slowly dying sideways

7/31/2019 Slowly Dying Sideways

1/21

Slowly Dying Sideways

A Skirted Memoir

by Brad Racino


2/21

I was raised on The Simpsons, on Home Improvement, on T.G.I.F. and mozzarella sticks.

I played tag with the lights off, spoke with a slight lisp, and wrote fan letters to my

favorite comic book artists and physicists.

I soaked up books on religion, on travel, on star hopping and on undiscovered monsters.

I crushed on little girls as a little boy, and those little girls grew up to become little else.

I watched as my town developed a limp, then staggered.

I left before the last toe succumbed to necrosis.

I keep my survivors guilt in a moleskin bag next to the back door.

Ive ridden sharks in the Bahamas.

Ive had a one-way conversation with the 2,000 year-old ghost of Rome in a vacant St.

Peters Square at midnight.

Ive skirted accusations of being a C.I.A. agent in Cuba, Ive eaten beef out of a shopping

cart in Guatemala, and Ive found the soul of America in the cardboard cutout of a gold-

mining town in Nevada.

I met a homeless man in a Boston subway who made me re-evaluate the concept of God.

My adventures have served as a sort of doctors note to society. Theyve allowed me to

check out; to prove that, yes, there is something wrong with me. I cant make it to life

today. I dont live here and now.

But I need more notes. Ill always need more notes.


3/21

Chapter One

THUNK. THUNK.

I stood frozen in the middle of the room. The vacuous eye sockets of the pirate-skulled

flag leered down, unsympathetic, while Zee and Joele stood by the bed, helpless.

THUNK. THUNK.

Steffan was raging against the plywood door with a cinderblock, trying his hardest to get

inside. He was trying to kill me.

THUNK.

I was 1,100 miles away from New York on Ship Channel Cay, one of the 365 islands of

the Exumas forty miles from Nassau, the closest thing to civilization.

THUNK.

Get out here ya fuck!

Much of my time spent living on the island has since become lost to me. For six months

I fought the good fight against bottomless jugs of rum, free Bahamian weed and an

endless torrent of drunken women who wanted nothing more from life than a one-night

stand with an ex-patriot-in-the-making New Yorker dressed as a pirate. But this day... I

remember this day quite clearly.

I looked at Zee. If I die now, I thought, Im going to haunt this island as an angry

ghost. I dont want to be murdered anywhere near her.

Maybe Ill use her as a shield if he gets in


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I moved a few inches behind her.

God I hated her hair.

THUNK. THUNK. THUNK.

There was no way that door would hold.

How can there be NOT be a sword in this fucking place?I thought. I live on an island.

I swim with sharks. I scanned the walls.

To an outsider, the interior of that shack on stilts that I came to call my office would have

appeared haphazard. An array of costumes lined the far corner. Captains jackets, old

suits with long tails, ripped up camouflage pants and a neon pink wig. Speedos hung on

a post of the king sized bed. Old suitcases and VCRs melted into a sea of books,

electrical cords and televisions.

All this junk and more, and none of it could be even remotely considered as a tool for

self-defense against a six-foot tall crazed Bahamian with a cinderblock.

THUNK.

A chunk of wood rocketed from the doorway like shrapnel, landing near Joeles foot.

Any second now, that door was going to give.

I looked down at my feet, not knowing exactly why. Maybe to say goodbye to them. I

had grown to like my feet, especially after my recent victory over nail fungus. My toe

tilted upwards.

Brad? Why are we always in these situations? it asked softly.


5/21

I honestly dont know, Big Toe. But well get through it. Dont we always?

Not saying another word, my toe silently submitted, prostrating itself on the wet

floorboard, and waited for my prophesy to make good.

****************

I was 23 years old at the time, and having just quit my $80,000 a year job as a sales

manager for a photo company in Long Island, I decided what I needed in life was more

adventure. And as clich as it sounds, obstacles abound on the path towards greatness.

The first hurdle was making damn sure this decision didnt drive my mother into a mental

hospital. Because theres one, like, not even a mile from our house. You can almost see

it from our kitchen window, which at the time I hadnt noticed, but now, looking back,

its funny how many of those similar conversations occurred within screaming distance

of the lunatics housed behind the brick walls and steel bars off of Mt. Hope Road.

Mom? Out of respect for her sanity, I tried not to smile.

What?

Ummm so I just got a call from Kevin. I knew she wouldnt remember who I was

talking about, but I paused anyway, knowing that the next sentence was going to change

everything.1

(Kevin was a Scottish alcoholic in his mid forties, the son of a banker and the steward of

the private island in the Bahamas. I had met him at Ship Channel Cay while on vacation

1For a language with more than three-quarter million words, it comes as a shock to me that no word exists

forthat exactmomentin life, the precipitous pause that occurs just moments before someone decides to

change his or her world as they know it. Think of how awful the sentence, I cheated on you, but yet for

us unlucky bunch who have heard those words and dwell back upon them, we think very little of that horridsecond of nothingness upon which those words are laid bare; the empty and unholy foundation without a

name.


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a month prior. My parents, their friends and I had taken a trip to Nassau, where we

signed up for a day of adventure with the promise of sharks, snorkeling, hiking and

drinking on an island roughly an hour away from the mainland by powerboat. I ended

up drinking too much or just enough if youd like to get all metaphysical about it

and pitched my services to Kevins girlfriend Zee on the ride back from the island.

What can you do, she had asked.

Everything, I replied. I may have been swaying a bit.

Photos, videos, editing, sales, management, web design

I stifled a burp.

Ill talk to Kevin, she said. She took down my number and told me I wouldnt

remember this conversation tomorrow, but that Kevin would get in touch if he was

interested in hiring me.)

Whos Kevin? my mom asked. I was still holding back a smile. She was making

dinner. She was always making something.

Bahamas Kevin, I said.

She stopped stirring her sauce.

I grinned. I couldnt help it.

My poor, lovely mother.

*********************


7/21

I touched down in Nassau on a windy Friday afternoon and made my way to the Orange

Hill Inn, some miles west of downtown. The city was so alive. Dark skinned women

made their way through the back alleys as white tourists shuffled greedily back and forth

among the diamond stores and clothing shops that litter Bay Street. It would be one of

only two times I would ever take a taxi on that island. It just wasnt the Bahamian way, I

later concluded.

I introduced myself to Judy and Brenna, mother and son owners at the hotel. I grabbed

some food and met Brian, the man with the crooked neck, at the only bar Ive yet to find

that relies on the honor system. Brian washed windows in Michigan, where its always

cold. He had no wife or family.

We found ourselves seated next to two English women and a plump English man. They

were discussing soccer, which bored me immensely. By this time I had almost 100 bug

bites on me. I had counted.

The following few days brought strong winds.

The powerboat from Nassau to Ship Channel Cay, my destination, was delayed day after

day due to the storms, so I spent Saturday, Sunday and Monday in the company of

strangers. I met Kathryn, a 24 year-old grad student on her way to becoming a nurse

practitioner. She was engaged, set to be married in six months to her longtime boyfriend

back in the states. We took long walks together, one of which led us onto the set for the

new James Bond movie. We apologized and dreamed. Six hours before she was to leave

the island for good, we found ourselves lying in my bed, her shivering uncontrollably as


8/21

the reality of all that was happening made itself obvious. I decided not to push. How

chivalrous.

Three months later, I would receive a letter addressed only to Brad the Island Guy

c/o Power Boat Adventures informing me that because of whatever had occurred

between us, she had called off the wedding. It wasnt written with any hint of malice or

blame it was signed with a thank you, and an understanding that though wed never

speak to each other again, this was one of those little things that could never be forgotten.

To this day, I still dont know what to think about that.

The winds persisted, keeping the boats grounded in Nassau. To get me out, Kevin had to

arrange a flight on a six-seater, propeller-driven island hopper. The two front seats were

occupied by an overflowing bag of groceries and its 300-pound owner. I assumed this

was normal. Which it was.

We flew east over Nassau, above the shallow blue and green waters and eventually

landed a short while later at Normans Cay. For anyone who hasnt seen the movie

Blow, the island, described by Carlos Toro as Sodom and Gomorrah, was at one

point the headquarters for Carlos Lehder, a major trafficker of cocaine to the United

States. It has since become defunct, bearing almost no resemblance to those days of

excess and lawlessness. Yet somewhere just off the dirt roads and ruined shacks dotting

the island, the chalky white nose of that era still sniffs.


9/21

I swore the potholed runway seemed too short for a landing, but I was quickly proven

wrong once the plane came to a halt no more than twenty feet from the trees that lined the

northern end of the tarmac. I was let off, my backpack and suitcase in tow. I watched as

the plane made a three point turn and headed off somewhere magical to deliver a man and

his groceries.

LeRoy will pick you up and bring you to our island.

Those had been my instructions.

Except LeRoy was nowhere to be found.

An overturned wheelbarrow lay dead in a ditch next to an abandoned plane hangar. A

black widow spider guarded one of the windowsills, alert in her web.

None of this seemed real.

Sometimes I look back at that day and laugh, thinking about this young white boy from

New York, pushing his oversized luggage through the thick grass and spider-infested

bushes in the middle of nowhere with the aid of a commandeered wheelbarrow with the

nave belief that this was it. This was the answer.

After ten minutes of wandering, I came to a pristine beach, calm and vacant. The waves

seemed only to move on my behalf, and lazily at that. A magnificent white egret high-


10/21

stepped among the washed-up conch shells and driftwood. It seemed as good a spot as

any to gather my thoughts.

It didnt take long before I heard a rustling in the grass behind me, and turned to find a

tall olive-skinned man with a shaved head and tattoos lining his arms. I remember

thinking how in shape the guy was probably because of how out of shapeIwas.

You der, you lost? he asked in an accent that seemed remarkably in contrast to his

appearance. Although tan, he was still a white man in the islands of the Bahamas, and I

immediately found him interesting.

A bit. Im supposed to be meeting LeRoy here. Do you know him?

Course I know LeRoy. Dat nigga be waaaay down da odda side da island, I tink.

Watchu need him fo? He said all this matter-of-factly, as if white kids washed up on

his shores daily.

Hes supposed to give me a ride over to Ship Channel. Im working there, I said.

You workin wit Kev? he asked.

I nodded.

He smiled.

Kevy? Oh shit. Ok, come wit me. You can leave yo shit heah. No one gonna touch

it. He laughed. Aint no one here to touch it!

So I followed. I followed this strange man through the trees with their wiry roots which

wound their way everywhere throughout that island; that home of the heavy stuff. The

above ground roots fascinated me; they always had. I had seen them before in places like

Guadalupe, Puerto Rico, and St. Thomas, and Id see them again in Havana, many years


11/21

later always a sign of the interconnectivity of places in which I didnt belong, and

never would.

A few minutes of walking lead us to a beach house of sorts. It was a shade of pale

purple, and it seemed inviting enough. The man put out his hand and I shook.

Names Steffan, he said.

*********************

Sleeping in the tent became unbearable around mid-March. The no-see-ums those

tiny, pepper-flake sized demons could find a way through the mesh lining of a tent

flap in minutes, and they worsened once the weather warmed. Mornings became

repetitive: wake up, look at my body, wipe off the blood (taking with it piles of

newcomers feeding greedily on the buffet) and curse loudly. There arent many things in

this world more infuriating than bugs that just dont give a damn. Theyre junkies. Blood

crazed junkies. I still hate them.

I had two options if I planned on keeping my sanity: soak myself in discarded diesel fuel

on a nightly basis or find an air-conditioner. Supposedly, the demons loved heat and

hated cool air, which makes perfect biblical sense.

After calling me a little bitch over our morning breakfast of toast and marmalade, Kevin

finally agreed to let me take the dingy to Highborne Cay; an island seven miles southeast

run by a big-hearted Bahamian chef named Louis who happened to have an extra air-

conditioner. How Kevin knew about the spare, Ill never know.


12/21

Kev knew a lot of things it was his world we were living in.

Joeles going with you, he said, stirring his instant coffee with a shoelace.

Come on, let me take the boat, its fine, I said.

After two months, I wanted to prove I could handle a day trip by myself. Kev looked me

up and down. I didnt realize it at the time, but it was the equivalent of a father letting his

son take the car out alone for the first time.

It must have been hard on him.

He sighed.

Aye. But youre takin the walkies, he said, and you radio in when you get there.

This was a big deal. Since my arrival, I had been bombarded with stories about death on

the ocean:

He was a silver medalist on the Olympic swim team. Their boat was anchored on our

shore, the sun was setting. The anchor came loose. He threw down his drink and

decided to swim after it it was only about 100 yards. Christ, it was rightthere.

What happened? Id asked.

Whatdya think? Whatve I been telling you about dusk?

No way, Id said.

Aye. Couldnt see it, but if I had to guess, there were some stripes.


13/21

Christ.

Yup. Tiger sharksll eat the motor off the end of a boat.

There were so many ways to die here.

Sharks, of course, but also stingrays, wild boars, drowning, crazed Bahamians with

machetes or cinderblocks, barracuda meat, crashing on a reef, or running out of fuel on

the open ocean.

By the end of my time there, I had faced every one of those threats. Some I handled well,

some I most certainly did not.

**********

Do NOT forget the Rothmans, Kev said while handing me the grocery list. Get three

cartons we dont know when the boats are coming back and I need my cigs.

And needle-nose pliers, Joele added.

For what? I asked.

For making my jewelry, she said. Gotta make money off the fatties somehow. I

assumed she meant the tourists.

Then Zee opened her mouth and told me to remember to buy something, but I wasnt

listening. If it was on the list, Id get it. If it wasnt, it was her fault. She probably

wanted me to buy her infants to snack on. Or unicorn tears. Something awful, Im sure.

Kev checked the gas tank and the walkie-talkies. Then the gas again.

Remember to fill up when you get there.


14/21

He handed me cash.

I got this, I said.

Kev and Joele pushed me off the beach. I revved the throttle in neutral to check the

engine and then flipped it into gear. The three of them stood on the beach, waving

goodbye.

Id done this before maybe not on my own, but I knew the channel and I knew the

tide. I hadnt made it 50 yards before I heard my name being called from the pier.

Meesta Brad, where you going?

Yap Yap stood at the edge of the dock, fishing spool in hand. Marie stood next to him,

silent as ever. She was throwing pieces of macaroni salad into the water below. I slowed

the dingy and pulled up next to them.

Highborne to get supplies, I said. You need anything?

He thought for a minute and looked at his wife. She shrugged.

Graycliffs two pack, he said. He placed the spool on the dock and rummaged

through the back pockets of his torn up jeans. No matter the weather, that man always

wore saggy jeans.

One secun, he said.

Almost three months in and I still loved his accent. Yap Yap was Haitian, born and

raised. He had scars all over his body some from machetes, some from bullets. He was

fierce, yet loving. He and his wife faced a constant barrage of racism from the Bahamian

tour boat operators as well as from Kevin and Zee.

Haitians are not to be trusted, Kev told me on my first day.


15/21

Deyll only be nice to ya to get tings, Rodney told me sometime in February. Deyll

keel you when you sleep.

Partly because of these warnings and partly because I had never met anyone so different

than myself, Yap Yap became my side project for five months. I wanted to figure him

out, and I finally did, on my very last day.

He handed me five dollars while Marie stared off into the sun.

Vanilla, he said.

Got it.

Yap stepped back, as if suddenly struck, and looked down at the boat.

Kevvy let you take da boat Meesta Brad? he asked.

Yea, I smiled, first time.

Ohh sheet, Meesta Brad. He smiled wide.

Danger, I said laughing.

Yap kept grinning and picked up his spool from the dock.

He pointed south towards the channel between our three islands.

Dat way.

**********

To an experienced boater like Kevin or Joele, the trip to Highbourne Cay would have

taken around twenty minutes. After half an hour out on my own, I still hadnt covered

more than a few miles.

Learning how to ride the crests of the waves took time, as did not freaking out every time

I saw a fin above the water or a large black god-knows-what ten feet below the boat. I


16/21

tried to drive like Kev drove standing up, balancing, navigating by the geography. I

reached Allens Cay after half an hour.

Allens was the first stop for the tour groups that made the 40-mile trek to our island

every morning. It was a warm up for what they were in for. Wild lizards patrolled the

beach, waiting for the grapes the tourists fed to them on the end of a stick.

Dontchu letm bite chu, Miss.

Dey aint pets, kid.

Rodney, being the youngest and most inexperienced of the tour group leaders, was

usually the one sent off the boats to hand out grapes. Captain Jim, Stevie and Patch

usually stayed on board, reverting back to their full Bahamian accents when out of

earshot of the tourists.

Chu SEE dat crazy woman, where she gern?

Prolly gern back to dat singlet an gettin har own.

Id laugh when they laughed it took me months to figure out what they were saying. It

was the same with Yap-Yap. His Haitian accent was as thick as their Bahamian, and

reconciling the two was almost impossible.

But today there were no voices, tourists, grapes or lizards. I sat in the middle of the small

channel that ran between Allens Cay and a few tiny strips of land a hundred yards to the

east. It was only a few more miles to Highbourne, but the noon sun was sweltering and I

needed a rest. The water was so clear since there were no waves in the channel,

looking down at the ocean floor was like looking at a high-definition television.


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Although the floor was at least twenty feet below the boat, I could almost count the

grooves on the brain coral below.

After a quick swim to cool off I was back on the boat, heading towards Highbourne.

*******

Im going to digress a bit here.

What do you mean, how could you, no, stop

Please allow me to digress a bit.

You see, there was another morning beautiful and pristine maybe a few months in

to my time on the island, when I was sure I was going to die. There were many times

throughout those six months when I knew, for sure, I wasnt going to make it. This was

yet another instance.

I woke up on the sailboat around 8 a.m., about a quarter-mile from shore, where I had

crashed with Joele the night before (the bugs couldnt reach you out there, so she and I

had left behind our two-room air-conditioned tent on land and set up temporary living

space on board Kevins floating sanctuary a few weeks prior).

Well, Kevin, it must be said, was psychotic, and that night while Joele and I were

slumbering in a rum-induced coma below deck he had an attack of adventure back on

the island. Sometime around midnight, donning a wetsuit, some flippers, a snorkel and

mask and most likely half a bottle of something in his belly he plunged into the

channel.


18/21

He swam the entire distance to our boat under the moonlight, the time when the big

sharks the hammerheads, the tigers, and the occasional great white came swaddling

through.

And without waking us, he untied the small dinghy from the stern, hopped in (without a

map, compass, walkie-talkies or food) and set out toward the island of Andros a good

sixty miles westward. Later that week, when I asked him why he did it all without

navigational equipment, he told me that he preferred to do things the hard way because,

later on, when he was inevitably forced to do something the easy way, it made him

appreciate the experience that much more.

Good for him, but it still left me without a way to get back to the island.

When I woke up that morning and made my way above-deck, I had no idea what had

happened where our boat was, where the hell Joele was and why I was left without

any snorkel, fins or food.

After an hour and a half, with the tourist boats set to arrive soon, and with that, the start

of my workday, I decided that I would simply swim the distance and get the answers to

what was going on when I got to shore (this is as good a time as any to inform the reader

that I am not an Olympian. I played sports in high school, but I was lackluster in all with

the exception of tennis and baseball. I had quit the swim team in seventh grade when my

coach introduced Speedos into the equation).


19/21

I psyched myself up for what I reasoned would be no more than a strenuous ten-minute

swim. I scanned the surface of the channels waters for any oversized fins, stretched my

legs, popped on a pair of tight-fitting goggles, searched one last time for a snorkel or pair

of fins on the boat (to no avail), and hopped in.

Despite the protestations of theoretical physicists, I will declare here that there is no

quicker warp from one universe to another than to simply dive off a sailboat and into the

waters of a coral reef.

The noise all but disappears. In less than a second, one plummets from a master of his

own destiny to a vulnerable tourist in the most unforgiving landscape. Any control is an

illusion. There are no friends below the water.

I swam slowly, with the horizon of the island always in sight. After a few minutes, I had

settled into a rhythm two minutes of paddling, thirty seconds of relaxing. After ten of

those sets I had covered barely half the distance.

This particular channel was the California of underwater landscapes desert and barren

for a stretch, lush and green afterward, rocky and jagged on both sides. Grouper swam

slowly below me while slender, eel-like fish with dragon teeth whizzed past. A noise

echoed through the waters a metallic banging, every few seconds.

A side adventure! I thought to myself.


20/21

I tracked down the source quickly a lobster trap had snared a giant purple-colored fish

about ten feet below the water along the sandy part of the reef. It was illegal, supposedly,

to lay traps in the channel, and the fish was thrashing like mad against the paraphernalia.

I must have made fifteen trips from the waters surface, taking deeper and deeper breaths,

staying underwater for fifty, sixty, seventy seconds, tilting and shaking the cage every

which way to get that fish loose. I swore it changed color after every dive where

initially I thought it to be purple, it now looked green, then blue, then red. Its size was

startling. On my last dive down, I noticed how empty that universe became just her

and me.

With one final jolt, she popped through the small door of the cage and sped off without as

much as a look back.

Why does this memory stay with me, while a hundred others from that time have not?

Probably because I rescued a beautiful lady, an underwater princess snared by ugly and

evil men (I imagined), and I was the only one who could save her. This scene has

repeated itself above water in other ways throughout my adulthood, and they usually end

similarly with not so much as a parting glance. Or smile. Or apology.

I resurfaced and recharged. I had maybe ten more minutes of swimming and Id be back

on land, I thought.

And one minute later, out of the deep, forever-blue background, he appeared.

All 15 feet of him.


21/21

******************

Luck. Its always been luck. Everything.

How I survived the shark encounter, how I survived the Steffan encounter, how I

survived the 500-pound-boar-chasing-me-through-the-pitch-black-forest-during-a-

thunderstorm encounter, how I survived being stranded out to sea with no gas, and only

Jenna, sobbing and blonde, the girl who would nearly destroy my soul a year later and

how I survived that.

Its always been luck.

Sprinkled with apathy.

slowly dying sideways

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