November 21, 2010
I would have drowned, had it not been for Pete.
On our recent trek to the Seychelles Islands—a nearly pristine archipelago 994 miles northeast of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean—I found myself 20 feet underwater with enough air in my lungs to fill a Dixie paper cup. Staring at a seabed of kaleidoscopic coral, I began to make peace with my final aquatic resting place.
My life began to flash before my eyes: I saw myself—a lithesome, suntanned, toe-headed youth—down at the “swimmin’ hole” on the back 40 acres of our family’s secluded country estate, gliding across the water as effortlessly as a swan, alternating swimming strokes between the crawl, breaststroke, butterfly, and back stroke. I paused only briefly to flip my body with scarcely a splash to propel myself with muscular legs from the pontoon-supported platform anchored in the center of the lake, back in the direction I had swum.
Then I realized…the wrong life was flashing before my eyes.
You see, I’m a sinker, not a floater. Despite the hundreds (thousands?) of dollars my parents spent on me for swimming lessons during my formative years, if you toss me in any body of water, no matter the depth, be it hot tub or ocean, I swiftly pitch to the bottom as if I were wearing a Jules Verne-like metal atmospheric diving suit, replete with lead ballast and boots and lacking an oxygen tether. I suspect that my tendency to sink can be attributed to my apparent lack of the lipid gene. My BMI registers less body fat than a single four-ounce serving of Yoplait® Light yoghurt. I was the kid on the beach in whose eyes you kicked sand or whom you buried up to the neck to play Goofy Golf using his wailing mouth as the jabbering putting green hole.
Allow me to back up a little. While taking in the sights, sounds, and exotic attractions of the islands—a beachcomber’s Shangri-La—Pete and I chartered a sightseeing vessel that ferried tourists around some of the lesser atolls and lagoon-corrugated islands. Not 30 minutes into the choppy seas, I felt a wave of nausea undulating upward from my solar plexus. I reached into the deep pockets of my flouncy Perry Ellis linen clamdigger shorts only to discover that my 12-dose bubble pack of Dramamine was missing. I asked Pete if he had any on him. “I don’t use those things,” he said matter-of-factly. “They make me seasick.” This made perfect sense, coming from a land-lubbing perch. “But, here. Take a swig of my Takamaka Bay coco rum.” Having had a bad college experience with rum spirits, I declined, preemptively holding two fingers to my near-emetic lips. Just hearing the word ‘rum’ made my pyloric valve convulse like a mullet that has aimlessly propelled itself aboard a passing watercraft, flapping and floundering upon the boat’s deck.
As I pondered the side of the vessel over which I would sully the crystal clear water with the meal I had recently consumed, I wondered if, being a fish, Pete’s sun sign was Pisces. Of the positive personality traits associated with this astrological sign that Pete possesses, he is loyal, kind, and giving, is receptive to new ideas and adventures, and has an uncanny ability to nurture and lend support due to his powerful intuition. Pisces’ innate sympathy equips them for careers in charity, catering to the needy, caring for sick animals, or in Pete’s case, caring for sick humans. And I was one sick human.
He looked at me with those wide-set eyes that reminded me of Marty Feldman (had the brilliant wall-eyed comedian undergone corrective eye surgery), and in his handball-sized optical orbs, I could see the reflection of my face, which seemed to have taken on the color of wasabi mustard. Coincident with the realization that the color of my complexion clashed with my garishly flowered Hawaiian luau shirt, our boat-captain-slash-tour-guide pulled a net of live conches from the water. He lifted one from the ensnared catch, and out came a slimy, writhing, prehensile creature that made the xenomorph that burst out of the chest wall of John Hurt’s character in the Ridley Scott thriller, Alien, look like Casper the Friendly Ghost. Our salty skipper (whose ironic nom de mer was Captain Davey Joneslocker) stabbed the creature, tugged its rubbery body from its beautiful Fibonacci-structured shell, and held it in front of my face, flashing a set of tourist-bedazzling, chalk-white teeth framed by a wide smile. “Eat! Eat!” he goaded me while pantomiming the universal sign language gesture for “pop this squirming, Chihuahua-sized mollusk into your mouth, chew, and swallow.” A gastronomic, vesuvian event of seismic proportions became imminent. As I flung my body toward the starboard wale, I attempted to aim my bilious eructation seaward but managed to propel myself so forcefully that my entire body toppled overboard like a fleshy bowling pin.
That is how I found myself counting a constellation of starfish creeping languidly over a coral reef. Each seemed to be waving goodbye. Becoming delirious as I attempted to extricate the last oxygen molecules from my final breath, a great blue-yellow-and-orange popeyed fish appeared before me, motioning me to hold onto its factory-stitched tail. I held fast to his Made in China tag. Pete did not so much pull me to the water’s surface as much as he floated upward with me in tow by virtue of his plush, fabric skin being stuffed with buoyant Styrofoam pellets.
As the last bubble of life-sustaining air exited my lips, I was grabbed by my skinny, blindingly pale arms and was pulled from the chop by Captain Joneslocker, whose laughter was amplified by my waterlogged Eustacian tubes. His malodorous rum-spiked fish breath blasted hot in my face, “You no hungry, eh?”
Back on sweet, precious land, Pete and I opted to forego future seafaring adventures and instead lounged by the hotel swimming pool with paper umbrella-festooned tropical fruity beverages, the sun setting slowly behind the mangrove trees. I dipped my toe into the kiddy pool, and Pete asked, with a barely perceptible overtone of sinister sarcasm, “Deep?”
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