Swashbuckling Shenanigans

It was getting somewhat close to what would have normally been my dinner time on any other Monday evening, but I wasn’t hungry at all. I looked at my phone and contemplated calling it a night.

I was tired, and had been barely holding on all day to what little bit of energy that I had saved for a drink with my buddy Dana. We were going to pour one out for my best friend and co-pirate Mason, who had just died from a ravaging tick fever only 5 days prior.

I typed out a message to Dana, trying not to sound too rude or impatient.

Hey bro, I’m already feeling like it’s almost bed time. Wanna come by tomorrow? I’m probably just going to nod off watching a movie here in a bit… but I’ll still have a drink with you if you want to come over.

I waited for the double blue check mark but clearly I was being impatient, as I quickly typed a follow-up. I didn’t want it to seem like I was completely bailing on him.

I can always come over to your place tomorrow or something.

I put my phone down and picked up the remote, mindlessly scanning for something to distract me from the empty pit of sadness that wallowed behind my throat.

My phone vibrated. He still wanted to come.

Hi, was just about to text you. If you’re okay, I’ll leave now by car.

I didn’t really understand why he was going to drive over, as he usually just hopped on his paddleboard and ripped across the water, but I was too tired to ask why.

Okay.

30 minutes later Dana showed up with a Costco sized bottle of tequila. I figured he didn’t want to risk dropping it in the water from his paddleboard, and that’s why he chose to drive over.

“Just one more” was the reoccuring theme of the night. We talked, we laughed, and I may have even cried a little. We laughed, we wrestled, and after we watched the latest Joe Rogan comedy on Netflix, weĺl then we laughed even more.

Needless to say, the 1.2 litres of reposado tequila went down real smooth.

I do remember suggesting that he spend the night on the boat, but I guess Dana decided that he just wanted to go home. I honestly don’t remember us leaving the boat, or the marina, but I do recall driving him in his car back to his condo. Not my proudest moment, but at least I got us there without crashing into anything, or anyone.

Don’t drink and drive kids, just don’t do it.

Apparently I decided to park his car in the middle of the pedestrian walkway along the front of his building, leaving the flashers on to make sure that everyone could see us, while we sat outside his building and presumably started to make a lot of noise.

Knowing just how well tequila and I can get along, I can only speculate that I was probably barking at the sea lions that were less than fifty yards away from us down at the water.

The next thing I can recall is one of Dana’s neighbours started yelling at me from a balcony to “STFU”, and so of course I started yelling back up at him in kind. Clearly the sea lions thought this was hilarious.

“SHUSH DANIEL!” is also another very commonly reoccuring theme in my life, and besides from Dana, I’m sure my guardian angels were also trying to warn me, but I just couldn’t hear any of them over the sound of the pesky sea lions laughing at me.

When Dana’s neighbour finally yelled down to us that he was going to call the cops, I must have thought that was quite funny and after I had started laughing at him, I told him to go ahead and do it.

So he did.

When the cops showed up, I can remember slapping Dana on his gut as he was laid out almost asleep on a sidewalk bench in front of his building, and cackled “I gotta go bro!”

Next thing I knew I was bolting away barefoot in my swim trunks and tank top, putting as much distance as I could between myself and the cops that had surrounded Dana who didn’t know what was going on.

I ran out to the main road and saw lights in the street, so I jumped in front of the car to hopefully flag down a ride… but of course it turned out that it was a police cruiser, and of course they were looking for me.

I waved them off saying “No, no, I’m all good!” but they pulled their car over anyway, and two cops jumped out. They started to ask me things that I had no idea how to respond to, so I jokingly asked them if they would give me a ride to over to the marina.

They said no, but they were going to give me a ride to jail instead. One of the cops moved behind me and patted my hips to see if I had anything on me, and I defensively jumped back and yelled, “Hey WTF! I said I was all good man!”

The other cop stepped towards me and I instinctively lunged towards him with both hands into his chest and pushed him back. I watched in disbelief and shock as he tripped his heels over the curb and fell back on his ass, right on to the grass.

No bueno.

After a brief second of confusion, the other cop tried to grab me but I was gone like the wind, running full sprint on my bare tip toes across the bridge and over to the other side of the road.

They chased after me in their cruiser, and so I scrambled over a chainlink fence into an unmaintained property filled with thick bushes. As I bushwhacked my way through tall grass and virtual jungle, they had no choice but to drive around the roundabout, desperately shining their floodlight into the bushes trying to spot me.

I waited until they passed by and then I slipped through a gap in the fence and ran back across the road that went alongside the golf course.

When the cops came flying back towards me from the opposite direction, they had no choice but to go all the way around the roundabout again. I streaked back across the meridian that they were unable to drive over, and jumped back into more thick bushes for cover again.

After they had passed me once again, and as I was climbing out of the bushes once again, apparently a young palm tree pissed me off. Full of drunken macho bravado, I decided to start fighting with the palm tree, which was about 3 metres tall and maybe 6 inches in diameter.

I can loosely remember grabbing the tree by its trunk and leveraging my hips and body against it to try and break it in half, but instead, I ripped the whole damn thing right out of the ground.

“YOU’RE MINE NOW, BITCH!” or something to that effect spittled out of my mouth as I heaved the palm tree on to my back, and started dragging it down the sidewalk as if I was carrying a cross.

The bulb of the root was about the size of a basketball, and it dragged behind me as I held the branches spread out on both sides of my head.

Any time I would see lights coming down the road from either direction, I would leap into the bushes and use the palm tree as a camoflauge.

Okay Rambo, settle down.

I dragged it all the way back to the resort, and as I dragged it past the security gate, the guard watched me with a wide-eyed bewilderment.

It was only as I was about to stumble into the main hotel lobby that 2 security guards ran up, yelling at me to stop.

At that point, I can distinctly remember turning around and staring at them with a completely dead eyed stare.

Just try to stop me.

They both backed away, not knowing what to do. I then turned and proceeded to drag the very disgruntled palm tree through the hotel lobby, trailing a smear of dirt and branches behind me.

I dragged it all the way down to the dock and dropped it in front of the boat. I climbed aboard and stumbled down through the companionway into the master cabin, where I ripped off my filthy and bloody clothes, and then collapsed into bed.

Finally, sleep.

When I opened my eyes some hours later, I was still completely drunk, but I awoke to the increasingly uncomfortable pain from almost every part of my body.

My knees were throbbing. My hands were swollen and injured with several small but very sharp cuts. My left arm was scraped to hell, and it was swollen and bleeding. My feet were on fire, and a dull but annoying pain was throbbing just above my left hip.

Surprisingly, I had no head ache or nausea.

I honestly couldn’t remember a thing at that point, except for a faint memory of a tree. To be honest, I still thought Dana was on the boat, and I started yelling out his name.

“DANA! What the fuck bro? What happened?”

I looked down at my naked body. I was covered in dirt and blood, and there were even some remnants of branches in my bed.

“DANA!!”

I somehow managed to climb out of the bed, wincing and moaning at my every move. The pain was getting exponentially worse by the second.

I searched the entire boat, and of course Dana was gone, but at least my phone and wallet were still there. I saw my tattered clothes on the floor and picked them up.

WTF?

After I put my shorts back on and painfully pulled a clean shirt over me, I went outside and got off the boat, but there was no tree. The dock was wet, so it could have rained overnight, or somebody may have sprayed it down in the early morning.

Was it all a dream?

I made my way up to the hotel lobby and shuffled myself inside. Everything seemed to be normal in there, but I was beginning to notice some glances and stares from some of the staff.

I went into the men’s bathroom, opened a stall and sat down on a toilet. It was at that moment, with the absolute explosion of pain from both my knees and my left hip, that all of the night’s shenanigans came flooding back into my consciousness.

I sat there for at least 30 minutes with my head in my hands, grunting, wincing, and uttering to myself, “What in the actual fuck?”

I think it was one of the staff cleaners who woke me up, and so I got my shit together enough to stand up and head back out to the marina. The glances and stares from the staff were blatantly obvious by then.

A few hours later as I was writhing in pain on the couch in the salon of the boat, a knock came from outside.

I clambered up the stairs and out of the companionway to find one of the marina staff holding a manila folder with a letter in it.

“Am I in trouble?” I asked with a mischevious chuckle and a hiccup.

“I’m not allowed to talk about it, sorry sir.”

I opened the folder and read the letter with blurry eyes.

—

Dear Mr. Thorburn.

Please come to the marina office, we need to talk.

Luis, Marina Administrator

—

I felt like a naughty school boy summoned a principle’s office as I stumbled through the hotel lobby and made my way across the resort property to the marina office.

When I opened the door, Gina (the harbormaster’s wife) started laughing. She high-fived me as I was directed past her to the big chief’s office.

Luis, the marina administrator who had written me the summons letter, escorted me in to the office, and he was clearly not happy with me at all.

I sat down at the desk, and looked up to Dick, the head honcho harbormaster, who was laughing so hard that he was crying. They had been watching the security camera footage of me dragging the palm tree through the resort and the hotel lobby.

Luis was standing with his hands on his hips and was sporting a very disapproving look on his face, while the rest of us laughed and cried, and then laughed some more.

I told Dick that I got into a fight with cops and I was running away from them, using the palm tree as camoflauge. That was too much for Luis to handle, and he had to leave the office while we split our guts open again.

Eventually Dick told me to leave, and to go take a shower because I stank and I needed to sober up. I didn’t argue that one little bit.

He told me that he had kept a photo of the tree, and so of course we cracked up again. I told him that I thought it was from somewhere near the golf course, and he said that they would try to replant it.

Luis scolded me as I left the office, and I apologized profusely, which seemed to calm his tits down enough to let me go. He did say that there might be a fine to pay, which of course I said that I understood.

Fucking Hooligans.

I’m just glad that I didn’t hurt anyone, and of course that I didn’t get caught by the cops. I really do hope that the palm tree survived, because it sure didn’t deserve being ripped out of the ground and then drunkenly dragged around for miles out of it’s element on a sleepy Monday night.

I also really hope the staff here don’t hate me. They know that I was working through some major grief with the recent passing of my best friend and co-pirate, but I just hope that I didn’t piss anyone off too much.

Except Dana’s neighbour Kevin who called the cops on us. He can fuck right off.