" I like to. I would like to write more often. I always feel so pressed for time. No time. Will this all change soon??

So today my head is still cloudy, or foggy, or whatever. Well hang out here today, and push off for New Orleans tomorrow morning. I should be off my boat by Saturday or Sunday at the latest.

GOOD NEWS!

I've gone almost four days with nothing to eat but beef jerky and Altoid sours. Can this be the new diet craze? I don't even feel hungry, and the pounds seem to just be melting away. Also, other than a beer last night, no drinking either. I hope the whites of my eyes become white again soon. See we shall. Ok, off to go look at Pinzgauers and shoot turtles.



May 21? 04 Saturday afternoon, 5:20 PM Eastern

I'm on my boat. This is probably the biggest vehicle I will ever own. 55 feet. I hear the sloshing whisper of the water against "her" sides.

Oh, the boat -

So, after the dude I bought the boat from didn' show or call me back for about an hour this morning, I was convinced I was an Ebay victim to the tune of $7900 (plus expenses so far) but he called, and I unloaded my gun. Not long after, I boarded the boat.

I got depressed.

This is probably too much work for me. Rotton these. Seized those. Fucking church boat. Dingy looks like shit too. $1100 for THAT? Fuck YOU! But. No matter what, I bought a sail boat sight unseen, and drove cross country 4200 miles to board the fucker. Yep. So I was very upset and depressed for about 5 hours, now I am beginning to like it.

Fuck these people, I like the boat, though. Too bad it can't move. I've bonked my head several times already, pumped a monster shit out of the "head". Where does it go? Will stroke, next on the list, - and will try to stay here all day tomorrow. I'm having my first drink in several days and will follow that up with some "nighty-nights".

Next day, on the boat. Almost 5 PM EST

Suffice it to say, I hate boats. At least I found out I had a total complete meltdown today. I would have left if my money and computer and other shit weren't on my boat.

I had to row the dingy to shore. (The guy I bought it from kept the engine as a result of one of my most near-sighted bargaining episodes (the boat was only a mile from shore and I felt I could use the exercise of rowing)).

Then drove my crippled Range Rover around looking for the internet cafe. I finally found one. The sign said "Open At Noon". I waited until 1 PM. Not open. During this monstrous display of submission, I also finally decided to eat. I went to three restaurants, and was not served in as prompt or timely a manner as I feel entitled to (No, really). So I showed them, and just up and left, Zak-style.

Shitty service down here, remember to tell everyone. Entirely annoyed, finally, I just wanted to row back (Oh, I lost an ore somehow in the dingy earlier, so I bought two more and oar locks)to the big boat, get drunk, and eat some stuff (Just discovered Cuban sandwiches, and had wine, cheese, turkey, and apples. The flood gates had opened.) I put the new oars in, (I also had two bags of rapidly melting ice). Started trying to row, and the oar locks kept popping out of their holes. Not my fault (really). Boat is fucked.) Managed to row about 60 feet from dock, lost an oar lock, and had to paddle back in with only one oar like some raging, off-kilter, Jewish, Pocahantas. By the time I returned to the dock, my Cuban sandwich was drifting sadly about in the bottom of my boat, bumping against apples, bottles of liquor, the final remnants of ice, before sinking, defeated, to the bottom of the boat.

Then, I, determinely ram my dingy into the dock and begin to tie up I have yet, another, old lady, walk up and remind me to come to the hot dog feed at 2:00. I now realize, I can't row out to my boat, I'm stuck. Range Rover is broken, its HOT, I want to drive home, but all my money and stuff is on the big boat, (which at that very moment, decided to resell on Ebay). It is at this time I recieved a call from Kalee. She called me from Eugene. 4,000 miles away, to let me know she has a flat tire and ask me what she should do.

FUCK.

I lost it. I'm screaming how I hate it here, I hate boats, Fuck all these people. Fuck a hot dog. All this in the parking lot with the locals about. I start punching my car, I throw what's left of my bags of ice across the parking lot, screaming, a single word over and over again. Fuck. I am not a boat person. At least I found out, right? Let's say you;re on your boat and you want some batteries, or an apple, or a plastic bag? A huge ordeal to get to shore. And hopefully, when you return to shore, your car works, and has a suspension, and stuff, an, fuck. I still have a 4,002 mile drive home. I'll take my time on the way back though, see some shit, go to a swamp?

Avoid Arkansas.

Final thought. Next stop, sell boat, buy 911 or?? Go to Mexico for a while. Live in LA. Ride my bike 1000 miles somewhere, or walk it? Thanks.

Sailboat Story Part 2

Saturday, January 02, 2010

Florida, hurtling towards my boat. ...(continued, somewhat changed from the Sailboat Story, PT1) ... forced life into my wretched vehicle, and then flooring the accelerator pedal, got straight back on the freeway, and did not get off again for the next three hours, until I absolutely had to, as the low fuel warning light had been illuminated for the last forty miles. I will not tell you how I spent those three hours white-knuckled and glancing into the rearview mirror every 30 seconds to see if I was being followed, or how I tried, to no good effect, to make sense of what I had just witnessed there in that tiny parking lot beside the Gulf of Mexico, but how I did indeed sense I was close to a very real danger that I did not want to know anything about, nor will I tell you how I will be revisited by this mental picture with accompanying fear every so often, unexpectedly, for the rest of my life. I will not tell you any of this. I do not want to bore you with ‘the little stuff’ that would prevent us from getting to the part about the boat as quickly as possible. In all fairness to the physical nature of my tale however, the cornucopia of geographical surprises waiting in store for someone driving across-the-country, I should at least mention that Florida is a very large and unique state. If you would humor me for a moment, close your eyes and imagine Florida. Yes, there it is. You’re imagining the semi-turgid, average sized penis (relative term used here - Length x Width as opposed to 'Actual Size' , which would indeed not be 'average', clocking in at over one thousand nautical miles in length ) a well-aimed cock that threatens to rain urine in the general direction of Cuba right? Well, there is another part of Florida too. Up at the top, where the cock joins the groin of the Southeast Continental United States? Well, right there, Florida turns left and West, and is proud to claim another five hundred miles of swampy coastline in that direction as well. Read: It takes a very long time to drive the length of Florida, from the west then down down down through toll road, swamp, marsh, your vehicle passing alien roadkill, giant bugs you have never seen before decorating your windshield in explosions of guts that threaten to shatter the very glass with their huge bodies. All day you have to pilot your vehicle. All day, and all night it will take you to drive this distance, and that is only if you are able to resist the billboards tempting you to stop and explore amazing Disney World and Epcott Center, and only if you stay as far away from Miami as possible, and are not sucked in by a sudden curious urge to ‘see the skyline’ , or ‘stop for a quick bite’ , since, GEE, you did just drive 3500 miles, and when are you ever going to be in your own car again near Miami? Only if you possess carbon-and-fire tempered self control will you be able to withstand such wonderful pleasures, and only then be able to make it across Florida, the long way, in a day and a night, driving only slightly faster than the posted speed limit, and stopping for gasoline only when absolutely necessary. Florida deserves this endorsement! It’s big, and it’s humid, and it is flat. You have never seen such a big, hot, flat humid state. If you ever find yourself wanting to experience the most unpleasant, hot and boring drive of your entire life, If you just want to go ahead and get it over with NOW, so you don’t have to keep wondering when it is going to happen to you, just pencil in a few days and head South and East. You’ll know when you’re finally there, because you will be wishing you were dead. And so it was that, finally, just a quick nineteen hours after crossing the state line from Alabama, I found myself crossing one of those weird bridge-things you have perhaps seen pictures of before that connect ‘mainland’ Florida with it’s daisy-chain of tiny tropical-looking islands. Actually seeing the road sign that read ‘Key Largo’ was pretty exciting, I have to admit. Soon that very song would be playing non-stop in my head as well as a mental picture of Humphrey Bogart in a trenchcoat, I do not know why. Is that when he says : “Here’s lookin’ at you kid”? I don’t know. I DO know that I could not banish either of these things from my mind, once they inserted themselves there. THAT’S what you get for driving straight across Florida, I guess. You lose your mind. The good news was that once across Key Largo, I didn’t have long to go now! And the road so tiny, it gave the effect of traveling faster, when in fact you can not. It should be noted that the freeway sort of peters out, and gradually shrinks after leaving the vicinity of Hell, AKA Miami. The lamp posts beside the road disappear suddenly and you are left in the dark wondering what happened. Remember: it is now the middle of the night. Doubt begins to flirt with you as the pavement literally disappears right in front of your shiny black SUV with no springs: from fourteen lanes to ten, to six, and by the time you begin to get frightened again, thinking you maybe made a wrong turn - but you have no map because you are 'better-than-that' - and you find yourself totally alone in a swamp after the most unpleasant drive of your entire life, after the road has dwindled down to two sinister yet-attempting-to-be-jaunty lanes, the shoulders of which are decorated with cardboard and plastic gaily-colored profiles of alligators and flamingos hawking God-knows-what, then far off in the black, moist distance where you imagined existed only an eternity of nothingness , and which you had been speeding towards all day and night, you finally see a flashing yellow light.

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.