A Shitty Day on the Water

I was working on a sailboat in Santa Barbara as a young lad, spritely and chipper, eager to be on the water. The salt air gave me such a sweet reminiscent comfort, a soothing reminder of my home town in Maine. But anyway, that's besides the point. This story isn't about picturesque beauty, or my nostalgic longings for freshmen year in college. No, this is a true account of the profound unbelievableness of the human race and the jaw dropping shock of reality.
As I was saying.......I was the first mate for a 41ft sailboat based out of Santa Barbara harbor. There was only a captain and a first mate, the only crew on the boat which took up to 18 people out on 2 hour sailing cruises and whale watches. The owner of the boat was a real douche bag, just a classic rich loser with an insatiable appetite for anger and money. His older brother Gary was even worse but with an added dose of "little man syndrome", and he happened to be the Captain. Once in a while people would rent the boat privately if they didn't want to drink mai tais with total strangers seated on the bow. Nevertheless, this fateful day a wedding couple had rented it. They wanted to give their vows to each other on the wind whipped sea, blue in every direction, and kiss with newly salted lips to the elegant California ocean. I got paid to watch this sort of crap. So, hours before they boarded the boat was decorated in all sorts of wedding shit, wreaths and ribbons, fancy flowers and silks cluttered up the whole ship. It made me sick to see my vessel looking like a doll house on Prozac, but I smiled as they all waddled on, everyone in their best tuxedos and gowns, picture perfect hair and painted faces. The groom handed me two bottles of expensive champagne and barked at me:
"Right after we kiss, bring these up from the cooler and pop 'em open!"
"Yes sir" I sarcastically answered. He thought I was serious.
So, off we went sailing down the coast. I was steering down wind while the delinquent Captain Gary was awkwardly up on the bow stumbling over the vows. About seven brides maids, all plastic and pretentious lined the port side and about seven grooms dudes made horrible penguin lookalikes on the starboard side. So blah blah blah, do you take home girl to...and do you take this guy to blah blah blah? Whatever. They kiss and the groom gives me the wink for the champagne. Which is where the fun begins.
I'm down below when I hear this horrific yell from Capt. Gary: "Walker, Walker, quick, up here quick, bring some towels, quick, on the bow!" He anxiously flailed about. So up I run holding two rolls of paper towels, one in each hand like I'm late to the gladiator's Special Olympics. "On the deck, on the deck, quick, Jesus Christ" he pathetically kept shouting. So as I leap out there I take in all these things happening at once, all these senses coming at me in seconds. Everyone is standing around horribly uneasy, I can instantly feel it. They're looking with frozen shock at the bride's mother on her hands and knees. She is dry heaving and moaning quite loudly. I automatically think she must have gotten sea sick and is puking, I clean up after sick people on the job every day. But then I notice she is covered in a dark wetness, her legs and hands and hair are saturated with it. And milliseconds later I get an ungodly stench that rapes its way into my nostrils. Rancid outhouse with marinated dead things it smells ( and tastes) like. And then I see it, out the corner of my eye, on the port side, there is a stream of murky water spouting up 4 feet from the deck through a tiny hole. I realize its "black water", which is all the piss and shit that has been accumulating in a bag down below for weeks, which the captain had forgotten to pump out before the trip. The bag had gotten so full and backed up it was violently projecting a thick stream out of the tiny hole in the deck plate which is for the methane gas to escape from. The bride's mother had been standing right over it. Week old rotten piss and human shit had shot up into her dress, bent her over and proceeded to "old faithful" all over that poor woman, cascading liquid poop juice through out her $200 hairdo. She was in hysterics. Everyone else was in shock. I pounced onto the menacing jet stream with both rolls of paper towels. I could feel the pressure still pushing up its fecal forced excitement. Black water was running all down the deck while the wind streaked it horizontally across the cabin top. The whole wedding crew all huddled in one corner like they were hiding form lava, fearful they would suffer the same daunting fate as the barbie queen's mother.
The pressure resided and I hosed the deck clean. We instantly turned right around, heading quickly back towards port. Everyone silent. Nobody said anything. Only the light sloshing of waves upon the hull and the agonizing moans of the shit drenched woman were the only sounds to hear. The 20 minute sail back into the harbor felt like centuries. As I tied her up on the dock, the wedding gang all numbly walked off, slow and still riddled with disbelief. The captain looked at me like he just sat on a bag of kittens. I shook my head with such a disgusted shake that I'm sure he cried about it later . And after everyone left and I thoroughly cleaned the boat, I happened to come across the two fancy ass expensive bottles of champagne. That night I laughed wildly with my roommates as we danced around the house eating mircowaved pizza and $100 bottles of bubbly. Marriage is over-rated.