My papi had a boat.

Tony was a sailor. He grew up in the city, and at the age of sixteen his grandfather died of heart complications leaving his sister two and half million dollars and Tony with a schooner. He had never been outside the city before, where within he was raised in the cultural core always learning about the different cultures that lived within his neighbourhood. Tony was shy, and never had the courage to go up to a stranger and ask why they would kneel to pray at dusk, or what the chubby idol meant in the corner of the bodega. He was raised catholic because his parents like the school's uniforms and he never really grasped the vastness of the world.

He wanted to sail the oceans of the world, and on his 21st birthday his sister lent him 1000 bucks to ship his schooner to the coast. Tony didn't want to forget his home, so he brought with him a city rat he had captured in his youth which he had named Sergeant Agustus Lamentia, and a gun his father had given to him when he became a man.

Once the schooner reached the coast Agustus and the new Captain set sail for the east, for Tony wanted to see Africa then Asia, and of course Australia. He saw many things on his journey that he had never been able to imagine outside of the books he read and pictures his grandfather had drawn out of charcoal sketches from his own schooner journeys. He experienced waves, and stars, and the vastness that only solitude on the ocean could reveal.

On October 17th, Sergeant Agustus Lamentia died of heart complications, and Tony could not take it. Despite the wonders of the new world, his grip on what was his only connection to home while sailing in the middle of the sea was lost. And so, on his 25th birthday he took his fathers gun, looked deeply into his soul and then the barrel, took a deep breath to experience the ocean air one last time and then whacked himself on the head with his heriditary airlume, for he had not packed a single bullet. Tony passed out and while unconscious was robbed by pirates.

When he woke up Tony found himself floating on a lifeboat, with neither his father's gun, nor his grandfather's schooner, somewhere off the islands of Hawaii with no memory of what had happened at sea.

You can reach him at 318-555-1782; he lives with a Korean family by the last name of Twong, and works in their garden.


* his sister is Belinda Stronich, and the Twong family is conservative.

posted by mr. tomas ubik @ Friday, June 17, 2005