Salty, Vol. 1
Enzio and Saadik take to the great restless sea by sailboat.
They grow long hair and beards, bleached a gorgeous hue of platinum blonde by prolonged exposure to sunlight. They assiduously apply Enzio's twenty-dollar-per-ounce botanical sunscreen; or at least they would if they still had it, but they ran out of it merely two days into their odyssey. For every shade lighter their hair, a shade darker their blistered, leathery skin; in short time they each look like clones of Giant Panther from Nintendo's Pro Wrestling. Enzio has a more erudite appeal than Giant Panther though, owing to the Cuban military cap he wears at all times to protect his head. By then they have also adopted Giant Panther's specialty moves, the Iron Claw and Head Butt, for strategic use against bull sharks.
Food is scarce, as is their constitution, for the stowaway prostitutes have mutinied, and the pubic lice they left them with preclude even a single decent night of sleep. But Enzio wisely brought the Lunesta, which he nicknames the New Hope, and Saadik has a big bottle of Xanax, which he stole from a beachside pharmacy in Laguna Madre. They help a little bit, but nothing like the stuff they're after now, the stuff they really covet: they are en route to Venezuela for a few more stalks of its famously chronic cilantro.
To pass the time, Enzio hits golf balls off the port side of the sloop with his three wood. It is a mystery to Saadik how Enzio manages to stuff the golf balls with broken-off match heads, but he happily relinquishes his disbelief as he watches each ball soar into the air and explode like a mortar. It's so entertaining that Saadik doesn't mind Enzio occasionally hitting the highly combustible fabric mainsail with one of those detonating golf balls, even though it's the only thing they have to catch the ever-slight breeze and propel them landward. Saadik even lets out a loud chuckle when one errant ball decapitates a nearby pelican, but when he looks to see Enzio dancing around, gleefully shouting "Hole in one! Hole in one!" he feels a curious tinge of remorse.
Meanwhile, Saadik has stored a week's worth of his ejaculate in a bottle, which he eventually corks and tosses carelessly into the deep blue. He will never know the great miracle that will happen from the throwing of that little bottle, that it will drift across the great Atlantic for months and months, to find itself one day washed upon the shores of Denmark near Copenhagen, and be intercepted by an artless young woman there, that this woman longs more than anything for a child to call her own, and remarkably will fertilize herself with Saadik's seafaring sperm straight from the bottle. Nor will he ever know what cosmic force kept his seed alive for that several thousand-mile journey, or that he might just perhaps have sex cells as impervious as that ancient heart of his.
The sea is full of mysteries.
Look, Saadik is no fool; he can tell Enzio is irritated by the endless, oppressive sunshine. But Enzio is Saadik's guest on this voyage, and he does what it takes to make Enzio comfortable. He offers him Belizean rum in great quantities. He feeds him enchanted cilantro. He gives him pulverized tobacco for relaxation. He plays Journey's Greatest Hits on his dad's old Sony Walkman, which connects to the portable CD player through a cassette adapter. "My friend," Saadik says, "you are the guest, and this voyage ends only when you are satisfied. I will accommodate you, even if you want to remain in my boat for the rest of your days."
But who the hell is he kidding? They don't have days, only several hours at best, before their rickety boat is swallowed by the unforgiving sea. After the battering they took from a pod of pilot whales, the boat is now leaking to the bilges. The rudder and anchor are both missing. Saadik is wasting his time in idle reflection whilst their tropical water ration dribbles rapidly over the end of the stern. "Well," Enzio replies, "your guest thinks maybe we should get to caulking the seams or something." He knows he's only indulging his conscience, because no amount of caulking will save the boat this time. And so he goes back to driving golf balls, aiming vainly at a bull shark that has been circling them since they left Xcalak...
They grow long hair and beards, bleached a gorgeous hue of platinum blonde by prolonged exposure to sunlight. They assiduously apply Enzio's twenty-dollar-per-ounce botanical sunscreen; or at least they would if they still had it, but they ran out of it merely two days into their odyssey. For every shade lighter their hair, a shade darker their blistered, leathery skin; in short time they each look like clones of Giant Panther from Nintendo's Pro Wrestling. Enzio has a more erudite appeal than Giant Panther though, owing to the Cuban military cap he wears at all times to protect his head. By then they have also adopted Giant Panther's specialty moves, the Iron Claw and Head Butt, for strategic use against bull sharks.
Food is scarce, as is their constitution, for the stowaway prostitutes have mutinied, and the pubic lice they left them with preclude even a single decent night of sleep. But Enzio wisely brought the Lunesta, which he nicknames the New Hope, and Saadik has a big bottle of Xanax, which he stole from a beachside pharmacy in Laguna Madre. They help a little bit, but nothing like the stuff they're after now, the stuff they really covet: they are en route to Venezuela for a few more stalks of its famously chronic cilantro.
To pass the time, Enzio hits golf balls off the port side of the sloop with his three wood. It is a mystery to Saadik how Enzio manages to stuff the golf balls with broken-off match heads, but he happily relinquishes his disbelief as he watches each ball soar into the air and explode like a mortar. It's so entertaining that Saadik doesn't mind Enzio occasionally hitting the highly combustible fabric mainsail with one of those detonating golf balls, even though it's the only thing they have to catch the ever-slight breeze and propel them landward. Saadik even lets out a loud chuckle when one errant ball decapitates a nearby pelican, but when he looks to see Enzio dancing around, gleefully shouting "Hole in one! Hole in one!" he feels a curious tinge of remorse.
Meanwhile, Saadik has stored a week's worth of his ejaculate in a bottle, which he eventually corks and tosses carelessly into the deep blue. He will never know the great miracle that will happen from the throwing of that little bottle, that it will drift across the great Atlantic for months and months, to find itself one day washed upon the shores of Denmark near Copenhagen, and be intercepted by an artless young woman there, that this woman longs more than anything for a child to call her own, and remarkably will fertilize herself with Saadik's seafaring sperm straight from the bottle. Nor will he ever know what cosmic force kept his seed alive for that several thousand-mile journey, or that he might just perhaps have sex cells as impervious as that ancient heart of his.
The sea is full of mysteries.
Look, Saadik is no fool; he can tell Enzio is irritated by the endless, oppressive sunshine. But Enzio is Saadik's guest on this voyage, and he does what it takes to make Enzio comfortable. He offers him Belizean rum in great quantities. He feeds him enchanted cilantro. He gives him pulverized tobacco for relaxation. He plays Journey's Greatest Hits on his dad's old Sony Walkman, which connects to the portable CD player through a cassette adapter. "My friend," Saadik says, "you are the guest, and this voyage ends only when you are satisfied. I will accommodate you, even if you want to remain in my boat for the rest of your days."
But who the hell is he kidding? They don't have days, only several hours at best, before their rickety boat is swallowed by the unforgiving sea. After the battering they took from a pod of pilot whales, the boat is now leaking to the bilges. The rudder and anchor are both missing. Saadik is wasting his time in idle reflection whilst their tropical water ration dribbles rapidly over the end of the stern. "Well," Enzio replies, "your guest thinks maybe we should get to caulking the seams or something." He knows he's only indulging his conscience, because no amount of caulking will save the boat this time. And so he goes back to driving golf balls, aiming vainly at a bull shark that has been circling them since they left Xcalak...
Labels: salty
posted by Row of Streetlights at 8:10 PM
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