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Harboring Regrets
We learned writer’s block in Hollywood, drove it down to Pedro.
by Andrew Hume
As much of Fran’s reporting will undoubtedly show in the future, these few pages were meant to be saved for the coverage of a specific event, but we fucked up somehow and the article devolved into a retarded party, circa 11th grade. In this case, we missed the boat entirely and quite literally. We were supposed to go fishing in San Pedro, but were half an hour late for the charter...
Sure it makes for a clever little intro. But if we hadn’t been teeming with wits and street smarts, our sashay into the Port of Los Angles would have already ended with few, though significant words. So, we decided to rent a little boat. You know, load up the beers and see the harbor. I knew it would, if not match, at least proximate the excitement we’d originally set out to meet.
But, dammit, I’d wanted to describe our fishing captain’s beard and guess at the origin of his wheezing (Whisky soaked cigars? A blade to the gullet? A bout with pneumonia after the hull took too much water, and he’d spent days on a raft?). Yet, we had no captain to speak of, only a dumpy little boat at $30 an hour, that generated speeds comparable to a zoo pond paddle boat.
Our tardiness has put me in the discomfiting position of describing beer bongs and hobo lunches. The albacore is no longer “the clever, haughty beast of the seas.” I now must use this description for Ryan, who decided to drink a submerged beer bong in the nude, save his Gilligan cap and life vest. The waters were not “atremble with the passion-torn rupture of a love-plagued pirate.” They were actually really calm because we couldn’t take our fucking boat passed the breakwater.
We were all a bit embarrassed about our various sailing caps at first, but as we untied the knots from the pier and met the knots of the wind, the knots in our bellies relaxed from beer and we decided not to fucking complain so much and unwind to the nautical joy of LA Harbor. And lo, ‘twas a good day for sailing. None of that speed, sunshine and bikinis bullshit of the tanned and blonded boatsman, but the slow, grey dirge of an aged barge driver. The gulls were lost to the overcast sky, the enormous shipping carriers all but abandoned. We traded turns on the beer bong and recalled all the sailor speak we could muster.
“Aye, ‘twould we could swab the dreariness aft mine clouded mind.”
I just made that one up now. The ones we said then were much funnier. We tried to get the herons, storks and pelicans to eat our pretzels but only the gulls would have ‘em. Our day out in Pedro didn’t produce much interactive excitement with the wildlife, but it was interesting to see America’s busiest port on its day off (Saturday). It looked like that movie Waterworld–all that huge floating machinery, completely stationary.
The workers were out putting back slugs of scotch and nailing hookers, no doubt. They’d spent hours in their tubs, working diligently to clean the stink off their arms and hands before they could go out. Sea bass smell the worst, I’ve heard. That rotten, oily stink follows you years after you’ve flayed your last one, they say. Until you’re 70 and having terrible nightmares about the scales your skin has unexpectedly sprouted. Yet, you’ve no interest in waking up, fearing that you’ll find a haggard, Virginia Slims scented old porpoise sharing the bed with you.
My granddad was a fisherman in Alaska. He used to come home after months at sea and would be completely insane. “He beat the shit out of one of my little toy rafts one day,” my uncle told me. “Of course, your dad and I idolized him, so we made your grandma buy us everything that related to water. We wore little white caps and those old-timey blue sailor scarves. But your grandpa came home one day–I hadn’t seen him in a while–he got out of a taxi and saw me in the yard. He had a big ol’ smile on his face at first, as he walked toward me. Then he saw what I was doing. I was blowing up this raft that was supposed to vaguely resemble one of the big cannery ships, and he pulled it away from me. He was fucking furious, looked tired as hell. And he lifted the little thing over his head and yelled like a madman. ‘Cock…Sucking…Raft!’ he yelled. Then, for some reason, he tried to break it over his knee, which, of course, did nothing. So he threw it on the ground and body-slammed it until it popped, stomped it into the dirt a little with his shoe, took a deep breath and smiled as if nothing had happened. ‘Hello, son,” he said, then picked me up and kissed me, and we headed inside to say hi to Mom.”
It was much more peaceful in our boat. We floated about calmly and unconcernedly; our minds clear of worry, save the occasional slow, measured turn. I was happy that we’d missed the agitated excitement of the fishing charter, with its destination and purpose. We would’ve been grouped with half-day adventurers that cared nothing for us. It was nice to just shoot the shit undisturbed on our quiet little boat.
It seemed hard to believe, in our short two hours out to sea, that something so calm could cause the violent and crazed behavior of my granddad. But, I guess, as hours become days, days become lost, and quiet serenity becomes hot, bellowing boredom.
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Volume 2, Issue 1 contents |
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