I’m home. I’ve been home from sea for a while. The night I was to leave my ship, I got word my wife was rushed to the hospital. Unable to sleep, panicking and scared to death, I wrote the following words. Oh and PW recovered, but now she hates me for something I didn’t do and I feel just as bad as I did that night. I don’t know how to make it better, how to fight something that doesn’t exist and I find myself at a loss, just as I did that night at sea when I worried for her life. That night, I had nothing and tonight? Nothing, again. So, PW this is for you. I am a gods-cursed asshole, but not for any reason you might think…

Admittedly, my life and lifestyle can be pretty cool. I’ve seen some amazing things around the world, done a lot of crazy shit, met people from a hundred different nations that have all enriched me and my view of the world and our place in it. I once lit a bar on fire in Germany and the next day swam in an underground lake. I’ve slept in my coat under a tree, while trying to walk halfway across England to Stonehenge without a freaking map (idiot). I’ve walked barefoot amongst golden temples in the jungles of Burma and watched a man there, nearly a stranger, drop to his knees and pray to Buddha for my troubled soul after dropping what probably amounted to a month’s salary to proudly show me his country for one short day. I’ve been marched back to my ship at gunpoint after getting caught skinny-dipping in Trinidad, West Indies by some angry and slightly homophobic soldiers. I’ve touched whales in the North Atlantic on the Grand Banks and just yesterday, a pod of dolphins put on a show for me, way better than that unimaginative shit they feed the masses at Sea World. For that part of my life, I am grateful and truly humbled by what I have experienced and learned from nature and the people’s I have met in this wonderful world.

It has been my choice for most of the last ten years to make the world my cubicle and certainly after 6 weeks of actually working out of a cubicle last year, I can honestly appreciate how rich and full my life has been and how god-awful lucky I am not to fly a desk, nine to five in some white-walled office prison bathed in fluorescent light, fed the corporate America line, contemplating the sale of my soul to Satan for a long weekend. I loathe that life and lifestyle, and this is just the way I need to roll in order to stave of the madness. OK, to stave off total madness and yes Queenie, I have not forgotten being chastised for posting Edvard Munch and screaming about the voices in my head. They are mostly quiet these days, thank you.

The people who know me well and I guess all the people I’ve let peak into my mind the last few months, know I also have my share of gripes about my choice of life, too. I often eat dog shit food, get my ears bloodied in the shower, get the shit beat out of me in exotic places and sometimes miss every birthday, holiday and milestone in an entire year of my children’s lives. I also occasionally get sodomized by Neptune to the tune of nine hurricanes and one motherfucker of a storm last fall that nearly sank my fucking ship. I deal with a lot of shit when I’m out here. The stress of managing multi-million dollar projects, the uncertainty of the elements, and the complexity and instability of the most advanced computer systems in the world. I get ornery and moody, piss and moan and generally act like an asshole. I guess all of us out here do at times. Us.

In describing my life out here, I have neglected to mention my cohorts in this grand, shitty adventure. The people I work with are really indescribable in their depths and stellar highs. They range from convicts to genius among men, often both in the same person. They are amazing and totally fucking whacked, driven, tireless and slovenly, bug-eyed and scary like an evil clown with a butcher knife, caring, compassionate, dependable and I routinely place my life in their hands without hesitation. There guys, that is the absolute best I can do for you within the limits of the pea that is my tired brain at 4:30 in the morning.

Which now leaves me with nothing else to say except why I sat down at my laptop, put on my “I am angry at the world, want to kill someone and cry because I’m scared shitless” music. For all I have gained by this strange life I lead, I am at this very moment dying inside because of it. Tonight I got an instant message from my wife just before she was rushed to the hospital. Eight hours later, after numerous phone calls and frantic online messaging with my best friend (May whatever God you believe in wake up and cut you some fucking slack soon, my friend), I am still at sea, roughly 2,000 miles and at least two days from my wife who is somewhere between really fucking sick and maybe a lot worse-nobody seems to know, yet. My youngest girl is staying with friends tonight (thanks peanut, how do you repay somebody for this?) and somebody’s going to let my dog out tomorrow so he doesn’t take a shit on my couch, out of spite and need. It seems that all the bases are covered, dog, child and wife in the care of doctors and nurses and cat scan people and I am dying, a little more every minute. I’m cursing myself for doing my job and not being there when the love of my life needs me the very most. What the fuck do I do? I’ve walked laps around the ship, smoked a pack and a half of cigarettes, slammed coffee, talked to people and I finally ended up here, writing this mindless, stream of shit for lack of, well for lack of any fucking thing to calm me down.

I hope like hell that I’ll give this to my wife to read in a few days, so she can wrinkle her nose, or laugh at what an idiot I am and I can update this with the fact that she passed a kidney stone or something equally benign and post it, or burn it, whatever she decides.

Whatever the case, one thing is for sure in my mind. For whatever good I’ve gotten out of this fucking life of a pirate, I’m a gods-cursed asshole and tonight I am paying the cost. I need a fucking smoke.

The editors of FTTW send their thoughts and prayers to the Pirate and his wife

Any Port in the Storm Archives

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