blast from the past......vacation

Since it’s May I figured I’d throw up some old posts from my first and so far only vacation from a couple years ago this month.


The captain of the tiny fishing boat was Charlie, this old swabby who’s been plying the gulf coast for nigh on to forty-five years and who used to be a first mate on an ocean barge.

He actually made the boat ride very cool due to the fact that he knew every fuckin inch of the coast and talked his ass off.

From the porch of the condo we stayed in, we could see way out in the distance oil tankers parked waiting their turn to come into port and unload. And he told us that they park about twenty miles from shore and every blue moon he’ll take his tiny fishing boat and ride out for a look see.

So I found Charlie very cool in an ole scoundrel kind of way.

He took us out into the gulf and showed us some of the sights on the tiny islands that dotted the coastline. Then he decided he wanted to show us a spot where he used to take his kids swimming.

We get to this spot and he throws out the anchor and everybody bails out of the boat for a swim. The water in this area was just deep enough to ground the boat and the farther you walked out the deeper it got.

I’m sitting in the boat with Charlie watching everybody frolic in the gulf water’s when folks started giving me grief about getting wet. So I unshucked my clothes and hopped in.

Now I’m gonna be truthful as a muthafucker when I say that Greg Beck is not a man of nature.

I like my concrete and friendly city trees and shit like that, so hopping out of a boat into the gulf was a big step for me even though I’m freaking the fuck out cause I can’t swim.

I float like a fuckin buoy and shit and couldn’t help but envisioning fears of me stepping into deep water and floating away never to be seen again.

Anyway, everybody’s playing in the water and picking up shells and shit like that. And I’m walking around starting to dig it all when I step on this large object and freak out again.

Everybody told me to calm down because it was probably just another shell in the sand.

So I calm down and start walking again and I felt my toes brush up against this object in the sand again. Hmmm, it must be another shell, I think I’ll pick it up and look at it.

I bend over and pick up the shell and pull it out of the water and when I bring it up to eye level for a closer look-see I start screaming like a slapped bitch cause suddenly my innocent shell starts sprouting all kinds of eyeballs, arms and fingers and shit.

Why I gotta pick up the fuckin shell with shit still living in it?

Dammit, I bounced in clubs for years and been in thousands of fights and ain’t too many things on two feet I’ll back away from, but seeing a seashell start waving at me just fucked me up.

After flinging the wavy muthafucker away I clamed down again and headed out to deeper water where everybody else was.

I walked out till the water was over my waist and I felt my ball-sac floating.

I stood there looking out at the gulf and all my friends for a few minutes thinking that even with not knowing what kind of deadly shit was crawling toward me under the water, this was all actually very cool.


"and the monkey flipped the switch"