THE SHITTIEST SAILING TRIP ON EARTH

You can call me Frank. A couple of years ago, having little or no interest in pursuing a relationship that was heading nowhere, and nothing particularly exciting going on in my life, I thought I would accept my girlfriend’s invitation to sail about for a week on the majestic Lake Champlain. It seemed as good a time as any to determine if I would leave her or not.

See, my girlfriend at the time, Nathalie, (whom everyone kept calling affectionally Nana, including me, for some reason), was deeply in love with me. I do not really know why. I wasn't always nice to her. I wasn't faithful either. It seemed to me that after four years, we had experienced everything that this relationship could give us. Nana didn't seem to picture it that way or else she was truly happy with me, which was a little weird. For my part, I was bored. Deeply bored. I didn't know how to muster the courage to leave her. She was a nice girl and I didn't want to hurt her. But I had to leave. I had to sail away to another tropic.

Nana must have sensed that I was thirsty for the offshore wind because, in a somewhat uncharacteristic romantic gesture, she had carefully prepared that sailing trip for us. Little did I know that she had also invited her best friend Patricia and that it would be my job to invite one of mine, Jacques. Nana had wanted to introduce Jacques to Patricia for some time. They were both single and the opportunity seemed perfect to try and match them. They were both athletic, in really great shape, super outdoorsy and passionate foodies. Oh, how I dreaded spending a week with them! As a chubby geek who loves junk food, beer and porn, the trip was going to be pretty, pretty, pretty long for me. Nevertheless, I agreed to invite Jacques to please Nana. She was going to such great lengths to organize that trip and I was very likely to leave her at the end of it.

After several excruciating hours of driving -during which I had to listen to Patricia and Jacques sharing climbing and hiking stories and way too much Mumford and sons- we arrived at the dock. The captain of our sailboat was waiting for us. He was going to show us the basics of a sailor’s life. King of the bongos was the pitiful name of his otherwise beautiful boat. It was evidently named in honor of singer Manu Chao, whose captain was the spitting image of. He greeted us with open arms and the musky smell of cheap weed. Everything about him was tight except his eyes, who were pink, droopy and unfocused. This was a man in which many forms of stupors were visibly personified and quite frankly, he sounded like a bit of a guffawing dick.

We boldly got on board. A couple of hours later, I would learn that I could add a truly shitty pair of sea legs to the list of my many Achille’s heels. I felt the cold embrace of anguish. I had made a huge mistake. Within days, everyone was comfortable with the boat activities, as if they were born sailors. For my part, between seasickness, a sunstroke and the shame of not being able to keep up with the crew, I felt utterly useless. The boat rocked for days and during my nausée, I rekindled myself contemplating that a man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated. Therefore, to quote the vernacular, I did my best and tried to man the fuck up. Something in my heart was telling me that I had to live and move, though I had no reason to, because it happens that it is the nature of life to live and move, to want to live and move. If it were not for this, I would be dead. It is because of this life that is in me that I survived this horrifying trip.

And so we sang and we swam. We looked at the moon and so on. Beers were tanked. Weed was inhaled. Vegan hot-dogs were munched. Obviously, the vigorous and "idyllic" context of our adventure quickly morphed Jacques and Patricia into quite the libidinous dolphins. They touched each other anywhere; on the deck, in the cramped space we shared to sleep, during their nightly skinny-dipping sessions. How it is I know not; but there is no place like a boat for confidential disclosures between friends. Man and woman, they say, there open the very bottom of their souls to each other and some old couples often lie and chat over old times till nearly morning. Alas, such was not the case between Nana and I. Oh, how horny I became, looking at the muscular and glistening bodies of our two friends. As Nana was not a woman to put on a show, there was no way she could lend me a helping hand with my growing needs. She was even considerably irritated to see our friends messing around like mermaids in a cheap porn flick. As four our captain, he had only three activities: Playing his guitar, smoking reefers and looking proudly at the horizon, shirtless, nipples erected.

Halfway through our journey, Captain Stoner offered us to fetch from his stash of fresh frozen fish a few filets to grill on the bar-b-q. We feasted like commodores. A few hours after this hearty meal, it became evident that the fish was neither first rate nor very fresh.

This is where our trip turns to literal shit.

See, the bathroom was lilliputian. With everyone on the verge of shitting themselves, we had to use every bit of self-control not to. The cabin of the boat, darted all day by the rays of the scorching sun as it was, quickly became a pestilential pressure cooker. THIS is how you take the real measure of a man: Self-control in the face of adversity. It was my time to shine. I had hardly eaten any of the captain's fish. My pain was manageable and I could wait with pride for my turn to empty myself. I would regret that decision for the rest of my fleeting days. The smell was soooooo pungent. It was hard to get inside. Every fiber of my body refused to enter. Nana came out of the cabin, eyes all watery, expressionless. She stealthily grabbed my arm and whispered in my ear:

« I am so sorry Franky-poo-poo but… I didn’t flush. I couldn’t».

Seeing my angry gaze, my girlfriend explained to me that the flushing system was difficult to figure out. She was afraid of making a mistake and breaking it. I couldn’t believe this was the first time she went to drop a deuce since we began our trip. I shouldn’t have been surprised, though: It happened very often that Nana was constipated for a few days. At the end of each ordeal, she would expel this massive anaconda of a turd, coiled on itself, which resisted all attempts to flush it. Sometimes, it was even necessary to cut in half what I came to call her monsturd to facilitate its passage to another world. I don't know how I came to live with this woman for four years, really.

I stepped into the cabin. The smell had an actual weight to it, like an invisible mist. It was a smell you could taste. It was sticking to the palate. Shivering, I walked over to the cramped, stuffy little space of the bathroom. There, on top of the brownish, muddy water, a monsturd was waiting. Nana had given birth to a conqueror worm. This was by far the largest of all the smoking turds she had ever expelled. Holding my breath, I set out to operate the cranks of the toilet mechanism in order to engulf the sea serpent. I was shaking. Nana was right. It was impossible to flush. The water pressure was not strong enough. I insisted. Again. And again. And again. Until suddenly, a disturbing noise could be heard.

A hiss.

A hissing noise coming from pressure. Something like the sound of a jet of pressure in a mechanism about to give way.

There are certain weird times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own. The joke, in this regrettable instance, came from the boat’s used water tank, filled to the brim as it was with the droppings of all the other fools who had set foot on the deck since the last month. Captain Stoner had simply forgotten to empty the full tank on his last stop to the marina.

It was inevitable. The tank ruptured.

My first humiliation was to be attacked by my girlfriend gargantuan turd, as it was propelled in my face by a stream of compressed water. To add insult to injury, it stayed there for a couple of seconds, stamped to my flesh by the unrelenting pressure. It broke down in pieces shortly after.

Before I could even figure out what was going on, my next humiliation came with the proliferation of water jets going in all directions inside the tiny cabin, like a sprinkler watering the pestilential vegetation of a hellish garden. In no time, I was drenched from head to toe in a hot, bright-yellow sulfur-smelling mixture of dejections.

I screamed for help, calling our incompetent captain to my rescue. At that fateful moment, my penultimate humiliation happened: The streams united into a single one, gigantic, relentless. Without mercy.

And… it went… in… my mouth.

I tried to open the door, but it was no easy task. The wave kept coming at me and my face was tightly shut. I couldn’t see shit. I fell to my knees. Surely there can be little in this world more awful than the spectacle of a strong man in the moment when he is utterly weak and broken? WRONG. A man can be weak, broken AND soaked in the pickled droppings and fermented urine of several individuals.

I somehow managed to open the door. A wave of yellow water crashed on the cabin’s floor, as our captain with long and curly-haired rushed toward the geyser to shut down the mechanism.

As I ran, I no longer dreamed of porn, nor of women, nor of great occurrences, nor of great sex, nor fights, nor contests of skills on my trusty X-box, nor of my girlfriend (soon to become my ex) and her monsturd. I only wanted to clean myself in the fresh waters of Lake Champlain. I arrived on the bridge; my dripping body oiled up with the foul substance. I dived as soon and as far as I could. But too soon and not far enough. My chubby frame fell clumsily on the hull of the boat and after a couple of wet, disjointed rebounds, I crashed into the water in a spectacular fashion. I threw up in the waters of the Lake Champlain, whimpering. Captain Stoner threw me a lifebuoy strapped to a rope, a soap and a shampoo bottle. I washed myself as the sun was going down. While Jacques and Patricia helped cleaning the cabin, the boat headed to the port to replace the toilet. I rested, gripped to the buoy in utter silence. As the boat dragged me through the water, I let the cold current scrub my soiled skin. I can’t say with certainty if the odour has ever left me. Years later, I can still smell it, burned into the very core of my darkest memories.

The rest of this story is not so important. I could tell you that I left Nana a few hours later, that Jacques and Patricia never saw each other again, that our hairy captain had to shave his beautiful and long curly hair or that we were only billed a third of the expected price for our shitty trip.

True, I will never the same man. But hey: you can’t play World of Warcraft as long as I have and not learn a little bit about bravery. I go forward. I am my own captain.

Maybe I am doomed. Maybe I have no luck any more. But who knows? Maybe today. Every day is a new day. It is better to be lucky. But I would rather be exact. Then when luck comes you are ready.

I have no regrets. The old timers say that stepping in dog shit or getting pooped on by a bird is supposed to bring you good fortune.

Shit, I must be the luckiest man alive now.