The Perfect Sturmby Jim ProvenzanoI had to leave San Francisco to love it. First BART stop, Oakland, which can be a hassle on a weekend, since you have change trains at MacArthur or Nebula 5. But I was determined. Having been promised hot toddies afterward in a knell behind Tiburon, I wanted to go boating, particularly with my captain, a fellow activist emeritus. I'd always wanted to partake of the bay in a more direct manner. Direct action took on wholly different meanings under the circumstances, since I sailed with a man who also knows better than to feature "irrevocably altered governmental healthcare policy through T-shirts and sit-ins" on one's résumé. Pink triangles. Slogans. So L.C. Why not go sailing? Boogie-boarding at Ocean Beach has its merits. The bike trails that haven't fallen into the sea are well-preserved, thanks to the Sierrans, and Angel Island, approached from any angle, is always a thrill. Enough scenery. There were things to do, and deck shoes to squeak across the rim of the job or the port or the shank. I'm not into that kinky rope stuff, so I can't recall. Feeling the bay thud under your feet in a skin bracer/Lands End way, I braced myself for the magical foray past the northern glittering humps of real estate that only select folk get to fall asleep with this view outside their windows. Billy Budd I ain't. The Boatology for Dummies from my captain eluded this landlubber for a pupil without the appropriate software. Eager at least, tenacious for sure. Craving my wet suit, just in case I'd be remembered as "Swims With Chum"? Oh yeah. After a volley of shouts, "Jib! Jib!" – not my name, and no, he did not have a cold – with a wobbly resolve to imagine a fleet of dolphins guiding me from below, we faced out under those columns to open sea. Chapter 2 Swooshing under the Golden Gate Bridge, end points of architectural monstrosity disappeared into sky, like a skirt of The Iron Giant if he'd worn drag made out of fog. The Presidio in its lush mystery, seen from the front, showed its true worth. Instead of sneaking in through the various backdoor gates into this, the real last treasure of the West, it lurked dark and high, soon parceled off to the highest dot-commer or obscure government entity/subdivision in a public/private trust/anti-trust park/not park. Since when do trees have to be fiscally solvent? They make air, for gods' sakes. The sheer enormity of the ocean just west of us doesn't come clear until you have bits of it splashing up on your face, chilling your hands to the point of near-immediate arthritic cramps. Understanding, at the moment of such intense physical exertion, when it's not just a ball, or a net, or puck or prop, it's simply about a wall of water slapping you for being in its way. Trapped in an Old Spice snowdome. I didn't want to stay there. I wanted the hot toddy part. Like, now. Chapter 3 In sea-farin' terms, a "scwow" is a moment where you totally fuck up, or hesitate, or get the whole vessel into a very wrong angle, like sideways, with a carpet of waves whizzing by a foot below you, and you are so happy you didn't shave that morning, otherwise you'd exfoliate a few layers, the biting jets of water hitting your cheeks like needles. (Scwow.com is no longer available. I got that word. Don't even think about it.) How many times did Sebastian Junger use the word 'wet'? "You could find that out if you purchase a Microtrust EBook." (Microtrust is a soon-to-be division of Microsoft). Miscotrust is great. "We're not replacing actual books. We're enhancing them." Who the heck are you? "I'm Moby Gates. I'm replacing your little paper clip guy." I knew I should have written this on the Mac. Chapter 4 Having only aquatic skills from canoe canoodling in high school, and a few laps across Long Island Sound in a pal's dad's ex-wife's mother's inheritance clipper, I thought boating fun, just rarely worth the four hour drive to the river with showtunes pounding through the stereo. You can have fun on a boat. Really. But Long Island had been with adult supervision, unfortunately, and on a sunny day. This day, under the bridge, facing off against the foggy wall of apathy, we were two guys with way too many pink triangle T-shirts just folded and put away, because the only "activists" left seem to be a Sacco & Vanzetti-Marx Brothers merger. Debating the homophobia of the film The Rock while passing by the set, my host and I discussed "sports entertainer" The Rock's drag performance on SNL. We talked recipes, cocktails in both forms. Then the sky got weird and cold all of a sudden. But we kept sailing. Chapter 5 My captain and I were facing our adult years, beginning to archive our lives. We hoped to save pieces of our culture, for some reason. That's what I thought we all wanted to do. Not just trophies, stuffed swordfish, but ideas shared, exchanged, not banner-linked. But the waters being rife with the thousands upon thousands of lost Java scripts, articles, debris from ASOs sinking in obscurity, duplicativity, bogged down by enormous salaries gathered from city to city by wheeled ones and flying monkeys – oops, no, that was a seagull. We sailed on. With increasing velocity, we approached the copper canyon, the bridge, like that part in The Odyssey where the walls of boulder open and close. "Doric, Iambic, Hebrew or standard English?" No, geek, the one with Armande Assante in it. "Oh. You can look that up on Microfilm.com" CONTROL. ALT. DEL. Anyway, it was like that. Never had I crossed under the Golden Gate, nor at this angle, nor with a Nor'easter goosing me, until my captain yelled something to me and, and OH MY GOD IT'S FIFTY-SEVEN FEET OF GDANSK!!!!!! Thwaaaaaaaaaap!!!!! A sideways guillotine. That thingamabob connecting the edge of the sail's bumper that I was supposed to keep steady and turning away from the freighter? It thwapped back to kiss me with a swiftness that … well, suffice it to say, I now truly value my neck and its attachment to my head. "Whoo, you nearly lost it there," my captain hooted. I panted, clung to something, recaptured the wheel thingy. Old Spice. Yeah. And I wondered why any guy would spend a week or two months on a boat with another guy if he wasn't dating him, and why so many hit movies these days are about disasters at sea. And when was I supposed to tie back the thingamabob? That's something only a true sportsman would know.
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