The lunatics: The Deep Serene.

For Yonton, and for my rent.
I knew he was a lunatic because he lived on a ship and knew nothing about the nightmarish bacterial biosphere of the human mouth.

It happened after I'd been living aboard The Deep Serene for thirteen days. Unlucky thirteen my father would have said, and I was to prove him correct once again. 

Why I was on the boat in the first place is a long story, to be told at a later date. Essentially, the first lunatic caught wind of my polar dreams and convinced me that McMurdo station would only consider hiring a woman, or a man, or any person, if they had extensive experience with life in the open sea, deep space, or somewhere of equal stress and isolation. 

Seeing no opportunity and having no desire to find my way into the space program, I took him for his word and stepped aboard his boat, The Deep Serene, which, at the time I write this story, has been reincarnated as the bulkheads, bows, sterns and ladders of one hundred other vessels at it's once-home port. Which is to say it was torn apart and canabalized by its own cousins. The lunatic, stripped of his captain's license for good. 

Thirteen days at sea, although never too far from port, we travelled mostly in circles, and I had learned a considerable amount about boat life. I could name the anachronistic instruments in the bridge, although their actual purposes were dangerously coupled with mathematics, of which I am hopeless. The lunatic would talk gibberish about the stars as if he could sail simply by their tilt and placement in the sky, but I saw him pour over his maps with his sexton and pencil a hundred times more often then I ever saw him look upwards at night. Besides which, how difficult can it be to sail in circles.  

Besides the navigation, I learned radio commands and a new set of words for every day items, six brand new knots: the triple overhand, blood knot, square knot, the Turk's head, figure eight and bow knot, and proper use and function of the Head. In addition, I developed a rigorous set of rules to keep the galley tidy and functioning to fit the needs of myself the voracious appetite of the captain. 

It was the generator that did me in. The generator that coughed twice and then died, killing the lights but not the radio, which had its own set of batteries. The lunatic was in the bridge reading a water warped paper back novel, having dropped the hook a few hours earlier. We were rocking a bit in a disagreeable wind, although it never bothered me. I grew up in the tips of trees, as far away from my Munchausen-stricken mother and her glasses of medicine as possible. The trees swayed and waved the long limbs where I clung, and from that I developed an iron constitution and legs that bent and braced independent of my thinking mind.  

And so, on that thirteenth night, what disturbed me at the moment was not the tipping floors but instead the lunatic reading in the bridge instead of in the living quarters with me. He'd been spending more time there in the evening, while we were swinging securely on the chain and he could have been below. I was happy to keep quiet and let him read in peace, and I told him that over dinner, but after we finished the meal he was up the ladder and out the hatch all the same. I stood there, turning the dishcloth around and around on the plate like a broken record. I was feeling grim. And then the generator hiccuped, the lights blinked twice and then went out for good. 

The insult of sudden darkness on an already disappointing evening made me suddenly seethe with anger, and I slammed down the dish cloth (not particularly satisfying) and felt my way through the tiny passageway towards the little space towards the stern where we slept. There, I groped for the panel that hid the generator and pulled hard. It refused to budge. With mounting frustration I put both hands on the metal handle, turned my head to the side and yanked with all the strength I could muster. The panel flew open and the corner ripped across my cheek as it swung by, leaving a stinging gash. 

 What was I doing anyway, opening the panel? I did not have a flashlight. I know next to nothing about generators. Was I planning on kicking it? I hope so. I'll never know. 

I stood there, hand pressed against my cheek which suddenly felt wet and three times bigger than it had been ten seconds prior, until the lunatic appeared next to me, holding a flashlight. He looked confused, almost annoyed, to see me there, until he saw that I'd been hurt. His expression melted into worry and I became instantly satisfied with my injury.  

"Come with me," he said, leading me by the hand to the main quarters. He sat down opposite me, setting the light on the table and gently removing my hand from my face. Playing on his tenderness, I decided to act aloof as punishment for his sudden exit after dinner. 

"It's fine," I said, pushing his hand back. "I just need the med kit." The med kit, which I suddenly realized, I'd never seen.

And then the Lunatic leaned in, opened his mouth like a fish, and changed the course of my life entirely.  
He pressed his mouth against my cheek, enveloping nearly half of my face, and began sucking it gently, as if removing the venom from a snakebite. Which is something you should never try to do because it is not effective. The course red hair on his face bristled against my eyes and chin and I drew back at first by instinct, shocked but also bemused. Here was the lunatic, the big barrel chested man, softly working his lips against my face the way I'd seen fawns chew peacefully on the tips of branches. He tongued the gash as if to clean it out.

Which is a terrible idea. 

But also the sweetest thing I'd seen him do in my short and ship-bound time with him. And so I let him do it, leaning against his chest and shutting my eyes. When he'd finished, he pulled away and gave me a long and serious look, although there was a note of something else, one of triumph, of personal victory. Here he was, the Good Captain and ship doctor as well. And all without iodine or sterile strips. 

I let him lead me to bed, and before I undressed I almost asked for the med kit, but stopped, thinking it might hurt his feelings somehow. Lulled by the ship's rocking and his strange but unusually soothing gesture, I fell instantly asleep.  

Within three days, the infection had set in. Red lines spiderwebbed from the abrasion, which wept a greenish yellow glaze. It grew hot and pulsed with my heartbeat, and I touched at it compulsively.  He was reluctant to take me to shore and to a hospital. 

It's as if he saw that infection as a conscious choice that I made, some sort of systemic rejection of him.