Max Keanu

I write short stories, novels and poetry. Published. I once wrote screenplays...egad, in 1978. Email me. HERE'S A SHORT STORY: ≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈ THE SAILOR by max keanu Dolphins swim in ... more

I write short stories, novels and poetry. Published. I once wrote screenplays...egad, in 1978. Email me.

HERE'S A SHORT STORY:
≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈
THE SAILOR by max keanu


Dolphins swim in the wake of the yacht's bow, in ocean water as clear and deep and blue as the sky overhead. I lie on the deck watching the foam wake slicing a 'v' around the sleek yacht, my head hung over the edge of the deck, shaking off the remnants of a hangover. There was a lonely joy in listening to the noisy slush and slap of salt water on the hull as we sailed towards Hawaii, but I also knew it would be rough sailing up ahead.

How unpredictable the ocean was, just yesterday I laid down in this same position at the bow staring into the deep and still waters of the horse latitudes, studying my reflection as if in a mirror. I saw the beauty of the man that I was and wondered if my good looks were the curse that always got me in trouble. Don't get me wrong, I'm no self-absorbed narcissist; I'm only recalling the words Logan spoke to me two nights ago... you're my beautiful young sailor boy.

Headed to Hawaii, to Lahaina to be precise and there I would be relived of duty by her husband, paid my $100 per day salary and my adventure dreams of cruising Polynesia deep sixed... well, for now anyway.

Two nights ago, this beautiful young sailor boy slept with the captain's wife. For weeks Logan Berry had stalked me (usually while her husband slept) relentlessly, on deck during my turn at the wheel, below deck, in the head, always trying to trap me, corner me into situations to make me give in to her. Although the Nauti Life was 41 feet at the water line, she seemed to always have a line on me and on that night she threw an anchor hitch over me.

I'd been invited to crew and cook on the Nauti Life by Logan's daughter, Anne, who had a life-long crush on me in our San Diego High School days. She found out five days into the trans Pacific Ocean crossing I may have been the man of her dreams, but I was not going to be the man of her wedded future.... Daddy would make sure of that.

I was a good catch for Anne, not at all wealthy, but young, strong, pleasant speaking and handsome. I looked a lot like Logan's husband, Anne's father. Captain Jeff Berry was six foot two or their abouts, handsome in the Yacht Club kind of way and always smiling with a perfect set of capped lawyerly teeth.

Maui came into view, or I should say Haleakala Volcano came into view, poking through the sky at 10,023 feet on the horizon line. In no time at all we were running the briskly blowing windline between Maui and Molokai.

The Pailolo Channel, between the two islands, I recalled … one of the windiest and roughest of the entire Hawaiian Island channel.

The Mikado 55 ketch would handle the channel, but Captain Jeff would need my help. However, Jeff had banished me to the crew cabin and the bow and took the yacht in with a single sail. I also knew he'd need me to navigate her into the harbor. Again, he surprised me by calling the harbormaster, asking for two water taxis, one to guide the yacht in and one for me. He was not giving an inch. My transgression with his wife was the last straw for me, and maybe for him.

Billy Braggs, a leathery skinned blond sea dog introduced himself, saying, 'best damned water taxi driver in the Lahaina Roadstead, Billy B… you betcha." I climbed aboard his Zodiac. My gear was slung over my back and I carried the envelope containing the thirteen hundred dollars pay in my fanny pack. Apparently, my pay also covered the two taxies. I told Billy B I had a captain's license, asked if any work existed. He said in a skeptical tone, "Don't ya wish."

Lahaina harbour has the one thing a sailor wants when they take that first step on shore--- a workingman's bar within 100 feet and a quiet library to catch up on the news of the world. Lahaina was an old whaling town in history and a tourist mecca in reality, but to me as it was a romantic place filled with characters out of Conrad, Stevenson and Somerset Maugham novels.

Lahaina was also a town of restaurants and bars. I needed a job. My plan was simple, I'd get a job as a dishwasher, move up to busboy, then to waiter. Start at the bottom, when you're at the bottom. Waiting tables was where the money was. A shave, a haircut and with my good looks I'd be assured of that three-cord progression. A week as a dishwasher would wash the sea salt and grim out of me, but I yearned to be back at sea, captaining my own boat.

The one thing I needed was local references, as picking up or being picked up by another yacht to the South Seas was not something done lightly. Sure as hell wasn't going to get a referral from Captain Jeff Berry, although I might possibly swing a dandy referral from his wife.

The other thing a sailor does in a new town is get a tattoo.

Walking to where a local directed me, I saw a bamboo framed shingle reading, Tattoo-U. Entering the low ceiling structure, I heard Jean Luc Ponty bowing furiously on the tape player and lovebirds chirping in a rusted cage. A wisp of a man momentarily peeked his head around an oriental screen.

"Be with you, una memento, mon amine."

The man was tiny, not more than five feet tall and thin as a rail, with rose tinted spectacles worn low on his thin nose, giving him the flavor of a diminutive Dickens character lost in one of my Conrad novels.

Sitting at the other end of the room was a frizzy haired blond, staring at me over reading glasses. The San Francisco Chronicle headline blared a headline in bold type, 'Study proves PMS is biological rather than Psychological'. She followed me with luminous eyes set in the sclera of the purest white I'd ever seen on a human being.

"Zindo Fidanza, my name. You're?" The tiny man said, emerging from behind the screen again, twirling up a gravity-defying mustache.

" Jem Summers," I replied, watching the woman nod as if approving of my name, face and wiry physique.

"What a fantastic name, Jem with a J," the blonde woman said, putting down her newspaper to reveal an Italian Vogue magazine under it. She then placed the magazine on her lap to reveal a bathing suit of exceptional cleavage and a couple of miles of tattoos etched on her pale and blue-veined Irishy skin.

I smiled and nodded in appreciation and asked Zindo if 'she' was some of his work in progress.

"Winnie? Yes, she my best work. Winnie, you show gentleman your, ah, beautiful legs... to admire, cucciola mia, your legs, my work... yes, ah, we, we are a match made in the heaven."

The woman was a natural blond and had the brightest eyes I'd seen since I'd seen Angelina Jolie in Girl Interrupted. One eye was green, the other pale blue... her movie screen sclera of pure white giving her a lit-up, but slightly off-balanced brilliant aspect. Her unique eyes each radiate a separate story; a green eyed life of love and laurels, and the other pale blue eye telling a story of mystery and adventure.

She slowly elevated not one, but of both pant legs of her paint splattered athletic sweats to reveal to me a Sistine Chapel of tattooing on some heavenly thighs. From toes to mid-thighs she was covered in fantastic tattoos, intricate scenes of Biblical proportion with emphasis on the more devilish parts of the Bible. Hiromyous Bosch made an appearance, as did H.R. Geiger with a stylized version of the creature from that movie Alien... of a version leaner, meaner and of a more profound alienation and considerably more menacing.

"You see, I, I study the Botticelli, Raphael, Tintoretto, Caravaggio... Italian masters ... I am only the lowly tattoo artist... Ha-haha," he also laughed with an Italian accent, "but me, yes! The best tattoo artist alive. Yes, no? Ha-Haha-ha."

"Incredible work, but nothing that elaborate for me. How about your face, your face on me, beautiful lady? Do you mind?" I smiled to the woman with a devilish eyebrow displayed at my most rakish angle, a playful tease. I was a bit of an Errol Flynn, a bit of Harrison Ford... well hell, that's what people told me I look like.

"Oh, no, no, you no want to do that... err... you not know this woman, you not know this woman...."

"Yes," she responded in a slow calculated voice, a response that immediately tied me to her in some unknowable way, "I can allow that. Definitely, yes, I can allow that. However, my handsome young friend, you will be entwined in my life for the remainder of yours." She emitted a giggly-girly laugh what sounded more like a twelve year old than a mature woman whose age I placed at the downside of forty.

"No, no, no. You a no want to fool with Win---" Zombo or what ever his name said, but I cut him off. My mind was made up as soon as her eyes signaled me that her hormones were flowing as heavily as mine.

"---Her face on my back or nothing." I looked to her and she smiled back, nodding, as if she had won a battle without even trying. Then unexpectedly, she was shaking her head and wagging a finger at me saying, "No, I must be on your arm, on your big strong arm, my manly-man, on your right arm... Please."

" I don't care where it's at. I'd be flattered to wear you on my arm or anywhere."

"I no think arm is a tattoo place for you. I to put it on ---"

"---Zindo, do as he asks. I'll pay for it, " the woman said in a commanding and shrill voice, "I'll pay you what I know your work is worth and you will tattoo a life-size face of me on Mr. Jem Summers' wonderfully masculine arm."

Out of her pocket came a roll of money slung together with a jumbo rubber band, a big roll. I'm talking about a wad of maybe 100, $100-dollar bills. She casually tossed ten bills at Zindo, scattering them on the tile floor in front of him and sniggered.

"You sure for me to do this, Mr. Jem? A tattoo, eternal, it take many sessions to please Winnie. Remove it, pain you no like, dermabrasion, salabrasion, cryosurgery and excision. More painful than when I put on skin. Remove it... ah, leave nasty scar you live with until you die," Zindo said in a flutter of nervous English accented Italian.

He picked up the bills, crumpled then into a wad and stuffed them in a back pocket of his designer shorts. With great industry he began to prepare a tray of needles and colored inks while humming a high-tenor Italian aria.

"On my arm, full sized or nothing," I said, flashing a flirtatious smile to Winnie. She only stared at me with those unusual eyes of her, then looked to her forearm as if consulting one of her tattoos for advice.

"Winnie, I can no use picture, no use a picture of you. You, I, him have to be here, pose for each day's session---"

"---Not a problem Zindo, you see, Jem Summers is going to be staying with me for quite awhile. Take off your shirt, Jem. Zindo will come to my estate to complete your tattoo."

"I'm going to do what?" I asked with a cock-eyed tilt to my head and a suspicious frown. No man likes to be put up... or put out abruptly, which is what happens eventually with spur-of-the-moment invitations like this.

"You've obviously just gotten into town. You came in on the new yacht in the harbor, The Nauti Life. You were fired as a crewman because you fucked the captain's wife. Am I correct?"

"Jesus, news travels fast in this town. Cook, crewman and... fucker, it's true. I see my reputation proceeds me."

"Zin, I want you to place my tattoo looking up at Jem so I can gaze into Jem's beautiful brown eyes... so he can stare down at me, talk to me, kiss my beautiful lips during lonely nights at sea," and while she said that she bent her head to her arm and kissed the lips of a tattooed man on her arm, a devious looking man with a dark curling mustache and sharply pointed goatee.

She turned back to me with her tongue still out... so sexy, nasty, provocative, inviting, sexy, wanting and long, very long. Her tongue then flashed out quickly and disappeared just as quickly and I swore it touched her Adam's apple, if she had an Adam's apple.

"Don't a ask me to do that Winnie. Client right.... I artist... I do what client asked. He say you to be on his back--- I put on back."

"Oh stop being so fussy, Zandman. Woman wants her tattooed eyes looking up at mine, fine, just do it. It's only a tattoo. What the lady wants, the lady gets."

"Si amica mia, be careful what you promise this lady.... "

I was old enough to realize what Zando or Mondo or Zanadu was jabbering on about artist freedom and his ideas were based on artistic pride. No artist likes to be told what to do or how to do it... but the two of them went back and forth like an old married couple the entire time it took to ink in her outline.

I went home with Winnie that night and realized I'd hit the jackpot. We screwed in a California King for nearly two days before we stopped. I was worn-out, had to eat and sleep and bathe. Often, as I drifted off into that wonderful sleep after our intense sex, I'd see her staring into one of her tattoos and having what appeared to be non-stop intimate conversation with her naked and inked flesh.

On the third day, Zando arrived with his inks and needles and I learned her full name was Alexandra Winter-Waltz Forrester and that she was a millionaire many times over. While Zando touched up an on-going tattoo on her pubic mound, I wander around her mansion like a curious pussycat.

Did she leave her correspondence, her bank statements out for me to find while she was occupied with Zando? You see, I peaked at a bank statement and as soon as I read eight figures starting with a nine, I put the statements back and tried to cool my emerging schemes of wealth, wedding games and love flames.

Her house was a mansion disguised as a Polynesian estate with tiki torches, grass huts gazebos, a lagoon, pools, verandas up the yin-yang and grounds made to appear like a tropical paradise of yesteryear. However, all the foliage was artfully arranged plastic and cloth. The lava rocks, plastic; the grass, Astro-turf; the sound of the trade winds, piped in. The numerous tropical ponds were only 3-D sculptures painted to look like pools and all inhabited by fake, plastic, motorized birds. The moat-like lagoon, only a mural stretching around the periphery of the estate, a rolled out giant canvas oil painting in the style of Alfred Bierstadt.

Nevertheless the house was real, 10000 square feet of elegant tropical workman ship and design having a never-lived-in look. In the sparkling clean glass-fronted cabinets, in almost every room, I saw hand painted Italian flatware, wine glasses of various shapes and sizes, and hundreds of pre-Columbia sculpture, all of the same design; all rotund female fertility sculptures with either enlarged bellies, breasts or buttocks or combinations of all three.

There was only one pre-Columbia male figure; a clay man with a bowl haircut, arms and legs in a running stance and a large penis, sticking straight out. I wondered if it depicted a healthy male running to a willing woman or running away from a wanton woman. Oddly, the sculptured face looked a lot like me.

Great-grand Daddy Forrester made a fortune in inks for printing and linotype machine and then in his days of phenomenal wealth acquired art from all around the world. On the walls of this little grass shack were original Braques, Picassos, and other impressionist of the period. An original, an Alfred Bierstadt oil painting of Polynesians greeting Christian Europeans adorned the wall in the main bathroom. Oddly, one native woman collecting coconuts, looked exactly like tattooed Winnie as a naked savage.

The next morning, on my side of the bed was the outlined sketch of Winnie in a snow storm that read in neatly printed pencil lettering on the bottom: Winter Waltz - Winnie - '78.

She had a drawing of me on her bedside table, reading in pencil at the bottom, My Man - Jeremiah Roger Thorndike Summers.... Ah, but I never told anyone my middle names. She'd obviously rummaged through my duffel and she must have drawn me while I slept. Something about the drawings hemmed me in like electric fence posts around the bed.

Later, as I walked about in my new home, with a cup of the most exquisite and flavorful coffee I'd ever tasted, I realized every painting in the house had a real or surreal image of Winnie in it.

Four months passed as if in a dream and all I did, as a kept man, was cultivate cucumbers in the organic garden and learn to draw, doodling really, as I was a true dilettante now. Whereas Winnie was an accomplished artist, quite a good one in fact, and presently had a show going on in collaboration with the Lahaina Arts Society taking place in the Jail Gallery on Front Street.

Penny Forshaw was her name and she came thrice a week to clean the house and wash Winnie's clothes. This day, Winnie rushed out early to drive the thirty miles to Lahaina to place one more picture in her art show, one more of her abstract oils, thinking just one more painting would catapult her to fame and… hell with the fortune, she already had that.

Penny had laughingly tossed off all my advances towards her. Advances usually made while Winnie was still in the house, but at the far end of the seventeen-bedroom house, for in this house a yell or a scream was oftentimes lost in its own echoes.

Today I did Penny in a back bedroom near the pool area and she really wanted it. The drone of the water feature, of a waterfall created a white noise that muffled the sighs and screams of our pleasure. Winnie had to have white noise going day and night, along with the constant hum of dehumidifiers in every room.... It clears my mind and lungs of black thoughts and demons, she often told me.

I wanted to place Penny under me and do her from the rear when I turned and saw Winnie standing in the doorway. How long she had been home I could only guess. There she stood, smiling, arms akimbo, a blazing sun lightening her up from the skylight's translucent diffusions.

"Jem, you will finish. You will cum or I'll shoot you both. I must see your come Jem. Do not cum inside her, but on her. Or I'll kill the both of you."

With that pronouncement she drew a 38-caliber pistol out from a black leather holster buckled around her waist and pointed it at us.

After I came, she told me to, just step away from the harlot, just step away from the whore, these being the exact words she used and with a small purple glass vial she collected my semen off Penny's stomached and breasts.

A few minutes later she brought Penny her pay out side, calculated down to the penny, and then pricked Penny with a sharp needle through the flesh of her left cheek.

She laughed loud and said, "That, you little slut is a little reminder not to play with a prick that belongs to me. I never want to see you again. You're dismissed."

Oddly, nothing was ever said about the incident and Winnie acted as if it had never happened, at least in my waking life. However, from that day on in my dreams she was my constant companion of malevolent evil. I was everywhere in her world, always that floating, flying being who has a panoramic view of historic events of evil... endless conflagrations, wars, plagues, beheadings; all seen in realities of living colors and dimension all too real, and always accompanied by Winnie's whispery voice of venomous breathing; a diabolical voice describing death and destruction to me in detail. She was the meticulous narrator of my nightmares never-ending.

One day, as I sat by the real pool, I spied a new neighbor through a break in a hedge on the five-acre parcel next to Winnie's. She was an English woman taking tea, enjoying the view and her two young children playing and laughing. The sound of children would never be ours to hear or enjoy, as Winnie admitted to me that she was barren as the deepest sea floor. I was living a life of luxury; with a loving but very unusual woman... however, the realization struck me that having children with Winnie would be like sacrificing them up to the ultimate female demon, Līlīṯu.

I had to meet the neighbor in private, as I'd found no other way to escape Winnie's constant eye on me. We sat on her patio and I discovered the woman's named was June Hatchet, was divorced and had an eye for me right away. Being sequestered for months now, I'd nearly forgotten how beautiful women always gave me that second look, that second smile, that invitation to the dance....

However, as I felt my hormones activate, provoked by desiring glances, gestures and body language from her, the most incredible pain shot trough me, a pain strong enough to make me gasp and bend forward in agony. June was taken aback and recoiled into a shielded deportment and a fearful look of surprise on her face.

I begged off, telling her it was a strange pain, a persistent pain in my arm and I decided to get into the pool to sooth it. I removed my tee shirt and there was Winnie... her head now a three dimensional eruption on the skin of my right forearm where her face was tattooed... her face seemed to emerge slowly, so alive, inch by inch out of the intricate tattoo of her face.

"Do you really want to fuck her? Oh my Jemmy, you're a bad, bad boy. You say I'm your true love and then you become a werewolf, lusting after her and I know you're already planning the next rendezvous with her. You're so sure of yourself in an affaire with our neighbor Juney. Oh, Jem you're just too good looking for your own fucking good."

I had to get out of the pool, sit down, but I did so while still staring at her face, a face now animated in loving eyes and a knowing smile from my arm. She giggled aloud, and I knew it was her real voice spoken because Polyhedral, Winnie's parrot, screeched, "Winnie is a good girl. Everyone loves Winnie," over and over and she only did this when the sound of Winnie high pitched and piercing voice was present.

"Yes my darling, we are in real time and I see you with my eyes this minute... you're never beyond my reach."

The muscles of my arm then morphed into her animated frizzy haired blond head of wild eyes, erupting out of me, more and more, until her entire head and neck bent up, looking directly in my astonished eyes.

"We'll have no more fooling around Jem. Do you hear me? This is for real. Darling, tell me you will never think about fooling around again."

I answered her, for I was so use to obeying her commands, obliging her, allowing myself to be kept and coddled by her in everything and in almost every desire I had.

She just disappeared ... as if it never happened and I fell back on the chaise lounge bewildered and in shock. I could only wonder if I'd been slipped a hallucinogenic drug or was going crazy. I brought my arm up close to my eyes to inspect the tattoo of her, realizing that I must have hallucinated for the tattoo only possessed her freakish eyes and that doleful Mona Lisa smile.

Nearly a year passed in her company of altered reality and tattooed being. I now feared my right arm more than anything, feared the sight of her emerging from it at some public place. She would appear, spying on me, while she was away gallivanting about the world, promoting her art that was too demonic to sell to anyone but the most perverse aficionados of her inner circle. She popped up at random and reminded me to be a good boy, that she still owned me completely and would plant a big kiss on my lips.

One lonely afternoon, during an April shower that cast sunny Maui in a confluence of angry dark clouds, I received a phone call in the kitchen.

"Jem, it's Logan...."

At first I had no recollection of the name and then it struck me... Logan Berry!

"Oh Logan, it is so good to hear your voice, " I whispered and even as I said this, I felt Winnie rising up through the skin on my right arm.

"Hold on a moment," I told her as I stood up and thrust my right arm into the freezer, closing the door as tight as possible. I had no idea if this would camouflage the phone call, but it was worth a try.

"You sound different... listen Jem, Jeff is in Switzerland trying like hell to get some money from Credit Suisse. I'm sure he will get it, but we need to sail out and he wants you to captain the yacht... no hard feelings. Listen buddy, my beautiful sailor boy, I caught him with a Victoria Secret's model and he relented... long story short, do you want to captain The Nauti Life to Samoa?"

Weather Winnie heard the call or not I couldn't tell because I'd already made up my mind to leave.

"Yes, I'll do it," I whispered to Logan.

"What's wrong with your voice?"

"Laryngitis. When do we leave? " I whispered thinking of ice cream. I felt Winnie's head slowly settle back into the flesh of my arm. She must be preoccupied with Bedouins I thought; why she was in the Yemen I didn't even bother to ask.

"That's the thing Jem, we leave today, as soon as you can get here. Circumstances beyond our control dictate we leave a.s.a.p.---"

"---I'll be there in an hour." I hung up abruptly and thought only of Stouffer's Corner Bistro Roast Beef and Cheddar Toasted Sub... shaved slices of roast beef with sautéed onions... and I kept thinking about, reading the side of the package in the freezer. I concentrated of the color picture of the sandwich ... mushrooms and cheddar cheese on Italian bread. I thought of nothing but that sub-sandwich and loganberries while I drove the thirty miles to the harbor. I knew she would read my mind...

On the boat, whilst well under way and adjusting the rigging, she finally discovered my deception and up came her head out of my arm. I was stripped of my shirt, as I knew her and I were going to do battle.

"On The Nauti Life... you bad boy Jem..."

"Winnie, I'll not let you win this time!"

I looked over; saw Anne and Logan standing agog, totally bewildered as I began talking to my arm.

"You will not kill them… or me ... never!"

My right arm shot out, striking Logan and Anne, pushing them back, pushing them aside before the mainsail boom slung around to strike them. They tumbled on to the deck. Anne went over the side.

"No Winnie, no! I will not return to you. Let them live!"

"I'll teach you a lesson lover boy! They all die... forget about Anne. She's the price you pay for deceiving me."

I quickly drew up my rigging knife and stabbed at my arm, striking Winnie in the eye. Immediately Winnie's head spun around and around, returning to look at me with no sign of damage at all. Then in a in horrid stare of astonishment she laughed and said,

"Oh my beautiful young sailor boy, you've stabbed yourself," But it was in Logan's voice I heard and then I knew it was the end of the line for me. My death would be the only way to rid myself of this demon.

"Yes! Just do it! Take the plunge, lover boy. Over the side with ye matey, into the drink, deep six to ya ... say hello to Davy Jones..." Winnie screamed in an echoing, screeching uproar and began slobbering gooey saliva, spitting blood and vomit all over my arm.

"Into the deep blue my little Jemmy-whemmy."

Up I went, over the side of the Nauti Life in a great dive. I hit hard on the ocean with a tumbling splash, as we were running the windline and hitting thirty knots with both sails billowing.

I spotted Anne immediately and then I saw it come towards the both of us out of the shadows, as if the blood from my bleeding arm was my calling card. A Tiger shark advanced, flaunting all fifteen feet of its terror, slithering its undulating stripes towards me in a curving sideswipe.

I stuck out my arm to fend off the attack and saw Winnie's smiling face, her head fully out of my arm now and shrieking a maniacal laughter, her blond hair a mass of lightning like tentacles floating against the dark cerulean blue of the deep, the white sclera of her eyes like torchlights.

Instead of my arm, the shark took off her head in one quick bite. I watched her long blond hair, straightened now in the strong current and streaming out the sides of the massive shark's mouth as it descend deeper and deeper.

I awoke days later. My right arm and hand were now a mass of bandages and there was Jeff Berry, sitting on my hospital bed, holding my good hand and smiling at me. The first thing he said,

"Jem, how can I ever repay you for saving my Anne's life? Anything I can do son, anything I can do, just ask. Any man who fights off a Tiger shark to save my daughter is the man I want for a son-in-law and I'm indebted to you for life."

Anne and Logan stood behind him with very happy grins on their beautiful faces.