Walkabout (continued) – May 2nd, 2002

by Bing Futch

The Waverunner bounced off of a deeply scalloped swell and went airborne, engine shrieking, sounds of sea-spray as it dripped and foamed from the bottom of the rocketing watercraft. I had the son-of-a-bitch at three-quarter throttle, tearing through little pockets of waves, attempting to catch the troughs as they rolled across the Gulf. It was a perfect day for oceanic frolicking atop a personal watercraft; practically no wind to stir up chop. Chop sucky, when you get right down to it. At least when you’re trying to test the limits of the machine. These things were made for lake action, not for the constantly shifting hills and valleys of a moving sea. And I’m riding one of those big Yamaha bitches too. The SUV1200. It even sounds stupidly big and I won’t let you down by telling you that it wasn’t. It was.

Four-passenger capacity, including driver, kicking 135 horsepower out of a three-cylinder, 1131cc Yamaha marine engine. It’s got three 44mm Mikuni carburetors in the powerplant and when you take it from idle to full, you’d better have your ass planted firmly on the countoured seat with a death-grip on the grips. It’s the Hummer of PWC’s. I wanted to see how fast it could go. Despite the favorable wind-free conditions, there was still enough wave action to guarantee I’d never hit maximum throttle without wiping out spectacularly, an option which I chicken-heartedly vetoed before it even had a chance in committee.

I opted for “near wipe-out” and settled for one huge, hairy and hell of an airborne leap that looked like an Endgame on some smuggler in a “Miami Vice” episode. Me and 900 pounds of watercraft came slapping back onto the Gulf of Mexico, scaring the living shit out of a bat-ray who happened to be scooting along nearby in the emerald shallows. With a quick release of the throttle control, the Waverunner mushed to a bobbing halt and putted for a few seconds before indignantly shutting itself off. The silence was restless and sudden. One moment, there’s motion and a wind whipping past the ears, sounds of frenzied interactions of hull and the quickly passing water, the occasional whoop and disbelieving trickle of laughter from your own lips and then – it’s all taken away and you can hear your heart beating.

I peeked over the edge of the Waverunner and into the clear, now-stilled water.

Cobia, thick and proud, skirted along in the shallows to my side, a few darted beneath the craft. Noiselessly cruising. I turned my face towards the other side, but the high-yellow glaze of sunshine flashed at me from the ocean’s surface, its hypnotic pull held fast. Slurps of water as it laps against the craft, machine and I drift lazily in unhurried circles. My gaze returns to the deep, smoky jade where I had spotted the Cobia and saw them replaced by a lingering bat-ray, soaring with only the tips of his wings moving delicately. A few smaller fish danced along in its wake, deciding to break ranks eventually to cross the bow. I sat back in the seat, which was quickly drying, and flexed my right hand and wrist a few times. Instead of a rotating throttle like the standard motorcycle, the accelerator is more like a bike brake. You squeeze it for more juice. Which makes it difficult to slow down when sheer force of motion is making it necessary for you to grab on to the damn thing. Little comedic pictures of wayward tourists, legs waving in the wind, attached to runaway Waverunners that are wildly racing towards open water. But I digress. The grip, it’s not natural, so hand cramps are an annoying side-effect to the fun.

It was so peaceful out here.

The sale of the house on Ellsmere had finally closed. After distributing appropriate amounts of the proceeds amongst children and ex-wives, I decided it was time to get a mental enema and focus on what life is. What I want life to be. What life will become. I knew it wasn’t going to be seven days a week of making like Club Med and forgetting about those pre-programmed bits of insanity that rule in everyone’s day-to-day. Even if you don’t have it, your lack of it can still put you in the middle of it. Of course, I’m talking about the Big D. The scene. The tendency towards situations that approach the red line. Drama. Your kings, your queens, your gentle knights, your apprentices and wizards. Each and every one of us a practitioner of his own drama. I decided to fire my casting agent and was definitely of the opinion that a new writer would be key.

So, a good friend of mine and I made plans to visit the panhandle of Florida, just lynching-distance from the Alabama state line. Though Destin enjoys its reputation as a booming spring break town, it’s Ft. Walton Beach that has become a desired destination for thousands of impatient, sun-starved snowbirds. The Ramada there is a four-star joint, a pleasant acquisition-and-make-over kind of place where the antique South Seas themed lava-shaped pool dips down to 8 feet. Circling three sides of a volcano and flowing with waterfalls, the pool also features a grotto bar where you can either access by tunnel or swim-up via an entrance in one of the falls. This is a beautiful concept. Besides the delightful pool area, the grounds also featured a full-service restaraunt, barbecue hut, beachfront rooms and watersports connection. We had arrived on Friday night; now it was Sunday afternoon with an eye on departing early Monday morning for the return to Orlando. The rest had been good; much needed. Except for Naked Head schedulings and my hosting duties at Open Mic XTREME!, I’ve been inactive in the local scene and spend my free time someplace far away from any of it. Occasionally, I’ll run into someone that I know from the scene and we’ll both discover that we’re “out of the loop” or “going through a phase” right now. It’s not just me, no sir. There are a whole lot of people out there, maybe one of you reading this even, who are sitting back, looking at their lives and going “what the fuck?” The sick, sad thing is that the media has caught wind of this and are currently weighing all the right possibilities; how to best exploit this disenchanted section of our populace. Or maybe not, maybe I’m just paranoid. Maybe I’m one of those people that doesn’t want to get diagnosed with a “condition”, but knows that there’s a condition existing. We’re a nation of people who require medicine for what ails us. For headaches, for back aches, for the proper amount of sertraline that will re-act pleasantly with our brain, make the seratonin run like honey and get all our acts cleaned up. Everybody’s got the blues. Everybody’s got ‘em. There is not one amongst you who have 100% Happy/Positive/Good – that can’t happen, there has to be a perfect balance, not many can keep that wheel of Yin and Yang spinning like a new tire. We hang in one end of the spectrum, we skitter across to the other side. As human beings, we’re constantly in a desperate need of alignment. That’s where these commercials come in, the well-produced ones that show images of people having fun with their lives, smiling, while a man who doesn’t ever appear in the commercials intones a horribly long list of possible side-effects associated with this drug. “Ask your doctor.”

You know the ritual. Go see the shrink. Lay your cards on the table. Follow-up or not, depending on how forthright and open you are, a Paxil prescription later, you’re talking to animated deer. Medication for the masses. “Ask your bartender.” I think I’m gonna sink me another drink. I done had the blues so long, I forgot what I got ‘em for. “Ask your dealer.” Have a smoke, eat a bean, do a Zanex. “Ask your cable operator.” Just plug it right into your brain, that’s it. It’s very nice. Isn’t it?

Disractions. Filters. Blinders. Bummer, it’s not easy to be easy anymore and it was never all that easy. Wake up at the crack of dawn, feed the chickens and livestock. Re-plow the field and plant for next season. Work at the land’s pace and side by side, in and of it. No such thing as credit, debt wasn’t something you got yourself into. Masters of your destiny, you simple folk of yore. Look at how many live that typical lifestyle of “hit the ground running” each day. Not a moment not fought for, a constant campaign of losing against that precious commodity to all lifeforms: time. We need more time. We want to do it another time, two for one. We fight for “us” time, we seek “me” time, we assign windows of time to our thoughts, our methods, our desires. We save time, we waste time and sometimes it’s on our hands – we can never seem to get enough of it but we can always make time whenever we really want to. Hear me now, I see people complain all the time. Penalty on that play! It’s simple to see that if you’re not complaining, you can make time for something else. Like sitting on a Waverunner in the Gulf Of Mexico with the sheer subtle silence of the water as the only voice you hear.

Time to sit. Time to just sit and observe the pace as the Earth sees it.

Then I realize that $45 only gets 30 minutes and if I really want to sit out here and float, admiring the sun and the clouds and the water, I should get something that’s considerably cheaper. But I came out here to max this throttle and make like a compact dragboat. There’s still time to reflect. It was planned that way. And things are going just swimmingly. I press the red “start” button while clasping the accelerator ever-so-slightly to give it some gas. The engine sputters to life and with a steady pressure on the handle, butt securely in place on the now-dry seat, the Waverunner lifts its nose out of the bright green Gulf and points southeast as I pull a tight curve and head back towards the beach. The road to recovery is going to be sweet.

(to be continued)

“bfsig”