Grown Man Cries In The Bahamas Chapter 3.5

Is there anything more liberating than skimming across Nassau harbour at night, a rum ‘n’ coke in one hand and a throttle in the other? Drunken shouts and the slaps of dominos drift across from the crack conch shacks of the mainland. You glide under the PI bridge as bass-booming traffic pours over you. Carve a hard right through the entrance to Atlantis marina, white spray on grey glass water. Ease off the gas Cap! You've entered the NO WAKE ZONE. Drift on through the reflections of two thousand three hundred and fifty-five hotel rooms.

            Looming over us was the Walt Disney palace of Atlantis, pink gargoyles in turrets, Pocahontas waterfalls cascading into the marina.

            “Where's your anchor?" asked Eddy as I switched off the head torch.

            "Uh..."

            "Guess we'll be driftin' then." Eddy brought out an Easy-Seal sandwich bag containing a wonky Backwood joint and a lighter. Toke and hold – American rules in the Bahamas.

            “Looks like ya got yaself a slow puncture,” he said. “Bes’ get yourself some good ol’ soapy water.”

            Toke. Hold. Exhale. Stephen was definitely more squishy than earlier.

             “Man, don’ look so worried. Tol’ you already. It’s always like this in the beginning.” Sweet-smelling smoke hung in the balmy night.

            We were a jolly boat bobbing in the shadows of the mega yachts. Mood-lit and spotless as galleries, patrolled by blond cabin boys in starch-white Bermuda shorts and crewnecks bearing the name of the boat. Names like “Acrewed Interest” and “Entrepreneur” scored highly on the pomp scale but “The Aspen Alternative” was in a league of her own. According to Eddy, Minted belonged to Mr. Haagen-Dazs. "Man Tom," he said. "Guess how much it costs them to come across from Miami."

            "No idea."

            "Give you a hint. More than your boat's worth," he said.

            There are times when being stoned just isn’t relaxing. When I retreat into my head and spiral into a state of paranoia. Especially when I start thinking about my own self-image – which had just swung from salty seadog back to sad sack teacher, whose one leaky asset is worth less than a millionaire's petrol money.

            “I'm sorry buddy,” said Eddy. “She was cool, man. Sexy, rich and she could sail..."

            I held the smoke down for so long that nothing came out on the exhale.

            "But what I don't understand," he said. "Why she have to go to India to sort her head out? Thought she was getting her Mudda Theresa kicks workin’ at the AIDS clinic.”

            I guess not. There just weren’t there enough limbless beggars and child prostitutes for her taste. It had to be India. “You want the truth?” I said.  “We had an agreement. We made a pact to never let it go stale. If you truly love someone, you don’t stand in the way of their destiny. Que sera sera. Inshallah. Maktub. Or some fucking Paulo Coelho bullshit!”

            “Far out,” he said and then we said nothing for so long that I couldn’t be sure that I’d said anything in the first place.

            We appeared to be drifting back down the channel towards the harbor. The boom-pine-apple-wine of a party boat grew closer and closer.

            “Know what you shoul’ do?” said Eddy. The joint was now a hot end that required tweezers but we carried on the exercise despite them.

            Tell me what I should do. You got us into this fucking situation.

            “Go solo,” he said. “You can't sit around waitin' for her to come back. How can you learn to take charge of a crew if you can’t sail a boat solo?”

            Enough was enough. “Eddy! I can’t even reverse into my dock space!"

            “Man, you doin’ jus’ fine! You sailed across the Gulf Stream didn’ you?”

             “You and Alice sailed us across the Gulf Stream! I just held the wheel and pulled the ropes when you told me to.”

            “The lines,” he spluttered.  “Come on man! You jus’ turn’ thirty –"

            "Three," I said. "Thirty three."

            "At your age I was sailin’ to Cuba, comin’ back with a hull full o' Cohibas. Come on man, you got ya whole damn life ahead o' you!"

            I wiped the sweat off my face, used it to push back my hair, and pictured the dead follicles on my fingers. Alice thought my receding hairline was “sweet.” Was that a general consensus among females?

            Suddenly I was seriously stoned and listening to my own voice as I lamented the loss of Alice and the dreadful state of my financial affairs while drifting in a slowly deflating dinghy named Stephen. This was the onset of panic and Eddy’s consolatory advice ticked in my ear like a time-bomb. But then I realized that life was amazing as usual and if I had tonnes of cash it wouldn’t be so…authentic…After all, you could never feel truly out-there with ten days off before you go back to the boardroom meeting sporting a gaudy silk tie, hand-stitched by a blind orphan in Thailand. The choices I’d made, the life I’d lived, the people I’d met, none of it would have had substance if I hadn’t committed to a bullshit degree and my first plane ticket up and away from the soul-destroying CV milk-round… Anthropology had come in useful in any case – wherever I was I could study the natives in a non-ethnocentric manner.

            And what of my friends, my housemates, my peers? Until recently we spurred each other on from opposite ends of the globe, with electronic evidence of perfect waves, snow-capped mountains, mpegs of fresh powder runs and wild parties that made you feel guilty for having a girlfriend even though you were thirty something years old and left University over ten years ago.  But that didn’t matter cos' you were still livin’ the dream…of the eternal student. What were they doing now? I’d love to say 2.2 boring children and a Volvo automatic. Not quite. Snowboard chalet company (Daddy’s money), Surf camp (Daddy’s money), Art gallery (Daddy's money), beach-front properties, all-terrain vehicles, sharp-nosed fiancées the lot of them.

            “Few trips round Nassau to get use’ to the reefs,” said Eddy. “Then take off down the Exumas! Three hundred an’ sixty five islan’s boy, one for every day o' the year. If it’s solitude you want, you can have an islan’ to yourself. Or you can head for Staniel Cay for the regatta. Plen’y of daddy’s girls on big white boats dying to meet an English accent! Sound good? Whaju’ say sport?”

            The party boat slid by but it was empty - a palm-fringed ghost ship booming Calypso.

            "Hurricanes," I said. "What about hurricanes?"

            Eddy squeezed the deflating rubber. “Try not to use that word too often,” he said. “But yeah, I been meanin’ to ask, got yaself any insurance yet?”