by C. McGee
Marsupials, Thyroid Problems, and the Urge to Spill
“What the fuck is that?” I asked, nodding my head toward the caged animal residing on Lana’s patio.
“That’s Icarus,” Lana replied.
“Icarus? Jesus Christ, you and your fucking mythology.”
“The legend of Icarus conveys an important message about the dangers of hubris,” Lana said, defending herself without coming across as defensive.
“Indeed it does, Lana,” I retorted, an amused expression on my face. “But I didn’t ask who is that, I asked what is that?”
“It’s a sugar glider.”
“A what-what?”
“A sugar glider.”
“A sugar what?” I had heard what Lana said, I just wanted to get a rise out of her. Ethan’s antagonistic sense of humor was wearing off on me.
“Glider,” she replied calmly through a knowing grin.
I leaned in to get a closer look.
“Hey, Icarus,” I said, talking directly to the little marsupial. “Goddamn, look at those bulgy eyes of yours. You look like a pygmy raccoon with a thyroid problem.”
“He really does have hyperthyroidism.”
“Shit, seriously?”
“No,” Lana replied, a mischievous smirk on her face.
“Well played, lady,” I said, nodding my head in approval.
I like that Lana can give shit and take shit. I wish more women could. Unfortunately, it’s not a very common characteristic. I’m not sure why. Maybe they think that guys find it threatening? That seems like a rationale I’ve heard used before—a stupid rationale, but a rationale nonetheless.
As we made our way back into Lana’s house, she shifted the conversation away from her exotic pet.
“So, you were saying that you wanted to borrow something?”
“Yeah, I was wondering if you had a kayak sail that I could use?”
“Sure,” she stated simply, as though I were asking for a piece of gum rather than an obscure paddle-sport accessory. The nonchalant response would have seemed odd had it come from anyone else.
Not wasting a second, Lana walked straight to the garage, grabbed a folded-up kayak sail off the shelf, and tossed it over to me.
“Keep it,” she said.
“Seriously?”
“Of course. We have two more. I think one of them is still in its original box.”
“Fantastic. Thanks.”
“No problem.”
• 5. Find a sail for your new kayak … check.
And just like that the Operation Flush a Turd checklist was complete. And just like that, I found myself disappointed.
I think it was the anticlimax of it all. I had hoped that Lana would raise an eyebrow at my odd request. That she would inquire as to why exactly I needed a kayak sail. Where was I headed? Why was I headed there? What was I up to? Lana asked none of those questions. Deep down I knew that she wouldn’t. That’s why, when I first made the list and was devising ways to accomplish the tasks scrawled upon it, I had decided that it would be all right if I asked her for a sail. I knew that she had one and I knew that I could enlist her help without jeopardizing the clandestine nature of the mission. Unfortunately, now that the moment was upon me I realized that I wanted Lana to ask me questions because I wanted to answer questions. I wanted to reveal plans and tell stories. I wanted to talk about the Chicken-ocalypse, the hallucinating veterinarian, the impending ocean voyage, the capturing of mongooses. I was three quarters of the way done with a monumental task, and I wanted to discuss my progress. I wanted to share with someone, anyone, and I was not being provided the opportunity to do so.
Annoyed, I took a bottle of merlot off Lana’s wine rack and started drinking. Half a bottle in, I decided to call up the boys. Not the type to turn down a drink, they immediately came over. Another half bottle later I made a divulgence. It wasn’t a big slip, just a little one. I told Lana, Ethan, and Charlie that I would be gone for a couple days. “A big kayak trip,” I explained. I framed it as an Ingrid-versus-the-wilderness sort of thing so that no one would offer to go with me. They got the point. They all volunteered their drunken and enthusiastic support, but none of them volunteered their company. I graciously accepted their encouragement and then let the subject drop. I wanted to tell them more, but I didn’t. My desire to spill had not been satiated but it had been assuaged.
That night, as I fell into a drunken slumber, I thought to myself, It’s a good thing I didn’t tell them more. It will be a way better story once it has a conclusion. Then I thought, You know it’s probably good that some people know where I’m at. If things go awry, they will be able to alert the proper authorities as to my general whereabouts. Then I thought, Dear god, how did I not think of that earlier? I definitely should have. Disaster is a legitimate possibility. So is death. A solo, seventy-mile, trans-ocean kayak trip is no joke. Then I thought, Fuck it. I’ll be fine.
I was kind of right.
Chapter 21
The Dead Don’t Care What We Eat
The following morning I was woken by an incessancy of chickens. Eleven, twelve, thirteen, I don’t know? There were a bunch of them and they were going about their morning routine in their characteristically raucous fashion. Stupid bitch birds.
The island’s feral poultry had not served as my alarm clock in quite some time. The mass beheading had proven an effective deterrent. Chickens now rarely came to my neighborhood and the few that did were quickly escorted out by my .22. Unfortunately, I had not fallen asleep at my house, I had fallen asleep at Lana’s, and, as it turned out, her neighborhood was far more chicken-friendly than mine.
Ethan was asleep next to me. We were in the largest guest bedroom, sprawled out on a king-size bed. Amazingly, he was still asleep, breathing heavily through an open mouth.
“You lucky bastard,” I thought, envious as usual of his ability to slumber through anything.
Head pounding and determined to shut the chickens up, I made my way over to the window and slid it open. I looked around the room for something to throw at the monstrosity, but found nothing. Lana’s place was nice, which meant it contained few objects cheap enough to be used as anti-chicken artillery. As a consequence of this reality, I resigned myself to a verbal assault of the birds. It was an inferior deterrent method but at least it was something.
Preparing to yell, I stuck my head out of the window and looked down onto the chickens two stories below. As I did so, the rooster immediately underneath me threw his head back and crowed. It felt like he was intentionally mocking me.
“You little dickb—” I didn’t get to finish the word “dickbag.” The vomit that made its way up my throat prevented me from concluding the insult. On the plus side, it also provided me with a projectile. Aware that the puke was coming and that there was nothing I could do to prevent it, I decided to use it to my advantage. The dickbag rooster in my sights, I unleashed the contents of my stomach. He didn’t see it coming. Evidently, roosters crow with their eyes closed because that bird kept his head tilted back and his obnoxious beak open the whole time providing a clear path for my sick to go in his mouth, down his windpipe, and into his lungs. After my vomit hit the rooster, I heard his crow turn into a gurgle, which then turned into silence. A few seconds later, he plopped over lamely on his side, dead. I had not planned on killing the chicken with my puke, but I was happy I had. It was the second time in as many days that my vomit had come in handy. Unusual.
Startled by the sudden demise of their friend, the other bitch birds scurried away from the house. Pleased, I walked over to the bathroom, located an unopened toothbrush in one of the drawers, brushed my teeth, and then went back to bed.
Soon the whole island will enjoy this sort of quiet, I thought while drifting off to sleep.
I awoke two hours later to the sound of distant waves. It felt right, the way people are supposed to wake up in Kauai. Ethan was still asleep next to me, mouth open, breathing heavily.
I eased out of bed, w
ent to the bathroom, gave my teeth another brushing, slid on one of the ridiculously comfortable robes that I found hanging in the closet, and then made my way downstairs and into the kitchen. No one was there. It was nearing ten in the morning and everyone was still asleep—the hard life of wealthy twenty-somethings in Princeville, Hawaii.
Deciding that I deserved an award for being the first one up, I embarked on a search to find Lana’s stash of Kopi Luwak. I knew that she had some because she had made an offhand comment to that effect a few days prior. Despite the fact that some of the best coffee in the world is grown a few miles from Lana’s house, she had decided to pay thirty-five dollars an ounce for coffee beans that had been eaten by cat-weasels, pooped out by cat-weasels, washed, roasted, and then flown halfway across the globe. This so offended my Midwestern sensibilities that I simply had to have some.
As I searched the pantry, my wandering mind, inspired by the bizarre coffee beans for which I was searching, started devising a list of the weirdest foods I had ever heard of. Had I written it down it would have looked like this:
• Kopi Luwak: Obviously.
• Lutefisk: Let’s take a fish that tastes bad to begin with, submerge it in a chemical that people use to open drains, leave it there for a couple days, take it out, run some cold water over it, and then slap it on a plate. Sweet Jesus what were my ancestors thinking?
• Scrapple: Pig scraps mixed with buckwheat. Are you fucking kidding me, Amish people? It’s like their religion demands that they actively seek out ways to make their lives worse. “You know, Jedidiah, that barn raising was just too much fun, we should probably balance things out by having a loaf of ground hog parts. No, not the good parts of the hog, just the awful parts, head, heart, trotters, that kind of stuff.”
• Chitlins: Okay, so I get how it started: Plantation owners were looking for ways to feed slaves on the cheap, so they decided to give them the parts of the meat that no one else wanted (terrible). The slaves, being resourceful and ingenious, took said scraps and devised ways to make them palatable (impressive). And for their ability to make crap tubes edible, nineteenth-century African-Americans deserve to be lauded, but guess what? Slavery is dead and the consumption of pig intestines should be as well. They’re shitty, literally shitty.
• Jell-O: The boiled bones and connective tissues of animals made to taste like sugary fruit. How did anyone ever think that was a good idea?
Having thoroughly searched the kitchen and come up empty handed, I decided to head back to Lana’s study. I knew that she had a coffeemaker on her desk, and I figured that there was an outside chance the Kopi Luwak beans could be found in that general vicinity. On the way I mulled over the implausibility of Jell-O—fruit and animal ligaments, seriously?
As I turned the corner into the study I let out an involuntary sound of surprise. Charlie was in the room, clicking away on the keyboard. I had not been expecting to find anyone.
“Holy shit, you scared me,” I said. “What are you doing in here?”
“Checking my e-mail. My brother texted me and said that he sent something important. I didn’t want to wait until I got home to find out what it was, so I decided to use Lana’s computer. I figured that she wouldn’t mind. So what are you doing in here?” Charlie inquired, shifting the dialogue in a new direction.
I was curious about the contents of the e-mail message that his brother had sent, but I decided to allow the conversation to move away from the topic. When it comes to discussing his background, Charlie has always behaved in a reticent fashion. As such, it seemed inappropriate to force the subject.
“I’m looking for Lana’s stash of Kopi Luwak,” I said, turning my gaze toward the coffeemaker.
“Let me help you look,” Charlie stated brightly. He moved the mouse around, quickly clicked some programs closed, and then stood up, demonstrating his readiness to assist with the search.
“So what is it that we’re looking for again?” he asked, no longer distracted by the contents of the computer screen.
“Kopi Luwak. It’s a ridiculously fancy coffee. Lana said that she had some, but I haven’t been able to find any.”
Charlie opened the drawer underneath the coffeemaker and pulled out a small black tin.
“Is this it?” he asked, holding up the container.
“Damn,” I answered with a smile. “You’re good at this finding stuff business.”
“Yeah,” Charlie retorted sarcastically. “I found coffee beans in the drawer underneath the coffeemaker. Someone alert the CIA. They need people with my kind of talent.”
“Definitely. Bin Laden wouldn’t have lasted more than a month with you on his trail.”
Laughing, we made our way out of the study and back into the kitchen. I ground up some of the fancy cat-weasel poop beans, poured them into a filter, and brewed a small pot.
It tasted like coffee.
As soon as I finished the cup, I said goodbye to Charlie and headed out. The trip was the following day. I had shit to do.
Chapter 22
The Monotony of Adventure
Back in high school I played ice hockey. In most parts of the world this would be considered highly unusual but not in the Upper Midwest. In the Upper Midwest hockey is a religion, and it does not discriminate based on sex. Actually, it doesn’t discriminate based on anything. Its disciples can be found in nearly every demographic group: men, women, rich, poor, urban, rural, Evangelical Lutherans, Missouri Synod Lutherans, everyone. If you don’t have at least a cursory knowledge of the sport, then you don’t belong.
Up until my senior year I was considered an average hockey player, which would have been fine had I been putting in an average amount of work. This, however, was not the case. I was putting in far more than an average amount of work. I was putting in a shit ton of work, practicing at least an hour more than my teammates on a daily basis. If input truly equaled output then I should have been in a class all my own. But I wasn’t, I was in the same class as everyone else and it drove me fucking crazy. Of course, it would be easy to attribute my uncompromising mediocrity to a dearth of innate athletic ability. When genetics conspires against you, there is only so much you can do. A crap athlete can work hard and become an average athlete but not a great one. This, however, was not my problem. I was a slightly above average athlete to begin with, so, at the very least, the work that I put in should have resulted in my becoming a very good one. The fact that this was not the case left me perplexed and irritated. I tried repeatedly to figure out the root of the problem and repeatedly I failed. I altered my diet, my workout routine, my sleep habits, my stick, my skates, and none of it worked. Eventually, having run out of ideas, I tried nothing. And that’s when things changed. I kept practicing like I always had but I stopped thinking about it. I stopped thinking about everything. The effort I put in remained constant but my angst over the effort I put in faded away. And suddenly I was good, very good, thirty goals and thirty assists in one season good. Having overcome my fixation on achieving, I had achieved. Is that ironic? I don’t know, but it’s true and knowledge of that truth changed me. Generally speaking, that change has been a good thing, not an unequivocally good thing, but a mostly good thing. I add the qualifier “mostly good” because on a couple of occasions this approach to life has gotten me in over my head. The Kauai to Oahu kayak trip was one such occasion.
It’s not that I had undertrained or underprepared for the expedition, for nothing could be further from the truth. I had worked out rigorously and planned meticulously. Instead, it is the simple fact that I did not give the endeavor the respect that it deserved. My work-hard-and-don’t-worry-about-anything-else approach had made me cocky when what I needed to be was confident. It’s a fine distinction but an important one. Cocky people have immense faith in their abilities and as a result disregard potential problems. Confident people have immense faith in their abilities and as a result address potential problems head on. More often than not, both the cocky and the confident overcome the
obstacles that get in their way, but every once in a while the cocky person gets blindsided and ends up on their ass. I didn’t end up on my ass, but I did end up neck deep in shark-infested water, which is probably worse.
Fine, tiring and boring, but fine. That’s how the first couple of days went. When one sees television shows or reads books about grand outdoor adventures, they are given the impression that such endeavors are pure excitement from beginning to end, one exhilarating and life-changing moment after another. As it turns out that’s a bunch of shit. In reality, grand wilderness expeditions are the definition of monotonous. Less than five hours into my kayak trip this fact became painfully clear to me. Honestly, it seems odd that it never dawned on me before. Hiking, paddling, cross-country skiing, all of these activities are horribly repetitious, and, as such, I should have deduced that engaging in any of them for a prolonged period of time would be boring as hell. But I didn’t. The thought never even occurred to me.
I remember at one point, a few years back, I read about some Norwegian guy that cross-country skied from one side of Antarctica to the other. At the time I thought to myself, Unbelievable, that must have been so exciting. Now, I think to myself, Unbelievable, that poor bastard must have been bored out of his mind. Right ski, left ski, right ski, left ski, right ski, left ski, over and over again through an eternal white expanse. What a nightmare. It’s as if he volunteered to do Sisyphus’s job in a less hospitable clime. Dear god, I just made a mythology reference. I’m hanging out with Lana too much.
Objectively, I understand that my undertaking wasn’t nearly as difficult or trying as the Scandinavian skier’s. It took him over a month to cross the most unforgiving continent in the world, whereas it took me less than forty-eight hours to kayak from one gorgeous tropical island to another. Nevertheless, as I was paddling, it seemed to me that our undertakings were very comparable. Hell, it seemed to me that my undertaking and Sisyphus’s undertaking were comparable. If anything mine seemed a bit more trying. A hill and a rock? Bitch, please. Try an ocean and a kayak loaded with animal traps.