Journal Entries
-
- 1
- 2
-
Male Bonding
Posted Oct 7, 2000
I got an invitation from a trust department banker to join him on Captain Turner's boat out of Watchapreague for a day of fishing. I had mixed feelings about whether or not to go: I'm not all that keen on fishing, and I had visions of being 'hit on' all day by a banker trying to ingratiate himself into the deep pockets of the invested assets of the employee benefit funds I manage. Going meant getting up at 4 am in the morning. What does one wear on such a junket? On the other hand I firmly believe that time spent messing on a boat are not deducted from one's total. I accepted.
We joined up at 5 am on the south-side of Virginia's Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel, and I was surprised that there were only two other guests, a lawyer and the head of a small ship repair firm. The threesome were nattily attired in tasteful shorts, polo shirts with labels, and new deck shoes while I had chosen Merlot-stained Levi's, a blue work shirt, and my salt encrusted deck shoes were veterans of many, many excursions to the water. After introductions we loaded the banker's coolers into his rental van and set off across the bridge tunnel in the dark.
It was still dark when we arrived in the tiny fishing hamlet of Watchapreague on Virginia's Eastern Shore and parked at the marina. Captain Turner was on his boat, a gleaming wooden workboat of ancient design. Later I learned that he had bought it new from the builder in 1947 and the engine, it's 13th, had 10,000 hours on the clock. Captain Turner's son, the bait boy, arrived, loaded our gear, and we we're off in still waters and a lightening sky.
My host and his guests excitedly talked fishing and boats with the captain and shivered in their shorts in the morning air while I reclined in a deckchair and snoozed off my sleep deprivation. I roused momentarily to watch the blood red sun rise out of the water. I was comfy in my jeans and long sleeved shirt and declined a beer to return to my snooze. A change in the engine's RPMs announced our arrival at Captain Turner's chosen spot to begin our fishing. I'm up to learn the drill.
The banker, lawyer and Indian Indian chief are in the deck chairs, intent. The bait boy is passing out rods, their double-hook bottom rigs baited with a squiggles of squid. Captain Turner is backing down on the anchor he has deployed from his seat at the controls. "Ok," he announces, and the fishing begins.
We all hit the releases on our reels, and the monofilament line pays out 45 feet and hits the bottom. The conversation about boats, motors, inboard/outboard vs. outboard motors, bottom rigs, previous trips, fish caught continues. It is a stunningly beautiful morning to be up, but moreover and to be up and be on the water.
Almost immediately I get a strike and begin reeling. The others are also reeling. We move about the deck weaving our rods in and out of each other as the lines pay out and cris-cross. The baitboy has his hands full with the lawyer's rig and directing the weaving. "No, go over," he says to me as I work my way aft, the drag on the line too low to reel my fish. At the stern of the boat I pump, raising the rod high then reeling as I bring it down. Forward on the boat the baitboy is threading the lawyer's bottom rig thru the lines of the banker and the Indian Indian chief. Captain Turner, in his office at the boat's controls, smiles and drinks in another glorious morning on the water.
I get my fish to the surface, a 3 1/2-foot sand shark. The baitboy has unhooked and tossed a small trout from the Indian chief's line and raises my shark by the leader with gloved hands. After struggling for a few moments to extract the hook he puts it on the fishbox in the center of the deck and cuts the line. The shark is held aloft to the morning--the first fish in the boat. I accept my first beer; it's 8 am. Captain Turner orders the shark in the fishbox rather than overboard when I add the taste of shark steak to the ongoing fishing chitchat. I'm rebaited and back on the bottom.
I have another strike and reel in a small trout. I grasp the trout, carefully extract the hook, and toss the fish back into the green water. "I'll do that," the bait boy says as he puts more squid on my hook. I draw laughter from the group recovering from my faux pas: "I better smell like fish when I get home!" The four of us are constantly reeling in fish that are checked against measurements gouged into the wooden fishbox lid and tossed back. "Looks like my kid's growth chart on the garage wall," the Indian chief says of the scratches on the lid. A discussion ensues on fishing limits, conservation efforts and the political skirmishes between commercial fishermen, headboat operators like Captain Turner, and recreational fishermen. After too many skates are reeled in, we move, all of us having a beer during the short break. More fish, more fish stories, boat stories and rig stories, more moves, more beers; the morning drones on. I change into shorts and a Calcutta Offshore Baits T-shirt carefully chosen for the outing and add a few fishing stories of my own. The six of us become a fishing unit and the fishbox fills with trout, roundhead, blues, an occasional triggerfish, and a flounder and the trashbox fills with empty beer cans. Box lunches from the bank's executive dining room are produced and consumed. "Come on doormat!" the banker calls to his rig while describing how to fillet a flounder with a single swipe of a sharp knife.
At 3:30 we are back at the dock, the fish is been cleaned and bagged by a black man who follows my instructions for skinning the shark and cutting it into 2" steaks. The banker pays Captain Turner, the baitboy, and the fishcleaner. By 5 we're back at our cars, heading out for soccer games, recitals or weekend beach homes. Another day at the office.
Discuss this Journal entry [1]
Latest reply: Oct 7, 2000
Icon for Men by Matrix
Posted Sep 30, 2000
A lifetime supply of Matrix's Icon-for-men's Body Building Shampoo: that is surely what I must have. My God, the body of my hair will be forever built. Could I do it 3 times a day and turn my hair's body into the equivalent of what Chyna has done for her's? And will that 'do it' for me, or will it 'do it' for those who gaze upon my countenance?
I discovered the motherlode of Matrix by accident. I kept finding greenish goo on stuff in the bottom of a closet, but its source was a mystery. I was certain of every possession in the spartan rental house, the bulk of my stuff packed in numbered boxes in two storage sheds 30 miles apart. My new ex-wife had watched every thing I took from the home I'd been rebuilding for 16 years with a charm I had never discovered during our years together--I knew everything I had.
I found it by accident. I was turning a room in the house from a storage pit of s**t randomly tossed in by my roommate or me into a bedroom for my daughter's custodial visits. A bulging FarmFresh grocery bag hung from a clothes hanger in the closet. It was filled with black plastic 33.8 fluid ounce jugs of Icon for Men Body Building Shampoo. One was leaking. They could only have come from my ex's salon. What could this mean?
Surely it means that it will be some time--years--before I buy my next bottle of Flex. Despite missknowitallhairchemicals' oft-repeated stern warnings when we had started dating of the buildup of paraffin about the roots of my hair, I like Flex. I like the smell. I smell Flex and I'm whisked back twenty years into the shower with Marion and her waist-length hair. She shampooed it with Flex and rinsed with Flex Creme Rinse Conditioner every day, and I helped. I helped and I looked upon her gorgeous, wet body. Sometimes I helped myself to other things while she was busy rinsing, and every time I kneel I can remember the taste of Flex Conditioner on my tongue.
I've been back on my own for almost a year now. Maybe it's time to buy a bottle of Flex and start living again. Perhaps the Icon will do a good job on my car, altho I would think that a little paraffin would be better for beading-up the water in the rain.
Discuss this Journal entry [1]
Latest reply: Sep 30, 2000
Anti-Lock Disk Brakes and Adrenaline
Posted Jun 7, 2000
Monday, June 05, 2000
Norfolk, Virginia
I am driving north down Colley Avenue, my mind wandering. I'm on my way home after going to a meeting at the right time but a day early. I have stopped at the store to pick up three dozen clams for a dinner appetizer; and, giving up on locating the plunger with which to unstop the toilet, a new routine that accompanies my daughte's custodial visits, I've purchased one for $3.79 at Colonial Hardware. Everything--the sky, the street, the buildings--are a uniform gray and the street is slightly damp. I am not going too much over the 35 mph speed limit.
Out of the corner of my eye from the right, a motion. Instantaneously all of my attention is focused on the space my car is to occupy second by next split second. An older black gentleman on a bicycle set on crossing the street has pedaled slowly from between two parked cars. His full attention is now focused on my car and his eyes register alarm and resignation. His jaw has already set for the beating he knows will surely follow. He, too, is gray.
My foot goes to full press on the brake pedal even as years of driving tells me that I am far too late, the bicycle and the man will impact my nearly unblemished Acura coup at the right headlight. There is no place to swerve right or left. All I can do is push on the brake pedal and push some more. The odd vibration of the pedal against my right foot signals that the anti-lock disk brakes are in full function. In an instant the entire contents of my car--the clams, the plunger, a cell phone and planner, cigarettes, lighter, a half-full mug of coffee and the blue paper mache iguana from the back window ledge--are flung forward and compress in the passenger-side footspace.
On the street the bicycle rider has already reacted to the force of the coming blow and he falls away from the direction my car is coming. His bike tumbles to the street, but he catches himself and remains on his feet in a half crouch cowering against the blow.
The blow does not come. My car comes to a stop. The slight chirp of tire against pavement is now silent as is the clattering from the landing of the inertial--driven contents of the car. In the span of time it takes to check my rear--view mirror and verify that I will not be hit from behind, I am breathing heavily and my pulse is racing, ready for action that will not now be needed. The old man continues his crouch astride the fallen bicycle, frozen like a statue, still ready to take his punishment.
He turns and our eyes meet. Everything in my view is a dull, muted gray except for the old man's eyes. Everything around us is motionless, frozen in that one split second. His right hand comes up in salute on an otherwise expressionless face and he drags his bicycle back between the park cars. I drive on.
Discuss this Journal entry [1]
Latest reply: Jun 7, 2000
Melons
Posted Jun 5, 2000
Sunday, June 4, 2000
Norfolk, Virginia
The check out line was slow as the cashier wiped the scanner off between swipes of wet and heavy sides of ribs. The lady in front of me either had a very large family or a great party was in the works. I watched people coming into the grocery store as I waited. It was raining hard outside and they rushed in the door shaking water from their hair.
A twenty-something woman jogged across the parking lot for the door. That she had no bra on was an inescapable conclusion from the pendulous motion of her chest against her tee shirt. I couldn’t take my eyes off of her as she came through the door. The chill accompanying the rain had made her nipples hard, and the tee shirt clung to her body. She paused near my check-out line and raised her arms to gather her long hair into a pony tail. The world stood still as her fine tits stood out, chiseled against her wet shirt, as she worked at her hair.
Discuss this Journal entry [1]
Latest reply: Jun 5, 2000
Dust to Dust
Posted Jun 3, 2000
Friday, 6/3/00
Norfolk, Virginia
I pulled into the bank parking lot, into a space butting against a temporary chain link fence, and opened the Wendy's bag and began eating my lunch. A few feet away through the fence, I used to park on the rutted asphalt when I went to Paddy's Irish Pub for lunch. Inside Paddy's would be a crowd of longshoremen and sailors lining the bar and filling the tables. Paddy's special on Thursday, meatloaf, always drew a crowd.
In that spot now was a 10-foot high pile of rubble--broken concrete and bricks and chucks of asphalt. A large yellow machine with steel tracks was on top of the pile and slowly scooped away at it. As I chewed my hamburger into tiny pieces, the loader dumped buckets of the debris into a hopper atop another large machine that roared and belched clouds of diesel smoke and dust. A pyramid of coarse fill grew underneath a conveyor belt that led from the bottom of the crunching machine. On the far side of the fenced in lot, a front-end loader filled a dump truck from a pile of wall board, mangled wood, and corkscrews of steel rebar. Before a cloud of dust hid them, I recognized a jagged section of the beautiful old floor boards from Paddy's joined to several broken joists as they were dropped into the bed of the truck.
I finished my hamburger and backed out of the space. Many of the cars in the parking lot were coated with a heavy layer of dust.
Discuss this Journal entry [1]
Latest reply: Jun 3, 2000
-
- 1
- 2
-
geezer3
Researcher U132867
Write an Entry
"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a wholly remarkable book. It has been compiled and recompiled many times and under many different editorships. It contains contributions from countless numbers of travellers and researchers."