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Portrait of the Author as a Grown Man

by Rafer Ingwald Nelsen

It was a beautiful spring day, so I decided to take two girlfriends sailing in the hay field behind the barn. The water was calm, oily black. I had the girls busy themselves with the rigging and sails while I set about cleaning up the prickly little hairs that had been clinging to the stern of the boat since my last haircut. This sounds easier than it was, for the hull was constructed entirely of a very thin and flexible white rubber which was covered with little bumps. An oversized, inverted bathing cap with golf ball treading. So, pinching each hair between thumb and index finger was a laborious and frustrating procedure - the kind that makes a man's scrotum contract - and, as can be easily imagined, using two hands didn't help much.

Just as the girls were hoisting the main sail, and I was finishing off the stray hairs with a distracted brush of the forearm on the railing and a curse, the weather turned on us. Huge waves suddenly came rolling up the field over the wild strawberry patch, crashing onto the bow of our little boat. Luckily, it reacted well under the stress, rolling and bending with the waves like a jellyfish. Encouraged by the performance, I ordered the girls to proceed full sail with the main and to raise the spinnaker for good measure; the waves may have been against us, but the wind was with us.

The boat surged ahead with the wind, cutting the crest of each wave in a convulsive fit of foam, and soon we moved over the strawberries and into my father's cannabis garden. The buds of the marijuana plants looked and smelled splendid (odd for spring), oozing a sweet musky essence, but I feared for them on account of the salt water. I considered weighing anchor to harvest my father's spring crop in the face of the deluge, but just then a gust of wind pushed us out of picking range and toward the deer path that led into the woods at the bottom of the field. Concerned about a snag on one of the many tree branches at the entrance to the woods, I immediately gave the order to trim the main sail and store the spinnaker in favor of the jib. But my crew had nary the time to shuffle their clogs before two huge naked people washed up beneath the bowsprit. Both girls jumped back in surprise, then squirmed in place and looked hard for private parts. It was only thanks to my own presence of mind and quick feet that the mainsail was saved from a sure puncture wound.

I ordered the girls below and invited the giants aboard. There was a male and a female, both well over seven feet tall, as white and blond as Swedes. They had to be gods. The male saw the admiring look in my eye as I surveyed the female, and he explained that she had been shaped that way on purpose. The hollow spots had been carved out with a great golden spoon, just like for a honey dew melon. I asked them what they were doing in these parts and they said that they came for some peace and quiet and a little bass fishing. Bass fishing? I had lived in the old farm house up by the barn for nearly 18 years, had grown up in that field and in those woods, and had never caught sight of a bass. But there were bears. No grizzlies, of course, just Eastern black bears, but they could be dangerous too, when riled, or so it seemed to the eight year old boy I once was. I told the Gods about the tree down by Donkey Trail that had been mauled by a hungry bear. As a kid, I would run to the tree hoping to catch the bear red-handed about to scratch more bark. I would cover the last hundred yards Indian style, stepping between the twigs, so as not to attract the bear's attention and end up the object of its hunger. Of course, I never even glimpsed the sneaky bastard. The Male God gave a snort and said that the tree didn't receive those marks from a bear, but from a drunken snowmobiler. The drunk in question was riding his snowmobile late at night in the dead of winter and never saw the barbed wire that this very God had strung across the trail. When his neck caught on the barbs, the wire gave a jerk and scratched the bark. The God was genuinely sorry about the damage done to the poor tree, but even He couldn't foresee everything.

The girls began hollering, and baying and banging on the hatch, which had been battened down and upon which I was seated, so I tossed the Gods a set of keys and pointed the way to the cabin in the woods beyond the cannabis patch. I told them to enjoy the fishing and make as much French toast as they liked. They thanked me with great pearly smiles and dove into a towering wave, holding the Budweiser key chain between them. I let the girls out of the hold and set a course due south down the deer path. The girls followed the Gods' buttocks rocking and rolling in the surf, as they swam away.

As the trimmed main sail billowed to take us on our own way, I decided to write a short note to my parents. I didn't want them to be surprised to find two Norse deities in their honeymoon cabin in the woods. I tossed the message overboard in a bottle, trusting those relentless waves, and took the rudder with my left pinky, knowing full well that destiny was really the one at the helm of that particular dinghy.