He was young and beautiful, and he lived quietly on a small, tidy boat in a marina located a few miles outside of Waikiki. Despite the marina's proximity to Honolulu's tourist center, it was a world apart in ambience. The odor of paint and tar hung heavy in the air, and, on windless days, the water was green and foul. My father said the young man had sailed singlehandedly to Hawaii from California, and now he made his home on his boat and worked in the tourist trade in Waikiki. He was usually alone, tinkering with his engine or adjusting the rigging, and if his slip was empty, it meant he was at sea.
"He's a will 'o the wisp," declared my father. "One day he will haul anchor and disappear, bound for some unknown land across the ocean. When he casts off, even he might not know where he will end up."
He never seemed to quite fit in at the marina. He was trim and elegant, dressed nicely and walked down the ancient wooden pier like he was on a Paris runway, the lapping water and the creaking of the tackle his only applause. Nature had been kind to him: He was stunning to look upon, and although I had always been content with my appearance, I found his carven features intimidating.
My father, Ray, had the boat slip next to his. Sometimes they would talk, but they were both reticent men who seemed most comfortable when alone, so, at first, their relationship was cordial and somewhat formal. In addition, my father was nearly three times his age.
The young gentleman had few visitors, and all were male. Some were flamboyant, and others spoke little, but they dressed nicely, and all of them had a tidy, well-cared for appearance.
My father assumed the young fellow was gay, but he didn’t give a rat’s ass about that. It was no business of his, and I would not mention it except that it is relative to this account. To my father, what was important in life was that you were a good person, and you pulled your own weight . . . and it helped if you could sail.
My father had few friends. Other than me, I don’t know if anyone ever dropped by his boat. But he didn’t give a rat’s ass about that, either. Friends tended to talk too much or to get in the way.
My father found his pleasure in work. When he retired at age 76, he was the oldest person in his office. As any boat owner will tell you, owning a boat is hard work; but hard work was my father’s calling. So, while other retired people went golfing or hiking or shopping, my father went to his boat. And almost every time he went, the young fellow was there. In the beginning, they would exchange only nods or a brief remark about the weather, but, as the months passed, their mutual love of sailing dissolved the barriers that separated them. They respected each other’s skills, and they seemed to come to a quiet understanding of what made each other tick.
The young fellow was fascinated by my father’s neatness and fastidiousness. Everything on my father's boat was perfect. The lines were properly coiled, the railings were clean and varnished, there was not a speck of rust or dirt anywhere, and if the young fellow had plunged into the foul water to inspect the hull, he would have found it as clean and unblemished as a baby’s bottom.
One day he stopped abruptly by my father’s boat, his eyes caught by a perfectly coiled rope, and he leaned over the rail and gushed, "Raymond, Raymond, Raymond . . . there’s not a single fucking bosun in the entire U.S. Navy who can coil a line like you can.” The young fellow did not normally speak in this fashion, and it was so sudden and abrupt that my father laughed until he nearly cried. But that coiled rope was a fitting example of how my father had conducted his entire life. (My brother and I could attest to that.) A task, whether mowing the lawn or painting the house, had to be done properly, no matter the amount of work it took. A refrain often heard in our home was, “Be the labor great or small, do it well or not at all.”
My father had a profound respect for good sailors, and he had a well-cared for library of books by Chichester, Slocum and other adventurers who singlehandedly braved the sea. He told me that the young fellow was an excellent sailor, perhaps the best he had ever known, and he began to lend him his treasured sailing books. And, as the young fellow became comfortable with my father, he would assist him with his boat or his navigation. I would see them sometimes, on one craft or the other, intently discussing the rigging or the engine or perhaps a passing boat that caught their eye. They were an odd pair, the two of them, my father with his shock of white hair and craggy face and his long, birdlike legs protruding from a paint-splotched pair of short-shorts that were last popular when John Kennedy was president; and he would be deep in conversation with an exquisite, peach-cheeked Adonis who was just a fraction of his age. It gave me pleasure to see this, two guys from entirely different worlds who were brought together by their love of the ocean. This, I always thought, was a glimpse of the world the way it should be.
But one day, my father came home visibly troubled. He told me that his neighbor had something called HIV. He was clearly concerned for him, and I noticed my father later that night poring over a medical journal to see what he could learn of this insidious new disease. But it was too new to the world, and the books had no information, and there was no Google.
I witnessed the young fellow’s sailing skill one blustery morning when I dropped by the marina to visit my father. A storm spawned in a far northern sea had sent a mighty wind blasting over the Koolau mountain range, racing violently through its valleys and pummeling the lowlands and coastal areas. It was a bright, sunny day, but the wind was blowing a gale, and small craft warning flags were snapping in the wind above the harbor master’s office. Howling gusts shredded the water, and the masts of the boats jousted with the sky like a field of medieval lancers nervously awaiting battle.
I was talking to my father when, from the corner of my eye, I saw movement, and I turned to see the young man appear from below deck. He was barefoot and clad in a soft, white shirt and jeans cut off above the ankles. He greeted us with a nod and a smile, and then he turned his head, and his eyes swept the sea and the sky. He stood momentarily - a slim Hector beholding the battlefield - and then he seemed to come to a sudden decision, and he bent over the cleats and untied the lines that secured his boat to the pier. Hauling on the halyard, he raised the mainsail, and the wind filled the canvas with the snap of a rifle. His slim boat leaped like a large dog that is suddenly unleashed, leaving a wake as it pulled away. In seconds, he was offshore, in the grip of the trades, the wind screaming through the rigging, his legs wide and braced and his blonde hair whipped and glinting in the sun.
It appeared at first to be a foolish act. We stood and watched, and no one spoke. My father wet his lips and swallowed hard. The sea was a maelstrom of shattered waves, their crests torn by the wind and flung into shimmering sheets of billowing spray. Seething waves rose from the sea and struck violently against his boat. How many times did I gasp for breath when his frail craft appeared on the verge of rolling, the boat tilting at an impossible angle, one rail skimming the edge of the water, and wild green seas threatening to engulf his craft. But the young fellow never faltered, remaining always on tack, and, for the next ten minutes, he plowed through that wild anarchy of wind and waves, mastering his craft with a skill that belied his years.
And then he pushed the tiller, ducked catlike under the swinging boom and leaped nimbly across the boat to add his weight to the far side; and his spry craft turned on a dime and his mainsail billowed, and the boat ran back in our direction, the hull again tilted at a crazy angle and the opposite rail skimming the edge of the sea, and he swept past the end of the pier, his shirt open at the chest, his golden hair askew, and then he turned again; and suddenly he was back, easing his craft into his mooring, where my father waited to grab a flung rope.
Although I was not fond of sailing and did not pretend to understand it, I felt as though I had witnessed something magnificent, something not only skillful but wild and sensual and fueled by a passion for life and all its freedoms. It reminded me of a quote from Joseph Conrad that I had encountered when I was young, and it had left such an impression, I had written it down:
“I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back anymore - the feeling that I could last forever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all men."
The young fellow did not outlast the year.
My father came home one day, my same father who was a tough guy from Newark, the same tough guy who, in 1941, went into the Army as a private and slogged his way through the nearly impenetrable swamps and highlands of New Guinea, who battled unseen adversaries in thick Philippine jungles, who evaded gunfire as he sprinted up the beaches of Mindanao and Lingayen, and who, four years later, left his booted prints on the sandy shores of Japan. And his eyes were red and watery and his voice shook, and he said the young fellow had died, the same young, energized fellow who would gush at a perfectly coiled rope and leave him laughing until he nearly cried. He was gone.
I know nothing of his last days. I don’t know if he died alone on his boat or if he was confined to a hospital; and I don’t know how he must have raged to have been vanquished by this relentless, implacable disease that doctors did not yet understand. I know only that this good and decent young fellow who once trod the seaports of Hong Kong and Singapore and Suva and countless other exotic ports around the world had unceremoniously reached the end of his tumultuous but wonderful voyage.
Sometimes in the night I am drawn back to the marina, and when I look at the heavens I like to imagine the young man is sailing his craft in the great firmament, his sails flush with the wind that blows among the stars. And my father is manning the tiller. And, if a soft breeze blows my way, and I listen hard enough, I can just make out, “Raymond, Raymond, Raymond . . .”
Comments