18 December 23 Tuesday at the Office

Around noon. Raining like hell. My feet are wet. This is not good. Makes me feel like I’m coming down with something. I’m sitting here at the office at my favorite corner table, facing customers lined up for coffee. Look at them.

A slice of humanity. None of them recognizable. My pal Sonyo, helming the register, I’ll get her permission for this blog post. A few of you been reading me know I’ve been kicking this blogging shit around for some time now. Making up posts like little Psycho Kid Narratives. Posting all kinds of lamebrained shit. Some of it clever. Most of it self indulgent. I’m done with that.

I’m looking to pull a score

Haven’t figured out what it is yet. Once I get it figured you’ll be the last to know. Unless it’s legal. For the time being, I’m following my pen. The mind, they say, is a terrible thing to waste.

BTW, any of you out there got any ideas to share? I’m talking legal and extra-legal Scams. I’m happy to listen. That’s what the comment section is for. Don’t be shy.

Meanwhile, I’m taking up my favorite table here at the office.

I’m not the one named the Office the office

Rather, it was John Connolly. John owned the Sailing School at my Marina. A man of recognizable accomplishments. John was a New York State tennis champ. Taught advanced sailing and navigation internationally. Then he started Moss Motors. Anybody who ever owned a Triumph motor car knows about Moss Motors. John sold his interest in that and started the sailing school. Here at the office, he worked on Op Eds. Wrote for conferences on world peace. Brainiac shit. I’d see him here every day. He didn’t sit still. He’d be in here pacing. He wore a headset and paced across the room like a Nasa Controller, talking to somebody or other. Used to irritate the hell out of me. I hated his pacing, so I hated him. Then we became friends. I forget how.

I remember. The harbormaster threatened to evict me for being a sneakaboard and for being a bum with a dog. John stepped up. Said I was okay. John had real clout at my marina. After that it was simple. A guy vouches for you, he’s your friend. When he died, they posted a eulogy in Latitude 38. They never do that, but for John they made an exception. Said he had an encyclopedic knowledge of sailing. I didn’t care about his encyclopedic knowledge. I cared that he vouched for me.

I read a couple of his op eds in world conference publications. International law was a hobby of his. Dry as desert sand. He had that kind of intellect. But what endeared me to him was how he lived. He’d been sneaking aboard at Marinas for years and years. He knew all the tricks, how to black out your windows, park off the designated lot, come and go in the dark…the man was determined to never pay a liveaboard fee. John started the Sailing School and bingo he no longer had to pay a liveaboard fee. Maybe that’s why he started the Sailing School. That, and he was real good at Sailing. Yet that’s not why I came to admire him. It was the way he lived.

John had money. But he liked to live on nothing. Another hobby of his. He owned a decrepit VW van with a diesel engine. Looked like shit but it ran like a champ. He set it up nice for camping. Often he’d crash in it to stay warm. His boat, broad, cavernous, beautiful to a sailor’s mind, was trouble to heat in the winter. He’d run a half dozen electric heaters around the clock. Back them they were charging 30 bucks a month for electricity with a sliding scale for overuse. His bill would be 300. That’s when he’d crash in his cozy van.

I’d see him at the office every damned day, pacing. I was working on my novel. He was writing Op Eds. He wrote stuff for a reason. Wanted to get shit accomplished. I write stuff…I don’t know why I write stuff. But John liked that I was writing a novel. It meant I was more than just a bum. He invited me to a couple little parties he threw on his boat. Huge fucking Sixty foot Sloop. Cavernous. A real beauty. When he got sick he sold the boat and bought a trawler. Big one. Better boat for keeping warm. He died on it.

I just Googled him.

Come spring it’ll be ten years since John Connolly passed away. Ten years. That makes eleven years I’ve lived at Marina Plaza. The Sailing School John started now dominates the Marina like it never did when John owned it. I’m still around, tucked in at the far end of C Dock.

Eleven years.

I don’t plan to croak aboard my boat like John did aboard his. I may. I’m not making plans for it. Would you like to croak aboard Scruffy?

Croak and leave behind these dependents.

I think not.