People would say you and I are in paradise, on a sailboat near a tropical island. What would you say to them?
I would tell them to fuck off. It’s easier that way. It’s not like they will listen to, or accept (believe us) telling them how it really is. They simply don’t want to KNOW the truth. They want/need to think there are better places on this planet that they might escape to for a week or two of all-inclusive holiday paradise. It is the only way they can stand their own horrible existence. It is the same reason people believe in god and heaven, and why they so vehemently attack us for saying we don’t.
Out of what you have been experiencing in the last years or months, what is the most challenging for you?
Other than the pain, exhaustion, fear, predation, hostility, malnutrition, illness, injuries, infections, lack of medical care or medicine, mental illness, suicidal ideation, poverty, illegality, homelessness, uncertainty, hopelessness; and now, profound deafness in one ear, crippling tinnitus, killer headaches, incipient blindness in one eye, constant vertigo and confusion, other than all that stuff, I would have to say the hardest thing for me is the loneliness.
People would say, if you hate boating so much and want to sell the boat, why didn’t you do it earlier?
a – Because the boat is all we can afford after losing everything in the fight (we lost) with Immigration Canada to let you be a citizen, after you declined to spy on Russians for the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service in exchange for ‘immigration favours.’
b – Because the boat is a mobile shelter we can move between various third-world countries that allow both Canadians and Russians uncomplicated (tourist) entry into. Living on the boat as opposed to living in a car has the advantage of providing access to more countries that allow us a temporary place to be.
c – Because (for reason b) sheltering on the boat and staying in pretty much constant motion, is the only way we can stay together.
d – Selling the boat is a pipe dream. It keeps us going for just one more day, one more anchorage, one more gale. It is technically unrealistic unless we can bring some money in to provide a domicile and a legal right to reside somewhere on the dirt part of this planet. So far, that hasn’t happened, yet. Really, before we step off the boat, we need someplace to step on to. As for selling the boat, it is the only thing Elena will listen to, and hey,
Maybe we can get enough money for this wreck to get started somewhere majorly cheap.
In the meantime, I am hoping to sell this our True Life ‘Survivor’ story, which if presented and placed well, would likely provide the income to let us off this wretched boat. Someday. For now, that’s what I am trying to work on — when there is even just one second between the various disasters and shit we have to deal with just to keep from breathing seawater.
Describe for us, in few words, your day.
I wake up. If it is already light, I resent that I didn’t die in my sleep. If it is still dark it is easier, I usually have a panic attack, desperate to get back to sleep before the sun comes up. I absolutely hate sunrise. It is my worst part of the day.
I make coffee. Caffeine is my only hope for breaking depression enough to function and keep the tears at bay. I sit in bed, if it is possible, drinking my coffee, reading the news, hoping nuclear war has broken out.
Then something happens, we’re told to move, or we’re threatened by some locals or other boater and we have to start the tractor engine we live on top of and haul the anchor up by hand (the windlass was destroyed in a storm last year). The cranking and pulling and the pain. Ah, the pain! I have some kind of lesions on my hands and feet that scream with fiery pain. Then the endless, slow, moving to some other horrible, unstable spot to wait out time, wait for something better to happen. And there is the fixing – jerry rigging – something is always broken. Sometimes it can be fixed with hours of looking for tools and scrounging parts from old computers or tin cans. Sometimes it can’t and we cogitate on how to work around the loss.
We try to think of ways to get calories into our bodies.
I try desperately to grab any second of time to study screenwriting (I have given up on music after going deaf), and try to present this 18 years of Real Life Survivor in a tangible (sellable) form. I think it is the only hope we have and I don’t know how much time I have left; frankly, I’m hanging on by a thread.
But the boat screams for my attention. Storm is raging. Something is broken. Something is out of control. Someone is threatening. Bills need to be paid. Time is infinite but broken into tiny, useless pieces.
Eventually, mercifully, the sun sets, the heat relents, the horizon closes in and disappears. Less to see means less to fear. If it is at all possible, Elena and I will watch Star Trek Voyager on DVD to escape reality, if it lets us, even just for a moment. Also characters in film can sort of satisfy a need to belong, for a moment, sort of. It helps.
Then, if we are not in a storm or sailing in traffic or something is not on fire or failing or screaming or flooding, I crawl into the bunk and read a novel. Fiction and characters take me out of here for a while. Maybe. Then to sleep and perchance to dream. For in those dreams come people. People I have known, people I don’t. But for a blissful moment loneliness is vanquished. Somebody (even a delusion) knows my name.
What has it all been for? Why boating and why for so many years?
What it has all been for is when you look at me and smile. It has all been for love and to be together. It has always been about love.
Why so many years? Because, for the reasons listed above, there has simply been no other option.
All my money, all my friends, all my family is gone. The boat and our ability to keep it afloat and in motion is the only thing that keeps us alive and together.
And being together and defying all the grinning bastards that say we can’t and our love is not allowed, that is worth all of this.
