The weather lets up completely by the time we get tied to our mooring. We take the dinghy to shore and dramatically kiss the ground because we think we’re funny. There are little campground-style showers, where we get cleaned up and I do my best to fix my hair. Without a blow dryer, braided pigtails are my only style option. If pigtails could become a really fashionable look for adult women, that would make my life so much easier. That or “attacked by a raccoon.”
As soon as we are in dry clothes we head to the one structure in the harbor: the bar. The handful of other sailors who also crossed through the rough water are easy to spot because of their thousand-yard stares and the fact that we are the ONLY patrons not yet drunk off our faces. Everyone else is in full buccaneer garb, using over-the-top “Argh, matey” accents and drunkenly groping what I hope are their wives. Debauchery is clearly best executed in a costume, and everyone seems to have forgotten this is real life. Alcohol might not be the best remedy for seasickness, but the inebriates are in markedly cheerier mental states, so we hurry to catch up.
We spend the night on the boat, and by eight the next morning, even through the thick hull, we hear the mating calls of functioning alcoholism. The sun is still low but the good people of Buccaneer Days are already up and harassing each other. Groups of aspiring marauders are piled in dinghies and weaving between the sailboats, throwing plastic coins and bellowing, “Prepare to be boarded!”
This is a lot. I’m not much of a morning drinker, but Luke has weed, so I gratefully smoke as much as he offers. It’s like I’m at Mardi Gras but it’s balding and in the middle of the ocean. I am getting a window into what it means to be an adult. Sometimes, being an adult means getting some friends together and whizzing around in a tiny boat shouting jocular threats at the passengers of slightly larger boats. It’s quite a thing to watch grown men and women brandish fake swords and climb aboard the vessel you are standing on to demand beer. The environment (and probably the weed) bring me to a few surprising revelations:
1. People need escape and fantasy at every age.
2. Maybe we are all most free when we are playing make-believe.
3. At least five people here have buried a stripper in their lifetime.
My most pirate-y shirt happens to make my boobs look awesome, and twelve hours have passed since I last threw up, so I’m on the prowl. We get dressed and go ashore, and in the daylight I notice we are truly the only people here who are unmarried and under the age of fifty-five. Well, this changes everything. Put me on an island with a cute guy and give him no other sexual options? This must be how socially adept women feel all the time! I won’t even have to get that drunk! But I do anyway.
The next forty-eight hours are a haze. We dance, we take the dinghy around the island, we drink more. We consume nothing but overcooked mystery meat and the bar’s signature drink: a mixture of Kahlúa, Baileys, banana liqueur, and whipped cream known as Buffalo Milk. The combination of sugar and alcohol is probably shutting down vital organs, but we feel invincible.
On our last night, some of us go ashore for a last hurrah, but Whitney and Brian stay on the boat to call it an early night. Luke and I sneak away from the party and make out in the grass under the stars. It would be romantic if we weren’t dressed like off-brand theme park entertainers.
I am drunk, and very young, and sharing a near-death experience makes me feel like I can say anything to Luke. I tell him that watching Whitney and Brian stay on the boat made me depressed. Then I say of course they stayed on the boat; why would they bother coming out? Just to hang out with each other? Once you’re married there’s no more excitement or possibility. I say settling down sounds like death. I say I feel sorry for them.
I can’t imagine anything more important than chasing that “butterfly feeling.” I can’t imagine what would drive a person to get out of bed in the morning if you knew you’d never have that new-crush feeling again or ever dance on a table, or get so drunk you try to fight a stranger. To not come ashore on the last night of Buccaneer Days? It’s tantamount to giving up on life.
Maybe because he’s a little older, or maybe because Whitney is his sister, Luke scoffs. He’s right; it’s stupid. I just don’t know it yet.