On a moonless night some years ago, my friend Carlton Proulx jumped without warning from a speeding boat into a dark saltwater bay–outrageous behavior that I might have applauded had it not been my boat, my liability insurance, and my Coast Guard captain’s license that were on the line. Authorities get mighty testy when it comes to losing passengers.
One moment Carl was at my side as we skipped across the bay at about 35 miles an hour. The next moment I felt the boat list heavily to starboard, and he was gone.
Confused, I yanked back on the throttle and yelled to one of our companions, a fraternity brother (and Carl’s cousin) named Hal, “Hey, where’s Carl?” Professional that I am, I knew that it is difficult to misplace a former high school defensive back on a 19-foot skiff.
“He jumped,” Hal replied. “He just bailed.”
“He what?” I was already wheeling the boat around. “You mean he fell overboard?”
“Nope. He bailed. It was his idea. Leave him. He’ll make it back.”
We were two, maybe three miles from the mainland. “I’m not even sure he can swim.”
“He can swim,” Hal said. “He’s from Miami, isn’t he? Almost everybody from Miami can swim.”
Behind us, sea and sky came together in a rind of January gray. The bay was black and without borders. I had a small flashlight, but its beam was no match for a cloudy winter night. I panned the light around. Nothing. When I switched if off, Hal was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “There he is. You see him?”
What I saw was a boiling green light in the distance. Earlier in the evening, we had remarked on the unusual brightness of the water, an eerie phosphorescence created by plankton that fire up like lightning bugs when disturbed. Our wake had been an expanding cone that flamed like turquoise paint. There were only a few weeks in each year when the phosphorescence was so vivid.
Studying the glob of murky light, I said, “Yeah, anything that size, it’s either Carl or a small whale.”
As we approached Carl, it was as though he had been internally illuminated by some secret radiation experiment from the fifties. His hair, face, and hands were all glowing. When we were near enough, I cut the engine and listened to him yell, “What a hoot! Watch this!” He began a clumsy synchronized-swimming routine in which each sweep of his hands created long, bright contrails in the water. “I had to do it,” he explained as he climbed back on board. “That stuff hypnotized me. I kept imagining what it would be like just to let go and bail. It was even better than I thought. It was like jumping into the stars. I wish I had my speargun – it’d be like fishing in the Milky Way”
Carl was a favorite buddy of mine. He was very funny, but he was also prone to dangerous behavior: jumping from a moving boat was one of his milder stunts. He was almost always late–sometimes he never arrived at all–but he was a gifted athlete, effortlessly charismatic, and a good guy to be with in a tight spot.
A partnership is defined by one’s willingness to go to the aid of another. It’s an obligation that blends conscience and accountability, and in that sense Carl was always dependable. He could also be depended on to continually invent bizarre and outrageous things to do. Now, with this unexpected leap, he was blazing a new trail. The question was, would we follow?
“It’s one of the most awesome things I’ve ever tried,” he told us. “It’s like you’re flying through space, then there’s this explosion of light. You tumble through it like a meteor.”
Another interesting aspect, Carl noted, was all the big bull sharks that cruised the area: “It adds just the right edge to the whole deal.”
The guy was almost unfairly persuasive. That evening, the Bailing From the Boat at Night Club was founded. I’m not going to romanticize an activity that is stupid, adolescent, and dangerous. Indeed, I’ll be blunt: Do not sneak to the stern of a vessel that is traveling 30 or 40 miles an hour over black water and jump. Don’t let anyone you know try it. It’s not worth the risk.
Still, the Bailing From the Boat at Night Club enjoyed an existence of some four years, always meeting on moonless nights when the phosphorescence was exceedingly bright. The membership was small and select. It included public servants, business tycoons, a partner in one of south Florida’s most prominent law firms, and the first baseman of a Major League Baseball organization.
The club was founded on a contagious madness, one that had little respect for intellect. But at a certain point in the maturing process we all realized how stupid it was, and we closed the books on the membership, and then closed down the club. It got to the point where an out-of-the-boat jumper couldn’t be certain the driver would return in less than an hour–or return at all.
“It’s getting harder and harder to maintain that edge,” Carl explained one night as we approached my dock. “I mean, after 30 times, it’s just not spontaneous anymore.”
A few weeks ago, Carlton returned to that same dock for a small ceremony that we were holding in his honor. He was uncharacteristically punctual, but only because he came with his older brother, Clayton. With them was their mother Margaret, Hal, two other cousins, and Carl’s wife. When Clay saw me, he approached quickly and removed the lid from a small container. “You won’t believe what I just did,” he said. “I tripped in the parking lot and spilled some.”
He was talking about the contents of the urn he was carrying. I told him, “The guy liked marinas. Don’t worry about it.”
Clay was sifting the contents of the urn through his fingers. “Look at this stuff. It looks like cat litter. The whole package, it weighs like ten pounds. When he was in pretty good shape, he weighed, what, 190? I can’t believe it. We’ve got that much water in us?”
He was talking about the way his brother had been, the way he was now. He was talking about Carl.
A friend told me recently that you know you’ve reached middle age when you start attending more funerals than weddings. Another sign, he said, is that your drinking buddies start dying. “‘Natural causes’ is the key phrase,” he said. “Listen for that, and you’ll know.” I think he was referring to any “cause” other than fast cars, air crashes, faulty climbing gear, boating accidents, or street thugs. In short, he was excluding situations in which we have a hand in the decision-making process. If there is risk in what we do–and an active life always involves risk–then we have the option of throttling back and living safe but dull lives, or we have the option of embracing those risks and trying to manage them as best we can. Perhaps that’s why the phrase “natural causes” is so disturbing. It describes a process over which we have no authority and less control. It transforms death from an external variable into an internal eventuality in which our own bodies turn traitor. To accept that process is the challenge of middle age.
There’s a lot to be said for just letting go. It also helps to keep in mind that that bastard Grim Reaper is loose in the room and moving targets are harder to hit.
All my friends, all the people I most admire, are movers. Another friend who kept moving was Gwen Iannone. She was a sweet girl, one of my wife’s sorority sisters. I’d see her when I was picking up my then-girlfriend at the house, and we’d chat. After graduation, she moved back to her hometown, started working in finance, and then died of cancer just shy of her twenty-ninth birthday. Natural causes, sure – though in light of our predicament, and in terms of the adventure in which we are engaged, all causes seem no less natural than, say, leaping off a speeding boat into black water.
Carl was different – he knew all the risks of living the adventurous life, and how to mitigate them. He got married, had a son, and settled down. Then one November morning he got up to do a few chores around the house, and dropped dead behind his lawnmower at the age of forty-five. Massive heart attack. Natural causes.
I didn’t tell Carl’s family that his was the third funeral of a close friend that I had attended in only a few months. I was asked to give the eulogy, an honor that is hard to covet and impossible to dodge. I can’t remember exactly what I said to that crowded room. I know I said, “The guy was a hoot. Wasn’t he a hoot?” because that was a favorite expression of his. I told a story or two at the funeral, and then I said something that I thought might make the man’s family feel better: “Carl had great energy, and energy cannot be destroyed. It has nothing to do with religion or hope. It’s a fact of physics.”
Standing on my rickety dock with his family, however, I wasn’t so certain that the sentiment was true. Middle age does not suffer wistful platitudes gladly. So I listened to the other speakers, and I tried to comfort Carl’s widow and young son as best I could before boarding my skiff with Clay, his mother, and the rest of the family to spread the remainder of Carl’s ashes in the bay. It was nearing dusk, but it was not pretty outside. The family had been hoping for a symbolic sunset. Instead, they got rain, and then more rain.
Clay sat to my right, the urn in his lap, glowering at the sky as we powered off toward a place in the bay that was one of Carl’s favorite spots. Spirits were no higher in the forward part of my boat, and in an attempt to lighten the mood I pointed ahead to a section of deep water and began to tell them about our Bailing From the Boat at Night Club.
“This is where we did it,” I told them. “Always right in here and usually going about this fast.”
Carl’s mother’s eye’s twinkled and she smiled a little. “That sounds like him. That sounds just like him. He loved stuff like that.”
“Yeah,” Clayton said, and then he was silent for a moment, looking at the blur of water. I didn’t expect him to do what he did next, although I highly approved. He nudged me, flashed a wicked grin, then flung the urn overboard. It was the first time I’d heard him laugh in several days. “Hey, Mom, guess what?” he said. “Carl just bailed.”
I circled back, switched off the engine, and we drifted through the turbidity created by the ashes, a slow cloud of reds and grays that, on a day so dark, seemed as lucent as starlight.
Author’s Note: this is semi-autobiographical, semi-fictional.
But Carl was very real, and I’ve known his family for forty years, and care for them all deeply.
I was already leaning in that direction.
When my friends and classmates started leaving another friend and I traveled the funeral circuit together.
We called the little cards of the guest of honor the “Class of ’55 “trading cards”. The object, of course, was to
collect all but one of the cards.
I’ll trade you a Roger for a Carol type of thing. I have the one from my traveling partner. Still a few, but not
many, left to collect.
Interesting, Shpip, I kept waiting for the pun.
I most certainly did NOT cry while editing this. You cried while reading it!
I didn’t cry. A little dusty, maybe.
I hate to tell you, Shpip has another one coming up.
BASTARD!
*hunts for tissue box*
I sit here celebrating my remarkably boring life as another year winds down. Boring is underrated.
Agreed. I strive for it.
In the big scheme of things, living past the age of 5 makes you lucky.
I’m with you, Kinnath. Watching the chaos go by from a place of peace and comfort is a good thing. I did refill the bird feeders today.
I have to feed the turkeys X2 a day, deer in the evening after the turkeys have gone to bed. Only have to
fill the bird feeder every 4 days or so. We’re not seeing many small birds this year or many deer.
I’m not sure why .
I have had enough excitement in my life, in the first 4 decades, and people wonder I don’t want to do a parachute jump or climb a mountain or such.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._D._M._Bell
***
Walter Dalrymple Maitland Bell (8 September 1880 – 30 June 1954), known as Karamojo Bell after the Karamoja sub-region in Uganda, which he travelled extensively, was a Scottish adventurer, big game hunter in East Africa,[3] soldier, decorated fighter pilot, sailor, writer, and painter.
***
https://www.badassoftheweek.com/musashi
I’d love to do some more adventurous stuff by my broken ass body says no.
+5 Jump Chump
After 3 weeks at Ft Benning Im good now about falling out of an airplane.
Used to be, my life was the norm. Marriage right after high school. Kids right away. One spouse until death do us part (still working on that one, hopefully another 20+ years to go).
Merry Christmas glibs.
I am with you kinnath, except I was delayed a bit by long schooling, and a couple three wars/deployments got in the way – but I like the fact that I am still married (only time) and have only a few years left before I retire. The most excitement I want now is to see a nice sunrise on vacation in Iceland or such.
Far too much time wasted in school for me too.
Didn’t start marriage until I was almost 30.
Kids far too late (at 40) and not enough of them, sadly only two once we figured out why it was hard to have them.
I have taken my wife to England, Ireland, and Singapore. But we haven’t travelled out of country in 20 years. I have no more interest in transoceanic travel.
Tribal bungee jumping – something I will not do.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6hXnYW_2ac
wingsuit jump into flying plane – a bit above my ability level
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YL9sNrOlK-I
The name Carl will always remind me of Llamas with Hats.
Japanese log riding ritual
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siEgvT-jyYY
suggested music
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzcvRDWgRIE
Too young.
Today I learned that the coast guard issues licenses for boats. I wonder if that’s just an off shore thing or do they mess with freshwater guys too?
State registers/licenses boats here (MN) and a driver’s license is required to operate the motor. Underage have to take a training course to get a permit
Individual states register vessels, but the Coast Guard licenses captains. The basic one is called the Operator of Uninspected Passenger Vessels and allows the captain to carry up to six paying passengers in nearshore waters.
A Master’s license involves more tests and experience, and can carry various restrictions or endorsement on the size of the vessel and where you’re carrying out your commerce. So the guy taking you and a buddy out to catch stripers near the Outer Banks has a different license than the captain of the car ferry going from Muskegon to Milwaukee.
“The basic one is called [The Six Pack]…”
The funny part is “six passengers and up to a 100 ton vessel”
That’s a big boat.
The feds and their terrible interpretation of the commerce clause strikes again.
They have to have their fingers in everyone’s pie.
Interesting tale. But jumping into the sea at night with Bull Sharks around is a big nope for me. Hell if we are outside of our local bay the rule is to wear a harness and clip into the boat after sunset. A few years back a very experienced sailor disappeared on the California to Hawaii race when he went to shit off the back of the boat at night with no harness.
OT: FU Australia. Free speech is not optional. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/elite-thought-free-speech-will-have-to-go-to-preserve-multiculturalism/ar-AA1SV3ci?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=HCTS&cvid=694b10c6bc5f43f8bfae91d92fa38451&ei=26
Hit the Europoors where it hurts. We know that wages and living standards are higher in Mississippi than in England. This guys readers likely do not and won’t bother looking it up.
“ I’ve spent several months in the USA over the last two years, from the poorest states, Mississippi and Kentucky, to the richest, California and Connecticut. And for all its many problems – guns, drugs, political divisions – the USA has a cultural energy and scientific dynamism that makes Australia look like a dismal backwater, and an opulence and wealth that would make any European wince in envy, except perhaps the Swiss.”
dramatization from a sci fi movie:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwtpb3L-4bE
FTFY
I would ask that person why “different races, creeds and cultures can live happily and peaceably in the same place” has often if shakily been the case in the United States for a long time, but not in Europe.
barehanded shark fishing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivsP45hCA4s
gator rams kayak
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhzc5J1BJNU
The semi-official chronicler of Florida Man:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Hiaasen
I remember seeing the complete series lining the walls of Shpip’s living room.
I prefer Naked Came the Manatee.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naked_Came_the_Manatee
Xtra hardcore
man survives 76 days adrift
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUyt_iW9dVk
lost in the Amazon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aP1Dqf_n0IM
OT… “Drag for Palestine,” advertising a two-day-long “drag event” in Toronto, with “all proceeds going to UNRWA.”
lol Posted if only for the pic at the bottom of the article. I really want to know what the author fed into ChatGPT to arrive at that result.
I don’t know what to say about this except I hope the headliners try to deliver the proceeds in person as they move to Gaza.
Queers for Palestine protester doesn’t know Hamas hates gay people and thinks Palestinians are Jewish too:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UX_8Cy587jw
My bad, dumb protester thinks Israel and Palestine are both Muslim.
Hmm, none of the markers for middle age for me, save my own mid-life crisis; but then I lead a reasonably boring life as well – though I do know some rather eccentric people.
Was it Keith Hernandez? It was Keith Hernandez, wasn’t it?