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.