Category: James’ Fiction

Socks and water

Boat Projects, Cabo Verde, Dena's Blog Posts, James' Fiction, Life Under Sail

We arrived in Ferreira with a short list of important projects from the shakedown from Sao Vicente and a strong desire to get our asses in some sea water. James needed to recoup his strength and energy after that brutal underway illness but a little labor is good for a body, right? First things first: jump (the fuck) in the water! I (James) after setting that hook dove in and it was like all was well in the ‘Verse once again. The water was warm, clear and highly salted so we floated until the wrinkles were obvious. We rinsed, stared at shit, and slept like the exhausted sailors we were. We started early the next morning with the head because there’s nothing good about a malfunctioning marine toilet. I mean, our head is a tiny space with barely enough room to do your thing much less deal with a repair while underway so it was good to latch open the hatch, spread out the tools, and go to work. These Twist’n’Lock heads are inexpensive and, while the bowl and base are ceramic, everything else that isn’t a gasket is made of plastic. Anytime the intake water stops flowing, there’s a set of possible reasons. Usually, we start from the hull and work our way in. Since we’d just cleared the throughhull from the outside when cleaning the bottom in Mindelo, I began with the right-angle fitting attached to the seacock. I worked up to where the hose meets the pump and, while the water was stanky and foul, it was free-flowing, so not the problem. I disassembled the pump and found these (above) goose barnacles wedged under the intake flapper valve, keeping the pump from being able to create suction. Those three little shits were the cause of a whole[…]

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Dog Damn the IC(Fucking)W!

Dena's Blog Posts, James' Fiction, Life Under Sail

We passed statute mile 1000 this morning just after my (James’s) second watch…just after my first visible-light watch, about two hours after we kedged off the bottom in the southern Indian River…the Indian River not in India, …the one in Florida. Okay, let us catch y’all up. I (Dena) was at the helm, hedging to James about whether or not to spend $20 per day for a mooring with dinghy dock and shower access because I had just realized that this is still their prime season and they…well, they triple-load their moorings. No joke – three boats per mooring is their standard. Compared to that, a three-foot-wide finger pier creates a real privacy gap in a marina. We anchor partly for the distance from other boaters and… All the way down their (nightmarishly long and soon to be elongated) mooring field, we reiterated that there was no value rafting with a strange boat on a mooring when we could pass their territory, anchor, and then pay the daily fee only when we actually wanted to use the dinghy dock and showers (as I’d read was possible). Having passed at least 150 boats two or three to a mooring, we went hook-down right smack in the middle of the Indian river off Vero Beach, Florida. It was stunningly picturesque on both sides of the aesthetic spectrum. From the glorious sunsets… …to the sad realities of expensive dreams. Within an hour of anchoring, a hunter-green 14′ aluminum Jon boat with a 9.9 Merc ambled on up for a confab. We’ve been approached by plenty of dinghies in our day, most of which don’t hold people of all that much interest but there’s no telling, not knowing, so…I (Dena) engaged. A meandering ten minutes later, he’d warned me that the harbormaster may tell[…]

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The Big City!

India 2016-17 & 2019-20, James' Fiction

Ever since my early days of watching Bollywood movies in awe of the sheer volumes of talent and resources that go into these truly incredible works of frivolous entertainment I have held onto the fantasy that everyone in India knows,  at some point in their lives, the chorus line will form up behind them and it will be their inevitable moment to shine. In other words, everyone gets to “lip-their-lead” in India! It’s just the natural balance of the universe. More often than not your “lip-lead” will occur at some point in your post pubescent life (unless of course you’re Dev Patel who will never actually have a post pubescent life), or rather, sometime in your 20’s or 30’s but sometimes your “lip-lead” will happen even well into your 50’s, 60’s 70’s or even 80’s, in India, you just never know. Now, my all-time favourite lip-lead’r, Shah Rukh Kahn (AKA SRK) has probably had more “lip-leads” than any other human in the history of lipping or leading and with good reason, he’s fucking great at it. The guy has the perfect disposition for lip-leading, he looks great, he’s managed to stay in shape and on top of his game for three decades now, and let me tell you, when he’s lipping his fucking lips are sync’d godammit, I mean spot on and it doesn’t matter what language the dude is giving lip-syncing service to, he nails it every time. Anyway, Dena and I went to Bangalore this past weekend and believe it or not, I got my lip-lead and it was about as religious a moment as this old atheist will ever have and check it out, it was a Shah Rukh Kahn song! Ok, it wasn’t really a Shah Rukh Kahn “song” it was actually an A.R. Rahman song[…]

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Heading Out from Baltimore

Dena's Blog Posts, James' Fiction, Life Under Sail

We’re leaving Fells Point on a lovely, breezy morning.  There are about 5 knots of wind blowing us out of the Patapsco River and we’ll get a nice ride for a while.  Then it looks like we’ll be beating gently toward the Bohemian River. Our search for a global definition of the word civilization was not satisfied here in Baltimore.  We found pockets of intelligence, kindness, happiness – people working to make civilized lives in a profoundly uncivilized structure.  On we go, still searching. Thank you to the friendly and welcoming people waiting tables at our favorite restaurants, the respectful and inquisitive visitors to our respective working establishments.  The Domino sugar plant squatted across the changing seasons – an aesthetically pleasing industrial image of decay.  We saw Baltimore’s attractions and enjoyed the historical ships, the museums, the tulip garden.  We’re really glad we’re missing the War of 1812 2.0. So farewell, Baltimore.  We will.

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The Broom

James' Fiction

“You’re listening to ‘Pussy-Cock Juice is Weird’ live on 89.1fm FUCC, Belltown’s only totally illegal Micro-Radio source. I’m Snatch, one of three delicious fem-fantastic hosts and this is Azer-By-Jane, say hi Jane.” “Hi Jane.” “And this is our totally sexy Fem-Studies doctoral student, Frankie. Say yo Frankie.” “Yo Frankie!” “Tonight I’d like to do something a bit different. I want to re-tell a story I heard the other night while enjoying a dose of post coital bliss with, umm, a special friend of mine. It’s such an incredible tale that at first, like most things this man tells me, I thought it was a bald-faced lie. Upon further inspection and a re-telling of the same story by said lover’s mother, I have found that this tale is true and relevant to tonight’s theme of ‘Overcoming Random Violence’, though its male-on-male violence is outside our usual subject matter.” Throat clearing. “We all know that the guy that started this station is a really cool guy named Popeye Kahn right?” “Right, hi Popeye, he’s the only person in the world that listens to every single show on FUCC” replied Azer-By-Jane. “Well, Popeye was unlucky enough to have grown up in the USA’s ‘Random Violence’ award-winning state. Yes, Texas. So here goes, people, Micro-Radio at its best.” “’Parents are indeed a strange persuasion. It’s like once a person has a kid they somehow stop being a person and start being an influence and let me tell you, when you’re a ten year old boy in the mire of seventy’s suburban south Austin Texas, your friends and their parents become your most powerful influences. Besides TV of course. David Reynolds was my best friend and his dad, Tom “Shit, call me Tom” Reynolds, was undeniably the biggest man I knew. My hand always got[…]

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An elaboration of sorts…

James' Fiction, Life Under Sail

The century was almost old enough to discard and our Sovereign Nation was in ship shape and Bristol fashion. The event was the celebration of our first anniversary and the destination was our place of the declaration of our joining, Doe Bay on Orcas Island (Lat: 48 35′ 56. 84″ N. Lon: 122 52′ 09. 57″ W.) We’d worked for over a year to see this dream come into fruition and as I stood on the bow of our mighty ship I knew that our adventure had just begun. So. we tossed off the moorings at 0700h and shortly there after we set sail leaving Port Washington in Bremerton, Wa. for the last time. The weather was perfect for sailing our 50ft William Garden Sea Wolf ketch rigged wooden sailboat with 15 knots of wind on our Port-side beams as we rounded the southern most point of Bainbridge Island. All day long we tacked from shore to shore making our way North. At the end of the first day we called the Kingston Marina home. We jumped aboard the Kingston/Edmonds ferry and discovered the best Indian food restaurant in Washington just on the other side of the ferry terminus. Rested and ready for the continuation of our adventure the S/V Sovereign Nation with her crew of two (and one pissed off cat) set sail once again on the beautiful Puget Sound. As we rounded Point No Point the winds kicked up to 18 knots and the first reef went in the main. It was a spectacular sail. Because of the favorable winds we made the decision to head into the Saratoga Passage between Whidbey Island and Camano Island to drop the hook for the night at the Langley Anchorage… A beautiful night on the hook followed by a meal of[…]

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DJ Schlomotion

James' Fiction

Schlomotion sits at the radio console and stares at the soft amber glow of the instrumentation his thick brow is furrowed in concentration and the anger is welling inside. The song, She brings the Rain by Can is quickly coming to an end, it ends and yet he stares emptily into the dead air as if the aether was somehow speaking to him in a soundless language that only he could understand. The silence drives a painful stake into the dark studio. The mic is live and through the crackling silence you can hear Schlomotion lick his cracked, bloody dry lips. Finally, “I can see you.” Then again, a stunning silence with the occasional pop and crack of the signal as it bounces from one solid structure to another. “You think I can’t see you but I can see you, you and your lover, you are both lying side by side, naked, panting. I can see your breath, you bitch, you fucking bitch.” Schlomotion’s heavy Israeli accent, grated to shreds by nicotine and crystal meth bites off the i-n-g and the t-c-h as if it was cut from his tongue, he goes on, “You will pay, yes you both will pay. I will teach you, you fucking cunt, I will teach you, you will pay.” Presently my pager massages my thigh with my invariable conscientiousness. I lamely excuse myself from the table, drop the quarter with a sigh and a slight “g-by” dial, wait. “Phelch?” “Yeah. Dave?” “Yeah, are you listening?” “No, I’m eating, what’s up?” “Where?” “Snatch and I are at Mini’s why?” “Which one?” “Belltown, why, what’s up?” “Dude, Schlomotion has totally lost his shit and he’s airing his dirty laundry, you better get to a radio quick!” “Who gives a fuck? If the dude wants to bitch[…]

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