Grown Man Cries in The Bahamas Chapter 3

Full throttle past the marinas. The harbor was abuzz with craft heading back before the sun set - high-towered marlin boats with sterns full of sunburned punters, followed by jet ski touts revving and hollering and showing off their riding skills - one foot, one hand, side saddle - then an old conch diver in a chewed-up skiff and a Blue Lagoon catamaran with a top-deck full of waving tourists. And me in my Stephen. Buzzing past Bones boatyard, the gas hut man raised his cup and I saluted him back, suddenly wanting a rum ‘n’ coke more than anything in my life. Something to do with the pride of seamanly recognition.

        I headed for a mast on the far side of the boatyards. At the foot of a colonial villa and lawn, was a sparkling 54 foot sloop, the beautiful Medusa. “Man Tom, whatchu’ sayin buhy!? “ Eddy raised a thermo-insulated tumbler from the all teak cockpit. Summer his sun-tanned wife and two teenage kids smiled down from legless yachty chairs that matched the cushions on the benches.

            Eddy was our inspiration. The first and only person to respond to our ad at the poncey white sailing club: Looking to Crew. She has some experience, he has none, but they both have plenty of gusto. He was a cruiser in the true sense of the word. Not because he couldn’t afford to live ashore; he preferred to rent out his properties instead. The perfect treasure-island family, they’d spent the last two years cruising the Caribbean.

            “New dinghy?" shouted Eddy. "Good work Cap'! Come aboard!"

            I wanted to talk to Eddy alone. “Heading over to The Parrot,” I said, puttering alongside. "Thought you might want to come with me..."

            “Man! Whachu talkin’ about?” He raised his tumbler in my direction. “Tie up on the stern! Let’s have one for the road. Hey, where’s ya sexy firs’ mate?” 

            Fuck. I didn't want to do this right now. "Had to go away for a bit."

            “What?" Eddy sat up in his reclining-chair, rattling the ice in his tumbler. "Where?"

            "Calcutta." There I'd said it.

            "What about the big trip man!?"        

            Summer flashed a look at her husband.

            "Cos' o' the boat? Didn' I tell you it was difficult in the beginning?”

            “She's coming back." The engine had stalled. I yanked at the starter cord but Stephen just coughed and spluttered. “Just having a bit of a bit of a –"

            “Less gas! More choke!” shouted Eddy.

Stephen was now adrift with the current.

            “Watch it boy, you’re flooding it!"

            Live-aboard realtor to the rescue. In a pink shirt and a shock of grey hair, he reached out with a telescopic boat hook ($59.99 from West Marine he'd tell me later). Daughter Sky stood up to watch daddy save me. Hot pants and a little bikini top - definitely a candidate for Mr. Barnett’s front row.

            Summer invited me to come aboard while Eddy went below to mix us a roadie. But I assured her I was quite happy bobbing at the end of my tether and it wasn’t long before Captain Comfortable reappeared from his air-conditioned quarters with a miner’s light on his head, balancing two monster rum ‘n’ cokes in thermo-insulated tumblers.   No choke, no throttle. Full choke, half throttle. Half choke, full throttle. All on Eddy’s command. Stephen awoke in an angry cloud of black smoke and we set off on a course for Paradise Island.

         “How much dya’ pay for the ol’ lady?” he shouted above the scream of the engine.

         “A grand.”

         “Course you did! Like I tol’ you, B.O.A.T. Break Out Another Thousand!

            A megayacht named Chevy Toy cruised down the middle of the harbour. It was made of dazzling white plastic arranged in wedding cake tiers, topped with jet-skis and spinning radars. Eddy directed me onto its bulldozed white path. Relaxing in the stern were three middle-aged blondes in bikinis, sipping tall drinks on sun-loungers. Eddy whistled and waved and was granted a mimicked response excluding the whistling and the enthusiasm of the wave. As the megayacht turned towards Hurricane Hole Marina, I pulled off the stern wave, catching an extra notch of speed as we surfed towards the docking pylons of the Green Parrot.

            Paradise Island (or PI if you want to sound like a local) used to be Hog Island on account of the hogs. In her virginal state she was wild and beautiful. But ever since the advent of the bridge, she’d been whored to the highest bidder and was now the face-lifted silicon-implanted spouse of Mr. Sol Kerzner, hotel mogul extraordinaire and inventor of the famous equation: Bahamas = Atlantis resort. Paradise is sliding down a plastic Aztec temple into a see-through tunnel surrounded by sharks. Also available in Dubai.

         In 2004 the Green-Parrot did not belong to Kerzner, but it probably does now. For the time being, the bar staff were free from floral shirts and you could bring your own tumbler. There were two front-of-house dock spaces, both of which guaranteed an audience during drinking hours. One was presently occupied by another tacky white boat, the other by a rugged Dive Catamaran, in the stern of which a gaggle of diver chicks flirted with a dreadlocked instructor.

         “Through the rabbit hole, round the tree,” Eddy instructed as I bastardized a knot round a mooring post. “That’s not the tree, that’s the rabbit hole!” I was worried that he’d give the game away, that someone at the bar would notice. But nobody gave a shit about our dramatic entrance, the dad-sized bunch of keys round my neck or the springy red engine-cut-cable attached to my oil stained shorts. May as well have driven.

            The Green Parrot is:

1. A Class B hangout for mega-yachties who can’t find space at the Atlantis marina.

2. A watering hole for gym-boy Canadian foremen and their Mexican slaves employed to colonise the old Club-Med beach with Atlantis Phase III.

3. An authentic Bahamian experience for Boeing 747 loads of American tourists.

4. A potential gold mine for gold-diggers with long fake nails and pineapple hairdos.

            It was also the favoured drinking spot for young and not-so-young Bahamian professionals, which meant lawyers, bankers and realtors and a smattering of drunken St. Bernadettes teachers I didn’t want to bump into. I followed Eddy to a parasoled table where a group of 40 + white women gulped frozen margaritas. He introduced me to a buxom realtor, telling her that my girlfriend had just left me. She let out a sympathetic “ahhhh poor darling” and I renewed my fantasy of sleeping with an older woman. We flirted for a while and I bought her a drink before she launched into a monologue on the perils of relationships, the double-edged sword of love and the joys of traveling alone in Europe. She concluded with the statement that she’d always been anti-marriage until she met her husband of five years and I realized that we hadn’t been flirting.

             I moved to the bar and scanned the souvenir T-shirts that lined the roof. Most of them featured the names of mega-yachts like Contessa, Winnalot and Entrepreneur. Alice and I used to play a game - I deformed the first two into Cuntessa and Wankalot and was struggling for an innuendo for the last one when Eddy sidled up and suggested we go for a smoke in the dinghy.

WORD LIMIT ISSUE - READ CHAPTER 3.5!