You Should'a Seen the Ocean Then

There is no substitute for an alert crew standing watch.

Every now and then some genius sails into town to bemoan the general decline of humankind as if we're measurably devolving as a species. We no longer, for instance, know how to carve saintly statuary from granite slabs using a hammer and chisel. We’ve misplaced our ability to silently stalk small game for supper. We can't make our way to the killing fields and home again without a GPS-armed SUV. Stuff like that. There is always some noble talent gone stale, the shortcoming dissected by some Grizzly Adams type who often as not would be happy to show you how it's done on his cable show. The usual claim is that vital human skills are at or near extinction, the broader implicit message forecasting the inevitable demise of Homo sapiens.

Which is a load of crap. And as much as I might admire the presumed nautical capabilities of a fellow whose recent review of a piece of safety gear I just read, I cringed once again at his yearning for the days of yore when men were men, and the sea devoured those men with a regular vengeance.

Listen, I know what it’s like to have one’s eyes glued pathologically to the chart plotter while coming close to t-boning the freighter right in front of me. But technology does not turn us into chimps. It is our own nature that threatens us, just as an African plain full of tall grass and bereft of lion scent tends to make zebras heavy and lethargic. Succumbing to our indigent nature didn’t start with the invention of indoor plumbing. All animals adapt, some of us remarkably quickly, to an environmental change like a free smorgasbord at the local restaurant. Behavior is pretty predictable that way. Observe the boisterous flock of seagulls debating over my outstretched armload of Cheezos.

Darwin observed that species evolve rather slowly on the whole. The creatures foraging on bagged peanuts at thirty-five thousand feet in business class are virtually identical to the ones who huddled in moldy caves thousands upon thousands of years ago. But knowledge shared by note-taking animals is Lamarckian in nature. It gets passed on quickly, and we respond in kind. Let' s face it, it wont be long before every human is tapping away on an iPhone or Blackberry. These tools empower us to behave in different ways if we see fit, but I dare say if my i-Gizmo were taken from me for good, I would change again. In fact I did for a while on a boat once, because I had to. Then I changed back, because I could.

Here’s an analogy I don't quite know what to do with. Squirrels have been around for a long time, longer than cars, I’m pretty sure. The survival skills that got them this far, which include maddeningly unpredictable course changes as they’re being chased, don’t always work to their advantage on a paved road. Far more frequently than I wish to recall, I’ve watched a squirrel that seemed to be home free inexplicably double back into the road, and from thence into the hereafter. Squirrels could do with a little Lamarckian traffic seminar, I guess is what I’m saying.

To suggest humans are losing skills that make them essentially human is absurd. We might as well denigrate most honey bees for having lost the ability to procreate. What they did, as far as they’re concerned, is build a better mouse trap. If we weep for the loss of true love among the honeycombs, shall we not also eulogize the passing of good old Loran?

Humans take useful new technology and immediately put it to good use. As a side effect they often divest themselves of older paradigms no longer seen as productive. It also means that difficult chores like circumnavigating the globe on a floating platform become easier, which encourages a larger population to attempt the challenge. This fact seems to irk trained folks from the old school, which I find somewhat ironic. Because if you strip down any process into its component skill-sets, virtually nobody becomes an expert on his own.

We all stand on the shoulders of others. When I take my little boat out for a joyride, I do so because somebody else developed metallurgy, the combustion engine, fuel refining, textile manufacturing, synthetic materials, aerodynamic concepts, on the list goes, and then showed me how it all works, so I can sit there at the helm and go, “Well naturally this all makes perfect sense! And aren't I the master of my domain!”

I’m quite certain that the old salts who can still shoot a star with their trusty sextants could never actually make a sextant, or conceive of one, or a working watch, much less chart the heavens and develop the mathematical equations with which to locate themselves properly on a planet that looks flat to most of us. In fact, I’m pretty certain that just about everyone of us, were we forced to start from scratch, would place ourselves smack in the middle of the universe based on clear observation.

There’s room for all of us on the water, even the foolish ones. And if they get too stupid, well, Darwin has a place for those souls as well. It’s in the tarry pit I like to call the culling fields.

This crewperson is worth all the newfangled

gadgetry found in the catalogs, right?

Looks kind of shallow down there!

The Enemy Above

Ya Mutha Nature

That’s it. I’ve joined the Dark Side. I have had it, and I don’t mean with all the acquaintances of ours who decided Deb and I had sailed around the world to experience the embracing serenity of Mother Ocean. What we did was cruise the well-worn thoroughfare that is the Intracoastal Waterway, the liquid version of I-95, on a quest for warmer weather and cheaper beer.

No, I’m talking about all this wondrous natural life about us. If you want to check it out, it’s all there in high definition on the Discovery Channel, and if you keep your butt comfortably planted in front of the plasma screen you’ll be less likely to get it bit by one of the network stars.

Many of the villains are obvious ones. I despise mosquitoes, and I’d be willing to bring down the entire global ecosystem to annihilate every last one of them, by any means. I don’t care if the creature's life cycle is somehow inextricably linked to that of the cuddly Panda. Ling Ling can go take a flying leap onto a sharpened bamboo stick. I say bring back DDT, and hose down the planet.

The above goes double for no-see-ums, which you can damn well see just fine as they swarm in on an evening backlit by the setting sun, converging on Paradise to act out a chapter from the Old Testament. And below the waterline lies the demonic barnacle, which species has left me with permanent scars on my arms, new testament to the fact that guys who clean boat bottoms aren’t charging near enough for their work.

But these are just the obvious enemies. Far more insidious are the ones we greet with open affection. Indeed, we have protected these menaces with the strong arm of the Constitution, and built them homes to atone for their aggrieved status.

I’m talking about the osprey. This “noble” raptor, this poster pet for man’s eco-transgressions. This shitting machine, whose limp-wristed soprano whistle proclaims Hey! Hey! Look out below!

After years of living and letting live, one of these SOB’s has decided that our port spreader is his personal cafeteria, and he (maybe she; don’t know and don’t care) has been dismantling menhaden carcasses with disturbing alacrity from up there, drizzling gutted leftovers and then projectile defecating on our sail cover, dodger and deck below. You think it’s funny? Give me your home address. I gotta take a leak.

This creature, often called a fish hawk because it looks like a hawk and shits fish, is apparently washing its meals down with crazy glue, because it takes industrial solvents and a pressure washer to completely remove its festering offal, once the excrement has cured in the sun for a while. This is not a tidy process. No napkin is used, and there is waste aplenty. The osprey appears not to have yet come onboard with mankind's conservation obsession.

There is an industry out there catering to my problem, and I’m about to try out a system that would impale any bird attempting to alight on the booby-trapped perch. No, not really, Mother Teresa. The manufacturer claims the device is completely harmless to avian types. Ask me if I care. In a harbor full of suitable targets, this guy has chosen me alone to torment. Oh yeah. It’s one, maybe two birds, it’s personal, and if one of you out there has the gall to attempt to convince me that osprey play some crucial role in the natural management of bunker populations, seriously, I will crap on your car.

These are not osprey, but they suck too.

An Environmental Book Review

The Apocalypse Cometh

Here’s a joke for you: What do you call a book that takes up half the shelf space in your den, and is still smoking from the reader’s last attempt to wade through it while seated too close to the fireplace?

Hot, Flat, and Crowded.

At ten thousand pages, give or take, or in my case seventeen petrochemically produced CDs, Thomas Friedman has created a carbon footprint capable of sapping the entirety of Saudi Arabia’s oil reserves. Deb spent seventy bucks on the bored driver’s version, and I want her money back.

It isn’t that I doubt the veracity of this widely respected journalist’s research. In fact I believe all of it, as much of it as I’ve managed to wade through at least, and therein smolders the problem. In Friedman’s Herculean effort to unearth every last scientific fact on the perilous state of our planet, his argument has overlooked the most important one: the attention span of the reading public. Further, in an earnest attempt to convince us of the immensity of our predicament, he has grossly overestimated our capacity to comprehend scales based on the infinitesimal. This is why Americans have collectively shed more tears over the unplugging of one human vegetable than we have for all the souls nuked at Nagasaki. We’re kind of fickle that way.

Friedman would have done the world a favor to instead publish a booklet entitled We’re So Screwed! At the very least he would’ve spared the chunk of rainforest he has denuded with his present book. Here would be the outline:

Page 1…. We’re So Screwed

Page 2 … Here’s Why We’re So Screwed

Paged 3… And I Mean Really, Really Screwed

Page 4… I Told You We Were Screwed

Page 5… Have A Nice Day

Shock and awe do not empower; they paralyze. When I make the token effort to pick up after some slob in my neighborhood, I’m not kidding myself. What does one gum wrapper actually mean in the giant scheme of things? But the underlying principle causes us to forge on, with the hope that the snowball has a chance of one day leveling the ski chalet.

But not anymore. A snowball doesn’t have a chance in the torched underworld Mr. Friedman has so compellingly mapped out. His statistics prove conclusively that I am what the enemies of conscientious conservatorship would label me: an idiot tree-hugger.

I don’t know if Friedman believes he is waking the world up with his clinical compulsion to hammer home the breadth of the problem, or if he’s simply hawking wood pulp. Around halfway through the tome, which is where I met my dead end, he refers to an analysis made by a pair of scientists who’ve created a pie chart composed of carbon-related “wedge” issues threatening the planet. It all starts out fun (who doesn’t like pie?) and then heads for the leach field.

Of the fifteen wedges listed, we are asked to pick our own “easy eight” to enact were we to desire to save our world. But before we are able to sink our teeth into the challenge, we are told it would take a miracle to enact just one. A miracle? What kind of miracle? A hopeful miracle, or the kind of miracle that only happens on moronic TV shows and in our own childish reverie?

While we are pondering our odds at success, he claims it would be “the miracle of miracles” to make only eight of the fifteen wedge solutions happen. And they must be enacted immediately. If we delay, the task will soon be impossible. Impossible? How impossible? Like winning the Lotto jackpot impossible?

Mr. Friedman’s impossibly urgent message reminds me of another human conundrum that hasn’t gone away. The issue of compassionate euthanasia was for a time championed by a well-meaning physician who came off looking like a nut job. The fellow’s name was Jack Kevorkian, and his public persona undermined his cause. It’s more than a shame when a legitimate message is spoiled by the delivery. Thanks for the sermon, Mr. Messiah. Now leave me to my own personal soap opera.

Friedman should have saved seventy-two point four per cent of his stats for an appendix, or the Apocalypse, whichever came first. I’d give the Apocalypse even odds. In fact, I think an apocalypse is the solution. It’s been a long observed characteristic of humans that we subscribe to the “Not-In-My-Back-Yard” policy of problem solving. The poop has to pile up on the porch so high that it’s oozing through the screen door. That’s when folks break out the pooper-scoopers in earnest.

We aren’t there yet, so maybe, just maybe, it makes sense to continue to squander what we have in order to jump-start the recovery. Let’s face it: an entire political party and its voting followers don’t believe any of this Goremania. They need to swim through the stuff on the way to their Hummers for it to register.

Our boat trip introduced us to just such apocalyptic conditions, as boats do by their nature. On a thirty-four foot sailing vessel, if you adhere to Coast Guard rules and regulations, you are living amid the filth you create. Flush that toilet, and you’re filling a very small plastic reservoir strategically located right underneath your sleeping quarters. That’s what I said. So there, I got a boat reference in.

Back on land, I intend one day to pull out CD #17, just to see if Friedman has saved a deus ex machina for us there. With the other sixteen I plan on assembling a shiny mobile for the next arriving infant selfishly spawned by irresponsible friends.

Maybe I haven’t given up all hope yet.

Maine, Ho!

Lookit! I'm sailing!

For those of you who read my last post, we've found the perfect alternative to getting one's hands greasy unless it's with melted butter. We treated ourselves to a week aboard the Schooner Stephen Taber, one of the historic vessels comprising Maine's renowned Windjammer fleet. It was a fabulous trip, and to prove it I attach photos and my own personal log.

A hearty hail goes out to the accomplished crew of this fine vessel, which you can learn much more about on their site: http://www.stephentaber.com/index.html

One other thing: Captain Noah Barnes's wife Jane is a legitimate somalier, thus the theme of the cruise we signed up for (it was Deb's idea), and my log entries, which are a great discredit to her thoughtful selections, as well as the marvelous fare prepared by ship's cook Cara Lauzon and her assistant Brooke Payne.

Passenger's Log

of the July 2009 Wine and Chocolate Voyage

aboard the Schooner Stephen Taber

(Scribe’s Note: Dates, times, details, etc, are subject to inaccuracies because, well, you know, wine was served)

Sunday, July 5^th

(All points to Rockland Harbor, Maine)

All Day: Various strangers make their way to Rockland’s harbor and wedge enough gear into the bowels of the Stephen Taber to lay siege to a small nation. Except for wool socks.

Welcome Aboard!

1800: Captain’s Meeting. Captain Noah Barnes lays down the law, mixing general information with cautionary notes, obscure nautical terms, and threats of occasional crew irascibility.

Strangers disperse to various eateries in town to digest message and whatever else they might find in the way of seafood.

Back at the ship, passenger Holly memorizes everyone’s name in one shot.

Two teachers and an ex-principal are fingered among the passengers (Holly being one of them). Future homework assignments are feared.

People who are no longer strangers tuck themselves into their quarters for the night, and give up all their secrets to the megaphone-like walls of the Stephen Taber.

Monday, July 6^th

(Rockland Harbor to Isle au Haut)

0600: Smell of coffee mixes with odor of low tide. It’s a good thing.

0800: Cara (ship's cook; a treasonable understatment) summons omnivores with first of many bells.

(Scribe’s Note: That’s it for the nautical time BS)

Breakfast: Blueberry pancakes, sausage links and fresh fruit.

Passengers make multiple trips to Rite Aid and liquor store for vital supplies.

Passengers wash hair on dock. We won't smell this good again for a while.

Passengers skip rope.

Captain returns from somewhere, and after sending J&E Riggins on her way, the Stephen Taber exits harbor in hot pursuit (if “hot pursuit” can be likened to the urgency of a four year old on a tricycle).

Lunch: Beef stew, and other good stuff.

Mystery ship Raw Faith is pointed out. Captain Noah, clearly irked by its presence in the harbor, saves that story for later. (Scribe’s Note: For a good time, Google “Raw Faith”)

Passengers get first taste of Maine Windjammer sailing.

Rush Hour off the coast of Maine

Stephen Taber reaches first anchorage off Isle au Haut (pronounced something like the last stanza from “Old MacDonald”).

Dinner: Stew, maybe?

Jane’s Wine Selection: (Scribe’s note. I have no palate, and have misplaced the published data sheets, yet I shall forge on): Subtle, yet erudite. Hints of mollusk.

Sunset is saluted with firing of cannon. Jumpin’ Giminee! Fire in the hole!

Apple to Apple is played.

Captain remarks that if he had a nickel for every butt that poked into his cabin…(rest of message is lost in the wind).

Passengers retire for night. Two passengers attempt to sleep on deck.

Crew continues duties with no apparent need for rest, ever.

Tuesday, July 7

(Isle au Haut to Smith Cove, near Castine)

Break of dawn: Attempt by two passengers to sleep on deck is deemed a strategic failure. Smell of coffee ameliorates assessment.

Breakfast: Scrambled eggs, and much more.

Recon missions to island (pronounceable only through a mouthful of grapes) are launched via sail (S/V Plain Jane) and motorized vessel (M/V Babe). Target sites include church, lighthouse, and latrine at ranger station.

Weather deteriorates. Passengers come to realize how poorly prepared they are.

In a spiffy maneuver, the Stephen Taber sails off its anchor, bound for Castine.

Lunch: Greek spinach pastry wedges, hummus with pita chips and snap peas. Green salad, freshly baked rolls.

Passengers volunteer for galley duty, as it is warmest part of ship.

Stephen Taber ghosts through Castine Harbor on way to Smith Cove. Passengers stare longingly at land-based accommodations.

Anchor is set, Canvas awning expertly deployed, and lovely lanterns hung. We don’t need no stinking B&B’s.

Dinner: Homemade lasagna, first mate Super Dave’s favorite. His saliva on deck creates a slipping hazard. Where’s Will and his omnipresent mop?

Jane’s Wine Selection: Delicious! Particularly the one with the interesting label.

The following comment is heard below decks by an undisclosed source, “I can’t believe I’m taking a vacation in July and I have three wool blankets on top of me.”

Wednesday, July 8^th

(Smith Cove to Buck’s Harbor, via day trip to Castine)

Weather continues to remain damp and cold, as per captain’s prognostication. Spirits are girded by rosier outlook for the days ahead, and further bolstered by the first of two scheduled on-deck shower days. We are humans again.

Breakfast: Something nice and stick-to-one’s-ribbish.

Stephen Taber ties up at Castine Town Dock. Passengers de-board for a wet slog around town.

Lunch: A hale and hearty soup, as I recall. Probably freshly baked bread too. Scribe smells a Food Network special for Cara and Brooke (Cara's assistant).

Word gets out that seaman first class Alison has a male friend who is a crewman aboard the Victory Chimes. This rapidly devolves into the planning of a wedding ceremony by passengers with nothing better to do.

Stephen Taber anchors in Buck’s Harbor, within small cannon range of the Victory Chimes. All hearts are aflutter.

A search party attempts to conscript aforementioned male crewman aboard Plain Jane. The valiant effort is thwarted by an enemy with no sense of whimsy.

Holly takes sheers to Super Dave’s head. He cleans up quite nicely. Might there be any female crewmen aboard the Victory Chimes?

Someone notices that Brooke is pretty as a peach. What the hell is in this water, anyway? It is recalled that casks were once the property of Jack Daniels.

Dinner: All the scribe remembers is he spills oil and vinegar dressing on what are probably passenger Evan’s only pair of warm pants. Scribe considers completing vacation aboard the Victory Chimes.

Jane’s Wine Selection: Bold and haughty, with an end note of oil and vinegar.

Young able seaman Will, who has been gleefully fouled by all manner of grease, muck, flotsam and jetsam for the past several days, is finally undone by a dab of fine chocolate in his hair. He runs maniacally about the deck, then shoves his head into a bucket of seawater.

All aboard are entertained by the musical talents of Captain Noah Barnes on lead guitar and vocals, First Mate Super Dave Clemens on Steel Guiter, and Ship’s Cook Cara Lauzon on violin, or fiddle, if you prefer.

Captain and cook serve up something together

Thursday, July 9^th

(Buck’s Harbor to unknown island near Stonington, by way of Wreck Island)

The weather has broken. The harbor is beautiful. Boats are gorgeous. Alison is still single.

Breakfast: Huevos Rancheros, I think.

Crew continues to encourage group participation for duties the crew are perfectly capable of performing all by themselves.

Passengers hypothesize that Cara is in fact an identical triplet, having been reportedly spotted stoking the galley stove, manning a jib sheet, and commandeering the yawl boat all at the same time.

Initial bull seal sighting is revised to that of a floating log.

Young Will heads aloft to lower the topmast for a close pass under Deer Isle Bridge. Booyah, Will!

Shore Leave

All are put ashore at Wreck Island in preparation for crustacean feeding frenzy.

Alison models wedding gown designed and fabricated by Cara and Brooke from recycled petroleum products.

Passengers collect seaweed and lobster-demolishing utensils along shore.

Passengers hike to elevated fern grove to walk off expected caloric intake. Nan conquers the high plateau overlooking all of Maine. Dennis plants his ass on an unseen, slippery rock.

Lunch: More lobsters than should be allowable by federal law are consumed. Butter flows freely. No bibs are worn. Next, for heaven’s sake, come the Smores. (Note to captain: Forgo purchase of new anchor chain, and instead look into the acquisition of a defibrillator.)

Anyone for thirds?

Stephen Taber leaves Wreck Island, having left only footprints and a devastated arthropod population.

Wind is sprightly. Captain is content. Fred contemplates rigging a trapeze to increase ship speed in heavy air.

After several aborted island approaches (during which attempts captain is heard disparaging the invention of GPS), a suitably uninhabited anchorage is spotted near Stonington.

Dinner: Somebody help me here.

Jane’s Wine Selection: Seductive, yet coy. A briny nose mated with a full stern.

Cara creates plastic stemware sunset art. Check this out, Cara: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8602472107022912201

Friday, July 10^th

(Unknown island near Stonington to Pulpit Harbor)

Second and final communal shower is taken. This risky procedure is again performed without loss of life or limb.

Anchor is weighed, sails are raised. Super Dave once again shows why he’s Super Dave. Two-six, six-two, whatever, heave-ho, make it burn, blah blah. Wondering what Jane’s wine selection will be like this evening.

Breakfast: I can’t remember, but I’m sure I had seconds.

Crew, unsatisfied with grueling workout on deck, perform masochistic health club reps in full view of passengers, in order to shame us.

Young Will announces for thousandth time on trip that somebody is standing in a bad place.

Several passengers suffer nervous breakdowns trying to keep Alison in sharp focus.

Landing parties beach at Stonington Harbor. Passengers storm the well-fortified flea market at top of hill. No prisoners are taken, but all manner of gewgaws are plundered.

Certain passengers wait for a taste from the slowest lobster roll vender in Maine. Expecting to be admonished by the captain for holding up ship’s progress, the passengers are instead dressed down for treasonous conduct toward Cara and Brooke.

Lunch: ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS, as per usual.

Debster (not my wife, though it certainly could have been) suffers undisclosed emotional trauma while visiting the head.

Captain and crew navigate tight entrance to Pulpit Harbor under full sail, then proceed to show off for an hour or so, maneuvering a giant schooner about as if it were a small racing dinghy as they weave through tight mooring field.

The good ship Heritage shows up, providing an anchor for all. Crews of Stephen Taber and Heritage affect a raft-up that would make NASA space crew gnash their teeth in envy.

Hardest working crew on the Eastern Seaboard

We share the harbor with, among others, the Victory Chimes. Hmmm…

Excessive fun is had by all. Crew let’s hair down. Alison is nowhere to be seen.

Dinner: Fabulous antipasti platter, rolled beef with red pepper and basil, string beans. (Obviously scribe’s mate has now become involved in log.)

Jane’s Wine Selection: Gave me a headache the next morning. Must remember to share in future.

Saturday, July 11^th

(Pulpit Harbor To Rockland)

Passenger John emerges from cabin for sixth straight day perfectly quaffed. All aboard continue to be amazed.

Breakfast: French toast and bacon; my favorite things. However, wine from previous evening puts serious damper on morning appetite.

Super Dave, having tired of his duties as First Mate, turns to retail on afterdeck. Credit cards are swamped from heavy sea duty.

Tensions flare as end of trip is neared. Fisticuffs are narrowly averted due to cowardice on behalf of combatants. I’ll just say this: Fred started it.

The Barnes family is reunited at the dock, where sexiest kiss since Grace Kelly planted one on Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window is witnessed between Captain Noah and Jane.

Boxed wine resembling over-filled catheter bag is surreptitiously left on board for whomever.

Passengers of the July 6^th Voyage gather their belongings and sea legs, and head for home.

But not before several ex-passengers have one more lobster roll, the king club sandwich that threw down Bobby Flay at the Brass Compass. Watch for that show in September. In your face, Bobby!

Sunday, July 12^th

I can’t remember.

Monday, July13th

Crew of Stephen Taber gets up at crack of dawn and starts the whole process over again with another bunch of clueless landlubbers

Fair Winds!

Pretending To Be Sailors

The Laura Lynn, being left alone. Lovely, no?

Deb and I have a lovely sailboat. We really do. And occasionally we motor her out onto the Long Island Sound to prove to our audience (there is always an audience) and ourselves that we really are sailors. If that sounds a little paranoid, it’s because you don’t own a sailboat yet.

These cloth-driven gizmos are a handful. It takes some coordination just to get onto the things without the need for a 911 call, and I happen to be losing my youthful coordination faster than I’m losing hair on my topsides. A stubbed toe is practically mandatory, and at this point I’d rather stub an entire leg, which Deb has done (see photo), than fall off the boat trying to board if someone is watching. But that’s the testosterone talking. There is no better entertainment on the water than watching somebody else pretending to have mastered the art of sailing while I’m catching some rays at the mooring. I may look like I’m relaxing, but the binocs are always standing by.

Not quite so lovely

I’ve seen men who have most certainly crushed the empires of fellow titans of industry, stumbling around on their knobby old knees, lunging like special ed students (I’m old enough to get to use the reference) for their pick-up sticks. I’ve listened to trophy wives cut these captains down to size when the gals have finally had it UP TO HERE with the Captain Bligh routine. Sailboats will reduce your average Ghengis Khan to a simpering Mr. Rogers in a matter of moments, given the right wind conditions.

Listen, I'm trying to relax here!

The thing about trying to sail is there is so much to do before you’re actually sailing, and so many things that can prevent you from psyching yourself into doing those things, that the far more expedient course of action is to load up two large glasses of chardonnay and walk down to the dock to admire your boat’s lines from shore. It’s a major accomplishment just to launch the dinghy in order to enjoy said vintage from your own cockpit.

Then there’s the engine and sail prep. Jesus H., whatever happened to place key in ignition, twist and go? Here’s what happened, Mario. You left that scenario far away on land. But you can still smell it, can’t you? Over the reek of low tide and bilge rot.

No, a whole other set of circumstances comes into play out there on the water. Now you check the oil (when was the last time you checked the oil on the Chevy?) and the belt tension (both of them), and the fuel filter (for sediment and water) and the coolant level. And your lovely wife, who doesn’t know 10W-40 from extra virgin on land, makes sure you didn’t leave a step out. She’s the one who remembers things now. Did you open the engine seacock, Ahab?

Then, even though on land you’re a rational creature, you cross your fingers in earnest because you need all the help you can get. Because presently you could blow up and sink, or hit something hard and sink, or have a system failure and sink, or just sink right there where you are for no apparent reason, snifter in hand, in seas shallow enough that the salvage costs might just be manageable, given the proper insurance policy.

It’s your call.

Maybe we should just let her be.

Flying The Colors

What is wrong with this picture?

Succumbing last season to a lapse in judgment, my wife and I attended our town’s annual Harborfest celebration. It is a traditional cluster of over-baked humanity, out on a pre-summer weekend to test parenting skills, purchase mass-produced driftwood gewgaws, and consume deep-fried food before retiring home to the medicine cabinet to commence aloe vera treatments. Variations of this kind of celebration are set off at specified intervals across the country to prevent the citizenry from lapsing into complacency. There is nothing so charming as a mandate from the town elders to initiate a little traffic mayhem.

There was much to take in, some of it pleasant if one ignored the bay, which was sporting a red tide rivaling the silky luminescence of Pam Anderson’s Baywatch wardrobe. There was even a celebrity sighting. Rocky Balboa’s brother-in-law, a fixture in our community, was spotted heading for the dinghy dock with a bag of live goldfish. I have no idea what booth had offered them up for sale (The Society of Impulse Pet Owners?), or what he was planning to do with them, but setting some aquatic thing free seemed like a dubious plan for anything other than anaerobic bacteria that day.

Searching for intrigue, I found myself drawn to the town dock flagstaff. It was adorned with all manner of festive flaggery, and while I’m not a slave to formality, I knew something was slightly amiss. Always game to ask a stupid question, I headed off to locate some knowledgeable official, queries in tow.

The fully decked-out nautical flagstaff is a curious beast, comprised of a main pole, or mast, the top of which is called the masthead, or truck. It often sports a single crosstree, the two ends sometimes referred to as yards, which no doubt intentionally resemble a set of spreaders on a sailboat. They are identified as left and right from the perspective of a landlubber gazing wistfully out to sea. Finally, a gaff rises diagonally up and out, in a landward direction from the mast, starting at or just below where the crosstree makes its transit of the mast. The outermost end of the gaff, called its peak, never rises as high as the truck, and therein lies something of a rub.

At the town dock, what I saw was the American flag flying proudly from the truck. Hung from the right yard was our town flag, and from the left, the tragically anachronistic POW/MIA flag. Strung from the peak of the gaff to the halyard cleat near the base of the pole was a set of colorful markers featuring some of the international maritime signal flags, which I knew to represent letters of the alphabet, numerals, and other sundry codes. I was keen on decoding any message present.

I spotted a suitably uniformed and authoritative-looking fellow, and started peppering him with questions. I could tell it pained him to have to reveal the fact that everything was pretty much wrong with the presentation. The national ensign should have been hanging from the peak of the gaff, the place of honor in the maritime world. Instead, from the gaff was strung the aforementioned and purely festive, which is to say meaningless, set of signal flags. Colorful gibberish.

From our vantage point we could see the flagpoles of two of the several yacht clubs inhabiting our bay, those institutions all playing by the rules. Their three-sided burgees were at the truck, and American flags were properly flown at the honored gaff peak, while flags indicating the presence of commodores and other dignitaries at the club hung from the crosstrees. They were having none of our Harborfest nonsense.

It’s a safe bet a yachtsman doesn’t give a Flying Dutchman what a civilian thinks of his maritime traditions. But at the town dock, official tails were flying between legs as a result of complaints leveled by patriot types irate at seeing the Stars and Stripes skulking below the town’s colors. Here, where storm sewers pump effluent into the bay with startling efficiency, the public had made known its real concerns. Travesty! Put Old Glory up on top where she belongs, goll darn it!

Chapman, that ultimate arbiter of all things nautical, points out that no other flag should be placed “directly above” the national ensign, a rule met by flying it from an entirely different perch, the honored gaff position. Yet our constables had folded to popular pressure, too weary to fight the waves of righteous ignorance.

  
As further concession to those attributes that make Americans great, the town also refuses to fly storm flags from the appropriate left yard, wishing to avoid potential lawsuits. You can guess the scenario: some fisherman stoked on a bunker report heads out with a green flag sighting his sole weather advisory. When a summer squall lands him on some North Shore blue blood’s patio, forget the Coast Guard. The first calls go out to attorneys.

 Wrong

Instead, the bay constables see fit to fly the POW/MIA flag, a sad reminder of one of our nation’s darker periods. It is a shadowy thing, like a painful memory, evocative of, if anything, the forced confession of a vanquished pirate. You’d think there’d have been at least some resistance to its presence, but then doves are easier to fend off than hawks.

Right

 I guess it kind of made sense to finish out the pole with a little senseless color. You can buy a festive flag set, a random sample thirty-five or so feet long, for sprucing up the boat or cottage on special occasions. I have to wonder if each purchased set is the same pattern, or if the factory spits out randomly random patterns. In which case I have to wonder if, as one would expect with a roomful of monkeys given enough time and workstations, an interesting message might occasionally turn up. My interest is again peaked, almost enough for me to laminate a code list and start carrying it around in the wallet. Almost.

Author’s Note:

A few weeks after the above was written, I was relaxing at my mooring when I noticed a nearby yacht club flying two decorative sets of flags from the truck, each streaming down to anchor points near the ground to form a festive phalanx. With little else to do but continue drinking, I decoded the grouping with a computer printout I’d recently placed aboard.

The upshot? Again, the message was gobbledygook, but with a notable twist. One of the strands had been hung upside down. Now, the fact is, the yacht club in question is the youngest and most relaxed on the bay, but isn’t that special? Were that to happen at one of the more staid seaside institutions, it wouldn’t surprise me to later see the perpetrator of such ill decorum hanging from the appropriate yardarm. And I’ll bet you there is one so specified for the job. That transgression is surely worse than trailing a strand of TP from one of your Topsiders.

Author Subsequent Note:

I’m so wrong. I’ve now seen the same thing done at the stodgy club, which means they’re all hoisting a long set of flags from the middle. Get it? It’s just a big colorful bunch of nonsense. Still, don’t mess with their starting gun.

A Racy Fictional Tale at Water's Edge

A View To A Killing

(A make-believe story with lots of dirty words in it. I'm serious. If you are easily offended by scatology, read no further. Pick one of my real-life posts over down there on the side.)

Phil Stark stared past his sand-caked toes at the curling foam on the horizon. Propped on the deck, his vision rhythmically occluded by the Heineken label as it rose to greet him, Stark lounged laboriously on an ancient Adirondack, taxing his elbows, doing his best to hover in space. Discovering momentary comfort, he scanned the coast, checking first his left flank, and the strip of silica commandeered by gay sun worshipers.

"Like I need this shit.”

Next, a survey to the right, and the promising expanse that tended to yield the more favorable view.

"More like it." He always saved this vista for last.

Stark occupied a beach house in the buffer zone between the fabulously flamboyant and the bravely blasé. You wouldn't spot suburban families here. Not for long. Not once the kids had asked mommy what kind of bathing suits the funny men were wearing.

Neither would a serious angler be caught rigging his rod in the vicinity. Happily, mused the detective, the only wildlife frequenting this stretch was of the self-confident female variety, seeking a solicitous spot for personal reflection, and the occasional all-over tan.

Detective? Ex-detective was more like it, since he'd taken those thirteen slugs during a bust that had gone terribly wrong in the city. And it’d gone particularly badly for Stark. How long ago had it been now? He searched his body for evidence, and his ass gave up a confession with little prodding. Not long enough ago, man, it squealed.

His backside had taken the brunt of the assault, in a tight pattern that seemed the intentional insult of a gifted triggerman. Let's make it clear here at the outset that the wounds were not the result of our agent having turned tail and run. Not this decorated veteran of the force. The first of the fusillade had caught him as he’d turned to look for his absent back-up, and was followed rapidly by a pinpoint peppering of his posterior. Miraculously, he'd been saved by a rump with a well-traveled rep among beach strollers of the distaff persuasion.

What had gone down that fateful day? Had he been set up? If so, by whom? And if by whom, how come? And if how come, why did it have to be in the ass, and thirteen times already? It had to make a guy wonder all the way to the 7-Eleven for a case of over-the-counter painkiller.

Here then squirmed one of NYPD's finest, on possibly permanent R&R, soaking up the sights, smells, and UV of the Atlantic coastline, courtesy of John Q. Public. Could've been worse. If he hadn't spun around…

The hot cross buns were on the mend now. The doc, a strange bird with an admittedly odd assignment, seemed competent enough with the needle, or whatever he'd used to rebuild the area. A putty knife and some live spackle, one might reasonably surmise. Once repaired, the patient had been assured his trophy glutes would be reeling them in as usual. A thumbs-up from the attending nurse provided a compelling second opinion. Stark’s professional attention to detail flagged a hottie breathing beneath the surgical mask.

Speaking of reeling them in, just beginning to surface over the line of dune grass to starboard was a keeper, for sure. Stark's body stiffened reflexively. Bad idea. Ouch. But then it hadn't really been an idea in the first place, had it? No, it was more a primal reaction, triggered from some remote recess in his brain, a reaction honed through years of experience on the force. His ass forgave his neo-cortex, or whatever the hell part of the brain it was that made him flinch. What does an ass know from brains, anyhow?

She came gliding over the dunes like a vessel under sail, each control line taut under its assigned load. Triangles of fabric stretched in graceful arcs about her. Her hips seemed designed to ply the sand that yielded to the contours of her feet, and as she approached, her course was corrected away from the shoreline, in the direction of the deck where Stark sat, nursing his inflamed butt.

Brushing away bits of broken shell from his dogs, Stark sucked away whatever spinach dip might still be clinging to his gum line and gave his trunks a hitch to redistribute the newly alerted troops, first impressions being what they are and all.

She paused at the base of the stairway, assuming a stance that was casual yet provocative, with a breath of coy, a waft of demure …and what else was his sniffer picking up? A whiff of dominatrix?

The detective could've imagined the last scent. He wasn't sure. While it’d been his job to read people instantly through their mannerisms, he'd been fooled in the past, on occasion with catastrophic results. Like that one time… and the other time, too. Shit, there’d been a bunch of times, actually.

He shook the memories from the filing cabinet as a stallion might shake biting insects off its hindquarters with finely tuned muscle control. Maybe not that effectively. Stark focussed on her rack for a second, and that seemed to work.

Maybe it was just a wisp of ennui he'd misread. He made a mental note to look the word up. Anyway, she was put together like an exotic racecar. No, a classic roadster. Definitely not an SUV, which, call him old fashioned, handled too many passengers at one time. He'd figure the make and model after a test drive. At any rate, she looked ready to take on a wet, winding road in any gear you happened to slip into.

"Permission to come aboard, captain?"

"Well I'm no captain, but you certainly have my permission, sweetheart."

"I'm no sweetheart, but I'll accept the offer."

As her legs left the beach for the stairs, her gait accommodated, the way a thoroughbred leaves behind the rigors of the racecourse for the pomp of the winner's circle. Only this one you wouldn't want to blanket with roses. No sir. This one you'd keep saddled, and you wouldn't let go of the crop.

She wore a white two-piece, bathing being the last thing on its mind, and a sheer wrap of shimmering white drawn up and tied at the hip. A translucent white sunhat provided soft illumination for the view below.

Her hair was not white. That would have been going overboard. No, the coif was a startling shade of red, yet to be duplicated by the Crayola folks, cinched back in a tightly tethered, yet untamed ponytail. It seemed in the process of spontaneously combusting under heaven's broiler, while her skin had acquiesced to a burnished caramel hue. She looked like a sack of skewered marshmallows on the toasting altar. Okay, never expect an apt simile from a guy preoccupied with a misbehaving woody.

The whole ensemble left little for Stark's imagination, but he let it run wild anyway, like a bolting mustang (the horse, not the car) for the hell of it. What kind of knot was just barely holding that wrap on? It looked awfully, professional. The kind of knot you’d want to remove and inspect, maybe draw a series of sketches of, and not bother to put back the way you found it.

Stark rose to greet her, in the process burying a splinter from the Adirondack deeply into what had recently been a convalescing cheek. He choked back a yelp of pain, staring at the sun for an excuse to tear up.

"It's one I came up with on my own."

"Whaa?" he gurgled, wondering if the staples had held.

"I saw you admiring my pareo."

"Pa-wha?"

"Pa-rrrey'ho. It's Spanish. It helps if you roll the tongue. Like this"

She parted her lips languidly, introduced her tongue to the gap, and gave an inspired impression of Eartha Kit taking Batman to the cleaners.

"Yes, I'm…sure it does." Stark bit his tongue, not hard enough to convince himself his backside wasn’t hemorrhaging like a loyal employee’s 401k.

"You're struggling too much. It's no biggie."

"I, took French, in school."

"I can do French, if you want."

Sometimes it’s all in the timing. Stark garbled to the dunes, "This shit stinks, for sure.”

"Pardonne?"

Pull it together, Phil. "To what, do I owe this distinct, pleasure?"

She looked him up and down, and up again. He felt like a runway waif who'd yet to master the art of bulimia, with a package. Was she looking for anything in particular?

"I'm looking for a good detective."

Inspector Tush might just need another visit to the emergency room.

"Detective? Last I checked, I wasn’t listed in the yellow pages…"

"Word travels fast on the water. So how's that fine derriere of yours coming along?" She was playing with her R's again.

Stark took a gulp of humid air, but it was still too dry for his taste.

"Actually, I think I've suffered a relapse."

"Oh? If you'd like, I'll take a look for you. I have some training in that area."

Something in Stark's cerebellum crackled, like tin foil between the molars, but back where the cerebellum is. Where the hell is the cerebellum, anyway? And what's it supposed to do? Maybe the sensation came from someplace else. Again, his ass was of no use to him, hence the name. What was it about this woman? She seemed awfully, familiar.

"Listen, what do you know about me, and how do you figure I can help you?"

"Well, if you're going to get all formal on me, I know quite a bit about you, but I can't tell you why right now, or it would spoil all the fun. But you can help me, Phil."

Phil? That was his name. He made a mental note to check his mailbox shingle.

"How, do you suppose?" Phil, dear close friend of your devoted hiney, do you have any butterfly closures in the medicine cabinet? Don't desert the squad, Phil.

"I need the private aid of an investigator," she stated as flatly as she could manage, under the circumstances.

"Yes, well, as you might know, since you got the scoop on me, I'm not one."

"That's technically true, but you're no longer on the force, at least not actively. And if I know you, you could use a little adventure."

"A little adventure?" Like I need another hole to keep my rectum company?

"Sure you do. Something to get you up off that sorry ass of yours and get a little exercise, as it were."

Ouch, that stung. Not the assessment from the siren, but the area he'd just probed with a free finger.

"Got an itch, detective? I say scratch it."

"Listen, this is kind of a bad time…

"I'm certain I can make it worth your while, detective."

With that, and barely a distinguishable shiver from her shoulders (one last equine sense memory, and we'll put the pony away now), her top fell to the deck like the forsaken feathers of a wayward gull. Detective Phil Stark now found himself staring at a pair of breasts the size and shape of, uh… a great pair of breasts.

She floated to him on a cushion of desire, reeling on the balls of her feet like the posted guard attempting not to awaken the Unknown Soldier. She reached back over a shoulder to draw him to the crook of her neck. He pulled his finger out of his festering new wound, which had sufficiently coagulated so as to mitigate the need for immediate medical attention, and proceeded to heed other voices.

Stark managed to pin her hat brim between his nose and her ear for an improved view of the work ahead. She purred in a way that was just, just, intoxicating the way that, well, the way any sound coming from a woman is intoxicating when she's letting you feel her boobs. Hell, she could've been calling a square dance for all he cared. Grab your partner, don't let go! Kneed her tits … and a… well, you know the drill. Yee-haw.

Always the gentleman when in the vicinity of a potential lay, Stark made sure his calluses didn’t do any soft tissue damage to her, let’s call them milky orbs, while his medulla oblongata or whatever battled the scorching demons tormenting his backside. Some days the demarcation between pain and pleasure makes the Berlin Wall look like a simple demolition job.

She reeled suddenly to face him. Her lids fluttered, her eyes seeking some ecstasy or something far off in the distance. Her head jack-knifed back a bit too abruptly, sending the hat frisbeeing to the beach, and even though she was now kind of eerie looking, Phil Stark prepared to plant his tongue as deeply as possible into whatever orifice she might make available to him.

She fell in a limp heap to the deck.

"Like I need this shit," he moaned.

What was going on here? He'd tried to catch her on the way down, but she'd slipped right through his hands. How could that be? He'd been a starting tight end in college, considered by many a real pro prospect before the damn knee injury. Along with his famed fanny, women had all raved about the hands. Something didn't add up here. Whether he liked it or not, the detective was back on the job.

Searching for clues, he now noticed a moist, lotion-like substance on his palms. Odd. Very odd. Why would a man's hands suddenly be laden with ointment when all he'd done was fondle a woman he'd just met at the beach?

Wait a minute. Hadn't he heard of a diabolical plot that involved the introduction of a sophisticated poison through epithelial contact? Could this be just such a poison?

If it were so, then he'd be the murderer! Yet he was fairly certain he wasn't the murderer. But what if he were the unwitting accomplice? What if he'd been chosen to kill this poor woman without his own knowledge?

But how would the killer know the woman was going to let him … mess with her mangos? Okay, okay. What if… this woman were in on the plot herself! But that would mean she was… Was this some kind of bizarre suicide pact?

Pact? With whom? It seemed so improbable. And yet the detective had found that sometimes the least likely story ended up being the one that got published. I mean, I mean he meant… oh, you know what we mean, damn you.

How about this scenario? What if the woman was there to kill him, and… But then he'd be dead on the deck and she'd be….

Then it hit him like a tsunami sporting ankle weights. A homicide/suicide combo! She’d planned to kill him with the poison, and then die herself! But she hadn't planned on his having such heavily callused hands, made so by strenuous and repeated guy activities, thus delaying the effects of the poison seeping into his own bloodstream.

The poison, having effortlessly worked its way into her blood first, through those sumptuous, jugs just doesn't sound like the right word to use at a sensitive time like this. Look at the poor, half-nude girl, there on the deck. Just take a look. Stare for as long as you like. She deserves a more dignified word for her hooters than jugs. What's left? Think, Stark!

"I definitely do not need this shit," he told the sandpipers, or terns, or whatever the fuck they were, screeching like harpies overhead. Sometimes the beach isn't all it's cracked up to be,

Stark was getting woozy at the implications. How much time did he have to come up with an antidote and another word for female mammary glands? Where was it he'd heard about that poison? Think, Stark! Think!

"Damn!!!" It hit him like a double semi packed with bowling balls on route to a bricklayer convention. It was that stupid, fucking show, "24". That sophomoric pile of paranoia-laced pap that had an entire nation of imbecile xenophobes in a collective fit of hysteria over terrorist conspiracies popping out of every suburban garbage can. Even Mom was a terrorist. Your mom, I'm talking about. You, reader. Your mom. Kill the bitch, now, before it's too late. We'll wait…

There was that spook moron, Keiffer Sutherland, poster-boy for super-secret-special spy-cops everywhere, barking, rasping, waterboarding his way through season after season of gratuitous mayhem, wringing every method-mangled moment he could out of a singular look that stretched like the birth canal of a mother of triplets. That incessant, tortured gaze of extreme urgency.

"Drop to the floor! Do it! NOW! I can't tell you why right now! There's no time! Just do it! I can't tell you anything until a few hours from now, which is to say next month, at which point my cell phone battery will be dead. Do what I say now! What?! Yes, I'm talking to you from my cell phone… Cingular! What? Three bars, okay? But I can't tell you where I am. It's secret, don’t you get it!? Listen to me, if I bothered to stop for a moment to explain everything, the crisis would be over and the show would be called 2 !!!”

Jesus! Jacko was going through his minutes faster than a coked-up debutante plotting her coming-out party. Were there an Emmy for Best Supporting Electronic Device in a Mind-Numbing Neocon Series, the phone would have been a shoe-in. But you can bet our fictitious Agent Bauer wouldn’t have survived one episode on the LIRR. Forget terrorists. Commuters would've ripped him limb from limb for all his inane yammering.

Anyway, that was the show with the fancy poison, so in all probability Stark was going to be just fine. Still, there was the issue of the dead chick on his deck. How was he going to explain that to his ex-compadres? Would they ever believe a story from the guy who'd broken every rule in the book to solve every complicated crime the department had ever been saddled with?

"Damn it, Stark!" his ex-superior would say, "I'm sick and tired of you running around half-cocked (full-cocked, Stark would silently correct), skirting procedure, not filing forms in the right place, and solving everything for everybody! I did not endure mandatory "Being an Insufferable Prick " training to have my career ruined by a department scandal. I want your shield and piece on my desk right now! (Stark note to Stark: boss’s desk too small for my piece, ack ack). A dead woman on your deck, for chrissakes!"

"Help me up, would you?"

It was the dead woman, struggling to get to her feet.

"Whoa, still a little light-headed. I should have mentioned that I tend to pass out when I'm getting my melons manhandled in a standing position."

Melons! How could the word have escaped him? He felt his head begin to swim. He looked into those inscrutable eyes, and then at those inscrutable, uhh… and now it was Stark's turn to go limp and hit the deck.

When he came to, he was comfortably prone, his face buried in a Laura Ashley hypo-allergenic pillow. Comfortable yes, more or less, except for the… restraints pinning him spread-eagled to the most formidable poster bed Ethan Allen had ever devised for the boudoir. What the hell had he been thinking when he'd made that purchase, with no money down and seven years of interest-free payments? Oh, I think we all know what he'd been thinking.

The knots holding him in place looked diabolically…. familiar. At least he was lying on his front side, a nice break for his…

"HOLY MOTHER OF GOD MY FREAKING ASS!

A plink of metal into a ceramic container.

"That's one."

"What the…jesusmaryandjoseph is going on back there!

"I see you've come to, Phil"

"Thanks for noticing…YOOOOO BITCH FROM THE BLEEDING BOWELS OF HELL, OW FUCKING OW!!!

"That's not a nice way of addressing a girl who's just let you feel her boobies. Two." Another kerplink.

Phil Stark tried to compose himself so that he might assemble the pieces of the puzzle, which were now being extracted one JUMPING GODFORSAKEN COCK SNAZZLE by one from his BUTCHER THE NUNS AND FEED THEM TO THE PIGS!!! … tortured buttocks.

"Three and four. You better talk nice to me, or I might lose my dainty touch."

"Dainty, my WHORE OF THE FIFTH FLEET KILL MY LANDLORD KILL MY LANDLORD!!!

"Five and six. You’re a real trooper, Phil. My little soldier boy.”

"And you’re my EAT ME LICK ME HOWLING BUCKETS OF SCUM FIEND FROM HADES YOUHOOOOHOOOooooo!"

"That one's deep."

"For God's sake, take a breather, would you? Please, pretty lady, please. Tell me why you're doing this to me."

"You mean you haven't figured it out yet, detective? You, the relentless bulldog of the NYPD? The Jolly Inquisitor? The one who never tires of coming up with new names for my knockers?"

That one was a gimme.

"Okay, okay. I'm just a dumb ex-cop with a bug up his ass, or something. Educate me OH, SATAN'S SPAWN AND BLOW ME WITH A BACKHOE MOMMYYYY!!!"

"Got it. And that's number seven. And since you've lost your professional concentration I'll help you out, seeing as number thirteen I leave for you to enjoy."

"Me to enjoy BASTARD CHILD OF A MONKEY'S RED RUMP AND DONKEY DONUTS LORD ALMIGHTY oh let me die in peace. A stick of dynamite up my ass should do the trick."

The cup was rapidly filling with, what were they? The slugs had been removed by that doctor guy, right?

"Close, detective. What you haven't deduced, if I may pause from my work for a moment, is that you have been a very active, though unwitting, participant in a diabolically grand scheme."

"Really? Well experiment on this you GODFORSAKEN DARKEST HOLE OF HELL FIRE WITCH-WEASEL OHHH STOP stop stop please, and talk to me like you love me for a minute!"

"Okay, my little stud-puppy. Phillip, did you ever once pause to ponder how you managed to get pumped with thirteen well-placed rounds of non-lethal small caliber fire, right after all your back-up disappeared? That no arrests were made, no official reports filed, the only written words surfacing on the case being those registered as bathroom graffiti at your precinct?

No one had ever called him Phillip before. No one he'd ever wanted to fuck, anyway.

"Some of that might have occurred to me."

"Well, since you're going to buy it shortly, courtesy of an explosion through your freight exit, I’ll fill you in."

"You're too kind. I WASN'T BEING FACETIOUS!!!"

"Don't worry, Snookums. It'll all be over soon. See, your sweet cakes have been housing some of the most valuable intellectual booty since the discovery of Lascaux."

This had been the longest chunk of time Stark had had to consider his predicament without the accompaniment of searing ass pain. He searched for the perfect rejoinder, to keep his streak alive.

“Go on."

"Sooo…"

"Hey hey HEY!!!"

"Just teasing. The painful sling you've found your ass in is just one cog in an astoundingly complex, multi-phased, monstro-funded endeavor that may be the most massive para-symbiotic politico-corporate escapade ever conceived. I'm through now, with the hyphenated jabber anyway."

"What the fuck are you saying? And trust me, I'm not stalling right this minute."

"How could you be? What I'm saying is this: you've become an unwitting warehouse for the most valuable collection of data ever accumulated and stored in the history of mankind."

"Alright, I give. Shoot. YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN!"

"Well, for instance, one info-capsule is a collection of all the audio tapes Nixon thought he'd erased.

"Oooh!"

"I didn't touch you."

"No, I'm just impressed."

"Exactly, Think 'Books on Tape', as read to the masses by Tommy Lee Jones. The profits would be astronomical. Shall I continue?"

"Please. WITH THE EXPLANATION!"

"One capsule has the dirt on Rooseveldt and Pearl Harbor, one is a “Where in the World is Jimmy Hoffa” map, one has the sordid dope on that little baton twirler, one…

"Let me guess. Did we really go to the moon? PFFFFFOOOOOOCCCCCCCCK!"

"Stop interrupting."

"Sorry, but where did you come up with this stuff?" Stark was starting to forget what was more important, stalling this international mercenary terrorist till he could formulate an escape plan, or putting to bed every conspiracy plot he'd ever entertained in the part of his brain that… Where do we store all that crap? In the gray matter? Is it really gray? Stark hated when his head started doing shit like this.

"I didn't come up with it. Other people came up with it, micro-packaged it, solicited the secret bids, worked the deals…"

"And the bidders were…? M-M-M-MYYYYY SHARONAAAAA GO YANKS THEY HATE OUR FREEDOM HATE IT HATE IT!!!"

"That's for interrupting again."

"Listen, geez! I'm sorry! It's a reflex thing with me. You should know that. But, but, why me?

“Why you, detective?! You want to spoil the circus act with a spot of logic? You want to make sense of this collective carnival ride? You want a rational explanation? Google it, Columbo. Wikipedia to your heart’s content. Ask fucking Kieffer how it all “goes down”, if he isn’t busy driving his Maserati on a suburban sidewalk with a bottle of Jack in his lap.”

“Okay, okay, but since you've implied that one of these things is going to do me in anyway, the least you could do is humor me while you go spelunking around back there with no novocaine."

"You're right. What could it hurt? I might as well tell you everything, since, this kind of info, when it gets out, will probably, ruin mankind."

Did Detective Stark's schnoz detect the ever so subtle aroma of regret? Time for him to dig.

"Now you're getting me down. I mean it's one thing to come to an untimely end this way… How, does it work, anyway?"

"Well, remember Mission Impossible? When the tape gets through describing the mission and personally wishes Phelps, or Briggs, if you’re even older, all the best? And he backs off to watch the machine start to smoke and everything? Something like that."

"Don't tell me you hang around to make sure I'm erased."

She cocked an eyebrow and stiffened her lips.

"Like I need this kind of shit." Stark gave a tug on the lines that held him fast.

"Try all you like, Phil. The knots just keep getting tighter. And screaming, well it's nothing your neighbors down the beach don't hear on a regular basis. If anything, they're envious. Yes, it's pretty much all… hopeless."

Definitely a note of regret. He’d found an opening.

"Oh, what does it matter? A bang or a whimper. It's all the same in the end. There's good and evil in all of us. Some of us just practice with more… panache. I'm through with the force anyway. Washed up. Never did fit in. Thought I was doing something good for my fellow man, but all I was doing was wasting my time till this moment arrived, I guess. All I ever really wanted to do was find my own little spot, you know? Settle down, away from all the madness, maybe find the right girl, get a boat, practice my knots…"

"Really? You, mean that? Because, I've started to wonder, you know? About my role in all of this. I mean, who cares what's on Abraham Zapruder's other roll of film?"

"What?"

"Yeah, one of these capsules has the footage from his second roll, after he reloaded. Supposed to, you know, blow the lid off that little story. Anyway, all this information, who really did what to whom, what the definition of "is" is, how many hookers did George Bush garrote before he found Christ…"

"I hear you. I hear you!"

"Then there's the alternative ending to "The Matrix" trilogy."

"You have got to be joking."

"I'm so serious. Where Keanu Reeves wakes up and realizes he's a Mister Softy vender and it was all just a hokey, ridiculous dream."

"My God, the havoc that would wreak on the streets."

"Yes, and it would all be…my…fault."

"Not just you!!! I'm in this just as deeply as you are now! We're in this together! I mean, here I've been, half-assedly guarding all this horrible truth until it was one fine day unleashed on an unsuspecting populace. The collective national psyche could never rebound from the horror. And that would be my legacy. Those would be my last thoughts, right before I… went… Pffft.”

"Oh Phil! We can't let this happen! We can't let Paul McCartney get his hands on these capsules!"

"McCartney! I knew it! Who else could it have been? Who had the wealth? The connections? The time on his hands? Bill Gates? That goofball is giving it all away now."

"Philip, stop it! None of that matters any more. What do we do now? Just tell me what to do!"

Detective Stark was at the moment a man without a plan, or skivvies. Something was getting in the way of the firing of his, what the hell are those brain thingies that look like a leafless deciduous tree on its side?

Could I be falling for this femme fatale, he wondered? Could it be that he actually believed what he'd just said? That Mrs. Right had just now shown up at his doorstep, lashing him to their bridal bower at this pivotal moment in mankind's history?

Then the solution hit him like a bucket of chilled Gatorade at the Big Countdown.

"Listen, you've got to trust me. You've got to dig the rest of those suckers out of me, NOW, and then throw them all into the ocean like so much flotsam. No! Jetsam. That's it, jetsam. The worst that could happen would be that, I don't know, the answer to whether Don Larson's pitch was outside or not ends up in a jar of shells on somebody's mantle, looking for all the world like a bit of polished beach glass.

"Oh Phil! Are you sure? Are you really sure? It's going to hurt just horribly!"

"Do it NOW! There isn't any more time! What's a little pain in the ass when there's a planet to saAAAAAYYYY YA COULDA WARNED ME DARLEEEENG OOOOOOOOKLAHOMA WHERE THE WIND COMES SWEEPING DOWN THE SHIP SET SAIL ON THE SHORE OF THIS UNCHARTED DESERT IIII’D LIKE TO TEACH THE WORLD TO SING! BY BALOGNA HAS A FIRST NAAAAAAAME, IT'S O-S-C-A-RRRRRR WHAT'S THE FREQUENCY KENNETH! GIMME THE FUCKING FREQUENCY IF I ONLY HAD A BRAIIIIIIIIIN A DAY THAT WILL LIVE IN INFAMY ICH BIN EIN PATSYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!

"That's all of them!"

"Now go, go, GO!!!"

He listened intently to her bare feet scamper out onto the deck, down the stairs, into the sand. There was a distant, dainty but determined huff, as capsules encoded with the planet’s dirtiest shared secrets were flung into the sea, there to mingle with its other myriad mysteries. As Mr. Sutherland Jr’s big-screen commanding officer had once observed from the witness stand, we can't handle the truth.

There was a loud pop, followed by squeals of male surprise from down the beach, and then exuberant applause. That had been the capsule meant for Stark.

Moments later she was at his side, the sweet scent of her bosom wafting over him like overripe fruit from an equatorial country the name of which you’d get wrong on Jeopardy even if you watched regularly... Damn! It’d been Coppertone all along.

She effortlessly flicked loose the knots that had held him in place. She's gotta teach me that shit, he thought, as she delicately rolled him over. She stood next to him now, staring down sweetly as a Johnycake baked shortly after the civil war, when sugar had become affordable to ex-slaveholders. His eyes met with those of this stranger, who had so recently held captive his every sense, now reading his mind.

"You try it," she instructed.

He brought his hand to her waist. Recalling his early days on the playground as a marble ace, he wedged his “fuck you, jagg-off” finger near the first joint of the thumb, loading up muscular tension between the two. Aiming slightly off-center, he increased pressure on the middle digit, while simultaneously relaxing the collective muscles of the thumb just enough for a spring-loaded release, allowing the finger a glancing blow to the pareo's knot. What had remained of her original ensemble, wrap and all, wafted to the floor like a granted wish.

She deftly picked her way over his now mostly inert frame, alighting with the pressure a butterfly makes against her chosen stamen. That’s where a butterfly lands, right? The stamen. Or is it the other thing? Damn! I got a B-minus in biology. That bitch, Mrs. Rosenberg. In any event, he felt no pain from the area that had recently been the focal point of his existence. There was a new kid in town.

Stark smiled lovingly, forgivingly, presently at a loss for an apt simile, but not for a boner the size of Mount Rushmore, without the faces, which would be way weird.

Now this is the shit I'm talking about."

As she tweaked her landing, grinning back at him in complicity, it struck him. "Wait," he whispered.

"What, my sweet love-bone?"

"I never caught your name."

"Monica, my precious. Call me Monica."

"Then, Monica, heart of my heart, as a new kind of experiment, be gentle with me."