Holy Ship!

 

Water

Music

Fridge

I was deep in a dream about the beach and starfish and this magical turtle that could speak Arabic when my mind alerted me that the water was real and I was actually choking on water that was ricocheting off the wall and into my mouth.  I really need to set an alarm so that I wake up before the first water spout but my alarm clock’s adapter stopped working so the only option would be to wake up to beeps instead of music and I am under strict doctor (meaning me) orders to wake up to more peaceful sounds than annoying beeps.  Yeah salt water in the mouth isn’t an ideal method, but it beats the alternative.

I slipped on my new slippers and slid into my newish robe to walk over to the new fridge where I was fully stocked with burnt and then frozen hot dogs.  I realized after a few tries that just burnt, or just frozen was not a winning formula of petrifaction to clog the hole.  Either of the options alone lasted an hour, at the longest but the two combined could last an entire morning.

I grabbed one of the dogs from the freezer and held the wiener angled a little towards me so that the water would shoot away from me as it came in contact with the stream of water bursting from the  bottom of the ship.  I’ve also learned the hard way that the idea is to find the correct ratio of wiener inside and wiener outside of the hole.  I’m not sure if it was a fish or something gnawing at the dog or if the imbalance just made parts of the wiener drop off but when I leave it dangling mostly in the ocean it tended to disappear really fast.  When I left too much wiener inside the pressure of the water kept shooting it out and I would have to replug the hole.  If the distribution of wiener inside the hole and wiener outside of the hole, was about equal it prevented the fast disappearance of the wiener and the premature ejaculation of the wiener.  I knew this wasn’t an ideal or a permanent option but it worked.  When I could save up some cash and get to shore, I would fix the hole up proper.  For now the burnt and frozen franks would have to do.

“What’s for breakfast Jeeves?”

Jeeves looked at me and then looked down at the cupboard below the coffee machine.

“Pancakes again?  It’s always pancakes with you Jeeves.  You’re the weirdest Iguana I know.”

I reached in for the cookie jar beside the box of pancake mix and grabbed one of the critters inside for Jeeves.  For some reason Jeeves loved crickets.  He looked a little unhealthy because he wasn’t eating his greens as much as he should but who am I to deprive him of what he likes?  If he wanted some greens he would have looked at the fridge instead.  Sometimes I drink beer for breakfast.  That isn’t healthy but fuck if I’m going to let someone else make my breakfast decisions.  I grabbed the box of pancake mix and started the pancake creation process.

I like listening to music when I cook.  Out there where the TV stations are non-existent and your only social interaction is with a reptile, music is about the only thing to keep you sane.   Boy and Bear was a popular choice for the morning routine.  Mumford and Sons filled that role for a little.  Anything folksy was good for the morning on a boat.  Somewhere around the middle of the day I usually made a switch to something like Washed Out or Toro Y Moi.  I was on a big Chill Wave kick over the summer but the main music requirement at the time was that it be new.  I didn’t want to listen to any of the music that was in and around my previous world.  This boat trip was about leaving that former life behind and reconnecting with the inner me.

I jammed out to Blood Gold, dancing around in circles a little while I mixed the batter with a wooden spoon and that was when the water started spurting again.  I was a little surprised that I would have to use a second frank before I even finished cooking breakfast but it was not unheard of.  I clogged the hole and took a shower before I found that the hole was AGAIN spurting water.  It was turning into a strange morning and I knew immediately that I would probably have to burn and freeze some more dogs if this continued.

I dressed, finished building my pancakes and slathered them with hazelnut syrup.  There were few extravagances that I brought with me on this journey but this newly- discovered, wondrous liquid?  was high on my priority list.  The hole spurted water before I was done with my pancakes and I clogged it once again.  The wieners were disappearing so fast I found it necessary to start burning some new dogs immediately.  I headed up to the main deck, where I kept a small grill with an armful of hot dogs.  I cooked one dog normal and wrapped it in one of the leftover pancakes before starting to burn the rest and this is where things got really out of control.

When I headed back down, the cabin was full of water.  Somehow, I did not notice the ship sinking.    The original hole was unclogged but that was not the main source of water leakage.  There was a harpoon lodged in the ceiling that left a gaping hole behind it.  I took my slippers off and grabbed Jeeves and my dry boots out of my closet for some reason, like they would keep my feet any dryer in this amount of water.  Before I headed back up the stairs I noticed, what looked like tentacles sticking out of the original hole.

“No way”, I thought, “a burnt-hot dog-eating octopus and his hunter have just sunk my ship?”

I searched the water for an octopus but didn’t see anything.  So I thought I probably just needed some more bait.  I burned another round of hot dogs and tossed them into the water.  If I was going to get on the reserve boat I wanted this monster to be preoccupied with something other than me.  To my surprise a team of divers popped their heads out of the water.

“Thanks mate.”

“Thanks?”, I screamed, “Thanks!  You’ve sunk my ship assholes.”

“Yeah…  Sorry ‘bout that mate.  These dogs are ace.  We thought you’d use a couple more if you had a bigger hole to fill… I guess we didn’t think things through.”

“No, you surely didn’t.  How the… what the… seriously?”

One of the other divers spoke up, “Ya’ brassed?”

“What do you think?”

“I think you could use a burned wiener”, and then he tossed it up to the ship.”

“What I could use is a new ship.”

“Sorry mate.  Our ship went down too, Tyler there was hunting a fly.”

“With a harpoon?”

“No, of course not”, they all laughed like this was a ridiculous notion and then he returned seriously with, “a shotgun.”

This didn’t seem real to me.  I really thought that maybe this was some kind of prank show.

“ A shotgun huh?  Yeah I could see that.  That makes sense.  Why wouldn’t you hunt a fly with a shotgun?”

“Could you burn another round of dogs mate?  Then we’ll be out of your hair.”

“Why not?”, I replied.  The more I went along with the joke, the less I would be ridiculed when people see the video.  Instead they’d think, "damn that brotha’ handled that shit with class.  He even made them some more franks.”

The water in my cabin was now to my waist and the hole seemed to be growing.  I burned them another round of dogs and then commented on their appeared fatigue.

“Take my raft”, I said, “I’ve got it all under control.”

“Are you sure?  That would be a real life saver.  We’ve been swimming around since the middle of last night.  Trevor cut our lifeboat trying to open our last bit of food rations in the middle of the night while the rest of us were sleeping.  You sure you don’t want to hop on with us? “

There wasn’t any room on the boat so I said, “no.”

It wasn’t long before I regretted that.  The boat continued to sink and my level of worry increased.  I began to realize this was no joke.  My ship was actually sinking and Jeeves and I would have to figure out a way to survive.  Who were these guys that put a hole in my ship and took my reserve boat?  I’d find out later that they were escape criminals and I had just aided and abetted but that’s a whole other story I will get to later.

There was a moment where I had no thoughts about a future.  I thought, “This is it.  I am going to die on this boat”.  I had positioned myself at the highest point of the ship with my headphones and Jeeves.  Jeeves was always so cool about shit.  The world was sinking around us and he just sat there all cool, wasn’t shivering or anything.  He was the coolest person I knew.  I pictured Jeeves to be a person with dreadlocks and sunglasses if he were human.  He’d be all chill and he would never freak out about shit.  He’d probably smoke pot too and be lazy.  He’d just smoke and just lay around all day, not talking or working and he’d always be asking me for money.  Come to think of it, Jeeves was kind of an asshole.  He knew I was sick of eating pancakes and yet he chose them for me every day.  I bet he doesn’t even like crickets.  What kind of iguana eats crickets as their main source of food anyway?

This was not the time to be getting mad about Jeeves’ selfish ways.  I had to remind myself that as I clutched the suitcase that floated to the surface.  Jeeves clutched my hair a little to keep from sliding off as the suitcase wobbled a little and I cursed him deep down but smiled to his face.  It was imperative to keep my music up and out of the water.  As I floated along those days towards one shore or another I needed some sanity.  Float on seemed appropriate and I listened to that on repeat for a few hours. 

I fell asleep in the hot sun and when I awoke, Jeeves had disappeared.  It was sad but not anything like Tom Hanks and that volleyball of his, which is weird because at least Jeeves was a living thing.  He was my pal.  I guess maybe it helped that I didn’t see him die.  I pictured him getting fed up with me going slow and just deciding to swim to shore.  I pictured him on an island with a bunch of hot chameleon ho’s servicing him and he is just waiting for me to show up.  He’d have some crickets saved up that he would share (he’d be a good host and he loves them so he probably thinks I would too).  I’d probably pretend to eat one just to be polite but secretly spit it out when he wasn’t looking.  Then we’d have a little party of sorts and I would drink fermented nectar out of fallen coconuts and the aborigine tribe that has been worshipping him, would also worship me and I would be awarded with a harem of women to massage and dance for me.  Life was so great in my imagination while I slowly slipped off of a dilapidated suitcase.  I needed to find another vessel.

The fridge floated along near me when I went to Lulu land but it was slowly beginning to increase the distance between us.  I placed my headphones down on the suitcase and climbed on like it was a boogie board so that my limbs were free to swim.  It felt a little like I was moving into a large house climbing onto the fridge.  I could fit my entire body on top and so I did after splashing it with water.

The sun was beginning make me wary at this point.  I was hungry and had to make a decision that was difficult.  I knew there were more hot dogs in the fridge but I also knew that if I opened it that my floating apparatus would begin to take in water and would join my ship at the bottom of the ocean.  My headphones were also beginning to run out of juice so I decided I would run it out before taking that plunge.  For a minute I forgot that I was dying in the middle of the ocean and I just soaked in beats from First Rate People, Sea Pinks, G-Side, Wild Nothing, Pixies and then half of a Matt and Kim song.  Then it was time.

The skin on my face was feeling tight and my stomach felt like it was being stuck with a knife.  I opened the freezer and ate the rest of the burnt hot dogs.  There must have been eight in there.  They weren’t frozen any longer and I felt full after two but I didn’t know when I would get another chance to eat so I just powered through.  Unlike running, that first mile of swimming was not the hardest.  I ran out of energy quickly and the next 30 miles (or however long it was, it felt like 1,000) seemed almost impossible.  When I think back on it now I don’t know how I garnered the strength.  Something in my head just said to keep going.  I replayed Matt and Kim’s 5K over and over in my head.  When that song lost driving power I would switch to WWPJ’s Ships with Holes Will Sink or, oddly enough, Island in the Sun by Weezer.  

By the time I reached the island my arms felt like spongy and the burn on my face was making the skin feel as though it were dripping off.  I crawled to a shade and had a nightmare about zombies eating my burnt face like it was a burnt wiener and then eating my wiener like… lets just say it was disgusting and embarrassing.  If it weren’t for the unrealistic events in that nightmare, I would think what I awoke to was fiction.