From: Mate Horizon Hawk
Sent: Wednesday, November 18, 2009 5:28 AM
Subject: Voyage 030. The Guam Experience
It was HOT.
I mean HOT in a hard tropical Guam way. Not that easy dry California hot.
Hot where you are covered in sweat seconds after leaving the safety of air conditioning. Hot where a minute later you are soaked to the skin and dripping wet…
A kind of Hot that just smothers you, weighing you down as you walk, as if gravity itself was increasing, making each step more laborious than the last. A mind numbing Hot. No thoughts, no thinking possible, moving on survival instinct only, constantly wiping the stinging sweat from your eyes as you trip and stumble along.Was an overwhelmingly depressing Hot - not a happy hot. Not at all.
Somehow made it to the Seaman’s club. Staggered into the air conditioned sanctuary, well stocked with almost everything that a seaman might require. What I required was water. What I ordered was beer…
Over heated brain must have gotten the signals mixed somehow. But a few ice cold San Miguel’s into my belly and I sure felt like I was on the road to recovery. My head had stopped spinning. Another beer and my eyes were able to focus again. Both of them. The next one triggered that euphoric rush of surviving a near death experience. Everything was So Great! Everything was So Wonderful!…
Ahhh, the magic of beer, I thought as a blissful smile replaced that grim look of certain death I had come in here with. Another cold one slid down my throat and that guy at the bar - who was such a jerk on the ship, was suddenly my new best friend. Exchanged life stories and home phone numbers as he bought me another…
Enough. I came here to swim, and it was time. One more and out the back door and into ocean I go. It’s what I planned when I left the ship, why I had carried the mask, fins and snorkel with me so many painful miles.
The ocean felt wonderful. Twist and turn under water chasing multi-colored strange looking fish. Felt One with Sea. But the sun burning my shoulders and face, and my parched salt-coated throat forced me out sooner than I had wanted. Out of one liquidy environment and back into the other. Not really a clear boundary between the two as in these latitudes fish fly in the air, birds swim underwater and crabs walk on land…
Swam my way back across the reef, breast stroked up the rocks and over the coral, and free styled my way into the Seaman’s club and up to the bar. “Water” is what I thought I said but what appeared before me was a San Miguel. Ummm… well maybe it is bottled water, bottled in these ice cold brown bottles. Better taste it… ahhh…. Like angels dancing on my tongue – the nectar of the Island Gods slides down my throat… no it’s not water, at least not in this bottle – maybe there’s water in the next one…. Had better check. Nope, no water in this one either but in the next one….
Then the boys appeared, quenched their thirst, seized me and off in the rent-a-car we go.
Take in the view from the back seat. Thru my salt encrusted blue eyes and San Miguel altered mind…. Not sure if it’s a submarine we are in or car as an intense rain squall hits, pisses on us then moves on… The outside even more distorted to me now, melting cars blurring by as giant geckos with long forked tongues chase them…
Jungle foliage interspaced with houses either under construction or under destruction - can’t tell the difference. More jungle and abandoned rusted cars melting into the ground. Why were they abandoned? What became of their owners? Around the next curve, a fast moving band of wild aggressive Guamanian chickens answers that question… Pack like coordination as they spot and quickly surround us. But skillful driving by someone else saves us from certain death.
Time slows and blurs and so does sound. It’s just a constant ocean roar I am hearing. And melting, everything out there is melting… melting in the 2000 degree heat. What color is green and Toyota when melted together?… For a little while there I knew the answer – felt it. Tasted it.
Eventually my brain cooled and returned to normal size as the AC finally kicked in. Still in the car, still moving but the world outside had stopped melting; the ferocious chickens and giant geckos had faded away.
It was going to be OK.