cuba libre

I knew this would be good. Those who could take the heat were in for a special treat, a treat so few tourists enjoyed. I pointlessly wiped my brow. The thick, fog of the jungle clung their loose cotton and linen dresses tightly to their bodies. Yummy, I thought. Of course, the locals noticed about as much as my grandparents could see the overtly sexual tones conveyed in those 1950’s fuselage bras. They took the heat, and the broiling blood it brings, for granted – a part of the natural order of things.

And then I saw her. There was something special in the way she swayed. Not like the overly sexual, lilting swish of the others, beckoning a free drink or dance or nightcap. No, she moved with a more natural, luscious swirl that drew your eyes up to her soft smile, imbued with the confidence of romantic youth. I was going to need my A game.

“hey, baby. find what you’re looking for?”

Taken aback, her delicate lips slightly parted, “What makes you think I’m looking for something.”

“aren’t we all looking for something? why else are you here?”

“I’m meeting a…friend.”

She stepped back a bit, scanning the dance floor with a little too much intensity for credibility. I could sense the growing desperation rising up her shoulders, as she try to conjure an acceptable, polite escape. She had lost.

“we’ll you’ve found one. let’s dance.” and in a motion entangled our fingers and led her deep within the mass of flailing, musky flesh.

* * * * * * *

“I still remember that night,” she smiled broadly under the umbrella at Café Piccou. “I can always feel the way you looked deep into my eyes, your fingers tracing the outline of my swollen nipples on that silly, white cotton blouse asking, so…how does it feel to live?”

adrift at sea

It has been days since I sailed out of Sakonnet. Adrift with heavy waves buffeting the hull. So sick it seems with the constant rocking, tilting, and sway. I am not a natural sailor - I acquired a taste of boats early in life but had not acquired my own until much later...anyway, what kind of sailor can't even swim? But the way I figured it is if you actually have to swim in the big water, you've got much larger things to worry about...

here there be dragons

Casting off the moorings tethering me tightly to the shore, I gave a sharp kick to the pier. Off we drifted - the mast resplendent in the rising sun. With so little wind and current just as weak, I wondered where we might drift or whether we’d get far at all.

Hell, I guess I could always row. Not that I minded to row from time to time. Sometimes the exertion was therapeutic, an enema for polluted thoughts that betrayed the honesty of raw labor. I had been encouraged by the previous owner to install a small outboard engine for these moments, but I said I wouldn’t. “No, I couldn’t put an outboard on this old boat. All wood and brass and sail is what I want. I like my things solid,” I had said. He could tell I meant it and for a moment looked strangely, deeply satisfied.

But rowing is real work. Particularly, when you don’t know where you are heading. Spend yourself too deeply rowing out of the calm and there may be nothing left to give when it’s rough. I’ve learned that lesson a few times.

Hmmm. I could feel the restless tension begin. Only a few yards off of the dock, maybe it makes more sense to wait for better weather and just soak in the sun. Such pure, azure sky.

Was I adequately provisioned? I had thought to acquire stocks in either Sakonnet or Kiptopeke before journeying in earnest, but my hasty departure and this damnable calm may leave me ill supplied for even this first leg. And well provisioned I would need to be. It’s difficult enough to sail off the map, but doing so hungry is altogether different. Just ask Columbus.

Hmmm. Best decide before dark. Staring into the placid drink, I can’t help but think to my uncertain destination – here there be dragons.

social capital lost and found

Suckling at the last of his drink he pressed for another. The biting sting of fresh lime burned his cracked lips as the sweet Suaza Silver slid down his throat. "Number 1 tequila in Mexico they say," his thoughts wafting away with the excessive smoke of too many cigars sauntering slowly through the open air patio. "How fitting, fucking parrotheads." As always at this time, the local color had begun to relive the excess of their fraternal youth, the endless chant of Buffet sloshing off the juke. "...and I know, it's my own damn fault. Fucking Brilliant." Grabbing his stained jacket, he stumbled away, stuck on the remarkable subtlety with which signs always arrive.

Brokeback Eggroll

putrid rear opens
squirting sour cabbage yet
I just can't quit you

Oral Cartography

Weary from the drive, I should have known better than to trust Little Jim. It wasn't the mechanic's carefully pleated and pressed nose, a byproduct of many revelrous nights back in the service, but rather the peculiar brand of oral cartography practiced like a tired punchline. After a few days you'd think I'd expect it coming, but my claims of distant kinship are either regarded with the suspicion reserved for the revenuers of lost decades past or embraced for a false understanding of the secret codes punctuated in the local dialect. Regardless, my directions always beget a spiral of beguiling turns through the woods and hollows as landmarks slipped through a web of "can't miss" and "just past yonder."