A Night In Love City

5 May 2017

(Edited 14 March 2020)

I.

Like a hellbat freshly loosed from county jail on good behavior we shot down the crumbling asphalt track that cut deep into the dark heart of an island jungle—a jungle overflowing with kamakaze iguanas, dumpster discharge, assorted ocean detritus, and freshly-squeezed donkey crap.

The evening’s pleasantly-warm drizzle had become a sharp, sloppy spittle. I winced, and shaded my face against the double money-shot of fresh, cutting rain and 4x4 muckraking, as the car sprayed mud à la carte, the dirt track torn up by mismatched, treadless tires desperate for purchase in the wet grit.

“Just run it again,” the tires pleaded to the earth, not unlike a desperate man in supplication to an aging Marlon Brando with cotton balls stuffed in his cheeks. “It'll go through this time. I can't understand what the problem could possibly be.”

“You come to me on the day of my daughter's wedding,” the ground responded, disapprovingly.

It was one of those nights.

3:38 in the morning on a Tuesday and I was perched like a gangrenous parrot on the back of an old Suzuki Sidekick I would later come to lovingly refer to as the Widowmaker. The thing was a relic, a flaking rot-metal throwback to a simpler time, when import cars had been cheap and plentiful and the Japanese, sensing an unrivaled opportunity for economic hegemony and armed with the finest in manufacturing technologies of the day—captains of industry!—had outdone themselves in grinding out these dirty little AWD coconut-rockets a dime a dozen. Perhaps in the early days, our untrusty chariot might have even passed the Caribbean’s version of vehicle inspection (basically an ornery tire-kicking coupled with a glance under the chassis to see if anything was seriously hemorrhaging fluid/on fire), but these days, her latest owner couldn’t much be bothered. In truth, he was the type who preferred to kick his own tires, if you know what I mean, and trusted his own intuition/his buddies’ jumper cables over any so-called professional opinion...and anyway, the man loathed paperwork. In the absence of such legalities, glued slyly to the lower-right of the cracked windshield was a large dead leaf meant to look as if it had fallen casually and perfectly at random over the definitely-there inspection sticker tucked away underneath it. As my kamikaze driver (and arbiter-of-my-impending-doom) had explained it, “for insurance”.

Jesus mercy fucknut, I thought, my spleen jostling somewhat uncomfortably inside my skull. Christened holy dickbonnet I'm going to die, right here, and it's going to *hurt* like a mother. I'm actually dead right now; I just haven't realized it yet...fackin' hell, man. Well...I suppose it was a pretty good run, all things considered...

My thoughts turned to less dangerous times...to about 9pm. I missed 9pm, I realized. It had been good to me.

There could be little doubt that it was the weird part of the night—that give-a-damn hour that heralds a sneaky sort of pre-dawn madness, ruled over by the 13th House of Invincible Impulses and Bad Directions, a time to break new ground within ourselves and to ask the hard questions. Questions like, ‘why the hell not?’ and ‘can I get a ride, bud?’ and ‘this is so fun, what could possibly go wrong?’...generally followed, as was currently the case for me, by 'what the hell did that old guy mean by “keep going at the cliffside?”' and 'is it possible to keep anything at all in my stomach?'.

I wished I could describe my current state to my 5-hour-younger self, perhaps offer a word of warning. I had been such an innocent, back then...such a wee cherub. I had not understood the 13th house, and now—having wholly underestimated its dark influence—the Weird Part of the night had me firmly within its grasp.

It is a time when our good-natured, normally-reserved sense of laissez-faire throws back a few-too-many coconut rum painkillers, cuts loose, and before you're quite sure what's occurred you're topless and dancing to Toto's Africa on stage with some old German moose with paisley shorts and a Rolex who wants to show you his yacht and you try to decline politely but instead hear yourself shout something like hellyeah I'm down for whatever, Herr shortzenwatchen—a time when the mind’s defenses are worn thin by all this boogie and booze, and you find your common sense dredged about fast-and-loose in some tepid, gluten-free illusion of grandeur.

Welcome to paradise, you know? Business as usual. And even if you knew beforehand you'd be shake-and-baked into months of progressively-greater habit-forming recklessness and casual nonchalance, you'd still do it all over again...wouldn't ya, m'boi.

It is of course this same devil-may-care attitude one often comes to regret once the sun is well-and-truly up the following morning...assuming, of course, one can actually make it that far. In the meantime, however, your mind has doubled down on the new you, embraced zee Germans, zee Toto, and all zee janky-ass “man of steel” delusions you can invent. For example, that hitching a ride back home with this maniac was a relatively not-unsafe choice.

Perhaps in a more inhibited state (that is, not suffering quite so profoundly from what the locals call the 'sloshy-sloshy') I might have managed risk a bit better and opted to walk...or just slept on the beach like a narwhal. Whatever.

But it was raining, after all...and there were far less-harmful crazies back over on the east side of the island—where I was ostensibly headed at close to warp factor 9—than the west side, where I had written a story entirely my own and polka'ed the night away with my new octogenarian-Bavarian flame.

Life is alright in America, I thought to myself, bouncing along jocularly. We were barely out of town and I was clinging to the roll-bars like a codependent barnacle in a creosote factory.

As I would later realize, the crazies all stay on the west side of St. John at night because none of them are stupid enough to try hitching a ride back east with the locals.

Confusion. Speed. Adrenaline.

Sloshy-sloshy...well, what you gonna do.

As sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti, Love City was lovin' on me tonight, all right—loving hard. In fact, it was getting a bit bumpity-humpity, if you're familiar with the colloquialism.

So it was that in the surreality of this present moistened darkness, with daylight seeming like a hazy childhood memory, I became aware of my peril only in broad brushstrokes. Black Nutella-clouds were smeared all over the stars, and the world seemed to have gone a bit limey around the edges. Maybe it’s just the greenish tint of the headlight, I thought to myself (the Widowmaker only had the one, held fast with what looked like the entire roll of duct tape).

Everything was green, down here. And the jungle was incredible.

The clouds continued to spray rain into my mouth and nose with kegstand ferocity...it kind of tasted faintly of rum-and-coke. Or perhaps it was just my stomach issuing a “return to sender” order on that final round of painkillers. Anyhow, lacking a legible return address, it would seem some poor donkey's number was up for one heck of a legendary mafioso drive-by yakking.

Struggling to see through the torrential evening, to hold my alcohol, and somehow in my addled mind piece together the shock and confusion that comes with staring into an early grave, I winced against the car’s every chunk and dive and dip, railing all the while at my conscience and ye almighty gods for letting me bum a ride back home with this daredevil on sabbatical—all 11-odd miles of it. But there was nothing for it now, so it was buckle up buckeroo and try to stay mostly on the inside of the car...had there been a seatbelt within a hundred feet of me, of course, things might have been that much easier.

But it was what it was, rain lashing my ears and baldfaced tires screaming over the road, and so we went speeding gaily along home to Coral Bay, St. John, USVI...to paradise.

Also, my final resting place.

My bloodless grip was clamped down on the Widowmaker’s roof, itself a rusted bit of corrugated standing-seam aluminum paneling, attached in several places with razor-sharp screws leering longingly at me in the night air. The repair job looked to have been done in pitch blackness by blind goats tripping on blotter acid. Those fucking screws fucking want my fucking blood, I thought, and I wasn't wrong. Tires begging for the friendship of well-blended mule fertilizer, the Widowmaker thundered on.

It was, for all intents and purposes, a rolling tetanus-wagon of death.

Tied to the fused-shut tailgate was a 30-horse long-stroke Yamaha outboard motor missing its prop, which lent a certain “aqueous assault vehicle” mystique to the car...the kind of thing one imagines one might find, for example, in the discovery of the ancient technologically-inferior remains of a failed, now-submerged nation-state. It looked kind of like what the Eloi would be driving 800,000 years from now in what would used to have been the Maldives.

Put simply, there was no explanation as to how the Widowmaker managed to stay in motion. I mean Newton himself would've needed an additional law to explain this thing. She was a jury-rigged fossil—a diesel-soaked revenant, back for more. In lieu of a backseat, I had found only a soggy cat-chewed Styrofoam cooler to crouch upon, set sideways atop what appeared to me to be someone's entire day-glo crossdressing-wig collection, nestled here in the trunk—and not a part-time dabbler, mind you, but an old hand—a real pro—the kind of person who's got the lyrics to every ABBA song down cold and worships Sia like the second coming of Christ. Doubtless whoever owned these wigs was a karaoke god amongst mortal men.

I remember thinking something like, where in actual fuck am I right now?

We rounded another corner.

Mamma mia, here I go a-gain, I thought, preoccupied with the unlikelihood of my perch and the absolute certainty of my untimely demise—my, my...how can I resist ya?

Grinding my teeth against the combined onslaught of cold rain and seized suspension and wigs marked for death by various gangs of conquering felines—

Shoot me down, but I won't fall...! I am titaaaaa-niii-um!

—we sped on, spun out, nailed some poor iguana bastard in clean fucking half, and plunged past a herd of nonplussed wild donkeys, none of whom seemed even the slightest bit phased by our incursion into their sacred shitting grounds.

Basically, as I later learned, it was business-as-usual in the Caribbean, baby.

The goddamn Suzuki was just getting into its stride, doing probably a cool 180mph in the snot-slick mist—shit!shit!shit!shit!—my lacking-the-will-to-live chauffeur was actually *accelerating* through turns now—why hast thou forsaken me Lord—the back wheels fishtailing suddenly 30 or 40 degrees to the left in the wet sludge—bitchIamgonnabesickkkk—and then, as we climbed another near-vertical crevasse, rounded yet another corner of abyssal precarity, I was at once treated to the briefest and sweetest of lightning-lit vistas: a view of sweeping hills and valleys rolling down to the boat-speckled bay.

For an instant, I, literally weightless, drinking in the effortless stormsoaked fury of the evening and held aloft by an utterly sweet and silent prayer for the continuing beauty and Mystery, beheld a miracle.

There in the little splintered car, suddenly beyond all care for my own personal safety—all pleas for caution cast away like spent wigs—I became content. This is another of life's secret little perfect road signs, I realized. And shit I didn't know how bad I really needed one tonite.

And then just as soon as it was there, my little revelation was gone, and we were up the side of a cliff, becoming momentarily airborne only to rocket back to earth a second later like a failed North Korean missile test. We hit the ground, SpaceX-style, with a crunch that felt like a spinal-tap-and-Coke: an instant island classic. Thank Christ for my cooler, I thought, rain spitting in my eyes as I slammed into the outboard behind me.

As the radio crackled and Jim Morrison suddenly screamed out through rusted-out speakers, I briefly contemplated mentioning to the demon behind the wheel that we might consider slowing down a smidge. But just as I voiced the sentiment, thunder crashed overhead, drowning my words completely. Through the howling roar of wind, around a swig of fireball whiskey I heard the belching reply from the front seat: “great idea bud braaaapp!—let's take the scenic route! Why the fuck not!”

What in fuck's focking faaaq are we on now, then? I wondered, my nostrils flaring with concern. How is this night even *possible*?

To be fair, my culture-shock was not entirely unfounded. Here in the states it's somewhat rare to find a place that has achieved the perfect balance of lawlessness and apathy that the people of this little island so loved. They were a zen master's riddle become flesh.

The thing about St. John, see, is it's the badlands...no joke. Want a beer on your drive? It's no worries...just don't be stupid, eh? Don't fuck this up for the rest of us.

'Pass the Courvoisier, mon.'

For all intents and purposes, the Virgin Islands are like every fantasy of a faraway place to go away from winter and your boss, where the rules weren't exactly rules anymore, and you could kinda...do basically whatever you want. Personally, I've come to think fondly of these fabled jungles of nonconformist misfits. St. John is a place of unexpected danger, and perpetual accident-forgiveness (because nobody cares about another scratch in the paint of their thirdhand toaster); St. John is a place of driving mostly-naked with a fistful of Jack in broad daylight on a sacred quest (aka the munchies) to get Slim Jims and oranges and more hash; a place where anything was acceptable so long as one didn't draw undue attention to oneself. No shirt, no shoes, and smell like a barbacued beachrat? Good for you, bruh.

But you cut in line and I'ma cut you, myself. M'boi. (Everybody loves “m'boi” down here)

So, like any person out of their element, it was adapt or die. Newcomers like myself were studied with toothy and amused “let's see how long it takes this time around” grins by the briny locals, and absolutely *everybody* knew a guy. In fact, the guy currently driving me over cliffs and just barely not killing-us-to-death was a guy everybody knew. And the rule of thumb, I soon learned, was that the more people who knew the guy, the more folks whose go-to guy was the same guy, the crazier the sumbitch was bound to be.

As it turned out, my guy on this particular evening was *everybody's* guy—the guy-of-guys that people's guys had as a guy—and that meant my odds were much worse than Jim Morrison's scratchy “Five to One” lyrics now blasting over the radio. We'd been going for what felt like hours, and Sia was old news, maybe a half-dozen panic attacks ago. Yes, it would be fitting to die to the Doors, I thought. One could do worse, honestly.

No one here gets out aliiive...!

So blow me down, I had found perhaps the single craziest dude on-island to chill with. Or if not, certainly he was a heavyweight contender for this season's title. And he just seemed to love saxophone so much he evidently felt that it was his privilege—nay, his duty as cultural ambassador of the island he called home—to get me back home just as fast as Newtonian physics would let him go.

Come to think of it, he was the kind of guy who often seemed to test the limits of physics, just to see what would happen...in fact he tested *everything* to see what would happen. Thinking back now, he was something like a perfect storm of accident. His combined curiosity, open candor, and unrivaled carelessness often made for a very good time (or at least, a very interesting time), and on an island 11 miles long in the middle of the ocean, boredom was a killer...and baby, he had the cure. Little doubt, then, he was so popular, or at least so well-known. Take your eye off him for only an instant and he would find some questionable liquid to imbibe, some strange object to improvise as a makeshift musical instrument/harpoon, or just something he could straight up immolate for the sheer hell of it.

I once saw him light a vinyl record on fire with zippo fluid and try to play ultimate frisbee with a bystander (who evidently did not much want to play). And he had a thing for dolphins, but was deathly afraid of bees.

He was essentially like that friend you had in school who, in the name of furthering scientific research, would willfully and gleefully drink the contents of unlabeled lab beakers in science class to see if one of them would make him see pretty lights, or perhaps bolster his intelligence—coronary thrombosis be damned!—all of which were perfectly entertaining and acceptable outcomes to him. He would walk around town, guitar slung over one shoulder like El Kabong, Mexican shawl and shades and strawbare cowboy hat cocked on his head, and cooing to baby chicks he carried in his shorts pockets. As in, chickens.

The man carried chickens. And they seemed to adore him.

He probably had one on him even as he hurtled us through time and space like the Doctor without a TARDIS.

He would toss lizards in the freezer overnight to slow 'em down and play catch with (usually no takers), and he'd hunt, butcher, and cook wild roosters with an ancient Red Ryder bb gun, a Swiss army knife, and a blowtorch to avoid having to pay for dinner...and then let the local gangs of cats clean up after him. Actually, if I’m being fair here, he usually paid for dinner with weed...and sometimes, breakfast with weed...in fact he paid for weed, in weed. He owed favors to everybody, and everybody owed him favors, usually at the same time.

He was essentially the 50-year-old embattled version of Huck Finn—the Huck Finn who, grown up and recently back from the war, was none-too-eager to readjust to society, and took things one tall whiskey at a time. He was the sneakiest, most scurrilous rat-bastard you ever knew and his friends loved him and jibed him and his enemies never pushed him too far. His penchant for alcohol was as bad as anybody's and he stirred up trouble a whole lot better than most. He had a sailboat with no sails and no engine, a tab a mile long at the local burger shack, and a Suzuki that rode like hell, and only rode at all because he’d often borrow car batteries to get the thing in motion (and sometimes, even, try to remember to return them before anyone noticed). He stashed joints in every hidey-hole imaginable—often on other people without them knowing it—and recovered them considerably less stealthily. His profile was by no means a low one.

But for every wild, drunken night and repentant morning, every emergency outboard motor repair and stolen other-half-of-the-sandwich-you-were-saving-for-breakfast in the fridge, he only entrenched his reputation in the community. People counted on him, knowing he was the most capable and least reliable guy this side of Bermuda, a damn good sailor, and the guy who would get you where you needed to go for a pack of smokes and a warm Corona.

Or perhaps, as in my case, for a song.

By god, he’d get you there even if it killed you both.