And Once Upon a Time – 2

That Dougie Haversham, the one who married Zennie, was always full of jokes and chat and sex, and happiness and never got around to the Me 101, nor did Zennie.

We lived in the now and didn’t explain why or how or when.

That is why I called the boat Uncle Jackie’s Boat, because that is how I thought of it.

It had been his, he’d given it to me a few months before he died.

I had been eighteen and the only time I’d spent with him was on the boat.  I loved being at sea, I learned everything he could teach me with a voracious appetite.

Until I met Zennie, being on the boat was all I ever loved.

When I look back, I wonder why I never told Zennie I owned the boat.  Maybe it was because I’m sure she’d have wanted me to sell it and use the money to buy some crummy house somewhere.

It’s kind of strange to look back, and recall how we had bounced from one friend’s living room to another and then, when we were desperate I had said;  “Hey, I know where we can go….”   and we took our knap sacks and went to what I had told her;  “This is my Uncle Jackie’s boat.”

I’d thought she’d think it was wonderfully fantastic, but from the moment we came aboard she began saying how she felt queasy and didn’t want to be here, and I never told her I owned it.