Trial By Fire With Billy Boat-School

In homage to an old friend who got married a few weeks ago, I am getting off my ass, dusting off my brain that once recreated so freely (and the ol' Billy Blog it tended), and cranking out one last nostalgic entry for the mostly-abandoned 2015, in hopes that 2016 will be a more entertaining, less end-of-graduate-school-and-start-of-new-grownup-job-dominated year.

This one's for you, Billy Boat-School.

***

When we first met, Billy Boat-School was a scrabbling liveaboard who'd just set his sights on the then-distant goal of a captain's license. He had a tiny little sloop whose mast was lashed in a firmly horizontal position on its deck, and he lived on it, anchored out in a bay overlooked by the lovely Saint Thomas dump.

Billy Boat-School was one of about a dozen ragtag pupils enrolled in a three-day US Coast Guard training course required of all crew wishing to work in the boating world of actual paying commercial passengers, and I ended up seated next to him on the first day. I, for my part, was still fresh on Delirium, with one stormy 72-hour trans-Caribbean passage with Billy Basso and Ginger and a lot of sunny day-sailing and snorkeling with Billy Billionaire under my belt, a great deal of excitement about my still-new life afloat, and little else. As far as boat trash go, we were both fairly wide-eyed and young. And, in this transient environment largely devoid of attractive here-and-now social options, he was a good-looking Billy in my same demographic who clearly understood the wanderer's urge. Of course I sat next to him.

Let me back up a sec: this is not a "class" in the organized, sensibly-administered sense you might infer, just based on the fact it's ostensibly overseen by a uniformed force under the US Department of Defense. No, no, no. This a class I'm taking in the islands. What this means, for anyone who has never lived the uniquely amusing-to-hellish spectrum of the experience of doing business in the lesser Antilles is that - and this is both a singular fact, and also applicable as a metaphor useful in the broader contextual sense - it was not searchable on the internet.

This is because the islands are a different world when it comes to getting things done. Just for example, in order to get here I've hopped two separately exciting rides on the island-wide "dollar bus" system, which is comprised of a fleet of trucks driven by Rastas with seats bolted into their beds and is classifiable as a "system" by only the most relaxed island standards. Also for example, I've been chased down the street at my stop by a pack of islander schoolchildren laughingly screaming "CRACKER!" at me. Also for example, I've been initially misdirected to a dilapidated building on the wrong end of the property, where the only occupants are little green lizards swarming the stone walls. I've put in a decent amount of effort just to arrive at this training (all the while building up blog fodder for days), and none of this is particularly special, is what I'm saying. In the islands, you are just as likely to go through a similar obstacle course of acrobatics in patience and problem-solving trying to buy a pair of shoelaces or something else you'd consider mundane and ubiquitous in the non-islands universe. Just for example.

The first day of the course was dedicated to Marine Medical First Responder training, and featured a local "medic" who offered a downright alarming number of firsthand stories of people in her social circle and professional purview becoming seriously injured or suffering progressively worsening conditions under her misguided care. In summary, I would not have picked her for my survival team.

(Yesterday's takeaway.)

Enter today's instructor.

The guy's name is Len. He is wiry and dirty and wears the almost-obligatory Harley Davidson do-rag and greasy grey ponytail, stone-washed jeans completely ripped out in the ass, and features a constant cigarette. You've met this Billy a million times at gas stations and carnivals all across the country. This is that Billy whose "ol' lady," when he has one, sports an identical ol' lady-version of his same voice and ponytail.

Len is the island's Fire Expert, and he begins the second of our three days of instruction for the internationally-mandated STCW, or "Standards of Training, Certification, and Watchkeeping" session on maritime fire safety and suppression by shuffling up to the front of the room, flashing a yellow smile, and welcoming us to the "Stupid Things the Coast Guard Wants" class.

Much as our trainer yesterday largely exemplified, in her true-story illustrations, exactly how bad a medical situation can turn if everything is done wrong, Len has a grab-bag of personal backwoods pyromania disasters which he divulges throughout the day. Billy Boat-School and I have an increasingly hard time keeping straight faces: both The Angel of Death (who had to be gently corrected on the difference between venous and arterial bleeding by a classmate who just couldn't take it any more) and The Firestarter are oblivious to the irony of their own causative involvement in all these firsthand accounts of Things Gone Horrifically Wrong. Tragic isn't exactly the word I'm looking for, but it'll do. 

(*To his credit and in contrast with Day One's happenings, Len at least didn't come back from lunch drunk and supremely high on his day to teach. This is the sort of gold star for exemplary performance one can expect to receive in the islands.)

Anyway, we spend the first half of the day dozing to firefighter training videos created by Texas A&M and aimed at crewmembers on oil tankers, and then for the second half of the day, Len calls for a van to take us to the Saint Thomas dump for hands-on suppression practice.

On his way out of the classroom, Len tucks an oil-stained cardboard box piled high with professional teaching materials (by "teaching materials," I of course mean emergency flares, full lighter fluid jugs, leaking paint thinner bottles, and the like) under his arm, accidentally knocking his lit cigarette out of his mouth in the process. Billy Boat-School and I both see this and reactively glance at each other with eyebrows raised in alarm. One single exasperated "fuck" escapes Len's lips as he fishes, seemingly endlessly, through the bottom of the box for his glowing Camel before finally retrieving it, shrugging, and taking another drag as he ducks out the door as if nothing noteworthy had just happened.

(Well this class just heated up.)

It's time to start some fires.

At the dump, it's tropical-summer hot out and there is no shade. This, Len says with a laugh that disintegrates into a 30-year smoker's hack, is because the charred framework of a former shade structure, which he points out a small distance behind our current training site, had just recently become a casualty of an overzealous day of practice-fires. Billy Boat-School shoulders me and I nod, because this is the sort of self-written joke you don't even have to verbalize to a person of standard intelligence: of course the Fire Expert burned down the training site. By this time, we're both wearing paper safety-masks so at least we can smile openly without appearing rude or frightened.

Len is now in his element. He dramatically sloshes diesel fuel from shoulder-height into an upturned car hood, wipes his now-covered hands on his jeans, and holds an acetylene torch flame to the surface of the pool until it hits its flashpoint and ignites. Then he turns, bounds toward us with a manic grin, and tosses the still-lit torch on the ground. Its hose, ending in an invisible flame hissing from its nozzle, is very close to the plastic can of remaining diesel fuel, and pointed straight at it. Billy Boat-School again nudges me, and we just look at each other. Behind his mask, I'm pretty sure Billy Boat-School's mouth is wide open. Mine is.

(It's just that I never pictured myself actually physically exploding.)

So now we are all to take turns advancing on Len's fires with different types and calibers of extinguishers supplied for the course, half of which turn out to be already discharged (because remember, Islands), with Len doggedly reigniting our target blaze. It's amazing to watch the new hazards he creates with every flippant toss of the torch: sometimes it lands with the flame pointing back squarely on its own canister, sometimes burning directly on a discarded cabinet or pallet or tire or other readily flammable object. More than once a fellow student has to cartoonishly dodge it as it rolls to a halt among us.

Len, obviously a connoisseur, quickly grows dissatisfied with the flame's quality and begins adding to the burning stew like a chef seasoning to taste. At one point, he asks us if anyone has a knife, which he uses to pry open paint cans and other household hazardous waste collection items, then to slash open lighter fluid containers directly over the flames, as if he's savagely gutting small animals that otherwise wouldn't bleed fast enough. The man's immersion in his work is so devotedly focused as to be almost meditative, in an insane caveman-at-a-big-tent-revival-type way, and I'll be honest: it's goddamn riveting.

(It also ends here, if the wind shifts.)

Then he becomes dissatisfied with the quantity of our blazing foe, crippled as it is by the confines of the car hood whose edges are now glowing dull red. He pours a trail of diesel directly onto the ground around the hood. This seems to help, but it's clearly Not Enough. He begins to throw other random objects - a computer printer, an old extinguisher hose - onto the blaze. Still not sated, he cracks open a few marine flares and waves them around very near us, his little increasingly-uneasy non-safety-goggled captive audience, before throwing them onto a cement block where they boil away blindingly behind him like minions.

(Well, I guess not everyone can pass the class.)

It is at this fevered point, with Len pacing and laughing and gesticulating wildly, unintelligible behind a WWII style gas mask, spilling highly-flammable substances on himself and now no longer able to restrain the compulsion to pull all the firing pins in the extinguishers himself, before relinquishing each one to a student, that Billy Boat-School and I lock eyes and silently, momentarily, share a wordless revelation: Len has completely fucking lost it. He's in an alternate state of being. He is overstimulated to the point of Nirvana, his fists clutching firing pins as if they were snakes, chanting at us to "get low!" as if this were his own personal shrieking mantra. He is, like footage of a Pentecostal possession by The Spirit, at once hilarious and terrifying.

(Not sure if speaking in tongues or just Marlboro-breath.)

We continue at this frenzy-pitch for around two hours - a stamina I quite frankly would not have expected from someone so clearly courting emphysema - after which time the sun has almost set, appearing very red and sick through the black shroud of probably one hundred carcinogens and teratogenic gases intermingling in a hazy soup over us. The official ending time of the scheduled STCW training day has long since come and gone. Under Len's spiritual guidance, we have each personally probably cheated a fiery death approximately a dozen times (though it's really anyone's guess what will now happen in our offspring's DNA). It has given a whole new meaning to the phrase "trial by fire."

And then, the most fantastic moment of all happens: we are completely out of charged extinguishers. With his beloved diesel-and-more Molotov cocktail flaming 15 feet into the sky, now restrained by neither the metal confines of the car hood nor the constraining cautions of common goddamn sense, Len discovers there are no more pins to be pulled: we are out of ammunition.

This seems to neither surprise nor worry Len in the least.

(I am become Len, Destroyer of Worlds.)

I hear Len's breath come out like an exaltation. Then he shoves his gas mask up onto his forehead, takes a sort of divine healing stagger-step backwards, and stands facing the fire in what appears to be moment of sacred reverie, possibly unaware of us, his small gaggle of onlookers still present, our smoke-watering eyes averted in all different awkward directions.

Billy Boat-School and I don't even have to look at each other to know we're on the same page at this point, but over the roar of the conflagration I can hear him losing it beside me.

"Guess we're done today," mutters Len, and just like that, we retreat to the waiting van with Len bringing up the rear, occasionally turning back for just one more look at his battlefield. You can just tell that the man's entire life force is wrapped up in this endlessly-repeated struggle: Len is born, dies, and is born again at the Saint Thomas dump, ad infinitum.

(Did not even know the human body could do that with a flare.)

As for Billy Boat-School and I? I guess you could say that was the day that forged our now decade-long friendship.

The Case of Billy Brilliant, Billy Bait-and-Switch, and the Recognition Curve

Short, relevant, scene-setting true story:

Back in the yachting Delirium years, I once came face to face with Owen Wilson on an island in the French West Indies and had a brief, unwittingly conversational exchange.

Owen freaking Wilson - probably one of the most distinctive, unmistakable Hollywood noses faces out there (not to mention his being Punchin' Judy's lifelong fave, hahahHAHAHA, Judy, suck it!). And as I walked away, my crew-mate at the time, who had witnessed the encounter, gave me the wink-wink-nudge-nudge-burst-into-delighted-giggles, and I had to have said crew-mate explain why. And then, after the ensuing barrage of facepalms, I tried with all my might, but really couldn't remember much detail about the guy I had just talked to or how much said guy did or did not look like the vague Bottlerocket-era Owen Wilson of my mind.

My point: I am the poster-child for why eyewitness identification is unreliable evidence in court.

(Oh right! Haha! Hi mom.)

This Billy case occurred maybe just a week after starting work in a new lab.

***

As it happened, one evening shortly after my first day on the clock, I approached a busy crosswalk in downtown Fort Billy, and through the gaps in passing traffic, I happened to spy Billy Brilliant standing across the intersection from me.

Who, you ask, is Billy Brilliant? Oh, right, I forgot:

(Betrothed - the most useless kind of Billy.)

So here's what you readers should understand: I'd just barely met Billy Brilliant, but by the time I spied him in the twilight that evening, I already knew that his smart-ass company was aces. Plus, since he was married and we were coworkers and so all the Potential Awkwards were just right off the table from the get-go, and what with being newish in town still and an irreparably-social creature at heart, I was just genuinely pleased to see someone I actually knew. And he must have seen me looking at him like I knew him, because after a few seconds he caught my eye and grinned just a little bit, chin up in a long-distance, familiar hello.

(You misunderstood my previous enthusiasm, Billy.)

Now, a normal person would feel relief or vindication or happiness or whatever it is normal people feel when they recognize and are recognized by a new acquaintance. But not me. Here is what my brain did as soon as Billy Brilliant's attention focused me: it hit a flying reverse. All of a sudden, my fickle, unreliably prosopagnosia-prone brain had reconsidered and was furiously drafting a dissent to the Solo v. Familiar Face ruling of a moment earlier.

Sure, this dude *looked* like Billy Brilliant (that's the suspect, officer), and he *acted* like he knew who I was (admission of guilt, your honor), and (another piece of circumstantial evidence, ladies and gentlemen of the jury!) he was dressed as if coming from the gym, which was a positive cue because yes, fine, I'd noticed in the course of working shoulder-to-shoulder at a fume extraction hood with Billy Brilliant that yeah, duh obv the man works out. But now, after both of us having performed all the social signals of positive recognition, now my wishy-washy brain decided it wasn't sure. Now my brain motioned for a mistrial.

This was unfortunate, because the moment of sentencing - where we would be within speaking range and one or both of us would have to say something - was nigh!

We both continued walking, closing the gap. Billy Brilliant continued making positive eye contact and flashed a dazzling smile. The gavel was poised.

 (Didn't your mom ever teach you it's not polite to stare BACK?)

PANIC. Nobody wants to suddenly be That Cray Witness who botches the suspect ID and points to the wrong stranger! But if I really didn't know him, then why else would this guy be, as he now was, fully locked in on me? I must know him. Right? The fuck? - do I have Capgras delusion or something?

(You know that moment of decision when you've met someone once, and the next time you speak, you realize you've forgotten their name and you have one of two choices: ask again and risk offense, or pretend and then commit to playing it off evermore, because by the third time you see them, you've already pretended to know, and so now admitting you never did know would be an order of magnitude weirder? I always choose wrong.)

( Heyyyy.... you.)

So I committed. I looked Billy Brilliant in the eyes and strode the final three steps toward him and then, at the last possible second of deliberations - reminiscent of that douchey frat-boy joke where you offer to shake someone's hand but then right as they reach for it you duck your palm and make the gotcha! face - this imposter swerved and shifted eye-contact as though all this body language was just in my head and walked past me and I realized that goddammit, this guy was definitely not my Billy!

 (What nothing I oh, there's that one thing you I mean where, me? No it's, haha.)

11th hour reprieve! We passed by one another like super-awkward chimera, and each completed our walks across the congested thoroughfare. But then.

We both stopped in our tracks. And turned.

 (Mitigating circumstance: under the effect of the Wrong-Guy-icus spell!)

And so, now on first appeal, we waited again through the motions of another orange-flashing Don't Walk cycle, he squinting intently at me, me looking away intently across the shadow-and-blinding-bright procession of low-beams and tail lights and illuminated cab signs and pyramid pizza delivery magnets rushing between us. I briefly considered turning and darting away through traffic to the opposite side of the street. But then, as I was still trapped by my own indecision on the mid-avenue island, the river of wheels came to a halt again.

The crosswalk flashed an "all-clear." Other pedestrians proceeded about their business.

And Billy Brilliant's ringer and I both just.

Fucking.

Stood there.

(Mentally replace, if you will, the crosswalk chirping with that O.K. Corral whistling-song.)

I shit you not - neither of us walked. The tension grew absurd. We both broke smiles.

As the Don't Walk rolled around again, he finally broke and jogged back toward me, and politely asked,

Do I know you?

It was clear to me now that I did not, in fact, know this guy from Adam. But the amnesty period for a confession had passed. Now was not the time for any lame  'you look like someone I know' alibis. Now was the time for pokerface. I raised my eyebrows and shook my head slowly.

No.

I thought I could see a quick deliberation happening in his head. Then, having reached his verdict, he extended his hand and introduced himself. A long handshake, a brief exchange, an offer to join him for a latte, and we turned and walked toward the nearest coffee shop together. Sale made.

Though I initially saw Billy Bait-and-Switch as probably the easiest date I've ever accidentally snagged, when I jokingly told Billy Brilliant about it the next day at work, he rolled his eyes and issued a quick bench trial ruling of his own: Pshhh. Billy Bait-and-Switch was likely the shark all along.

Jesus.

I have to say, for a science-not-pre-law kind of guy, I do admire Billy Brilliant's legal acumen.

Billy Bénédiction Saves the Day

Bénir - French: to bless, to thank the Gods for

Bénir any Billy who wears that fabulous of a tunic.

Once back in the Delirium years, against all common sense, I headed out surfing by myself.

I know, I know I shouldn't do this. Even at the time, I knew I especially probably shouldn't do this at L'endroit Sauvage, which was about a 20-minute fair-weather dinghy ride from where we regularly docked on this particular island in the French West Indies. Getting there involved motoring around the exposed side of the island, out on the windward side of the rock where the shore essentially openly received an Atlantic that had been rolling westward unfettered for an entire oceanic-basin-worth of space. But on the particular day in question I couldn't drum up anyone else available, and it was one of precious few days off between charters, and well, I felt like surfing.

(Them waves aren't chocolate, you know that, right?)

As soon as I got out of the bay, there were swells. I mean, big swells right there at the outskirts of the anchorage, which is still somewhat protected. So here was the scene: me standing at the jerking dinghy console, realizing it's windy as hell – the sort of wind that's blowing up whitecaps right outside the breakwall. The wind-and-water factors combine to make dinghy travel slow at best, un-doable at worst. I don't know about this. But whatever, I feel like surfing.

It takes me a long time to get to L'endroit Sauvage and when I do, there is nobody else there. Being as how this is a pretty popular surfing spot for island locals who know what they're doing, this is A Bad Sign. But it is breaking. Breaking big! In fact, it's big enough, and from a slightly shifted direction, so I can't even anchor the dinghy where I usually would, but have to keep it further down the shore from the point, and further offshore. I idle and consider this for a long time, getting tossed around on the wishbone bow of the pontoons while getting the anchor out and tying the bowline onto the end of the anchor chain.

Two thoughts come to mind: 

a) I neither have a knife,  

b) nor do I have my mask and fins with me in the dinghy. 

(S. Solo Standard Protocol Item 126, Article 34.5: Do not admit, proceed as if nothing wrong.)

Even though I've never had trouble with the bottom here before, every once in a while, there's bound to be a struggle getting the anchor back up, in which case both the above checklist items are standard supplies in case of just-in-case.

Stupid me. Wonder... I wonder... if I should scrap the whole thing?

I notice that I'm already at a certain psychic level of unease – I can feel it uncoiling in my lungs and behind my navel. I know I probably shouldn't ignore it. But goddammit, I feel like surfing!

I know full well that of them all (and there are plenty), maybe my most staggering character flaw is impenetrable stubbornness, and with this in mind I've made a standing deal with myself about all things to do with forces that give absolute-zero shits about me (e.g., the sea and the mountains) – that never, ever will I force what doesn't feel right. So I sit in the cloud-scudded streaks of fleeting sun out there offshore, squinting at the azure surrounding me, trying to think and also, to not think at all in order to let some sort of clarity surface in me, just holding the anchor and chain for a minute.

Two minutes.

Then, the sign:

A turtle surfaces an arm's-length away: a big lazy green olive in the sapphire martini of the water. She cranes her neck to check me out, a fidgeting alien on my floating, wave-crashing white spacecraft – first out of one eye, then a slow head turn to double-check with the other. She is unhurried, unworried, mellow as moss while she comes closer. I keep waiting for her to realize what I am, for her millennia-long memory to remind her she is shy, to snort alarm and dive deep and fast. But she doesn't, so we just watch each other, me fiddling with the anchor flukes, her blowing tiny spumes of salt spray out of silent reptilian nostrils. 

Hi there, turtle.

It calms me down – maybe it's spiritual? – and when she does finally serenely turn and slip away, a tarnished green penny carrying some secret terrapin wish down with her as she slices and wavers out of view, I nod to myself. I have gotten the feeling that it's going to be OK.  

I am listening, Turtle. Gotcha. 

I set the anchor open and chuck it overboard.

It's a long paddle from here, and the chop is big enough that very soon, even sitting up as tall as I can on my shortboard I can't see the dinghy for seconds at a time while it ducks down between swells. It makes me nervous to lose sight of it – not so much for myself, but for the nightmare of the anchor dragging, or the line breaking, and the $30,000+ dinghy with its brand-new outboard blowing into the rocks before I can paddle back to it. It is the rough equivalent of parking a Mercedes without a hand-brake in the San Francisco hills and hoping for the best. 

Shit, it's a long way off.

Maybe this is not too safe. 

But Turtle said it's cool and maybe Turtle is my spirit-animal and hey, I feel like surfing!

L'endroit Sauvage break is windy. Confused. Coming in fast. I pearl and get rolled right off the bat and kick coral on my way around the washing-machine, and then even after I get back out and settled I keep feeling the bottom snagging my leash and I start thinking maybe, just maybe I am being supremely foolish for being out here alone today... 

Am I? 

(All this poor judgment, PLUS I didn't even put sunscreen on my bald spot.)

Once it takes root, the idea grows geometrically. 

Oh my god. 'The fuck am I doing? This is ridiculous. I'm not up to this. I'm too old to be this stupid.  Because of a *turtle?* Really, Susie?! REALLY. Your spirit animal is a jackass.

So I cut my losses and start paddling back and lo and behold, when I catch sight of it, the dinghy is a lot farther down the shore than when I left it. 

Fuck! (Paddlepaddlepaddle...) 

(THANKS Obama.)

By the time I get to it, the anchor has stopped dragging and has caught again, but it's now closer to shore, meaning the waves are stacking up bigger underneath it, and the dinghy is slapping down on them like a kid having a tantrum, angry at the ungiving anchor line. 

Great. What the fuck NOW, Turtle?

I can't pull it up. Every time I get a few feet of line on board, the 1,000-pound dinghy takes a rearward-hop on a wave and burns it back out of my hands. The anchor is not budging. 

Well isn't *this* just perfect? 

(Stuck between the devil and the deep blue sequins, here.)

I pull, tug, wrench, strain, try to time it with the waves, and almost get yanked overboard when the bottom snatches every hard-won inch of line back from me. 

Fuuuuck. 

I try idling forward while pulling, then I try to drive in front of it, try to back around it, pull it the other way, nothing. 

FUCKFUCKFUCK. 

The sun is getting lower. The wave sets are pushing tighter together. The tide is getting higher. Nothing good can possibly come from any of these developments.

I have to swim. I have to try to unhook the anchor off the bottom at the source. Aaaand, I have to do this shit without mask and fins. Jesus. I'm trying to remember how long the new, longer anchor line I just replaced last week at the ship-chandler a couple islands over is. 

Maybe 25 feet? Plus another 5 or so feet of chain? 

I jump back in and tread water, trying to think this out. No mask means I'll have to pull myself down the line, since I won't really be able to see shit. 

Which will make equalizing my ears a bitch. 

No fins means... well, I've had to swim the anchor up before when it's gotten lodged after taking guests snorkeling and whatnot, and with the chain in tow, it's maybe 10 pounds. Maybe 15. Even with fins, it's a good strong kick getting that load back to the surface. And without? I have never tried.

You don't float carrying that much steel.

I breathe deep, trying to get all oxygenated.

OK, go now. Think Turtle.

Pull, pull, pull down the line. Eyes open, everything is murky and stirred up and I can barely see my hands when they're stretched out to full arm's-length. The line is just a dark blurry stripe, and I can't tell with each grab-and-pull if I'm reaching for nylon or chain until I touch it. It seems really goddamn cocksucking sonofabitch motherfucking long. The dinghy on the surface is thrashing at the line like an unruly dog put on a leash for the first time ever. 

Even if I get to the anchor, what then, if it's still under pressure with nobody on-board to drive up on the line? A little help here, Turtle?

Line. Line. Line. Line. Chain. 

Chain! My fingers are on chain! But I am out of air. 

Go up now. 

The line is snapping like a bullwhip. 

Go up now. 

My nose, my bitchy little nose that is used to being masked, is wanting air really badly, rebelliously, starting unbidden to hiccup little leaks of water inward. 

Go up NOW. 

None of my meditative Delirium nights spent lying on-deck looking at the stars and practicing static apnea for three-minute stints of breath-holding – and there have been many, what with the Billyless nature of boat-life – are currently doing me any good in this turbid, aerobic-goal-oriented hell. I have to let go, have to surrender to a flutter of almost-involuntary kicks, and myopically I watch the bright fuzzy surface nearing. It's stranglingly slow. I feel crippled without fins, like my bare feet are some impotent, embryonic mishap. A turtle I am not.

(You're out of your element, Susie.)

Back on the dinghy, I see a lone Billy watching from the beach. He gets on a surfboard, which he has till now wisely shunned, and starts to paddle out. I secretly say a little blessing at this sight.

Maybe he has a mask! Fins! Or a miracle! Quelle bénédiction!

As he nears the dinghy I'm disappointed to see that he does not have a mask or fins, but I pull his board up and he gamely volunteers to try for the bottom himself, while I sumiltaneously drive forward to take the pressure off the line. He dives for it... 

(oh please oh please oh please!) 

...but comes up a minute later out of breath and empty-handed and sputtering, then climbs on board, and we sit, gathering ourselves, thinking. 

Finally he asks, You have a knife?

Well yeah, I *should* have a knife. I *should* have a mask and fins. I *should not* have come out without these things, I fucking knew this before the fact. I should not have come out by my damn self. I should not have come out today at all. And I *certainly* should not have let an effing *turtle* tip my mental balance.

But, out loud, all I have is the admission that No, I don't have a knife.

We sit, surfboards stacked wax-to-wax between us, and watch each other drip-dry in the wind. There is nothing left to do but break something.

So Billy Bénédiction lies belly-down, hanging forward over the bow, and I again drive up on the line. It comes tight and the outboard starts kicking up bubbles because we are not going anywhere. I open the throttle some more and the steering gets squirrelly in a way that you should never feel. And then I open it up some more. 

Are you watching this, you jerk Turtle? 

The bow, my cohort too, gets pulled down low into the waves, getting socked squarely in the chops by them instead of riding over their backs. This is the point-of-no-return: either something gives, or the dinghy will swamp and this ride is over.

Goddammit, you see this bullshit, you stupid Turtle?! Is this funny to you? 

And then there is a shudder, a lurch, the dinghy rears up like a hornet-stung racehorse for a moment before I can cut the engine and Billy Bénédiction yells something, hauling in the line quickly, hand-over-hand, to keep it out of the prop. At the end is chain and the anchor shaft, with all four flukes ripped off: galvanized steel, dismembered and left to drown. But we are free! We both let out a wide-eyed little laugh, looking at the shaft, shaking heads, shrugging. 

You're welcome for my anchor, you awful Turtle! You terrible, mean lying Turtle you!

(Next year for your turtle birthday: mylar balloons. Lots of them.)

I drop Billy Bénédiction back off as near to the beach as the dinghy can safely approach with the current waves, spouting merci beaucoups, and we split, one paddling toward shore and one steering away. 

***

The next morning, when I got back from buying a new anchor and was prepping the deck for our imminent departure on a passage, I found a note with a French island phone number tucked under our dockline, which read:  

America – L'endroit Sauvage – Surfing?

To this day, I occasionally randomly regret that I didn't act quickly enough to put some credits on Delirium's shitty island-cell-phone to give him a thank-you call before we sailed away. 

I never even got his name, but I mean, I owed the guy a drink, at least. 

And maybe some turtle soup.

Billy Bavaria and The Sound of Music

Some years and life-stages after the Delirium epoch became a thing of the past, I still count Billy Billionaire as one of my most favorite humans on the planet. To that end, we've stayed in touch the way you might imagine staying in touch with a wealthy, hedonistic septuagenarian of the Rat-Pack era might entail: Billy Billionaire occasionally transglobally drunk-dials me to belt out some long-distance Sinatra; I occasionally day-call him back and get rather rapidly hung up on, as Billy Billionaire is invariably operating at full steam in some philanthropic or art-collector-world social engagement or courtside-spectating a high-profile sporting event. And every six or so months, I receive an invite and accompanying plane ticket offer to come share martinis with him in Aspen or LA or Hawaii or on a sailboat afloat somewhere in the world.

Being as how upward of 40 years passed between our respective birthdays and we mostly frequent the sort of upscale locales where the high-stakes Hollywood-type long-con is ubiquitous, we also tend to garner a lot of judging looks from bystanders who likely think they are witnessing a May-December gold-digging effort in full swing. The truth, though, is this: my association with Billy Billionaire has platonically outlasted a litany of actual romantic Billys who have come and gone over the years. It has made me both much more aware of, and critically skeptical of the sort of social pressures that dictate who should have what sort of affiliation with whom (here's a spoiler: they're all bullshit). And, my friendship with Billy Billionaire has brought me into the yearly-reunion orbit of several absolutely amazing women, who I completely adore and would nowadays classify as some of the most solid girlfriends out there (unfortunately, way out there, geographically speaking).

And, it's been a fucking fun friendship (I like to think for both of us), so when you boil it down, that's not a bad deal at all.

(To be fair, the glares may have been less about the age difference and more about the bicycle being ridden inebriatedly into the bar, Billy.)

So one time, long ago and far away, Billy Billionaire and I and two of the abovementioned gals - I'll call these lovelies Ms. Boston (the sexy fashion model) and Ms. Backwoods (the Amazonian beauty) - went on a boat trip. Not just any old boat - no, Billy Billionaire had an attack of nostalgia and decided to charter his own good old familiar Sailing Yacht Delirium, which he had sold several years prior.

This is the story.

***

Holy shit, she was in shabby shape.

From the end of the dock, she still showed the lines of the elegant old racehorse she'd once been. But on closer inspection, as we took off our shoes and stepped aboard, it was painfully clear that she was hurting for maintenance. Everywhere, there were over-worn cushions, threadbare seams, unpolished stainless, unshaved teak, unbuffed waterlines, unscrubbed exhaust and docking smudges. It was a little bit like finding a former showring champion put untended out to pasture, bony and ungroomed and long in the tooth. This sort of neglect would never have stood under Billy Billionaire's benevolent reign.

(Well this should be a fantastic ride!)

That was the vessel. Now, if you can take that mental image and lower your expectations just a touch more from there, you have our Friendly Charter Crew.

Exhibit A: the Mate. She is no less than 50 years old, a chain smoker, an obvious and only semi-functional alcoholic, covered in questionable tattoos, and unkempt in even the most generous sense of the word. She has the voice of an angel, if that angel's throat had been stuffed with gravel and sawdust and beef jerky and then baked at high temperatures for several hours, has a laugh that would shut a junkyard dog right up, and exhibits a passion for actually working on-deck that rivals that of a sloth with mono. She is the epitome of a Leather Handbag. She is immediately amusing, but (or possibly because) she is also utterly useless.

Exhibit B: the Chef. He is a strangely-mannered, socially-awkward little Austrian fellow with a shrill voice, an unsettling way of moving about very quickly like one of those spiders that jumps unpredictably everywhere instead of walking with its eight goddamn legs, and body-language that Billy Billionaire quickly pegs spot-on as follows: "I'm pretty sure the small Nazi is going to try to kiss me. Or kill me." The Chef, too, clearly has no ambition to expand his duties beyond the galley, which arrangement all of us actually prefer.

Exhibit C: the Captain. His name is Dusty and he is squishy and easily sunburned and he is just terrified, *terrified* of Delirium. Incompetent is too gentle of a word, so I'll put it this way: Dusty is in so far over his head that it's unclear if this man has ever been at the helm of another vessel in his life, or if perhaps he is just a middle-management financial-sector-type guy who had a mid-life crisis in Fort Lauderdale and hasn't quite figured out how to get himself back out of this particular jam and into something more suitable, such as used-car sales, yet. He has no concept of the physics involved in the docking of a boat, nor those of casting off lines in sequence to leave a dock. He does not seem aware of the series of tasks necessary to raise the sails. He is absurdly afraid to take the boat into anchorages, even though they are well-charted and deep and Billy Billionaire and I have sailed to each of them innumerable times before on this very boat.

He also, of course, does not receive any assistance whatsoever from his two crewmembers - and I know from years of physical experience that Delirium often takes two strong and competent bodies to safely maneuver in good weather. Billy Billionaire, because he is a wonderful reader of people and also a hilarious asshole, picks up Dusty's furtive trepidation toward All Things Sailing before we even leave the dock, and gives us all a wide-eyed "heeere we go!" smile and wink-wink-wink-WINK-WINK. He insists on calling our Captain "The Duster," which Dusty does not like but about which he can't really do anything. Another thing The Duster doesn't like is when I offer to help with docklines, but he doesn't have much choice about this, either, since his other two crew are already nowhere to be found when the time quickly comes to leave port.

Where Delirium's current ownership ever found such a band of incompetent misfits, I honestly have no idea. But fuck it - ahoy! All aboard! Anchors aweigh!

(Unclear if this .gif is of our hapless crew, or of Ms. Boston, Ms. Backwoods, and I at the exact moment our carriage has arrived.)

Several alarming things happen in rapid succession: the boat's entire hydraulic system goes kaput (or, more honestly, was probably already fucked before our charter began) as the mainsail is halfway up the mast, and there is no winch handle aboard with which to manually continue raising it. The engine has already been cut when this happens, and requires a crew member to go belowdecks to be restarted, but The Duster politely declines my offer to perform this task and instead, announces that no big deal, we'll just drop anchor. This is also a catastrophe because the anchor chain will not feed out of its locker at a rate of more that one painstaking goddamn link at a time, because of corrosion and a broken guide-pipe, which means we are drifting, anchor not up but anchor not down, either, blinking at each other and stifling laughter like shitty children in church. Meanwhile The Duster, already bright pink and sweating profusely in what is clearly a years-old Delirium polo shirt that is two sizes too small (a leftover from my era aboard), is toeing the line of panic up at the bow, wrestling with the dangling anchor, which is probably 75 pounds of galvanized steel and which, due to mild waves and aforementioned physics of which The Duster's grasp is woefully deficient, is swinging with a distinctly axe-like chopping motion into the hull.

But The Duster has a Plan-B (or -C or -D or -WhateverLetterWe'reOnAlready). He springs into action and hauls the dinghy up alongside the boat, jumps in, and unties his tethering line, on his way to a heroic anchor-debacle rescue.

Except after he launches himself, the dinghy doesn't start. The Duster levels a stare of dull sorrow at us, his passengers lined up on the edge of Delirium, the distance between us widening lazily as he drifts away, with a look on his face that I can only describe as utterly deflated. You can just tell that nothing this wholly demoralizing ever used to happen in his cubicle-farm job.

(Accounting department Teambuilding Day was always such a hoot, eh Duster?)

Speaking of deflating and the inflatable-pontoon dingh--No. No, you know what? I'm getting distracted here and this story, much as it could continue to grow like some sort of sad, sad superhero among stories were I to set it free, isn't about The Duster. Miraculously, and unbeknownst to him, The Duster had someone else on board who would soon divert the harsh spotlight from even his incompetence.

This story is about our odd little chef.

This story is the story of Billy Bavaria.

***

Things first started to get a little weird when I noticed that Billy Bavaria was sneaking extras onto my plate when he brought the china up to the table for every meal. A little homemade chocolate candy here, a heart-shaped bit of cream-puff there - all things he would set before me, in front of Billy Billionaire, Ms. Boston and Ms. Backwoods, without a word of explanation.

Naturally, because my abiding love for Punchin' Judy has done nothing for my self-esteem if not for digging deep, permanent holes in which body-image-based self-loathing has been the hardiest weed to take root, I at first assumed these little additional tidbits might be Billy Bavaria's way of trying to fatten me up and push me onto the "No Longer Needs Buoyancy Devices" passenger-safety-watch list.

(Someday you will eat those words, Judy. Unless I get to them first.)

But then he began doing things like winking with each delivery, and then intently staring into my eyes for as long as possible while backing away toward the galley, as if maybe he was casting some sort of witchcraft spell that would steal my soul later in the night. This, of course, did not go entirely unnoticed or at all un-latched-onto-and-then-underhandedly-encouraged by the rest of the gang. The most ripe-for-humor wild-card thing about it was, though, that while Billy Bavaria displayed this undue fixation with me, he also seemed to have an insatiable urge for physical contact with Billy Billionaire. None of us knew what to make of it, other than an unending and escalating series of inside jokes. And so that is exactly what we made of it - and how.

Our week on Delirium generally looked like this:

Me, darting back and forth across the length and beam of the boat and up and down the mast as The Duster glumly and relentlessly sets us up for our next narrowly-averted sailing catastrophe. Me, scrambling to keep us from crashing into such wily objects as docks or other boats at anchor or large stationary islands, all the while also doggedly avoiding the accursed experience of eye contact with Billy Bavaria, who would invariably pop his head abovedecks to do the Dahmer-stare at me in action and who would occasionally come up behind me when I was working a line or otherwise occupied with a task from which I couldn't physically depart, to whisper compliments and to mention his desire for a sailing ladyfriend on his own small liveaboard sailboat in the Dutch West Indies. Me, in what retrospectively just had to be the world's most annoying attempt at helpfulness, starting so many conversational sentences with The Duster with the words Y'know, just a suggestion, but when *I* was on Delirium, we used to... 

Meanwhile, the rest of the gang raptly looking on, like front-row ticketholders at some sort of Captain-Ron-Meets-Cirque-du-Soleil show, in emotional states ranging from horrified breath-holding to hysterical under-breath laughing. And throughout, The Leather Handbag could always be seen, a slouching, haggard fixture at the stern of the boat behind a panicked Duster, intently dragging on her fifth cigarette of any given hour and gazing obliviously off toward Give-A-Fuck Island, which was always geographically situated in the exact opposite direction from the action of whatever current crisis The Duster had managed to create in that particular fifteen minute block of time.

(To be fair, thick clouds of smoke *can* be disorienting.)

So over the course of our charter various ports and beaches and coves were visited, several tan lines were created, endlessly-compounding jokes of the sort that left us all chronically breathless sprang to life (to wit: to this day, Billy Billionaire and Ms. Boston and Ms. Backwoods and I all still reflexively refer to this sailing trip as "The Voyage of the Damned"), and innumerable cocktails were consumed. Perhaps needless to say, while The Leather Handbag had shown enough restraint to wait to partake with us until approximately 4 pm on our first day out, after this zen-master-like exertion of willpower, she was quite possibly never truly sober aboard for the remainder of the week. This meant we did a fair amount of our own cocktail-fixing from that point on, but somehow, we persevered. In fact, so inspiring was our perseverance that one evening about halfway through the week Billy Bavaria, who had initially announced that he was something like ten years sober, invited himself to join us for a high-octane nightcap.

(This... is... cool with you guys, right? (*asked Billy Bavaria, never))

Of course shit just rolled downhill from there.

By which I mean, our time as paying guests on Delirium was the most ridiculous, horrendous, shockingly unprofessional shit-show of a charter I can imagine (and that's saying something after years in yachting). Also, it was simply the most delightful charter ever.

***

Suddenly our final evening had arrived. As it's customary for guests to treat their crew to a restaurant dinner ashore at the wrap-up of a charter, Billy Billionaire booked a table for seven at a local joint. We all dressed up and trooped in, and the martinis began to flow. Clearly, tonight was going to be do or die for Billy Bavaria, and so I made very certain not to be stuck sitting anywhere near him. Instead, Billy Billionaire and I escaped to one end of our long, white-linened table, while Billy Bavaria was pinned at the other end, next to Ms. Boston.

Martinis were ordered. Bread was broken. Abs were worked to their limit via laughter. Other patrons were overwhelmed and likely offended. And once the details were all a bit blurred, we trooped back to Delirium, where the party continued in proper Billy Billionaire fashion. At one point, as I began to confusedly put myself to bed in Billy Billionaire's stateroom, I was blessedly intercepted by Ms. Boston, who gracefully escorted me to our shared cabin. Lights out.

(I feel you kid. I feel you.)

In the morning, Billy Billionaire and Ms. Backwoods take off for the airport first thing, leaving Ms. Boston and I to breakfast and pack up for our own respective flights home without them. I wake to Ms. Boston's stirring in the opposite bunk, and her sneaking out the door for coffee. Then, the next thing I know, our cabin door has burst open again and in one blink Billy Bavaria has scuttled across the room, locking the door closed behind himself and landing in a crouch next to my bed.

(Agghgggagguhuhghaaaaahhhh!!)

I have quite possibly never felt more trapped in my life. While I'm struggling to keep what few linens are in use on a boat in the tropics clutched resolute between us like a shield, Billy Bavaria is reaching for my hands, which are also propelling me backwards in the bed toward the aft wall with surprising speed and force, hangover considered. And as he is pawing for my wrists, he is laying out his offer to me:

Susie, you have to come home to my boat with me. I am in love with you. Step aboard, my princess.

Being as how I was at most 35% awake, I honestly can't remember exactly how I responded. But "step aboard, my princess??" I can say my reply entailed some form of a confused and gutteral waiyghhhh, whuughh? and then, in rapid succession, no. Nononono.

Billy Bavaria seems shocked.

You are confused. We are soul mates, Susie. I KNOW we are soul mates! You will live with me.

Again, Nononono. Whuck-No!

Now Billy Bavaria wants answers.

Why would you not start this life with me? Why would you fight destiny? I will fill my whole boat up with fine liquor for you, if that is what it takes. You WILL BE MY BRIDE.

Well now hold a sec, the gentleman *does* make a seductive offer. But still, Nonononono. UhaaanhauhNO.

And finally, because my brain has at last turned over and the engine has caught and is now fully firing and has simultaneously remembered I am not wearing pants and also processed how many boundaries are being flagrantly broken in this room and not by me, GET OUT OF HERE. NOW. GETOUTGETOUTGETOUT. GET! OUT!

(Time to floor it.)

Billy Bavaria stares me down in trembling silence, his face maybe five inches from mine and frozen in an expression that is at once shocked and enraged, then retreats in another fast-motion leap. I scramble out of bed once the door clicks shut to throw the bolt behind him, truly shaken. What. The. FUCK?

When Ms. Boston returns, I tell her a quick summary, after which we both state the obvious out loud, essentially in tandem: We have to get the FUCK off this boat.

***

Imagine the way you might pack if you have been ordered to evacuate your house because of an all-consuming fire sweeping toward your neighborhood. Imagine how you might gather your possessions if you had just heard the alarm begin to sound that indicated the final rover was about to depart from the suddenly catastrophically-crippled space station you used to call home. Imagine how you might throw your life into a bag if you had witnessed the haunting mushroom-cloud flash of nuclear Armageddon, and were subsequently counting down the precious few moments remaining in which to get below-ground. Ms. Boston and I put those scenarios to shame.

But in the midst of this flurry, we began to hear something strange.

Is that... music? I asked Ms. Boston, cocking my head.

Ms. Boston listened and made an involuntary face, much like an infant first tasting a lemon (but sexier, because this is Ms. Boston). If it is, it's nothing I would ever EVER listen to, she said with a look of disgust.

It got louder. It began to drown out our packing. It became an almost unbearable racket. And finally, in part because my goddamn freediving fins were still on the back deck of the boat and had to be fit into my bag, but also because what the eff?, I threw open our cabin door.

I was met with the sight of Billy Bavaria, seated in a chair in Delirium's main salon. He was pointedly facing directly toward our door, blasting James Blunt, mouthing the words, and there were rivers of tears streaming freely down his face. 

You're byooo-tih-fuhhl... (tears and unmistakably homocidal glare during other awful James Blunt "lyrics")  'cause I'll nevehhh bee with youuuhh...

This was just fucking fever-pitch insanity.

(Yes, for GODSAKES, I said James fucking Blunt - the man has LOST IT.)

I accidentally made eye contact one last involuntary time, whilst slamming the door back shut immediately. Fins be damned, nothing is worth that.

***

Later, after Ms. Boston and I had literally fled down the dock - our carelessly-stuffed baggage in tow like that of refugees desperate to make the last boat out of Cuba - to the marina office, a thoroughly defeated Duster shuffled down the dock to join us, carrying a shopping bag of lukewarm canned beer he had salvaged from somewhere in the galley. With his bloodshot eyes averted, he let out the sort of inadvertent sigh that communicates nothing if not an utter and complete Oh FUCK this shit, popped one open and drank half of it in a single long pull, and only then, as if an afterthought, wordlessly offered us each a tepid can. He hadn't even bothered with coozies. Right then it was clear: The Duster, more than anyone I have ever before or since witnessed, had reached the end of his rope. The Duster was done.

This... said The Duster, dropping his head to his hand for several seconds of disheveled, morose silence, ...this is... the worst thing I have *ever* been involved in. I am truly, truly sorry.

I'm not entirely certain, what with the mild PTSD from the morning's earlier events clouding my attention to detail, but I'm pretty sure The Duster and Ms. Boston and I silently warm-brew toasted this proclamation as if it were a solemn oath. 

***

I hope, for The Duster's sake, it remains an unbroken - nay, unbreakable - record.

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.