Billy Belize Might Take the Cake, But Susie Takes the Towel

I am going to preface this entry with a spoiler: I'm calling this guy Billy Belize because any other, more appropriately-descriptive name like Billy BWAAAAM-bwwwaaammmmp (think of that comical disappointed-trombone sound-effect) or Billy Belongs-Behind-Bars is just too annoying to type repeatedly, and I cannot let Billy Belize cause me any more annoyance in this one life. For, although it's been years (and I've found the humor in his story has blossomed with time), my brush with this fucker was truly the worst.

(Worse than a movie spoiler. WORSE THAN DWIGHT SHRUTE.)

Some background: immediately after I axed Billy Basement, I also took a hatchet rather clumsily (...which skill level shouldn't be too surprising - imagine this girl wielding... well, any sort of tool. It's not pretty.) to the rest of my life at the time, because what's a long-term breakup good for, if you're not going to firmly pull the ejection-seat lever? So, I not only cut all my boring ties with Billy Basement, but I also pulled the plug on my less-than-fulfilling employment at the time, meaning I had to relocate from the house which, admitted, I'd taken to describing as "shared with Billie Beautiful" rather than as "Billy Basement's," both of which were *technically* true. I accordingly shuttered my Billydelphia social life and, essentially plan-less, I moved to a tiny little mountain town several winding and treacherous highway passes away. Look, when I break up, I BREAK. UP.

And so I found myself residing in Billy Lake, Year-Round Population 447. No, that number is not missing any zeroes.

What does one plan to do in such isolation, an astute reader might ask? Well if you've ever even read the Billy Blog you can already probably guess several correct answers, including "drink" and "write a book."

But then, rather rapidly, I found myself residing there in the winter. And in that winter, I found myself quickly wishing for a non-ethanol-based companion on the long cold evenings that settled in. I realized that one of the abovementioned correct answers I must have naively assumed about what one does in such a place, without having considered the actual logistics of the place, would involve some sort of Billy.

(Hello, neighbor.)

See, before I left Billydelphia, I must have abstractly imagined a social scene something like this: bearded witty outdoorsmen of the most independent and chiseled strain, chopping down trees and discussing philosophy over rye whiskeys across the one rough-hewn bartop in town, while occasionally constructing attractive remote cabins with their appropriately-calloused hands and wrestling moose to the ground in the dead of winter to sustain themselves and the fashionable-yet-low-maintenance, mountain-goddess wives they all dreamed of devotedly romancing with handpicked bouquets of forest flowers.

 (HELL-OOHH, NEIGHBOR!)

But then, due to aforementioned companion-wish, I got online. And here is more like what I encountered:

 (WTF do you mean, "92% match"?!)

Also. Aside from the demographic-skew, here's something about being a young single not-mutant-looking human female and moving to a very, very small town which I also hadn't considered: my reputation preceded me.

I shit you not.

At first, in hopeful ascetic style, I committed to solo endeavors for several weeks as I was finding my footing - trail running for hours, walking my dog down the dirt road to the local creaking-wood-floored grocery shop, frequenting the formerly-one-room-schoolhouse library for quiet sunny reading, and perching on a stool at my kitchen table overlooking frozen Billy Lake itself for hours of dedicated writing time. I literally conversed with no one.

But, of course, the social side of me eventually started throwing small internal tantrums of loneliness, and so one evening I put on boots and ventured down the snowy, unplowed main road to the one-block wooden boardwalk that was "town." No more than 30 seconds after my first beer was placed in front of me on the bar (aha! I was correct about the one rough-hewn bartop in town!), but I was surrounded - as if by some coordinated pack maneuvering - by no less than a half-dozen local swingin' dicks who all knew something about me I'd not yet shared with anyone.

You're the gal just moved from Billydelphia huh?

Saw you out stretchin' after your run the other day.

You're living in that little cabin up the hill, right?

You sure do like Patsy Cline in the evenings!

You got new curtains in there.

(My bar tab's probably still open to this day.)

And that is exactly the evening that, from over 3,000 miles away, Billy Belize's fishing line drifted across my online surface and, starving, I bit.

Here's the thing: while he wasn't actually from Belize, which would've been cool, Billy Belize was a pretty strong candidate on paper: he was gainfully employed at an environmental non-profit (with videos online to showcase both his job and general vocabulary), he had been an investigative journalist previously and so was really really good at wordsmithery (be still my beating heart!), he had an elite climbing and mountaineering background replete with published adventure-story accomplishments, and he seemed very interested in the same sort of connection that I (still lugging around that ever-lit Husband-Watch torch) ultimately sought. So yeah, he was a few time zones away in the Far North, but he was a fun sort of prison-pen-pal distraction from the grim reality of my local Billy selection.

Right about the same time we began exchanging emails, my old friend Billy Basso and his wife, who I'll call The Botticelli (in part because she's sort of the quintessential Venus from the sea, and also in part because she's a bit of an actual painted lady (terminology stolen from Billy Billionaire), in that she sports an impressive collection of absolutely beautiful tattoos), got in touch with me to offer a visit to the boat where they were living and working at the time, in the islands off of Honduras.

(YES PLEASE)

And right about the time that happened, Billy Belize mentioned in a phone conversation, which stage we had evolved to, that he'd had plans to be in Belize for a friend's wedding that was now falling apart, but for which he had already purchased plane tickets, for dates that closely overlapped my already-purchased tickets to mainland Honduras. You know. Neighboring countries. Like a quick city-to-city bus ride rather than a full continent apart.

I'm an opportunist, a romantic, an adventurer, aaaand a total Jew with my money. This was a two-birds-for-the-price-of-one deal! You can do the math.

(i.e., "good ideas that run over budget.")

Now granted, I know I just said I'm a romantic, and that's true - but I've also developed a healthy dose of cynicism in the near two-ish decades I've been a Susie on the dating scene, because OMFG life. So I planned this trip accordingly: I would spend a little alone-time getting my bearings and firing up my dormant Spanish around mainland for a couple days, and then Billy Belize and I would meet up the day before we would take a ferry to Billy Basso and The Botticelli's boat. If I decided against it, I could always bail and head for the safety-net of friends solo, which people and location he didn't know any details about.

*****

I tried to give Billy Belize a chance, I really did. But as with oh-so-many online dates, the very first ten seconds of our meeting spelled his doom because zero actual chemistry. He was mostly-polite and all, aside from annoyingly trying to insert his shitty two-week Rosetta Stone Spanish into my taxi and hostel negotiations (my mother's maiden name is Chavez and you are already very sunburned, so stop, gringo. Stop.). He was in good shape and physically capable, aside from smelling horrible (for which I gave him the 36-hour-traveler's pass because we can all agree, standard airline travel is a bitch). And he was decently well-spoken, aside from having a voice that, in person, seemed... idunno, higher (and was just more annoying with its topics-of-choice than expected).

But it just wasn't there.

And sometimes, that's all there is: you know it's never going to be there.

(Me, exhibiting classic Avoid-the-Move-in-for-Kiss counter-move.)

But, he was friendly and non-threatening and capable of some pretty interesting conversation and so, after a local beer, I pulled the trigger and mentally gave him the final boarding pass for the whole islands visit. I mean shit, why not?

OK, just for a sec, we need to get back to the whole smelling horrible thing.

Having checked into a hostel, Billy Belize and I parted ways to clean up before dinner. And when he returned from showering, he had a request: he wanted to borrow my camera while I read a letter he had written. Like an honest-to-god handwritten old-fashioned many-paged letter to me, penned while he flew from the north end of the globe to the equator, musing about boats on the open ocean below, and my former-sailor's life, and how awesome and crazy it was for us to be in touch. It was laying it on a little thick, and the whole "photographing the moment" thing was a little goofy, but it was a cool letter and I'm nice, so I went with it.

The only problem was, I could barely read it because, with Billy Belize hovering next to me snapping photos, I started to have a hard time concentrating on anything but the terrible, awful smell of something nearby. It wasn't quite burning, but close. It wasn't quite rotting, but close. If you could concentrate the way mildew grown entirely on human hair surfaces might off-gas in a sauna, that would be closest of all. Was it actually Billy Belize? How in the fuck was this happening post-shower?

(So back to that "I mean shit, why not?" - I didn't really mean shit, as in the verb, Billy.)

Well I will tell you: Billy Belize was traveling with his own towel, and that towel was the single most offensive piece of textile on the face of the earth. Seriously, if this towel was any angrier it would have punched me right in the nose when I walked by it, hung over a closet door.

Actually, that is pretty much exactly what it did.

So, um, your towel? I broached casually, It's, ahh, kinda ripe, huh?

Billy Belize laughed. Yeah maybe, I've had a few nasal surgeries and I actually can't really smell anything any more. Lucky me, hahaha!

And that was that. Billy Belize did not take the hint and launder (let alone, more appropriately, exterminate with a flame-thrower, final-scene-of-The-Thing-style) his rot-rag of a towel.

*****

So I thought, if it's OK, I can just take photos with your camera for the both of us? says Billy Belize.

Because, I like to travel light so I didn't bring one. 

(Oh good because I travel light too and you won't mind carrying all my telephoto lens cases too, right?)

By now we are halfway through our ferry ride. I give it to him because what the hell. It's windy on the upper deck, which helps with the stank problem, but makes every photo Billy Belize takes of me a goddamn trainwreck of out-of-control hurricane-hair and I mentally note how hard I'll be deleting every single one of them as soon as I have my hands on my Canon again. He snugs up to me for a tandem selfie, which with one brief exception is the closest I get to my own camera for the rest of the trip because he keeps it on his person, paparazzi-ing me approximately every four minutes for the next several days. In much later image review once I was home again, I can tell by the way my lips are pressed in just a little that I might be holding my breath.

*****

While the days spent on Billy Basso and The Botticelli's boat are awesome and amazing and fun and hilarious and full of cocktails and karaoke and stories and silliness and scuba and good-friends-and-tropical-water-time, and are an OMFG! much-needed break from the bleak mountain winter gulag I've checked myself into at Lake Billy, they're really not all that key to the Billy Belize story so, sadly, I'm going to mostly skip over them.

The two details I will include are these:

One: I am not proud of this, but the evening we arrived on Billy Basso and The Botticelli's boat, I got Susie-Solo drunk. No, no, be serious now, it's not the drunkenness that brings me shame - I'm used to that. It's the fact that Drunk-Susie, ever the direct problem solver, hatched and executed the devious plan to momentarily steal away from the lively cocktail scene at some point in the night, procure Billy Belize's Towel of Utter Evil (upon which, I was dismayed to find, my camera was nestled!) while he was socializing up on deck, and throw it off the back of the boat. 

Was that a nice, considerate, Golden Rule thing to do? No.

Did this illicit burial at sea solve a gag-worthy problem with only minimal shoulder-shrugging denials of knowledge as to the Terrible Towel's whereabouts required of me the next day? Yes. And also, didn't he boast repeatedly about traveling light? I was helping. The end.

And two: on the final day before we are to taxi back across the island and part ways, Billy Belize sort of sneaks up on The Botticelli while she's online and asks her then-and-there to friend him on Facebook so I can see all the pictures of us. Because I didn't bring my own camera, you know. I travel light.

(Just... y'know... not right while you're watching.)

The Botticelli gracefully makes the requisite mouse-clicks, under close scrutiny and guidance by Billy Belize and while I side-eye her apologetically, and then we are off.

*****

If any part of this story is wholly, entirely my fault, it's that I just didn't have the heart to tell Billy Belize in person, over the four days on the island, that he simply wasn't going to ever, ever make the varsity squad. I mean, we were among my friends so any time spent with us all post- "Just no, Billy" conversation would've been super-awkward for him, he seemed as oblivious to my lukewarm signals toward him as he was to the aggressive odor of his existence, and it seemed kindest to just part ways with the dignities of our own perceptions of the trip intact, and let him down easy once he was home, where he could deal with his disappointment in the dark privacy of the Arctic Circle wilderness.

And so, upon dropping my duffel containing still-salty freediving fins on the cold floor of my freezing cabin 24 hours later, I wrote him an "It's Not You" email. Hey, I had a great time meeting - but I just think it's probably best if we keep looking individually for whatever it is we're each looking for, I typed. It was short and, though not exactly sweet, it was at least gentle and to-the-point and, I thought, unambiguous.

(I can't change science, dude.)

I can't say Billy Belize took it well, but that's mostly because I'm not sure it took with him at all. He continued to send novel-length emails, text-bombs, and long laughing voicemails, despite the fact that now, none of them were returned.

Finally, after shunning a handful of each type of communication over the course of a week, I realized that I needed to be more firm. He gets one more response from me, I thought. And so I clarified, as much as one can further distill the essence of the first two-letter word every single English-speaking baby in the world ever learns:

(I know. I know. No, I NO.)

And here is where Billy Belize started to unravel.

His emails and voicemails started to swing on a manic-to-threatening pendulum. In his brighter moments he referred excitedly to the amazing future I see for us!, attaching copies of his latest resumes and cover letters he'd fired off to employers in my own state so we'll be together soon!!. But in his darker spells - which sometimes arrived a mere matter of hours after a unicorns-and-rainbows communique - he would snap that I had no right to turn on him like this, and that I would learn not to treat people this way. 

Never ever treat someone this way without expecting consequences. 

I mean it Susie, think hard on that one. 

There are consequences to treating someone like me like shit. 

I refuse to go out like this. 

I think you are hiding something from me and I can't allow that. 

I will move closer to the truth every day. 

It's a fascinating exercise for me. 

I hope you stay up at night wondering how your lies will come home to roost.

You should know that keeping things from me will bite you in the ass, Susie. 

If you don't know, you will soon.*

*(Actual hand-to-god quotes, though distilled from at least ten separate emails.)

(HahahahAHAHAHA.PANIC.LAUGH)

I didn't know what to do, other than keep up with trail running and writing at my kitchen table and to assure myself, through phone calls where I told the ridiculous tale to my girlfriends back in Billydelphia, that homeboy was surely several thousand miles distant and not exactly capable of an impulsive stop-in slashing or something. I mean, he worked for a non-profit and air travel ain't cheap, even if you travel light. 

But it dawned on me, just before the very same sentiment began to surface in his emails, that I was a new girl in a tiny town where everyone already knew whatever generals there were to know about me. Anyone could waltz into town, stop at any of the four open establishments on the boardwalk, and be readily given directions to where that new Billydelphia gal lived. And I had no neighbors actually wintering in the cabins on my dirt road - if my car didn't drive in or out after a snow, there were no tracks. I had no local support. I had nobody I could call to check in on me, in the event something weird started to happen. I had nobody on whose door I could knock if something didn't feel right. Shit, the closest police station was 20 minutes down the highway assuming the highway was plowed.

I adopted radio silence and forwarded all his emails to a friend for record. I talked to my sister about filing a police report. And then, I heard from Billy Basement out of the blue: "Who the heck* is [Billy Belize's real name] and why is he writing me?"

*(Oh please, you didn't think Billy Basement was OK with anything as exciting as cursing, did you?)

(Of all my Facebook friends, you picked Billy Basement? You are the most boring stalker EVER!)

Suddenly, I realized that he was shopping through my online social networks for ins, and must have remembered Billy Basement's unique first name from some conversation. While it made me laugh a little bit (HAhaha, hope you're titillated by those Instagram pics of his latest vegan oatmeal!), it also kind of infuriated me, and pushed me back into action. I filed a report, and  I dropped The Botticelli a quick line to let her know, essentially, that I'm not in ANY contact with this dude anymore and you can do what you want, but he's gone a little stalkeriffic with me so please don't take the bait.

She immediately wrote back to tell me he had been emailing her repeatedly, pleading with her to please check in with me and then let him know what's going on, and claiming there had been a mysterious accident and he just wasn't sure who in my family was in the hospital, and feared the worst since I hadn't responded, and NEEDED INFORMATION FROM HER.

(Delusional 101: Of course your target's friends/family will take your crazy-talk seriously. Why not?)

A couple things I'm pretty into: not being involved with crazy people and, oh, laws. So I sent him not only The Botticelli's forwarded emails, so that it would be clear to him that he was not tricking anyone, but also an unequivocal "Do not contact me or anyone else to solicit information about me again, under threat of prosecution" statement, accompanied by the full text of my state's Stalking and Harassment statute, and a reference to the police report number as a cherry on top.

And there was silence, for about 30 minutes. 

Then, I received two more emails.

The Botticelli's message rolled in first, with a succinct notation by her: 

"He just sent me this. Holy fuck." 

It was a forwarded rant from him, warning her of my almost superhero-nemesis-level evil antics, claiming he and Billy Basement were "practically best friends now" (uhhh... I guess implying some sort of Starsky and Hutch-style detective work by Snoresky and Nuts?) and paternalistically suggesting she cut off all dealings with me based on what, quite frankly, I would call an enviably dark background of mine that he had "uncovered." It included a wide range of awesome horseshit - a history of bankruptcy, racketeering, abandoning children, killing endangered species, committing treason, practicing witchcraft, drinking milk straight from the carton - you name it, and Billy Belize was probably heroically warning my old friends about it. On the one hand it was amusing yet disappointing, to realize that I had apparently not even gotten to enjoy committing all these unbridled acts of the Id. On the other hand, it was OMFG crazy.

And then, email number two arrived, from Billy Belize himself:

Susie. We've both vented what we needed to about our relationship. We have a chance to still end this on a good and loving note, if you send me the photos I took on our vacation. I have a right to remember the wonderful time that we had together, and I need closure to move on from this intense time in our lives, so please do the right thing and send me those pictures. They are all on your camera, because as you know, I travel light. Thanks.

(This dialog is so bad it's even making Keanu sad, Billy. Also, I couldn't even make this up.)

While my immediate reaction was utter scoffing disdain, for some reason, something in this one started to pull my heartstrings the more I considered his request. I'm not a sentimental person, but I did realize, after thinking it over, that Billy Belize indeed needed closure and that I was the only person who could provide it. 

I knew what I had to do.

I caved, and sent him one special picture to remember me by.

It was a night-flash photo, and so he would have to look carefully to distinguish what is going on in it. But on inspection, one can find context in the bit of the boat's rail caught in the corner of the frame. And with closer examination, one can definitely make out the outline of a distinctively-patterned towel, sinking gently into the dark water of the marina.

(You're welcome, kthxbye!)

Billy Billionaire Comes Aboard

Not long after I made my way to the South American coast aboard Delirium, I started to hear rumblings of a tour de force even greater than Billy Basso headed my way: the yacht's owner, Billy Billionaire.

I'd get tipsy on the dock with Ginger and she'd say something like "Oh he's just going to eat you up!" Then Billy Basso would chime in with something similar, but less encouraging, like "Oh yeah... he'll eat you alive."

("Don't worry," they said. "It's all in play," they said.)

But I wasn't worried about all of that. After all, I'd cast off the lines of my suddenly-quite-dreary-seeming former life for the barefoot work of a suntanned deckhand in the tropics. I'd sailed off into the blue yonder with dolphins jumping at our bow, I'd swum in the ocean with green eels as big around as my thighs, I'd toured through steaming jungles and sat salt-sprayed helm watches in the middle of stormy nights and woken up to butterflies landing on our little ship when there was no terra firma in sight for 360 degrees. I'd had small near-daily word-nerd epiphanies on the nautical etymology of everyday language like "learning the ropes" and "giving leeway" and perhaps most importantly, I'd managed to not get myself fired. In fact, while learning that seasickness was, inexplicably, not really a problem for me on Delirium, I'd also managed to learn a fair amount about sailing in a short time and even though there were absolutely no Billys on any foreseeable horizon of mine in this new unpredictably nomadic life, I'd fallen in love with the water. I'd become smitten with the work of sailing in proportion to my growing competence on-deck. Yeah, I still had my occasional late-night moments of lonely mourning over Billy Builder when he'd cross my mind from halfway around the globe, but I'd made a couple friends and started to see the world and the related distractions were many. I wasn't invincible, but I was on the upside of life. I was ready for Billy Billionaire.

Or so I thought.

We prepared for days before he was to arrive: Ginger provisioned and cooked some of his favorite things, Billy Basso and I scrubbed and polished every surface, I made up the stateroom with 1,200-thread-count sheets and fancy towels and Godivas tucked into nests on every pillow, and at night we ate dinner and I received what, in retrospect, should maybe have been a disconcerting amount of coaching about how to "handle" Billy Billionaire.

"He just..." Ginger offered, trailing off. Expectantly-raised eyebrows did nothing to revive her sentence. That was all she had.

So here are the things I had heard:

He's in his seventies. DO NOT let this fool you, because:

• His visit will mean big changes to your daily routine.
• He likes to snorkel and sail to new snorkel spots all damn day. ALL. DAY.
• He drinks every night.
• He drinks nothing but gin martinis.
• Cocktail hour will be your cue to get out of uniform and ready for the town. All three crew. Every night.
• Gin causes him to get outrageously funny.
• No really, he drinks nothing but gin.
• He is hilariously, self-deprecatingly charming.
• He is generous to a fault. Money is nothing to him.
• He lives for other people's drama.
• He will try to get your life story out of you for said drama.
• You must not tell him your life story, because he is your boss and he will never ever forget anything you say.
• You will have to drink martinis with him. It is literally part of your job.
• However, you will love drinking martinis with him.
• You will invariably drink too many martinis with him.
• This will not help you to refrain from telling him your life story.
• He will tell you his life story. And it is fantastic.
• He will get adorably animated.
• He will spill lots of gin.
• He will love it if you spill more.
• You will probably start to spill more.
• The man. Is fueled. By gin.
• He will make friends with the entire bar, every bar, every island, every time.
• He will never *ever* have a bad time. He is always at his best.
• He is invariably a center of laughter.
• He will sneak off to bed once everyone else has set sail for blackout island.
• He is happiest when everyone else is having a roaring time.
• Your roaring time will not keep him up and you will continue to roar. Later than you should. You late-roaring imbecile.
• He will always be up early in the morning.
• You will always have to be up earlier.
• He will get you to drink too many martinis for this crack-of-dawn bullshit.
• GodDAMNit.
• You'd better be bright-eyed anyway.
• Sunglasses on the morning sails are your friend.
• Fuuuuuuck.
• There is no point even hiding it. We're all in the same boat (literally).
• He will invite you to share $100 wine at lunch. Do this if needed.
• You will be excited about the evening by the afternoon sail.
• All of the above: repeat daily.
• You will be exhausted, relieved, energized, and sad when he leaves. Except your liver, which will just be exhausted.

(I... am... failing to see any problem with this.)

So, the first day Billy Billionaire came strutting down the dock, an utterly unassuming-looking dude in a t-shirt and cargo shorts escorted toward Delirium's slip by a suitcase-toting Billy Basso, I stood barefoot at the edge of the teak with Ginger. He came aboard with hugs, immediate at-ease jokes, high fives, and smiles. And the night proceeded to follow the above script near-verbatim, until he fell down his stairs putting himself to bed. Ginger and Billy Basso both commented that even for him, this was a new level of drunken merrymaking. "I think you're in," they said.

I loved the guy.

But then, the next morning, with Billy Basso and Ginger and I all at the ready in our polos and khakis at sunup, Billy Billionaire failed to emerge at his usual early hour. According to them, this was absolutely unheard-of.

We waited. We joked about how my presence might have been the overstimulation that sent him over the edge the night before. We listened occasionally at his door for audible signs of life (there were none). And hours crawled past.

By eleven, in the neighborhood of four hours past his usual rise-and-shine, some serious worry had developed. What was the responsible course of action here? After all, he was the yacht owner, we were the help, and disturbing him was the last thing anyone wanted to do. But... what if he'd hit his head on that stair fall and was in bed with a subdural hematoma? What if he was just dead on the floor from alcohol poisoning or aspirating his own vomit or something in there? Finally, when I couldn't take it any more, I knocked.

There was no answer.

(Time for Plan B.)

It was "agreed," in a sort of ro-sham-bo loss, that I should go in for reconnaissance. It made sense: I was new, he seemed to think I was cute, and if he was mad about having his privacy invaded I could at least fall back on one or both of those excuses.

I cracked the door. Inside, in the dark, I could make out an inert human shape under the comforter.

Maybe six steps separated me from the edge of the bed. I squinted in the dimness, hoping to at least detect the up-down motion of breathing coming from the covers. No such luck.

Two steps closer. I could see now that the bed was a tangled mess of linens, covered in dark streaks. Ohgodohgodohgodisthatblood??ohgodohgodohhhh... The bed is absolutely destroyed. It looks like there has been a struggle. Now, as my eyes adjust, I can see definitively that some of the bloody streaks are clearly trailing handprints. And there is still no movement from Billy Billionaire's form.

Another two steps closer. Those blood streaks are so ominous now, so clearly not just the evidence of a nighttime nosebleed that I feel like I might throw up. OhgodohgodohgoddidI*kill*himlastnight? ThatistheONEwayIcouldpossiblystillgetmyselffiredGATDAMMIT!  I'm right next to the bed. I whisper Billy Billionaire's name but of course, nothing but silence and dread are in that room with me. I reach out to where I'm guessing his shoulder should be. I hesitate, taking a deep breath. OhgodohgodohgodOK...SoldierUPohgodohhh--and just as my fingers touch down on the corpse, the en-suite bathroom door bursts open and Billy Billionaire, looking a little haggard but freshly-shaved nonetheless, finds me bent over the bed in horror.

"Thought the old man shit the bed, huh?" He asks, with his trademark wry twinkle.

I'm still catching up with my pounding heart, barely processing that he meant "shit the bed" quite literally as opposed to the figurative meaning I'd been convinced of, as he shuffles past me to the door. Over his shoulder, he adds with a touch of reproach, "Oh for Christ sakes, it's chocolate. You hide those goddamn chocolates in a drunk man's bed, that's what you find in the morning."

And as I'm still clearly dumbfounded, he pauses in the doorway. "C'mon kid. Let's get some coffee."

(...Or therapy. Either one.)

And that, on what turned out to be the first day of the Billy Billionaire years, is exactly what we did.

Susie and the Electric Kool-Aid Basso Test

 Grenada.

Late evening, following a full 36-hour pileup of travel mishaps involving small aircraft, questionable maintenance, tiny airports, and infuriatingly-leisurely island scheduling.

90-plus degrees after sundown.

Open-air airport, roaring with the alien sounds of a tropical summer night. Whiffs of wet green earth and a trace of raw sewage saturate the already-near-saturation-point air, through which one sole sore-thumb whitegirl is laboriously dragging a duffel the size of a portly human corpse. It is naively packed with a year's supply of Dramamine (for previously well-established reasons), as well as a comical selection of  ridiculously stupid shit like economy-sized tubs of specialty shampoo, hardback novels, sparkly evening gowns and heels (you never know!), and a ziploc full of aspen leaves, among other even less practical items, toward customs.

Wait, back up.

(Still not sure how to empty the dust bin on this thing.)

Six days prior, I'd gotten the call from Billy Boulangerie. Did I want to take his sailboat job, thus essentially signing myself over to a slightly less secretive, but still Witness Protection Program-esque, make-you-disappear sort of arrangement?

I'd thought about it over one sleepless night. I'd mulled it over with local pals and relatives, whose reactions ranged from "You can't be fucking seriously considering that, right?" to "Send me postcards, you lucky bitch!", and then... I'd pulled the plug.

Classes: dropped.

Possessions: jettisoned.

Parents: shocked.

Stress-level: THIRSTY.

(No I'm not. HahaHAHAHAyes I am.)

Before I left Fort Billy, the weather turned absolutely miserable - torrential sheets of rain, gloomy grey mornings undifferentiated from gloomy grey afternoons and gloomy grey evenings. Symbolically, I told myself, this was old Fort Billy giving me the lights-out.

And so, for five days, I glanced repeatedly at my printed travel itinerary, pinned to my fridge by a magnet bearing a washed-out snapshot of myself and four of my closest coworker-family amigos laughing arm-in-arm behind the bar at The Homebar, as I buzzed about a grayscale Fort Billy tying up loose ends.

It was my one-way pass to a sunny mystery island northeast of Venezuela.

It was like Charlie's golden ticket, a Get Out Of Jail Free card, asylum granted to a bright new full-color world.

It was also, the closer I got to dislodging that photo for the unknown that waited behind it, like a hangman closing in on me at the gallows. I know, I know, I'd just fallen ass-backwards into going to go live - on a generous salary! - on a sailboat... but I found myself realizing, as nostalgia ramped up with unexpected speed approaching D-day, that there was a lot I loved and would miss around here.

(What if... there's no dependable high-speed internet to keep up with memes?)

And then, seemingly all of a sudden, it was like I'd just woken up from a dream, and shit got Quantum Leap real in Grenada. No more doubt or agonizing or rethinking potentially-rash decisions, because now I, not unlike Quantum Leap Sam, didn't even really have a plan-B to get me back home. I mean, I didn't even really have a Ziggy to give me hints.

(First of all, wrong Ziggy. Second of all, that outfit isn't even the most ridiculous thing I brought.)

Wide-eyed, I found my way out of the airport.

And into the realm of Billy Basso.

Billy Basso is one of those guys you hear long before you see him. In the island world of liltingly-unintelligible Caribbean "English," Billy Basso's voice came plowing through the night at me, unabashedly loud, unyieldingly low, un-fucking-mistakably American. I knew this was my guy long before I rounded a corner and actually saw all 6'4" of him - the sort of person whose presence actually has its own gravitational pull - holding court with a crew of laughing airport personnel.

This is the hurricane I am swept up into for the next year: Tropical Storm Billy.

(Like so, but I was slightly less prepared).

Billy Basso picks me out of the thin crowd instantly and advances on me, brushing aside my professional-handshake-ready arm with an oblivious-to-our-height-disparity bear-hug. Then he hefts my body-bag to one shoulder in a quick flicking movement, gives me a momentarily judging-yet-hilarious “WTF?” look when he feels the weight of the thing, and turns his back, already striding away on legs that take one step for every three of mine. Over his other shoulder, he booms out: “C’mon already, let’s get a drink.”

At this point, I’ve talked to Billy Basso on the phone exactly once, most of which conversation involved him making me repeatedly assure him that yes, I was serious; no, if he bought a ticket he wouldn’t be waiting for a no-show at the airport; yes, I understood this wasn't a fucking vacation; and yes, I thought I would be able to physically handle the sails on a big boat in dicey water (I'll just let you guess which of these questions I'd answered with purely-optimistic lies).

The truth was, I had not, in those few international phone minutes, found a way to broach the subject of my stomach’s complete failure to pass my one and only test at sea. 

But you know what? 

Now I was here.

Now there was no turning back for either of us. 

Now was definitely the the time to take some preventative Dramamine.

(Luckily, Dimenhydrinate's OTC. Now, if I can just find it amongst all these cowbells in my luggage...)

Furtively, I fished a couple pills out of the container in my pocket and dry-swallowed.

We tossed my sarcophagus of useless land-life shit into the back of a ratty rental Jeep and sputtered out into the night.

(Good thing I also packed a wide selection of turbans to keep me from freaking out!)

Lest you get the wrong idea here: Billy Basso was not, technically, a Billy, in the dating-prospect sense. In fact, if he was the personality-punch maelstrom that swept the last traces of my old life away in those first few Gilligan's Island weeks aboard, his girlfriend – an adorable little redheaded Alabaman Gulf Coast belle also there to greet me at the airport – we'll call her Ginger – was the calm harbor that never EVER ran out of cabernet and girl-talk to share on the deck or docks. And from pretty much the first three-way toast at our patio dinner table, I knew things were gonna be alright.

But back to the immediate matter of dinner. After wine glass number two, I suddenly remembered a warning I’d received from a much more sea-seasoned friend (who had achieved the unthinkable and gone on a three-day cruise once): “Drinking will make you ten times more susceptible to seasickness.”

Oh fuck.

But Billy Basso had already summoned another bottle to our table! I didn’t know if our boat was at a dock, bobbing around in an anchorage, or maybe we were setting sail within the hour. I still knew nothing about what I was getting into, except that I was woefully unprepared and didn't want to show it. One more glass to be polite, I told myself. One glass, and then double up on the Dramamine. I swished two more little pills down in a gulp of house red, raising my glass to Billy Basso’s “To new crew!”

(Think happy non-barfing thoughts...)

And now cut to the near-future where I am drunk. Not completely Susie Solo In the Wonder Years Shitfaced, but definitely tipsy enough that I suddenly remember, with slight panic, that I’m too drunk to even attempt the insurmountable task of not spewing on myself as soon as I step aboard a boat. A boat! On the water! You idiot, you’re capable of getting sick from sitting on a floating pontoon-dock! The jig will be up! You’ll be on the first plane home tomorrow!

But Drunk-Susie then suddenly remembered a fix: Dramamine. I held the magic solution right in my pocket! No time to waste: two more pills down the hatch.

And one more for good measure, because Drunk-Susie is forgetful and incapable of performing simple arithmetic and let’s just be blunt – a goddamn moron.

(There's a lot of wiggle room in dosages.)

So we leave the ramshackle restaurant, and bounce off again through the night, launching over potholes and scrambling down steep sprays of gravel and careening around dark corners like a go-kart safari. Or maybe we just idled calmly across a parking lot. The thing is, I don't know, because somewhere around this point all that Dramamine, no doubt augmented by a healthy dose of wine, started to do its thing. By which I mean, if you take too much of it, as I had inadvertently done, Dramamine apparently does a mild sort of thing-on-acid.

(Alright, who unpacked my disco ball?)

Everything was big and loud and confusing. I mean, Billy Basso really actually is big and loud and kinda confusing, and I was travel-and-wine tired. But on top of those factors, everything else just started to seem incomprehensible. And inebriatedly struggling to process that I was in the beginnings of a mild-to-middling Dramamine OD, I dimly realized with horror that I was kind of unintentionally tripping balls.

(First impressions are really my forte.)

I remember stumbling out of the back of the Jeep and laying eyes on the boat in the cool blue moonlight for the first time: she was a floating figure of classically-swooping outlines, sparkling stainless steel, twinkling mast lights, soft silvery teak, ghostly spirals of furled sails, leather-stitched helm wheel and, from the end of the dock where we stood, the faintest echo of Billy Eckstine wafting out from the salon. I felt like I was stepping back in time. I also, slightly less magically, felt like my lips were going numb and I was starting to hear weird shit Billy Basso and Ginger weren't. And though I wisely hadn't confided in either of them, what with them being my brand new boss and coworker, I was certain that the boat knew it. 

Onboard. Ginger is showing me the tricks to finding the hidden light switches in every room, and I'm steadfastly setting them all ablaze because the bright lights seem to normalize things a little bit.

Then we're in the dim galley and Ginger is pouring me a grotesque glass of wine from somewhere and I'm accepting because aforementioned Drunk Susie shortcomings, but then when I reach for it, there's no wine glass. While Ginger watches with a somewhat astonished look on her face, I casually paw at the walls till I mash the right button and fire up enough wattage to dispel the phantom stemware. I'm so fucked. Meltdown imminent. This is going to be the shortest, most embarrassing employed-to-fired period in my life. Goddammit, Susie! This was your once-in-a-lifetime golden opportunity! Biggest. Fail. Ever.

Then Billy Basso is touring us around the working innards of the boat, opening tiny Alice In Wonderland doors and odd-shaped hatches and hidden compartments, proudly showing me things that make no sense: weird little showers, fucked-up electrical sockets, endless switch-panels, optical-illusion walls that curved in illogical places, pulleys and levers and ladders to nowhere, engines and generators and watermakers with blinking sensors and toggles and dials and shit.

It was way too much for a drunken, sleep-deprived, Dramamine-addled Susie. There are just not enough lightbulbs in the world to make it through this.

(Now just one more, for good measure!)

And then something wonderful happened.

The boat - in the one and only instance of mercy I ever experienced from her - came to my rescue: lights-out.

The boat, that wonderfully demanding, fitful, grand old dame, had taken pity on me and called the game just in time - with every possible filament aboard lit up like a nursing-home birthday cake, she'd blown the power to the entire dock. Deus Ex Machina - the night was over!

Billy Basso unleashed a torrent of lower-register expletives, knowing he was in for a long night of futile trouble-shooting by flashlight. Ginger sighed, knowing she was in for a night of hearing about it. And I sighed in relief, as Ginger spirited me away to my bunk, urging me with a wink to just go to sleep and stay clear of the action.

"Just come up whenever you wake up, you must be exhausted," she said from the deck as I descended a ladder into my room with approximately the same amount of grace and elegance as my bag, which Ginger had unceremoniously stuffed through the hatch and let thud like a dead body to the floor ahead of me.

Oh, you have no idea, I thought, collapsing into bed as she let the hatch fall closed behind me.

There was moonlight coming through one small porthole, shifting with the boat's position. I could hear docklines creaking somewhere level with my head, and water rippling around the hull under my bunk. The last thing I remember was having the distinct but somehow unalarming impression that my duffel, slumped on the floor, was snoring.

Tripping. That's how I started my years-long trip on the Sailing Yacht Delirium.

Lights.

Out.