The Yachting Life

"The Yachting Life"
Oliver D. Anderson

I was home visiting my folks last spring. Now, first off, it's important to note that I am not actually mature enough to "visit my folks". A more accurate description would be this: I drove the two hours back to my hometown for a place to stay for a week or two and to try to bum money from my mom when my step-dad wasn't listening. For time's sake however let's just say I was visiting my folk's. Now that that's out of the way, let's quickly examine the living conditions at my parent's house. My parents have never had much money and consequently they are always looking to live with the lowest possible cost of living. If they could put hardwood floors in a large pet carrier they would live there and save up their money for travel. Anyway, they were currently living in an apartment attached to my grandparent's boathouse where they stored their yacht. --Yes, my grandparents have a yacht but I don't feel comfortable borrowing money from them.-- It was only a cramped one bedroom apartment so I got to sleep in the yacht. This was the perfect living situation for me because I had my own space and I was in a fucking yacht.

Every morning I would crawl out of bed at eleven and smoke a bowl and a Pall Mall on the back of the boat. Because I was outside I was able to keep these vices secret because, embarrassing as it was, at twenty I was still afraid of my mom knowing I smoked. She asked once, "You smell like cigarettes. You're not smoking are you?" "No, just weed", which she thought was a joke instead of a lie. Anyway, after about five days of this my stash was gone. This presented a problem because I hadn't had a dinner with my parents straight since I was fifteen and I didn't feel like starting now. After calling around I found there was only one other loser still in this shit-hole of a hometown who wouldn't hang up on me as soon as I said I needed weed. I was kind of an acquaintance of his in high school. Kind of. He had this really annoying habit of using the word "nigger" like he was an uninformed southern senator from 1885. I'm not sophisticated but I don't really like to be seen in public with someone who says stuff like, "Dude, my new long-board's nigger fast." Yes, he used it as an adjective. But I had been sober for nine hours and I was desperate.

The "nigger guy" picked me up in the same pick-up he drove in high school and I'm pretty sure he was wearing the same Carhartt jacket and baseball cap. He explained that he was taking me to this guy with "nigger dank bud". Perfect. We stopped at a double-wide about fifty feet from the highway. I couldn't hear well over the traffic noise but I think the dealer's name was Jeff. He looked to be thirty but he still had teenage acne and wispy thin facial hair. He wore a green shirt that said, simply enough, "Irish". No kiss me, just "Irish". I had never understood that. Why are you so proud to be Irish? I don't see many "Jew" T-shirts or "African American" tank-tops or "One Quarter Cherokee" sweatshirts. At least they have a reason to be proud off their heritage. They overcame something. What have the Irish had to deal with? Potato famine? Colin Farrell? Anyway, Jeff invited us into his trailer and sold me a quick half ounce. We all sat down and he loaded a pipe. The trailer looked to be straight out of 1976. There was brownish orange shag carpeting on the ground and two large brown sofas that you sank into so deep that you needed help to get up. Random knick-knacks peppered every available flat surface. There was an old Elvis lunch box, little glass ballerinas, and more porcelain cats than I could count. "That's my girlfriend's shit." said Jeff as he noticed me eyeballing it. "I hate it." Jeff passed the glass pipe around the room and the three of us got pretty high. I was sitting on his couch watching an episode of "Two and a Half Men" when I started to freak out. I suddenly realized that I was back in my hometown smoking weed with the same losers I did in high school. I was just as broke as I was then, just as alone, just as aimless, watching the same shitty sitcom. I graduated two and a half years ago, dropped out of college, and now I'm right back where I started. The "nigger guy" seemed to notice I was freaking out and tried to get me to calm down. "Shit, calm down nig-" I had to stop him. "Could you stop saying that?" Apparently these guys were strong believers in the first amendment because I soon had two pissed off stoned losers on me:"This is America..."

When I finally got back to the yacht I smoked a quick bowl to calm myself down. I raided the fridge and planned out how I would ask my mom for money.








P.S. you know what pisses me off? When some piece of shit gives me a one star rating without even giving me a reason. You know what really pisses me off? When it happens three fucking times.