Wednesday May 1, 2013
Ok, back to the rest of the story after we spent all day chasing waterfalls. Â Bet you thought the night held something really crazy like all of us going out in search a strip club. Ha, joke’s on you! We found out (too late) that that’s exactly what Crystal’s is. Which now makes it even funnier that there was no one there dancing last night. No, our night may not have entailed anything like that (again), but it doesn’t mean we didn’t have just as much fun. What we had waiting for us when we got back from the falls was a jam session out by the pool.
Although there are four guitars in our buddy boat armada, only two people on all of those boats actually know how to play theirs. Stephanie and I…..well, we’ll get to our guitars just as soon as we finish learning Spanish. (I promise I’ll be ready for our duet in January, Ron) Luckily Piers and Ren keep up on their playing and decided to treat us all to some by the bar that evening. After we all hit the showers to rinse off the fresh water we had just been swimming in (Seriously don’t know why though, after all the salt water we’ve been in lately, I felt perfectly clean.) we gathered back on the docks near EZ and Nila Girl to round everyone up. While standing there we began to chat up a crew member that was on a big sport fishing boat on the other side of the dock. He got a whiff that something fun might actually be happening in his life, I think he might have been at sea for too long, and was looking to join in on it. Ren wasn’t quite ready to go yet, but he sent us off with his guitar and our new friend to meet up with the guys on Tamarisk who were already sitting at a table by the pool. Sliding up some chairs as we pushed a few tables together I was quick to hand over Ren’s guitar to the new guy we met since he had already asked to play back when he first heard what we were up to, and before we could even shout out any request he was busy starting a song on it. It was something random and obscure and we all nodded our heads to the beat and gave him a loud round of applause as he finished, expecting Piers to be able to take the next round. But oh no, this guy wasn’t finished. Diving right in to another obscure song, he strummed away getting lost in his own little world of music, probably oblivious to the fact the rest of us were even there. We really thought that after the second song Piers would get a chance to play his guitar as well, but sadly he did not.
Remember how I complained that when Matt and I went out to eat the other night some random guy we saw at the marina came and started chatting us up, trying to sell us on anything he could offer? Taxis, tours,….drugs. We found out, to our dismay, that the marina has an open door policy to their bar/pool area and anyone off the streets is welcome to come in and use it. This means that some of the smarter and better dressed hustlers will sometimes make their way in to prey on unsuspecting cruisers like us. And sometimes just random old crazies make their way in. This is what happened tonight. The group of about six of us at the moment were sitting there, trying to have a good time despite the fact that our jam session was being hijacked by someone we just met, when some local Jamaican wearing a fishnet tank over a wife beater came up clapping his hands to the beat of the guitar. What our new friend was playing was a song referencing Jamaica and the crazy guy off the street was drawn to it like a moth to a flame, singing along and smiling wildly and showing off a few missing teeth. When the song ended, crazy man, or CM for short, pulled the guitar out of new friend’s hands, or NF for short, and only then asked if he could play something. It was Ren’s guitar, he wasn’t there, everyone was looking at me, and I was actually a little too frightened to say no. I still had fears of chances of being stabbed the previous night in my head. Just praying that he didn’t break anything I told him to play on, hoping he’d get one song out and go before Ren came by and found out I was passing around his guitar to any aimless stranger that walked by. It turns out that CM LOVES to sing about Jamaica, and when Ren finally did come by (with Ashley, Brian and Stephanie in tow) they smiled and clapped along, oblivious to the randomness of the night that had been happening before their arrival. CM and NF played a song together, but there was no shutting CM up. After his fourth song he just began strumming chance chords and crying out “Jamaica, Jamaica, I love you…â€. It was funny..for a moment..but we were ready for some real music. Ren politely stole his guitar back and we were able to begin the original jam session we had started out for.
The night was rescued and we finally had topics other than Jamaica to hear about (sorry Piers, I know you love this country). First Ren treated us with a few songs from his repertoire and then Piers carried us through the rest of the night. We all sang along to a bit of Niel Young, some Tom Petty, and even a little Inner Circle. There was one more random moment when between all these classic songs we were enjoying, NF stood up and in a very agitated manner started cussing “What’s up with all this commercial bulls*%t?! Play something effing (used full word) original man!â€. The table became very awkward and silent as we all kind of stared at him with mouths agape, and as soon as he realized we did not find him ‘edgy’ or entertaining, tried to play it off as a joke. We found out that the best remedy was to basically ignore him for the rest of the night and he stayed in his time out until he was ready to play with others again. We didn’t let it spoil our mood and we continued jamming on until the effects of cramming ten different activities into one day got the better of us. I’m not even sure what time it was when I crawled into bed, but I can tell you one thing. I am effing sleeping in tomorrow.
NF and CM, playing to their heart’s content.
‘And why are we out here??…..’