TO KNOW ME IS TO LOVE ME

  3:17 am      Despite my best efforts to stay asleep as we set off from our bay, it hadn’t dawned on me that the engine of the boat was just below our sleeping quarters. The loud start and sudden shake of the engine immediately shot H and I awake. Not long before that however we were already tossing and turning as the heat had bared down on us and once again I had awakened to a sweat-covered body around midnight.      Most of our crew were already up at this point to set sail towards Guadeloupe. I stayed in bed and watched the dark waves crash onto my port window. 6:33 am      I went up to the deck to see the rising sun and setting moon on opposite sides of us. Antigua was just a small vestige in our wake. It was the first time the whole trip that I had no phone service. Truly out to sea.      L, B, and R were asleep on the helm seats. The autopilot was steering the boat, creaking rhythmically as it teetered back and fort...

     We had spent all day in bed. I alternated from the living room floor then to the bed and back again, doing nothing all day but listening to the sounds of the TV. At some point, I watched from the floor of the living room Wong Kar-wai’s  2046 . I’d completely forgotten that we had ordered takeout for breakfast by the time it was 5 pm but found I wasn’t hungry at all. The lighting in the apartment had grown dim and snow had begun to fall outside. Did we still want to go out? I could certainly be convinced not to.      But by 10 pm we had gotten up and dressed and slid into a car that slowly crawled down the FDR heading to the East Village. The snow had piled up more than I had seen in a while but turned to icy rain by the time we arrived at the party. I regretted a few things already. The first, was wearing too many layers to a club and the second, was not wearing a hat and willingly standing outside to have a cigarette when I knew my hair would be ...