A Night at Sea

It was dark. Rain, slightly heavier than a mist, began to fall. If my hair weren’t soaked, the moisture would collect like morning dew. Water streamed down my face and dripped off my chin. I tried to capture some with my tongue. It was a salty mix of rain and the ocean that had surrounded me for the last few hours.

I was cold. Tired. And exhausted. I would say I was wet, but that had zero meaning – like repeating a word so much it begins to sound like gibberish.

Wet. Wet. Wet. Wet. Wet. Wet. Wet. Wet.

Despite the rain, the ocean was calm. The wind was nonexistent. Nothing had bumped my kicking legs. But it was so dark. My mind wandered.

Is this what it was like in the womb? Surrounded by fluid, kept in pitch black? I wonder if I was scared. I’m scared now. What if I’ve died and I’m in a new womb, waiting to be born?

I raised my hand in front of my face. I wasn’t sure if I actually saw it. I felt the water engulf my hand as I let it sink back into the ocean. My legs continued to kick. I let my head tilt back until the water covered my ears. I stretched my arms out like wings and felt the buoyancy of my body.

I tried to imagine I was in a sensory deprivation tank. Instead of finding peace, all the water beneath me vanished. My stomach dropped, and I fell a thousand feet. I crashed on the dry seabed. My spine was crushed on impact, only dying after an eyeball launched itself from one of my sockets.

The rain stopped. I opened my eyes.

Zero stars for this location.

My body remained buoyant, water lapping at my face. Cold turned to freezing. Hundreds of invisible paper cuts sang with pain as salt water washed over me. Even in the pitch dark of night, I felt the need to keep my eyes open. My mind drifted.

What’s the difference between thought and instinct? I think I’m hungry. As a baby, I cried when hungry. This was instinct – I knew I needed nourishment – But now, as an adult, I think it.

A hard wind blew mist into my face. The waves became more aggressive. I started falling and kept falling beneath the surface. I vomited large amounts of water every time I tried to take a breath. I kept reaching for a rope that wasn’t there. I turned over on my stomach. In the middle of turning, I took a huge gulp of air. When my belly and face hit the water, I gave myself to the sea.

If that’s the last breath I ever take, it was a salty one.

The ocean rocked me. Waves crashed on my back. I felt my body rise and fall. I flashed back to being a kid. My neighborhood had a steep hill, and a road ran down it. We would lie on our skateboards, then push ourselves down. At the bottom, the road went into a blind corner. None of us could make the turn. We always bailed or went off into the ditch. It was dangerous and thrilling, and we were Street Luging. I went down that hill countless times, almost getting hit by a car twice, but I was never closer to death than when I was face down in the waves.

Every time my face slammed back into the brine, I stole a breath and heard Bruce Lee, “Be formless. Shapeless. Like Water”.

Another flashback. I was driving home from work and fell asleep. When I woke up, I was heading towards oncoming traffic. I yanked the wheel hard to the right, then my brain shut off. When it turned back on, I was still buckled in the driver’s seat, a cloud of white smoke surrounding me. The airbag was deflating. I opened my door, looked down, and saw my mom’s Saint Christopher medal, the Patron Saint of travelers. I got out, not a scratch on me – the car went up in flames. I walked away.

Is Saint Christopher with me now?

When the sea’s tantrum began to calm, I was able to float on my back. I prayed, gently kicked my legs, pledged my allegiance to the flag, lightly waved my arms, and attempted to remember the Soldier’s Creed. But mostly, I questioned the action that led me here.

My wife and I had just finished dinner on the sixth night of our seven-day cruise. I needed a moment, so I lied about going to the bathroom. I snuck off to the smoking area. I was alone. I lit up, leaned over the railing, and looked into the black abyss. Before I knew it, I was underwater, desperately clawing my way to the surface.

When my head broke through the wet barrier, I calmed myself enough to bicycle kick and catch my breath. I was overboard, in the middle of the Atlantic, and nobody saw me go in. The ship was fading fast. Yelling never crossed my mind. I was screwed.

They tell you cigarettes kill – but they never mention their creativity.

I was losing sense of time and space. I had never been surrounded by so much darkness. The clouds were low and thick. Without the moon or stars, the water was black.

People go crazy in white rooms, but what about black?

I heard my therapist, “When you find the anxiety taking over, ask yourself, what do I feel? What do I see? What do I hear? What do I taste? What do I smell? This will help to ground yourself back in reality.”

I went over my senses, hoping to wake up on the deck of the ship or hungover in the stateroom. I wanted to hear my wife yelling, berating me for smoking and not telling her. And that’s when it hit me – I never told her I was going for a smoke. She was waiting for me to come back from the bathroom.

Fuck! How could I be so stupid!

For the first time, all my thoughts went to my wife. I could only imagine her confusion when I didn’t return. How long did she wait? How did she deal with the awkwardness of telling a stranger her husband was missing? The fear she must have felt after being told I wasn’t anywhere on the ship. And, God forbid, if there was a video of me falling over the railing, the pain of her having to watch and confirm it was me. Me, lighting a cigarette before peering over the edge, looking at…

What? What was I even looking at? Would they pause it before I fell, or would she have to watch it happen?

An uncontrollable shiver ran through my body. My eyes flooded, and snot ejected itself from my nose. I tried to breathe, took in water, and vomited. I repeated this twice before kicking into a full swim. I went a few feet, then stopped. I was out of breath. The stench of vomit was everywhere. My limbs were dead appendages.

I floated on my back and whispered, “I’m sorry” over and over again. It never became meaningless.

As I floated, I noticed the sky was starting to glow a greyish-blue color. A warm blanket of relief suddenly washed over me. I realized I hadn’t even hoped for rescue until that moment.

When I initially saw the ship disappearing in the distance, I think I instinctively resigned myself to the sea. I had no phone, no life jacket, and no way of signaling. My clothes were black. Whatever was going to happen, was going to happen. My only intention was to keep moving, because that’s what you do. You don’t quit. Even when the deck is stacked against you, you bluff, you make your opponent earn it. And I think that’s all I was doing. I was making Death earn its soul.

I looked at the greyish-blue sky with my mouth open. Then something bumped the back of my head. I screamed like a ninety-year-old man watching himself fall, and no way to brace. I turned around, ready to face the shark that wanted to show me the bottom of the ocean. Instead, what greeted me was a group of three-foot-by-three-foot, white squares. They looked like shrink-wrapped marshmallows. They were tied together with fishnet and rope.

I yelled, but nobody answered. I grabbed one of the marshmallows and realized I could use it to help me float. I hugged one with love, even gave it a little kiss. I thought I felt my lips tingle, or go numb.

For the first time, my body could rest. Exhaustion took over.

“THIS IS THE UNITED STATES COAST GUARD. DO NOT MAKE ANY SUDDEN MOVEMENTS. YOU ARE BEING DETAINED.”

That’s when I realized I was being rescued. Apparently, marshmallows don’t come in three-foot-by-three-foot sizes. And they aren’t wrapped in plastic or held together with fishnet and rope.

After the Coast Guard fished me out, they wrapped me in a blanket. Someone appeared with water, and I drank it down like I hadn’t just been surrounded by it for the last twelve hours. I immediately threw up.

Someone else brought out some lukewarm chicken broth and a protein bar. A medic looked me over, then the questions started. They wanted to know who I was, where I came from, who my contact was, and why I was clinging to nearly two tons of cocaine.

My eyes bulged. In a dry voice, I muttered, “I fell off the cruise ship last night. This morning, I found those floating marshmallows. I grabbed one and held on. Can I call my wife? She thinks I’m in the bathroom.”

The Coast Guard Officer’s head made the same swivel a dog’s does when it doesn’t understand your words. After a lot of checking, my story was confirmed. I got to talk to my wife, and the first thing I did was apologize. Another twelve hours later, we were hugging and kissing at the coast guard station.

In the end, two cool things came from this: My wife never yelled at me, and now I have a story that starts with, Do you wanna hear how cocaine saved my life?