California Dreaming
I loved living in the marina in Los Angeles, surrounded by happy go lucky boaters and sun seekers. (Regardless of the crooks) Everyone seemed to be happy. I liked being around happy people. I made lots of friends when I was there, although, I knew they would be temporary. Friends are like two logs floating down a river. Sometimes they come together and sometimes they are apart. Krishna is supposed to be the One that is always with me. I hadn’t realized that yet, so instead of sitting at home alone and getting depressed, I went out to happy hour and met so many people, got so many invitations and life became exciting! The California lifestyle was for me. Alone was starting to feel better, and I was seriously enjoying myself because in Los Angeles you meet many very interesting people with great stories to tell.
Captain Jerry was one of those people. He said that I needed to be careful if I ever told anyone about him because I could get killed by someone who might be looking for him. I believed it.
I really liked Captain, who wore many hats. He was my mechanic, fisherman, cruise ship captain friend who referred to me as his ‘next ex-wife.’ He was an old sailor who lied about everything and everybody, but could tell some of the most amazing and funny stories you ever heard. I do believe some of them were actually true, because from time to time, he would call a witness in to verify his story. He even told stories to others about me, in front of me that were true, but some were not. I just let those go.
One night we went to Playa Del Rey together to meet some friends for dinner. He was buying round after round of drinks and shots. I stopped drinking because I was driving. But Jerry got really trashed. Afterwards I said I would take him home so he wouldn’t have to drive. At the time, I lived in a garage apartment with a double bed mattress on the floor in one room. We both pretty much passed out on that mattress. The next morning, Jerry swung his legs around to get out of bed and go to the bathroom. “The boats sinking!” he shouted. “What?” I said. “The boat is sinking. We’ve got to get out of here!” I raised my head up and realized we were in my apartment, but there was about two inches of water on the floor. Seems the sprinkler system outside the garage ruptured and it was flooding my apartment. “Jerry,” I shouted, “we’re not on a boat, we’re in my apartment.” “Well, then your apartment is sinking!” he said.
Captain told his share of Bar Stories, never ceasing to amaze me. One story took place in Mexico, just after he returned from Viet Nam. He was sitting at the bar talking to a friend on his right when this guy butted in between him and his friend to order a drink. Jerry looked around and saw there was plenty of room at the bar, so he figured this guy was up to something. He made an effort to ignore the guy to no avail and then finally asked his friend to move down to the other end of the bar. They did and when they did, the asshole moved right along with him. Captain said, “You got a problem with me?” The guy answered, “Yeah I do” and pulled out a knife. “I’m gonna rip you to pieces with this dagger!” Captain reached in his back pocket, pulled out a Derringer and shot the guy right between the eyes. Lucky for the guy, Captain was having a bad day and the bullet went in and out at an angle, through his eyebrow and out behind the back of his ear. The guy lived. Captain did go to court, of course, but the case was dismissed as self defense.
Another bar story was shocking and funny. Captain was sitting at a private club when a regular biker member kept yakking on and on about how he hated his hair and how much he was sick of it and how it was bothering him. Seems the guy sported quite a long pony tail. After listening to him go on and on for half an hour, Captain pulled out his knife, walked to over the guy, cut his pony tail off above the rubber band, handed it to him and said, “Here, you don’t have to talk about it anymore!” The guy, in shock, said and did nothing. Love Captain Jerry. You gotta laugh cause nobody else would do those crazy things and nobody else could get away with it. Jerry was not a big guy either. He was around 5’8” with big blue eyes to die for and was not afraid of anything, well, that I know of.
According to him, he must have owned at least 50 boats. Truth is, he called every boat he was working on ‘my boat’. He was a sailor and fisherman but he also worked as a bounty hunter and a mercenary for the government in reconnaissance. Yeah, that’s what I wasn’t supposed to reveal, but nevertheless, I got his permission, a while back. It took knowing him for 9 years before he finally revealed his scandalous profession to my virgin ears, as he explained why. It seemed people he got involved with, or their relatives, might want revenge for the work he did, so he needed to keep his exploits a secret in order to stay hidden. He simply said he worked for the government under the disguise of a merchant marine. I always thought he was with the CIA. He wasn’t but he did work for the government, as well as I could tell, and he was working within the merchant marines. His team used merchant marine ships to go into places where he needed to do a job. It all started, according to him, a long time ago when there was a colonel in the air force who found him, and asked him to do a job and offered to pay him very well. They knew Jerry was working as a bounty hunter previously. So that is how he got his start in mercenary work. He’d been shot eight times and showed me the scars to prove it. And his good friend, who worked with him in the business verified everything. That friend got half his ass shot off! Just had to tell you. Not many people know that one! He laughs about it. I mean, how many people joke about getting their ass shot off? And, he did!
But this guy just loved being on the water. The last time I was out with him, we delivered a 42 foot yacht from San Pedro to San Diego. He truly knew what he was doing on the ocean. He was raised on large fishing boats, going out with his father and he had been on the ocean ever since. He knew engines and that made him a pleasure to be with. When you’re way out in the sea and your engine breaks down, Jerry could be your savior. We spent many hours talking as he worked on my boats and we took trips to Redondo Beach together.
They say you can count your real friends on one hand. I agreed. But I must have only three fingers! Anyway, I met some really good people in my life. There were some great people in the marina I met while sipping wine at happy hour. One friend made a joke out of everything. I’m kinda like that too. Honestly, I’m not sure if we took anything seriously! That would be Don. He introduced me to Denyce who always gave up her apartment as a ‘flop house’ after a party. I new a sailor woman who owned a boat named Invictus. That would be Pamela. She said what she wanted, when she wanted and at the same time seemed to avoid offending anyone! She was a real person and a true sailor from the heart. She liked to stand in the companionway as we sailed so as to get you a beer or take your empty bottle. Last time I went out with her she was feeling exceptionally well and kept flashing her tits as we journeyed into the sea. She was a member of a yacht club and had ‘reciprocals’ with other clubs, so we sailed to Redondo Beach and continued our party at the club there. She was a member of the Sea Level Club, too, having done it out at sea multiple times.
Then there was Blair. Blair worked in the New York Philharmonic for twenty-one years as an oboe player. She left New York and moved to California where she went to Stanford for a Journalism degree. She wrote a book called “Mozart in the Jungle, Sex and Drugs in the New York Philharmonic.” Blair was a real trip! She professed to have slept with over one hundred men before she ever left prep school! She married Bill who professed to love her novel, then royally screwed her both in marriage and financially. After some time, she sold the movie rights of the book to HBO. HBO sold the rights to Amazon and the story made it on Amazon Originals. I saw the pilot but I didn’t keep up. Show won 2 Golden Globe awards! Blair was another happy hour friend.
Nick Coster, who was a Broadway actor and in the Santa Barbara soap opera for 30 years, became a fun friend, always drinking champagne and getting naked. He sailed with my friend Don back from Catalina Island to Marina Del Rey wearing nothing but a pirate’s hat! I saw the pictures!
Gonzo and Leslie hosted everyone at the Pacific Mariner’s Yacht Club. We were always invited when they were there. The club became known as Pickled Mariners as everyone was usually drunk known to fall off bar stools. But they hosted lots of fun events like dingy hors d’oeuvre parties where everyone brought their small boats and rafted together as they passed around drinks and gourmet snacks. They played a game called Poker Run where they went from yacht club to yacht club on dinghies, picking up a card at each stop and when they reached home base, the winner got a bottle of Gran Patron Tequila, sharing it with everyone. There were many open nights with bands playing outside under the stars overlooking the yachts and I definitely attended a few!
The marina was one big party starting with happy hour a couple of times during the week and then partying all weekend. A typical weekend started with Friday night happy hour, followed by a Harbor Cruise on someone’s boat, then back to late night hour happy hour and then finished out the party on another boat! That is if you could make it that long. I usually called it a night around nine. But there have been times . . . I could tell some pretty bad stories about myself! Saturday was usually Bloody Mary’s and errands then Saturday evening would be a BBQ on someone’s boat or at Denyce’s place overlooking the water. (And yes, you can barbecue vegetarian style, and we were in LA where there were many vegetarians.) If we were lucky, the party kept going on Sunday morning with Sunday Brunch. I wondered at times, just how long could I keep up this lifestyle? I was usually the first to pass out on Denyce’s couch or stumble back to my boat.
Don liked to do Traveling Happy Hour on the Water Taxi. We would grab a drink at Jamaica Bay Inn, get on the water taxi, go to Tony Ps and grab another drink, get on the taxi, grab another drink at El Torritos, get on the taxi one more time until we were back at our original destination feeling pretty damned good and get one more drink at Killer Shrimp! The water taxi was a great way to be on the water and not have to be an irresponsible drinker. Don Juan, we liked to call him, was the oldest of our group and yet seemed to have the most energy. When the evening was coming to an end for me, around 9pm, he would want to go dancing at a place where octogenarians met on Friday evenings.
I lost one close friend who was a true jazz buddy. Number six gave me a real education in jazz standards and this lady and I went out often to hear great players. We discussed personal growth and right action, but we conflicted when we talked about god. She did not believe in a personal god. I did. We definitely disagreed! Seems she thought, “We were in control of our karma, meaning, if you don’t allow bad things to come into your mind or your aura, then bad things won’t happen.” I agreed, but I mostly believed in the “5 factors of action”.
And here they are: These five different factors, according to the Bhagavad Gita, are the determining factor in the results of our activities. They are: 1) the body, 2) the performer (you), 3) the various senses (sound, smell, etc.), 4) the many different kinds of endeavors (in anger, in love, in work, etc.) and the fifth factor, the quintessential is 5) the Supersoul.
To explain further, I need to tell you about the “Brahma Samhita,” 5.1, wherein the purport states “Although the place of action here refers to the body and the performer the soul, these 5 factors jointly contribute toward the success or the so called failure of any activity. Let us look at a practical example of how this is true in the material world. Let us say we are in a job. First and foremost, we have to be in the right job, but just landing the right job is not enough. What the individual does with the given opportunity of being in the right job through his or her various endeavors, by appropriately engaging both their perceptive as well as working senses, is entirely up to the individual. Having done all of this correctly, success is still not guaranteed as there is something beyond our control and that is the Supreme Will. According to the authority of Vedas, not a blade of grass can move without the supreme sanction of the Lord.”
Now what this means basically, is I believed in a Supreme Super-soul that I am a part of. A person who does not believe there is a God who can have any form or will of its own, believes everything is Energy. Energy does not have a WILL. It is simply based on the principle of action and reaction. If you put out good energy, you get it back, you know, the laws of nature, “The Secret.” I also agreed with this, but I believed no matter how much good energy I put out, sometimes the results of my activities were simply not in my control. There was another factor however, that something is left up to the divine. The fifth factor of action.
I new one great woman whom I met in Vrindavan and then spent time with in California. She laughed when I spoke with the mouth of a sailor even though we were smack-dab in the middle of a spiritual community. I was basically a non-conformist and so was she. I didn’t like to wear my religion, so I didn’t care for the traditional dress or clay markings associated with my beliefs and she kind of agreed. She was someone whom I could tell anything and I could tease her about her own shit and she didn’t get angry.
I looked through my contacts in my email and realized most of the people I knew were really kind of past friends or acquaintances whom I spent some time with at one time or another. If you moved around like I did, you accumulated a lot of those past friends. Sometimes I wondered why I never got an email from any of them. I tried to stay in touch, but, whatever. It’s sad.
So, I was thinking about aloneness, again, and dreaming about California while I was in India. All that partying was great, but in the end, I was still alone. After seven serious relationships, I was alone, but I was not unhappy about it at all. I did what I wanted when I wanted! And besides, My heart was changing as I went deeper into myself, realizing the name of God and God were one and the same. Krishna, Krishna, Krishna. Ahhhhh! Uuuuuu! Mmmmm!
Some seekers are truly loners, living in the forest or in a cave or maybe just staying in their apartment and rarely coming out except to buy supplies. Well, we DIE ALONE, right? So maybe we should definitely get used to spending some time by ourselves. I tried it on for size. I found if I either left my boat or my apartment I would spend money anyway, so if I wanted to save, I needed to stay at home a little. But my inherent need for social interaction was definitely there. And then, when I went to the Holy Dhama, Vrindavan, I wished I could be hanging out at the bar and talking to strangers for a while, maybe with an ice cold Sangria!
BFF? Best Friends Forever? . . . I think I needed to learn to love myself. My real Self was my best friend!