Boat People

Rebellious Palpitations - Spinnerette (mp3)
Red Wine & Whiskey - Katrina & the Waves (mp3)

At a shindig with several other couples, I recently made a comment about Boat People. I said people who weekended frequently on their boats in the lake seemed like their own unique and freaky sub-culture.

There's something about daisy-chaining your living quarters right up next to seven or eight other boats you might or might not know. That's weird, dude. It's like going to an RV park and happily connecting your RV up to a bunch of other RVs so everyone could hop back and forth between RVs whenever anyone got the notion. Maybe RV People do that. I don't know. RV People are freaky enough without the daisy-chain thing.

Anyway, my wife and I have had only a couple of random days and nights on the lake in the company of Boat People, and we always left with strange vibes even though nothing blatantly off-key occurred. We felt a little bit like Fox and Scully, like there was something lurking in the shadows that we just couldn't see.

The reaction I got from my comment was unequivocal. The two women who were sitting with us on the deck, smoking like chimneys, totally backed my theory. They both shared stories of going to boat parties and seeing weird things. Words like "sex swing" and "group sex" and "doing drugs off other guys' wives' bellies." Not them, mind you. Other people at these parties. The Boat People.

The following week at work, two coworkers are talking, and a man's name is mentioned, and it just so happens his name was brought up in the Boat People talk of the weekend. That inspires me to have a conversation one of them about Boat People where I express my theory, and my coworker enthusiastically nods.

"My ex was a Boat Person," she says. "I remember waking up one night, everyone was drunk -- everyone was always drunk on these boats -- and I had to go to the bathroom, and he had these friends who were older and very overweight, and I walked out of the bedroom, and they were just sitting there in the floor doing it doggy style."

My eyebrows naturally raised.

"I think I let out a little bit of a frightened squeak, but they didn't care. It was pretty gross. They just kept going at it," she said. "And my ex just told me that wasn't anything compared to the stuff that goes on some nights." At least those two were married to one another, was his general point.

Apparently, Boat People have two lives. On land, they're just like the rest of us. They work. They drive. They eat. They sleep. But on the water, they unleash these secret lives of lurid and verboten activity. Drug dabbling. Sexcapades. God knows what else, perhaps cat juggling or other such heinous crimes.

And I'm left to speculate: do they go to the water to unleash this hidden mutant form of themselves, or does being out on the water mutate them over time?

Meanwhile, another coworker talked over lunch about her friendship with a very promiscuous gay man who lives in her building. He claims to have sex with, on average, four or five different men each week. He has a separate email address used specifically to communicate in some kind of way with other men just wanting to get laid.

"Many more than half" of this guy's partners are married men, she said. He goes to their offices late at night. Or he meets them in one of several semi-secretive public locations.

My coworker said all of this has left her neighbor - brace yourself for this one - jaded about things. He's seen so many secret lives and revealed lies and shattered illusions that he can't help but start wondering if there's anything about the world we pretend we're living in that actually has any truth to it.

Are we all boat people? Is there, above the water, this gorgeous collection of rooms and seats, a well-tended bow and stern, polished and gleaming in the sun? Is there, meanwhile, hidden beneath the surface, the ugly mildewed hull and the propeller that actually moves us and motivates us, churning away in the water without those around us ever actually paying attention? Are there piranhas in the water, in 3-D?

Would we be better off if we acknowledged the entire boat instead of just the part above the water's surface? Or did we try that, and it was called the '70s, and it was horrifying?

I don't know. I just know it's getting harder and harder to act shocked - shocked! - that all of this happens so frequently right under our noses. Maybe we're just happier being a Culture of Gilligans: ignorant, naive, kinda sorta happy, and if that means running our boat into the rocks, so be it.

Perhaps it is the inevitable nature of a boat that some unseen vital portion of it must sit under the surface, out of sight but essential to keep us afloat. Cue the Jaws theme.

All aboard the drunk express
Bottles of wine in excess
Lines of gold to fill your holes
Holes so deep
Well no one knows
              -- Rebellious Paliptations, Spinnerette

A Small Window for Kinky Sex

The Kinks--"A Well-Respected Man" (mp3)
Fleetwood Mac--"Oh Well" (mp3)

It's a Friday afternoon a few weeks ago. I'm in my office, trying to wind down the week. The door opens amid a lot of passing traffic in the hall outside. One of my regular visitors enters, a guy whose company I often enjoy, but who has the unusual habit of assuming that his listener is fully up to speed concerning whatever it is he is about to deliver a monologue about and there for launches right in without context:

"Well," he says, unloading his backpack onto a chair and taking a seat right by the door where the headmaster's secretary can hear everything that is said from that position, "This evening is probably my best opportunity for kinky sex for at least the next three months. None of the children are home. We have no obligations. A few Jack and Cokes for me, and if I can get a couple of margaritas in her, then tonight will be the perfect time for kinky sex. I think I can push her a little farther than she's used to going. Now, here's the problem: I texted her about it and her response was that she thinks we need to go see this little boy that we've been helping through our church play baseball. That text message, that was like pouring a bucket of cold water over me. I mean, we're going up to __________'s graduation, and we'll have romantic sex up there, but tonight is our only chance for kinky sex. I'm hoping she'll text back with something else. I'm hoping that maybe if we get home and have a drink or two and she realizes we have the house all to ourselves, then maybe she'll change her mind about the game and we'll have kinky sex."

First, a definition from Merriam-Webster:

kinky

Function: adjective
Inflected Form(s): kink·i·er; kink·i·est
Date: 1844

1: closely twisted or curled

2: relating to, having, or appealing to unconventional tastes especially in sex ; also : sexually deviant

3: outlandish, far-out

OK, so back to that whole context thing I mentioned above, as in, if you were like me, you were getting ready to go home, if you had been passively listening, as I was, then you are bound to have some questions :

a. first and foremost, can the Penguins win Game 7 in Detroit?

b. is "kinky sex" better left as an abstract concept, or should an inquiring mind arm itself with a list of specific, example behaviors? (BTW, I'm staying in the abstract; if I start Googling "kinky sex" here in the office where I'm slaving away on this blog, I'm sure there are some kind of red lights that will start flashing down in the Tech Office, similar to the ones on the back of my house that go off when the sewer backs up. At the very least, a call across the room, "Everyone, interface with Bob's computer now!"

c. why do ______'s eyes kind of squint up when he says, "Kinky sex?"

d. why, if you know someone and you know his wife and he continually utters the phrase "kinky sex," does your brain search for a companion visual? why? why? why?

e. does that scene where Maria Bello wears the cheerleading uniform in The History Of Violence count as "kinky sex?" what are the chances your brain will let you substitute that for the visual mentioned in the previous question?

f. why does _____ feel the need to insert the term "keenkysex" so often into the conversation?

g. why, oh why, _________, are you telling me this? Usually, you come in and talk about what's going on in your church and that kind of thing.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that conservative Christians are a lot more intentional about their sex than the rest of us. Admittedly, I'm not basing that on much--1) a "kinky sex" monologue in my office from a guy whom I usually think is witnessing to me, 2) a realization that I've never pondered the sexual possibilities of the next three months in toto, and 3) my knowledge of Creative Counterparts, probably the most significant book to bring issues of sexuality into frank discussion in a Christian marriage and to argue for a woman's submissiveness to her husband. And also the fact that the "campaign," if you will, that this guy has mapped out clearly extends months, if not years, into the future. I think he was only revealing to me the current battle. If so, more power to him, I guess, but I just wish I didn't know.

Of course, for all I know, maybe the kink was getting me to listen and, therefore, somehow, be in on it.

UPDATE: I did receive a text from him later that evening, letting me know that not only was he at the baseball game, but also that he had had to pay 6 bucks to get in, and that the boy didn't even get any hits. Clearly, that put a kink in his plans.