Down with the Ship

Well Travis, you’ve done it again. Booked us on the vacation from the Underworld. No, don’t bother looking for the captain again. I saw him go overboard five minutes ago. He plunged his body into the what-I-can-only-imagine-to-be an icy abyss. Lucky Larry, I think I’ll call him. Lucky Captain Larry. Don’t get your hopes up, Travis. I have not stayed on this ship out of loyalty to you. The lifeboats were all full and even after I knocked out one of the other women with a stray paddle, she still managed to roll her body into a vessel just as it was dropping into the sea. But I’m not bitter about it. I saw a wave split said vessel in half and unconscious woman was promptly swallowed by a sea lion. Have you ever seen a sea lion swallow a human being whole, Travis? I didn’t know it was possible until today. All the things I didn’t know were possible until this very moment. That boats could go three blocks into a port city only to be pushed out again by Portuguese speaking nations. That waves could take the form of animals—cats, giraffes, emus. That love could have conditions. That forced with the choice between saving myself and loving you, loving you didn’t even feel like a choice. I was more torn up about hitting that poor woman over the head than I was about leaving you to drown and only thinking of you every year on the anniversary of the Boyott Terrania sinking into the Atlantic Ocean. I thought of the eulogy I would give. The flowers I would bring to your symbolic yet nonetheless empty grave. I thought of all the tears I’d have to cry. How many? How many does a wife whose stopped loving her husband have to cry when he dies? And even then does she cry for him? Or does she cry for what she had with him at one time? Or simply because she’s supposed to? While you were out running around like a scared child—when you should have been here consoling your wife—I realized that this really is the true revelation of your personality. Ignoring the problem—the boat is sinking. Doing pointless things to combat the problem—looking for a captain as if he was going to be able to plug the hole in the ship with chewing gum or a giant stopper. Forgetting your responsibilities—I could have been raped by one of the lower-class mongrels as some sort of last-ditch hurrah before they gave their lives to the sea. Loving silent action over necessary communication—taking the chance that I might already be gone when you got back. Not being able to say ‘I love you’ one last time—sentimental and dishonest as that statement might be at this point in our marriage. Oh look—the Winspears are trying to swim back to shore. I don’t believe they’re even going in the right direction. Should we yell out to them? Oh, why bother? They’re so gleeful. That must be what it’s like to be in love-filled matrimony. Even when you know you’re going to die, you die so happily because you’ve spent your life with the right person. So you toss around in the ocean while corpses float by you and you try and figure out which way is Jamaica and which way is Sierra Leone. I believe I’ll jump now, Travis. If you somehow make it out of this alive, please donate everything I own to the Goodwill. If I make it out and you don’t, I’ll burn everything you own. Use that as initiative to survive. If we both make it out, I want a divorce. If neither of us does, we’ll have successfully fulfilled our marriage vows. Bravo to us. Perhaps I’ll see you out there, floating on a chunk of something—the ship’s bow or an ottoman from the ship’s lounge. I’d like to say I’ll wave as I go by, but we both know I won’t. Not even out of courtesy. Good-bye Travis. I’m sorry I won’t be able to go down with the ship. I suppose I just didn’t have it in me.