There are a few things to remember:
1. It was Prince William Sound Alaska some time in the spring. The water was freezing and there was snow on all of the surrounding peaks. But, a night was still a night.
2. I was drunk.
3. My exfriend of undergraduate years in California, let's call him "Drip," had just had an affair with my friend's sister and forgot to tell me about it but the nineteen other people who we lived with on the island, all knew. Every single one of them.
4. And my mother was dead. Just. Completely gone. Forever.
So me and Jules put on survival suits, zipped in our remaining budweisers, and jumped off the dock into the water.
I can't describe the peace that I felt shortly after landing. I floated in the water, occasionally unzipped myself to crack a bud. I felt like a sea otter with an oyster and I happily sucked back the liquid pearl. "Kill it. Sara. Kill it." It came over the intercom like the voice of G. That was a few days before though. And I knew very well that killing sea otters was against the law.
The mountains were barely visible--lit up only by the wonderful stars. We floated and unzipped and zipped and sucked and it was so quiet. There was a reassuring buzz off in the distance--the hum of remaining drunks rising and falling with the tide. It was a pleasant song--a deep, slow laughter.
My mother was gone. I had left my undergraduate family most recently. My high school friends back in rural Ontario had been gone for years. What was left of my family was -- I don't even know. I had made a few friends in the blurr of death and my first year in graduate school. I felt alone. Profoundly alone. I thought about the suicide production but quickly pushed that ugly moment down and tried to focus on the peace.
I had felt it once before when my friend Mattuse took me up in a plane for my birthday. I was his first passenger. When we got up really high up in the sky he shut off the engine (or put it in neutral -- I don't even know) and we just floated there. I looked down at the city and it was there like a picture. It was so quiet. As soon as the nose began to dive my stomach lept into my mouth. It happened so quickly.
We floated and floated and the big ship anchored in the distance was now more clearly visible. It was a U.S. Fish and Game boat. Sobriety slapped me. The hatchery was little more than a a few dots of light on the horizon. The tide had quickly taken us out of the bay and into the plain old Pacific Ocean. Raw, open, ocean. You could still see land. But it so far far away. All of it was farther away than the Fish and Game boat. Swimming against the tide, back to the hatchery could take several hours. The boat was less than thirty minutes away based on my liquid pearl thinking at the time. To the boat we went.
As we approached, I started to worry. At the time, the ratio of women to men in Alaska was purportedly 1:10. For the first time this evening I was scared. This crew probably hadn't seen land in weeks let alone women. The light came from the left and dragged over my eyes. A ladder appeared and we scurried aboard. Imagine the delight when we unzipped our survival suits. Empty beer cans poured out. We were draped in Mardi Gras beads. We had boobs. The party girl sea sluts had arrived.
Fortunately the captain woke with the commotion and promptly ordered that the zodiak be readied. He would personally take us back to the hatchery. I was sort of relieved. It took about forty minutes to get there. We decided not to tell anyone about that adventure. It was even more idiotic than the last and the last one had us barred from Pat's Beer Can for a whole evening.
