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Vicious Cycle: Whiskey, Women, and Water

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Kenton Geer

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“Paint thinner is the boatyard’s morning dew. The stringent smell awakens the mind of a sailor as spring flowers awaken the mind of a poet. The boatyard, a reflection of your life, reminds us that the least desirable jobs often prove to be the most important and fulfilling. The harder the task, the more one feels rewarded when accomplishing it. Paint erratically splatters on skin in the same fashion that the stars come to fill up the night sky, the constellations on your forearms telling of the most recent project.”

“A lifetime of hard work developed a deceptive amount of strength and power in her. She clearly had hidden muscles. Her dock lines creaked and moaned like that of the reins of a horse trying to sprint but forced to trot. She anxiously chomped upon them, growing ever more restless with the change in the tide. She could see the open pasture from the fuel dock and feel the ocean pulsing through her as the south swell churned the harbor”

“The reality is that nightclubs are nothing more than a sea of lost souls searching for something that cannot possibly be found within their confines. We go to these places for we lack other direction, momentarily appeased by distracting sounds, flashing lights, and the prospect of pleasures of the flesh. Again and again, we confuse these stimulants for something worthy of our time. We drink in these places to pretend like we aren’t individually awkward, an irony we all share.”

“The sea can gauge your mood better than a thermometer can gauge your temperature. The sea is a teacher and a doctor. She gives you what she believes you deserve in dosages, prescribed by her liking. What you believe you need for your ailment may be exactly the opposite of what she believes you need. You may believe a slam job trip will fix your problems, yet she may believe a broker is more important to the lesson you are supposed to learn. You’ll find no better therapy when both the patient and doctor are on the same page. I was hopeful we both agreed that a slammer was in order.”

“At sea, the darker the night the closer you will get to your past. The music you decide to play is the radio dial of your history. Van Morrison’s “Have I Told You Lately” played as I stared at the setting moon. This is a song that always transports me to a New Hampshire backroad of my youth. Her name was Katie. She was tall, blond, and wore the girl next door look like an angel. She was smart, funny, and kind. She infatuated me from the moment I met her at Wentworth Marina. She was the daughter of two well-to-do doctors from upstate New York. It was her plan to sail around the world, and she wanted me to join her. “Just to mate” she would always say with a wink. She told me, “Pull over, pull over. I love this song. We have to dance.” So I found myself with goosebumps despite dancing in the warmth of the summer air. The sky around us filled with the flashing luminance of fireflies, and it seemed like we were dancing in the heavens above. You could almost touch the music as it drifted out of my truck windows. I will never forget the look in those crystal-blue eyes as we danced to that song alongside my Dodge Ram pickup. Little did I know it would be the last night I would ever get to look into them again.”

“Unbelievably, the whales continued to circle me. Eventually, I was even able to run my hands down Mama’s back several times. Her black skin felt much tougher and tired. Remnants of barnacles made her skin rough in patches. She seemed more hesitant of this human. Perhaps she had firsthand evidence of man’s horrible actions and treachery. I didn’t blame her for her concerns. I had come to trust fewer and fewer humans myself. Her giant eyes possessed wisdom only found in the passage of time and miles traveled on long journeys.”

“Loved ones will beg you to stay home but in the same breath refuse to stop mentioning how much money they need. They want you around more but want the all-mighty dollar just as much. So, though you may long for your warm bed at home, you know it will be freezing cold if you don’t come home with money independent of how many blankets you pile upon yourself. Just because fish were worthless this month doesn’t mean the mortgage or price of groceries was adjusted to reflect how terrible the auction was.”

“I lay in the rain as it made intricate rivers that flowed off my nose and along the peaks and valleys of my face. I could almost feel memories encapsulated in the different streams. Water pooled in the leeward side of my mouth after cascading across the rapids of my front teeth. In the previous hours, my jaw and mouth went limp from their newfound home on the ground. They now served for little more than a shitty birdbath. I wished the water would drown me.”

“I was cursed with the inability to ever sleep in late, a habit inherited from years of working on fishing boats. Being drunk and/or being hungover has never been nor ever will be an acceptable reason for not being at work and doing your job on time. In some sick way, there’s even a sense of pride from being able to party all night and work all day. Throughout my entire career, I and others alike in the industry were praised for this attribute. A talent that I often secretly wore like a scarlet letter of shame, I was blessed with an extremely high tolerance for alcohol, particularly whiskey. The problem with this is that it got me into a lot of shitty situations. I often found myself in questionable locations, with even more questionable company, doing even more questionable activities. It was a direct portal to a darkness that had haunted me since my teenage years.”