People in Maine work together towards a common goal. Unlike in New Jersey. The Garden State. I still can remember how I lost my way. It was in Somerville. I was a toiler on the seas. Cortez came sailing up. "Hey fellow," says he, all conquistador-like. "Have you any rum?"

"Fuck off!" says I and away drops the disguises on all my gun ports and a broadside of the 16-pounders I gives him. After all his reputation had preceded him and I was no fool. Rum he wanted but also total and complete control of my wessel and to kill me. Which prospect I did not like to think of and besides I likes my rum.

Well he thought that was a jolly good lark on my part. And so our friendship began.

Park Slope

Now, you are but a dreamer and I am but a dream, a dealer in nostalgia, but a sandman also. I reach in to the neocortex. I know that's who you are. I look up at the halo over your angelic face. You were so kind to me, not to mention a sex goddess. You wrote poetry and on the wall of your little room on Eighth Street, Park Slope, there was a poster showing flowers of the world. I liked sex with you.  And we went to a party in Greenwich Village, and there was disco and rockaroll, and a fistfight between the gays and the straights which we set aside for a breakfast of cooked eggs and toast as the sun rose on a new year in New York, in 1977.  When you get right down to it, after all, fistfights suck. In New York or on the high seas.

Back to Galleons and Guns

So up I sails onto Cortez's virtual front lawn and "ahoy johnny!" sez he and offers to uncork a bottle of rum in my honor held in his possession since the conquest of Tenochtitlan nearly half a millennium ago.

But that's a story for another day.  I just thought you would like to know that he's OK. Some of the other friends from the Plague Mill Mall were there too-also having a dance party to the sweet melodies of K.C. and the Sunshine Band but here for now my travelogue must end. Tomorrow we may make sail for Patagonia or else head down to LL Bean for some topsiders. One never really knows, does one?