Grown Man Cries in the Bahamas

Grown Man Cries in the Bahamas by David W.J Lee

Two days into my thirtieth year, my trust-fund girlfriend dumped me. I say “dumped”, which suggests it was sudden, but in reality we’d decided on the split some months before. I guess I just didn’t come to terms with it. I didn’t come to terms with it when we bought the sailboat for me to live on. I didn’t come to terms with it on that last night, when my heavy, brotherly arm movement betrayed the platonic nature of our relationship. I didn’t come to terms with it when the Bahama Mama at passport control sent a sobbing Alice back to my arms for a final goodbye. I toyed with the little mole above her little breasts, holding back the tears until I looked into her eyes and wept uncontrollably.

I know I wanted the break-up. I was excited by the idea of bachelorhood in the steamy night-time scene of the Bahamian capital; scouting the tourist bars, the Cuban bars, the sailor bars, the clubs and pool halls, walking the filthy, airless back-streets at dawn as zombified crackheads awoke in the gutter and gulls screamed at the escaping cruise-ships. Yes, once more I’d be a single man of honourable disrepute, a character among the brave, an out-there, doing-it, standalone person. On the way back from the airport I stopped off at Sea Front Sushi to buy a quart of rum. The night was heavy and a few large warm drops signalled that it was set to explode. Insects buzzed around the crackling neon-sign like teenagers on acid, occasionally head-butting the light and fizzing out of existence.

Will, a fellow heterosexual language teacher from the local international school, sat at the sushi counter staring accusingly at the keen hands of the sushi chef as they chopped, sliced and rolled him a “Dragon roll mate… deep-fried shrimp with eel sauce, cucumber, and shit loads of wasabi.”

“I dunno,” he said. “Something’s gotta change. It’s no longer exciting…maybe it’s time to grow up, move on from sushi rolls and pay the extra for sashimi.”

The Dragon roll was intact for an instant. It sat on the chopping board looking festive; the deep-fried tentacles and tail of a mummified shrimp protruding from either end. Then the blade came down in a flurry of strokes, slicing, scooping up and sliding out from beneath six perfect pieces of sushi that gently fell apart on a white porcelain dish garnished with ginger and wasabi. Will poured full sodium soy sauce into a crimson saucer and received his order at the end of its accurate slide across the fake wood counter.

I ordered a quart of rum to take out and a rum ‘n’ coke for immediate consumption.

“What I’m saying,” said Will. “Sushi rolls are poor man’s sashimi…They’re sashimi wrapped in starch…the sausage, egg ‘n’ chips of Japanese cuisine. We need to move on, appreciate the delicate taste…”

He prised his disposable chopsticks apart with a satisfying splintering sound and proceeded to lift a colourful cross-section into the soy sauce where he left it to soak. “What’s wrong with you anyway?” he asked painting the piece with wasabi and crowning it with ginger. “Where’s the missus?”

I explained the situation, starting with the fact that Alice and I were of course “still very much in love” and wanted to be together in the future; she just had a calling that was all. Then I got another rum ‘n’ coke before clarifying that I had to let her go for the good of our relationship. She needed “do her thing” in Asia, cure the sick, feed the starving street orphans, set up a charity or whatever it may be, but get it out of her system. Otherwise she’d grow to resent me.

“Sounds like you’ve split up, mate,” said Will before releasing the dripping headpiece into his mouth. The deep fried tentacles stuck out from between his lips, and then disappeared with a crunch. “I’m sorry but oh my god that is so good! You know Tom that’s the key – keep it simple, not drinking, just getting stoned and eating sushi…I don’t mean to sound insensitive but she was a bit of an airhead. Look mate you’re onto a winner. You’re a white guy with an English accent and a boat. Get yourself a local chick. You know what they say, once you go black…”

“I don’t want another woman,” I hissed, rattling the ice in my glass. “Look…we haven’t officially split up, we’re just having a break…She’s off to Nepal in October and she has to do a Tropical Medicine course before then…But we just got the boat so…She says she’ll be back at the end of the summer to cruise around the islands…I guess we’ll see from there…” When I got back to the boat, there was no power from the batteries, which meant no lights and no water pressure, so no shower. I stood on the dock in the dark under the heavy flow of water from the industrial-sized boat hose. Seconds after turning it off I was sweating profusely and slapping at mosquitoes. There was little choice but to retire to the heat of the cabin, take a long hit of rum from the brown paper bag and let the drowsy night engulf me. So here I am, a standalone person of honourable disrepute. If you hang out with me you know that the night will be endless, I may cause a scene, probably have some sort of mechanical bad luck and will definitely be driving home rat-arsed.

Saturday July 10th 0900 hrs Bones Boatyard
25° 04’ 29 N
77° 18’ 58 W
Wind: None
Sea-State: Glass

I’m not sure if it was the acrid taste of exhaust fumes that awoke me or the reverberating banging on the side of my boat. My first thought was that it was the fumes because I’d been quite content in a dream in which I was living in a drum. I rolled off the bunk, slid the main hatch across, removed the slats, and stepped into the blinding light.

“English man, you look like shit. You been fuckin’ all night or what?”

“Who’s there?”

“Down here!”

Jimmy Bones clung to the side of the boat by one heavily tattooed arm, a mask on his face and a snorkel hanging by the side of his mouth.

“You gonna be late for school teacher man!”

“Oh shit! What time is it?”

“It’s fucking Saturday man, I’m jus’ fucking with you... So you been fuckin’ all night or what?”

“Thank god for that…No I haven’t actually…”

He was doing pull ups on the rail and I saw that he was wearing yellow Speedos.

“Why not? You got a problem man. At your age I was having pussy for breakfast, lunch and fuckin’ dinner. See this?”

He switched to one arm, opened his mouth wide and pointed to the underside of his tongue.

“No.”

“It’s a fucking ulcer man. You know how many times I made Sally come last night?”

“No.”

“FIFTEEN. And that was before I put my dick in her.” He grabbed on with the other hand and pulled himself up so that his upper body slumped on deck under the lifeline. Long strands of his bleached blonde mane stuck to his leathery shoulders. He shifted onto his elbows; chin cupped in his palms and looked up at me like some sort of pantomime seal. “First orgasm, I didn’t even fucking touch her. You know what I use?”

“Your tongue?”

He shook his head patiently. “A vibrating razor.”

“Vibrating blade man, just lookin’ at it makes them wet…You cream that pussy up real good…then when you apply the blade man…” He moved onto one elbow so that he could use the spare hand to hold out an imaginary razor.

I rubbed my eyes and scratched my neck.

“English man I know you a bit green but you gotta know that you talkin’ to the Trim Doctor man! I use’ to take a fuckin’ shaving kit to parties. I would not fuck a woman without shaving her first….Where’s your sexy wife? You know she’s fucking sexy right?” I wanted to interrupt, to stop the punishment, to save the embarrassment, but I was out staged by this bona fide wild man and powerless against the onslaught of his monologue.

“Man English, she’s been causing some serious disturbance in the yard buhy, walkin’ around in that little bikini. I’m tellin’ you straight, there’s been some wonky fuckin’ paint jobs man…You know I gotta tell you…She was askin’ my help with your batteries… But I told her, I said that I would not step foot onboard man without your permission and you know why?”

“Why?”

“Too tempting…Too fuckin’ tempting man cos’ you know what…” He flashed a look into the cabin. “Where is she? Still sleepin’ hey?”

1200 hrs

It’s midday all day. The sun never tires and rules from its zenith until forced to don the cloak of night. So it was some time around midday, at an hour when only mad dogs and Englishmen venture onto the blistering tarmac that I spent my uncle’s $1000 inheritance on a second hand inflatable dinghy with 15HP Johnson outboard. I’d been to see the hard-bottomed tender several times; 10 feet of flaccid, off-white rubber in a mosquito-infested store cupboard and somehow decided that it was a good purchase. I spent two hideously sweaty hours buying and trying a variety of valves and pumps and generally pumping money into the flaccid pile of shit before I realised that the situation drew a strange parallel to the decline of my alcoholic uncle, especially his ICU years, and right there, I dubbed the boat Stephen. I couldn’t bring Stephen back to life alone so I enlisted some help from the marina gas pump boys. One of them held the valve in as air hissed out the sides. The other lethargically bore his foot down on the pump that slipped out from under his basketball sole to much hilarity on their part. They had no respect for the dead. I wished I’d done it myself.
“Mudda’ sick, you een guh be dancin’ tonight buhy!” shouted the valve-holder, followed by doubled up laughter and clapping as it came bursting out once again. In the heat of the midday sun I could not find the humour in the situation. I feel no part of the hazy lazy droopy-limbed solution to the summer. I’m just a hectic white boy pacing from marine store to marine store, sun-cream burning the corners of my eyes, feet slipping in the sweaty grime of my flip flops.

The outboard was clamped to a wooden beam in the sauna-like workshop, but the clamp handle was stuck. The valve holder gave it a shot at first, lazily whacking at the handle with a hammer until it broke off and fell to the floor and bounced behind a pile of marine stuff.

He laughed “Shit man, now you gotta problem” and the two of them retreated to the shade of a tree outside.
I fumbled with tools and finally got a grip on the bolt with a ratchet I found in an oily toolbox. Half an hour later, drenched in sweat and scratching at mosquito bites that ringed my ankles and wrists like poor-man’s pearls, I removed the engine from the beam. After a couple more unexpected problems that I'm growing to expect, I motored out of the marina. As I entered the harbour I opened the throttle and the bow reared up, so I shifted my weight forward and we settled onto the plain. I tore past the boat yards, relishing the breeze and frequently looking back as I cut a frothy path through the clear blue water. I recall smiling and even hooting.

I pulled up alongside the beautiful Medusa, a beamy Jeanneau 54, docked in front of a large colonial property and lawn, cleated my bowline to the stern step and hailed Eddy in his air-conditioned comfort below deck. He lives onboard with his wife and two kids and is the man responsible for getting me into this sailing mess. His family spent the last two years sailing the Caribbean and are perfect examples of it all going right. A couple of trips to neighbouring islands aboard Medusa, and Alice and I were hooked. A few months later we sailed our own 30-footer back from Florida, putting our relationship problems on the backburner and rediscovering the spirit of adventure that brought us together.

However, a gulf stream crossing in 70’s life jackets was not enough. There were no emaciated children who’d given up on brushing the flies from the corner of their eyes onboard a boat. Alice felt the call of the wild, the Wild-East. First step - a tropical medicine course in London, a requirement for working in the most wretched corners of the globe…because only the most wretched places will do…there’s not enough downtrodden, godforsaken, disease-ridden people here in Nassau…then a flight to Calcutta to find those street orphans who would never forget her.

Eddy appeared from the main hatch wearing surf shorts with a wildly clashing Hawaiian shirt, a miners torch on his head and balancing rum ‘n’ cokes in tall plastic tumblers. He handed me the drinks, un-cleated my line, jumped into the dinghy, grabbed his drink and squatted in the bow to keep the dinghy flat on the water and ease her onto a plain.

“How much dya’ pay for ol’ lady?” he shouted above the scream of the 1980’s outboard.

“A grand!”

“Of course you did! Like I tol’ you, B.O.A.T. Break Out Another Thousand! Where’s ya’ first mate?”

“Uh…She’s gone back to England…then on to Nepal to work for a charity. She said she’ll be back at the end of the summer for…”

“I’m sorry buddy!” bellowed Eddy. “She was cool…”

I wasn’t sure if he heard the last part above the noise but we left it at that. I had one hand on the throttle and took frequent gulps of my drink with the other. The dark rum got straight to work and I felt a familiar thirst flutter in my stomach like the awakening of a Bacardi bat.

A megayacht named Chevy Toy cruised down the middle of the harbour. It was made of the same dazzling white plastic as the interior of Starship Enterprise, arranged in wedding cake tiers, topped with jet-skis and spinning radars. I slowed to negotiate the boat’s stern wake, the dinghy momentarily coming off the plain before finding its groove in the smooth, bulldozed path behind the stern where “three, not two but three!” (as Eddy would remind me later) middle-aged blondes in bikinis relaxed in sun-loungers sipping tall drinks from straws. Eddy whistled and waved as we approached and was granted a mimicked response excluding the whistling and the enthusiasm of the wave.
The megayacht slowed to enter Hurricane Hole Marina where similar boats would make it feel at home. I pulled away as it began to turn and caught an extra notch of speed as we surfed their wake towards the docking pylons of the Green Parrot bar.

Paradise Island (or PI, as nauseating acronymists like to call it) used to be Hog Island. In her virginal state she was wild and beautiful. Since the advent of the PI bridge, she’s been whored to the highest bidder and is now the face lifted and silicon-implanted spouse of Mr Sole Kerzner, an expert in Disney World architecture and the inventor of the famous equation: Bahamas = Atlantis resort. No visitor will ever forget the exhilaration of sliding down a plastic Aztec temple into a see-through tunnel surrounded by sharks.

The Green-Parrot does not belong to Mr Kerzner, but there’s a rumour it soon will. For the time being, the bar staff are free from floral shirts and beers are reasonably priced.
There are two front-of-house dock spaces at the Green Parrot, which guarantee an audience during drinking hours. These were presently occupied by a standard mega-yacht and a rugged dive catamaran. In the stern of the cat a group of girls in bikinis flirted with a pair of brawny instructors to the echoing hiss and clatter of tanks. We pulled up to the dinghy dock, which juts out from the bar like a catwalk, clambered up, taking our tumblers with us, and trod the boards. I was barefoot, with the miner’s torch around my neck, a dad-size bunch of keys including the springy red engine-cut-cable attached to my shorts, and held a rather high opinion of our dramatic entrance from the harbour, especially my double hitch round the mooring post. No one gave a shit.

The Green Parrot is:

1. A Class B hangout for mega-yachties who couldn’t find space at the Atlantis marina.
2. A watering hole for gym-boy Canadian foremen and their Mexican slaves employed to colonise the old Club-Med beach with Atlantis Phase III.
3. An authentic Bahamian experience for Boeing 747 loads of sunburned American tourists.
4. A potential gold mine for gold-diggers with long fake nails and borrowed beads.

It’s also the favoured drinking spot of young and not so young Bahamian professionals, which means lawyers and realtors and a smattering of drunken St. Bernadettes teachers I do my best to avoid.

Eddy ordered Añejo and Coke in our personal tumblers and I followed him through the crowd to a parasoled table where a group of 40 + white women were drinking frozen margaritas. Eddy introduced me to a buxom blonde realtor by telling her that I’d just been dumped by my girlfriend, to which she let out a sympathetic “ahhhhhh poor darling” and I renewed my fantasy of sleeping with an older woman. We flirted for a while and I bought her a drink before she launched into a monologue on the perils of relationships, the double-edged sword of love and the joys of travelling alone in Europe. She concluded with the statement that she’d always been anti-marriage until she met her husband of five years and I realised only I had been flirting.

I moved to the bar and scanned the souvenir T-Shirts that lined the roof. Most of them featured the names and pictures of mega-yachts like Contessa, Winnalot and Entrepreneur. I deformed the first two into Cuntessa and Wankalot and was struggling for an innuendo for the last one when Eddy sidled up and suggested going for a smoke in the dinghy. So we returned the way we came, lowering ourselves onto Stephen, who seemed to be squishier than earlier, and set off towards the bright lights of Atlantis. I cut the engine in the entrance to the marina, twisted my head light to the off position, and drifted on through the reflections of two thousand three hundred and fifty-five hotel rooms.

“I’m sorry about Alice,” said Eddy fishing in his easy-seal sandwich bag for the lighter. “You know what you should do?”

He passed me the drooping joint, fashioned from a sweet Backwood cigar (1$ a piece from the Texaco).

“No…” I took a drag and passed it on – American rules.

“Take off. Sail down the Exumas! 365 islands, one for every day of the year!”

“Alice says she’s coming back at the end of the summer…” I spluttered.

“Go single-handed man! You’ll be ok! A few trips around Nassau to get use to the reefs…” He toked and he held. A cloud of sweet smelling smoke lingered over the dinghy before fading into the humid night. “You know what?”

“What?”

“You thirty years ol’ man. You got ya life ahead of you! Go get yaself one sexy Bahamian girl to take wid’ you. Dapper young English man like yaself.” He cocked one eye and spoke through his teeth. “Hello shexy…Fanshy coming back to my boat. I’m docked at Bonesh Boat Bashin on Nashau you know…” I realised he was attempting a Sean Connery impression.

The joint was but a mere hot end that required tweezers, but we continued the exercise despite them. “Did you know,” he exhaled. “That marvellous pink palace in all its plastic glory is actually visible from space.”

Eddy held the end to his lips and whistled a thin line smoke into his lungs. He held the breath and spoke dying words. “See that big glittering arch between those turrets…That’s the arch suite. Guess how much…per night.” He exhaled, but nothing came out.

I’m not sure if I answered.

“Twenty five thousand dollars! Michael Jackson and his chimp Bubbles are staying there right now…probably scrubbing each other’s backs in the jaccuzzi.” He laughed and threw the cinder overboard where it fizzed and died. At least I imagine that’s what happened. Disco lights danced on the grey-glass water and a party boat boomed a bassey summer classic somewhere over Paradise Island - more than enough to mask the sizzle of joint meets H2O.

Some time went by. “Anything is visible from space,” I said, “with a big enough telescope.”

“Three…Not two, but three sexy blondes…that’s an odd number,” went Eddy.

Suddenly I was seriously stoned and listening to my own voice, whilst drifting in the harbour in a slowly deflating inflatable named Stephen. But then I realized that life was amazing. Right here, right now, I’d opened up the gate to a whole new world of experience – night-time water travel in the Bahamian capital, cruising the marina bars or downtown past the cruise ships, tying up on the dodgy jetty and heading to the clubs tricked out in nautical apparatus like the torch and the springy-key-cut thing.

So that’s exactly what we did: ten minutes gliding across the dance floor harbour to see DJ Swirlwide mix broken beats at the Segafredo café to a crowd of four white men on barstools. (Café Segafredo is a Nassau attempt at European hot-chocolate cool.)

The German bartender was slumped at the counter alongside a Lucky Strike ashtray piled high with smouldering cigarette butts. DJ Swirlwide was actually Will. Presently Will was deeply involved in mixing a dingy end-of-the-night saxophone solo to some click-your-fingers-to-the-beat funky house. A raspy male vocalist sang let me float across your mind from time to time… The bartender lit another cigarette and we waited for Will to find a gap in his set to talk to us. But Swirlwide was hunched over the decks, fiddling with dials and nodding to the advancing rhythm. “Last track,” he said at last, cupping his headphones with both hands and sliding them onto his neck. “Pretty funky huh? Tom, why are you wearing all that ridiculous shit?”

“I’ll get drinks,” said Eddy.

“Don’t bother,” said Will. “I quit. Bastard asked me to pay for my coffee. I don’t mind the lack of crowd but that’s just insulting. Let’s get out of here.”

Outside, a group of local men sipped bottled Guinness from brown paper bags and watched groups of tittering white women totter along the jetty on their way to Señor Frogs for their cruise ship discount. Every few metres the usual suspects stepped out of the shadows and offered them drugs, taxis, sexual intercourse or a combo. But no one seemed to be interested in three white men climbing into a dinghy.

Eddy had a plan. We motored out past the cruise ships, the engine struggling noisily with the extra weight, Eddy bouncing on the bow to get the dinghy on the plain, back across the harbour to see the “hundred-and-fifty-foot” sailboat in the Atlantis marina.

She was docked in the canal, away from the fluorescent buzz of high-rise neighbours, a sleek red hull curving endlessly round minimalist wooden decks. Two lofty white masts concealed acres of cloth and the mechanisms to furl them at the touch of a button. We passed round the hot end of a joint in a toke ‘n’ hold fashion and marvelled at her size and immaculate nature.

“Bloody hell,” said Will. “Look at the size of their dinghy! How much do you think that’s worth?”

“That’s a brand new thirty foot rib with twin 150s. I’d say twen’y something grand easy.” It appeared that Eddy’s high had not affected his arithmetic.

“So their dingy’s worth more than Tom’s boat?”

“Are you kidding? Look at it…Those outboards are worth more than Tom’s boat. You wouldn’t believe it!...Nice boat though Southwind…well crafted, from back in the days when they still made boats proper….Mudda sick, look at the size o’ the fenders on the mother ship! There’s gotta be over twen’y grands worth on that thing!”

“So what you’re saying,” began Will. “Is that the rubber cushiony things are worth more than Tom’s entire boat! That’s ridiculous!”

They fell about laughing, slapping at the sagging rubber.

“That’s good grass,” said Will.

We idled through the Disney pillars and Pocahontas waterfalls of Atlantis’s toy town marina, a jolly boat in the shadows of the mega-yachts.

“Tom, you’ve heard the definition of a boat, right?” said Eddy.

“I’ve heard the B.O.A.T bullshit thanks.”

“No, no, break out another thousand, that’s what it stands for. The definition of a boat is…A hole in the water into which you throw vast sums of money.”

Will nodded wisely.

“So,” continued Eddy. “You got insurance yet?”

“No. I spent the last of my money on Stephen.”

“Who’s Stephen?” asked Will.

“The dinghy. I named it after my dead uncle.”

“Nice.”

“Why don’t you ask Alice for some money?” suggested Eddy. “I mean…you and her went into this thing together…”

“Actually she bought the fucking thing.”

“Oh dear…”

I suddenly wanted rid of my guests. Eddy was keen to rejoin the mature fantasies at the Green Parrot and Will needed a ride back to his car, so it was simple. I dropped Eddy at the bar along with his tumblers, promising an improbable return before burning across the harbour to jettison Will at drug-dealer jetty. I watched as Will confronted the touts. Usually it was “You like to party?” accompanied by a sniff of the palm. This time it was “You like girls?” which Will obviously took as an affront to his sexuality, because he answered “Yes but I don’t like to pay for them” and had to put up with their harassment all the way to his car.

A cruise ship was gliding into the harbour like a Miami hotel on a conveyor belt. I opened the throttle and motored towards it, trying to ignore the growing flaccidity of Stephen. Transfixed by the approaching rows of brightly lit portholes, I drew closer. Soon I could make out a climbing wall on the top deck. Closer still, I could see through the restaurant windows and thought I caught a glimpse of cabaret on stage. Families strolled the deck and I remember thinking how much it didn’t remind me of the P&O cross channel ferries of my youth, when all of a sudden, the dinghy was airborne, the engine screamed and I lost control of the throttle.

I lay in the hull, regaining my senses, until the wake dissipated and all was quiet and dark. The Johnson was hanging on by one bolt and steaming. I’d been lucky. I pulled the engine back into position but lacked the ratchet to tighten it. The big question was – would he start? I had no oars so if he didn’t, I’d be swimming the bastard back, dragging him behind me through the dark. And everyone knows who patrols the waters at night – the Harbour Master, a ten foot Hammerhead with a taste for Spring-breakers. (The bodies of Party Boat casualties are rarely found according to Eddy). I stood up and yanked the cord to arms length. The engine hesitated then came alive, revving wildly in the night.

I think that’s when it hit me. She bought the boat out of guilt. She’s gone and she’s not coming back. Eddy was right. This was everything I’d ever wanted. For a year all I’d done was pace the balcony, staring at boats through binoculars, whilst Alice watched Friends on TV. She insisted on getting Cable, then wasted her days watching sitcoms and eating cereal whilst moaning about this not being the place to “do her thing.” Bullshit! There’s plenty of gammy-limbed Jonesers, helpless crack-heads and pot-bellied kids…Who wants to settle down anyway? Thirty years old with a sailboat in the Bahamas! What the hell am I doing tied to the dock?

Next Friday’s the end of term. Six weeks of summer in front of me with over 700 islands to choose from. So what if I’m broke? I’ll grow a sun-bleached beard and live off the sea.