By Lucy

Saturday was my first all-day race, ostensibly around Pie Island. We were warned that we might be out ’til dark, depending on how the wind behaves, so after I had breakfast I ran to the store and grabbed a Gatorade. I packed a sandwich, a bagel, the Gatorade, my bottle of green tea, some Tylenol and Metamucil. I slept late and ran down to the dock for 11:00.

As we all hopped on the boat, getting her ready to make way, I noted a bright red boat on the opposite side of the dock called “Andiamo”.

“Ah, the Andiamo is here today.” Chris said.

I corrected his pronunciation before I could stop myself. He raised his eyebrows as I felt a blush crawl up my face.

“You know Italian?”

“I know some Italian. Italian carpenters like to swear at you in their language.” I said casually. We’ll just leave out that the Vagabond is the only person I’ve met on the jobsite who is fluent in Italian.

Actually, it was interesting when I started learning Italian. It wasn’t just for him, I know there is a large Italian population in Thunder Bay. Since I love their food, and the fastest way to endear yourself to them is to speak their language, it seemed like enlightened self-interest that could be useful in a number of ways. When you already know French and Latin, standard Italian is easy to pick up. But also, like, it was a bit for him and I won’t deny that.

When he first realized I was teaching myself the language, he didn’t have much of a reaction beyond a flash of surprise in his eyes, and to correct whatever I was trying to pronounce. But earlier this year, he did comment on it. He said his last girlfriend before me was intentionally a woman who was fluent in Italian before they met, thinking the language barrier was the reason his relationships fall apart (as opposed to, y’know, him just not communicating, which is the real reason!). He then said quietly, to himself, that he’d never actually had a girlfriend teach herself Italian for him. When I did the “sorry, I didn’t quite catch that”, he cleared his throat and changed the subject.

The Andiamo continued to haunt me, not helped at all by the fact that they were one of three boats in our class, so they were our direct competitor. Also, they were the only boat that was red.

We were the bare minimum of crew; me, Chris, Bruce, Foster and Michelle.

Since we were short-handed, I had to raise the main and the jib. I try to avoid doing that, because most of the way through raising them the rope changes to a steel cord that is frayed and barbed and I have my moments, ok? This time, I decided just to power through my fear and got both raised so quick it surprised even me, and no cuts.

The start of the race was delayed, and then delayed again. There’s no breaks on a boat (unless you count the anchor) so there was a dozen boats milling around the start line. Trying not to smack into each other, or get too far from the start for when the race did finally begin.

When the horn finally did sound, no one was going anywhere fast. There was barely any wind and the gem-green lake was smooth as glass. Everyone broke out their spinnakers, but we were still all putting along within yelling distance of each other.

Nothing much to do but drift along and hope we found some wind.

“You know, the owner of the Andiamo is Finnish.” Chris commented.

“Ah, so I can’t yell at him in Italian. Why is it called that?” I said dryly.

“It’s bad luck to rename a boat.” Foster jumped in.

About an hour into the race, we finally started to find a little wind.

The Andiamo and another ship not in our class pulled ahead of us, angling towards the Sleeping Giant. Chris kept us aimed more towards the buoy that was the turnaround point.

Just like being at the Head of the Giant, it’s always wild to me to see how tiny Thunder Bay is compared to the wilderness around it. In this case, it was helped by the fact we were traveling parallel to Fort William First Nation, the mountains handily dwarfing anything man has made.

From this angle, as well, we were getting a good view of the Sleeping Giant, the craigs and cliffs you can’t see from shore.

As we passed the Welcome islands, the wind picked up even more. I ducked into the cabin to shove some mouthfuls of food into my face. I had a feeling the further out we got, the choppier it would get, and I should eat something while it was relatively calm.

Isle Royale became visible in the distance, which was curious. I remembered in Copper Harbor wondering if we’d be able to see from land, although we weren’t. Now I knew I wasn’t that far off, although the distance from Copper Habor to Isle Royale is twice the distance as it is from the Welcome Islands.

At two, the wind had finally picked up enough to put away the spinnaker and raise the jib again.

Chris mentioned some people are too afraid to go on Superior, the Great Lake that was basically a freshwater ocean. He’s sailed on the actual ocean, used to keep a boat stored in Florida and traveled down there for the winter. We both reminisced about how much we missed the actual sea, the smell of the salt. I suppose Christchurch is right on the south Pacific – I should smell the sea once I step out of the airport. I wonder how far inland it travels? I can usually smell it when we reach New Brunswick going east, but then I’m not sure how much of the St Laurence is brackish.

We also talked a bit about sailing in New Zealand. Chris says New Zealanders are world renowned for sailing, which makes sense when you know how sailing is integral to the culture of the Māori and Polynesia in general. He suggested I might want to get a job on a sailing ship, but I’m unsure what that would entail. Personally, I’d like to apprentice to either a shipwright or a sailmaker. It speaks to both my current career as a carpenter and my former career as a seamstress.

We were flying now, the waves starting to pick up and rock the boat. It had taken us 3 hours to go halfway to the turnaround point, but just an hour to travel the other quarter. It was right at the toes of the Giant, mores the pity, because tacking would require all hands so I couldn’t stop to take a look at the bird sanctuary I had missed visiting.

On the way back, Chris requested we put up the spinnaker. Things quickly went south, however. The boat was fighting him. It’s hard for me to tell what’s normal boat rocking and what is the boat threatening to capsize, and Chris is always unflappably calm. Then he said, cool as could be, “I’m losing control of the boat, could you take down the spinnaker please?”

We leapt up to tear down the spinnaker. I was panicking, unsure how the others were.

(Kevin said there’s something called death rolls, when the boat is rocking so much it’s burying alternate rails every few moments, and we were close to that but not quite there.)

As we settled back onto the sidedeck, I turned to Bruce. “Well, supposedly this boat is capsize-proof…”

“Oh, it is! The spinnaker would have destroyed itself before it would be capable of capsizing us. It’s a light sail.”

Ah, that makes sense, I suppose.

We went back through the Welcomes. There’s a very narrow channel to navigate, even for a small boat like ours. The wind died off, but we drifted through on inertia and it was tense but ultimately uneventful.

Shortly after 5 we were back at the dock, the race having taken 6-ish hours, and most of that was the slow start! We had a few drinks and some snacks and talked for a while as the sun slowly descended. When I hopped off the boat, Chris said, “I don’t know how to thank Kevin for inviting you!”

As I got home between 6 and 7, I thought of a good answer; make his rum and coke with the good rum! Ah, well. It’s not just Kevin – there was some strange mix of fate going on here. I might have ended up on the boat just by being at the crew bench as well.

I went to bed within an hour of getting home, so exhausted from the day spent sailing, but exactly how I wanted to be. I was far enough out from my last job that if it wasn’t for sailing being so physically demanding, I’d be going squirrely.

The next morning, me, Hanuman and Emily went out for donuts. Somehow it crossed my feed that the mini donut truck was launching 30 new flavours this weekend, which seemed like as good an excuse as any to go out. We drove down to the Best Buy parking lot and placed 6 orders of donuts. Hanuman and Emily got 1 order of a dozen each, but I ordered 4 – I wanted to try a bunch of different flavours, and it was only 5 bucks!

I ordered Sour Patch Kids, Maple (something), Salted Caramel, and Persian Creme.

I tried one of each. I was slightly disappointed – because of my newfound lack of taste for sugar, I could really tell that there was a lack of flavour here. The Sour Patch Kids donuts, for example, was just a regular order of mini donuts with sour patch kids scattered atop it. So it’s not a flavour… it’s a topping. The Salted Caramel had no noticeable saltiness. Maple was Mapley and should hope so, nature makes it for you. The Persian Creme was really good, though! I tried one of each and then put them in the car.

Hanuman needs boxes for his move, and Emily wanted some pencil crayons, so we went into Wally Mart and wandered around a bit.

After I dropped them off, I went home and killed time until K was free. I dropped some stuff off at his place for safekeeping, some things I thought he might end up using, like my sewing machine. I brought him the salted caramel donuts and I ate the maple ones.

Monday morning I had a doctor’s appointment, in theory. I had written down the time, the date and the directions (the building “next to” the hospital), but I realized I had forgotten to write down the name of who I was seeing.

I drove down there, parked with plenty of time, and walked into the lobby.

There’s no receptionist. It’s one of those medical office buildings where it’s just an office, not a unity. I went up to the panel and looked at the list – maybe a name would jump out at me.

Nothing. I thought I was here to see a nurse practitioner, but I didn’t notice any particular offices for them. There was mostly general surgeons in this building, but one gastroenterologist. I went up to his office and asked the receptionist.

Nope, not that one.

I went into the hospital. They can always track down where your appointment is supposed to be.

They could not. Apparently even though it’s on hospital grounds, it isn’t “part of” the hospital, although they could see I had an appointment scheduled (figure that out).

I went back to the building and sat outside and people-watched. Surely once I was late enough, they would call me to ask if I was on my way, and then I could tell them I was lost.

9:30 ticked by.

9:40…

I got up and left.

Yes, it was a silly mistake to not write down who I was seeing, but what doctor/nurse doesn’t call the day before to confirm the appointment? It’s so standard I didn’t even think about it. I’m still not even sure what the appointment was for.

I puttered around my room until it was time for sailing.

I was pretty sure this would be my last day for sailing. Wednesday I absolutely could not – I had a Soroptimist meeting. Friday was a maybe, but I figured I’d probably be too busy absolutely panicking to go sailing.

Since it was ostensibly my last day, everyone asked where I wanted to be as a special treat. Gillian suggested the main, so there I went.

The main was fine. It’s funny how many different kinds of strength there are – I could jump the main with little trouble, and tacking was fairly easy, but moving the traveler back and forth as another learning curve. Eventually I learned to move the traveler while we were turning and there was no wind filling the sail. Pop the sheet out of the cleat, duck under the boom as it swings across, pull the sheet and pop it back into the cleat while everyone is still reeling in the jib.

One of the cruise ships was pulling in before the start of the race, so we buzzed it a bit for a laugh. It’s kind of sad how there was almost no one on deck. You’re pulling into one of the most beautiful nature oasis’s on the planet, sun setting behind it in a riot of red and pink and yellow, and you… what? Have better things to look at on Tiktok?

After the race was over, I said, “Alright, I suppose I should fix the spreader.”

Atop the mast is a spreader bar for the rigging… something something. The important thing is, there’s supposed to be some kind of bumper on the end of it to prevent the sail from rubbing on it, but it fell off and apparently no one wanted to go up the mast to fix it.

“Are you sure?” Chris asked.

“Might as well, pretty sure I’m the only one here with working-at-heights training.” Lord knows if it would actually be helpful in this situation, mind you, but it’s better than nothing.

Chris was all excited instantly, rushing about the ship to get it ready before I could change my mind. I anticipated some sort of electric winch to hoist me up the main. Imagine my surprise to discover it would be my fellow crewmates lifting me, using the same line we use to hoist the sail! And the bosun’s chair was little more than a scrap of cloth around my waist, although at least there was a buckle that went between my legs so it was harder (although not impossible) to pitch forward out of it.

The bumper itself was just a tennis ball with a slit cut in it, and some electrical tape to hold it in place.

I handed Gillian my phone. “Might as well get some good pictures out of it!”

They had everyone on the main line, and separately, Foster on the jib line as a back-up, which I appreciate. I definitely want the strong teenage boy as a safety. The tennis ball and electrical tape were shoved in a pouch, and Chris gave me a dull folding knife which I put in my pocket.

Then they began lifting.

“Try pulling yourself up the mast to relieve the weight for them!” Chris called.

Try what? I wasn’t even five feet off the ground and I was already hyperventilating. Plus, I didn’t trust the mast not to cut me again. I grabbed the rigging and tried pulling myself up it, which had the added benefit that it stopped me from spinning around and getting tangled or dizzy.

The usual advice is don’t look down, but when you are dangling from a steel wire by a scrap of broadcloth, there isn’t a lot of other places to look.

Focus. First thing I need is a piece of tape. I cut a small piece off the roll and stuck it to the rigging. Then I worked the tennis ball around the spreader and used the small piece to keep it there. I wound the roll of tape around the tennis ball several times until I was satisfied.

“Ok, you can bring me down now!” I yelled.

“Wait, I need some pictures with your face!” Gillian said, running to the bow.

Hah, victim of my own success.

I was even more concerned about going down than up. This was when someone let me go too fast and I fell, right? But I came down without incident.

We had snacks for about an hour. I brought the Persian Creme donuts with me to share. I walked home in the failing light and a train stopped close enough to the walkway that it triggered the crossing guards to come down, which was annoying. What if it started up when I was behind it?

Tuesday morning started slow. It was the day I’d planned for my magic mushroom trip.

I’ve tried taking magic mushrooms twice before. Before microdosing was the hip new thing, ten years ago I bought a dose for my then-husband for his anxiety. My friend gave me a second dose for free, but my husband – despite claiming multiple times that he didn’t want to take them and was morally against it, ate both doses. He had a good trip and I spent the day babysitting with some resentment.

The second time, I got them from someone else. I dunno if he cheated me on the amount, or if they were just old and not very potent, but I didn’t get deep enough to hallucinate.

People always want a panacea. I definitely had hopes for the trip, but I’d settle for just generally feeling less anxious afterwards.

To be honest, what I was really hoping for was that the trip would allow me to unpack why I was in love with the Vagabond, and let him go.

I drove down to the car wash and cleaned my car, included shampooing the seats. Cleaning helps me feel like I’m in control of something. I forgot the floor mats have spikes on the bottom to help them stay put, and went to hit it to beat the dirt off, resulting in several little cuts to my left hand for my trouble.

Then I drove down to Boulevard for a meditative walk at 2.

I lost Hanuman. He had originally told me he’d be ready at 3. At 2 he texted me that he was done and available early, but I wanted to finish my walk. When I was done I asked him if I was picking him up at the hostel (an hour is more than enough time for him to have walked back to the apartment) and got no response. I had a snack so my stomach didn’t twist itself into knots and drove to his place at 3:30. He finally texted me – he was still at the hostel but walking back. Since I wasn’t sure what route he was taking, I sat down in the parking lot and played on my phone. 20 minutes later, I got a text asking for a pick-up.

We sat around the apartment and talked a bit while he ordered pizza. Then I measured out the dose. Magic mushrooms do not taste good. Plus, they are usually dried and feel like chewing on tree bark.

Emily came out to the living room and Hanuman started taking some mushrooms as well.

“Hang on, you’re supposed to be babysitting.” I protested.

“I’ve babysat multiple people before.” Emily said.

Sure, and I have no trust issues with Emily. But Hanuman has been here for my entire relationship with the Vagabond, and I wanted him to help me wield the melon baller and cut him out of my head. I wanted a proper therapeutic trip, not just to hallucinate, and he aught to know that. I even declined to trip with Emily on Sunday, specifically saying I wanted to be the only one.

There was nothing to be done about it now, but I did feel nervous that the shock was going to set me up for a bad trip.

About half an hour after consuming the mushrooms, I started to feel dizzy, like I’d smoked a joint, and hot. And nauseous. Hanuman was talking about the things he was seeing and starting to get the giggles. Hey, I’d consumed mine before his, shouldn’t I be seeing things first?

I had another small mushroom. I was seriously concerned my brain was somehow incapable of hallucinating.

About ten minutes after that I started to see purple blotches in my vision, like when you look at a bright light for too long. I developed giggles, but they were still external to me. I was giggling, but it was purely my body acting on its own – my mind was rolling its eyes at the nonsense.

The hallucinations shifted slowly. The world took on a strange texture, as if it were suddenly made out of pastels. Then there was an outline of things, in red green and blue, as if I was watching a 3D movie without the glasses. I looked down at my grey pants, which were alive with patterns, writhing and shifting.

I was suddenly scared that I would end up speaking nonsense like Hanuman. Why had I agreed for this? More than that, asked for it.

No backing down now. Changing my mind would be fighting the trip, which would result in a bad trip. Just let it happen.

Breathe.

“Are you ok, Lucy?”

I looked up at Emily. Was I making a weird face, or was she just generically asking me?

I was crying. I touched my face and was confused by the moisture there.

“Can I have some tissue?” I asked, struggling to get the words out.

She got up and went to grab a tissue box from another room, and sat back down on the couch next to me. “Having some big feelings?” She asked.

I couldn’t speak. I dissolved into tears.

Time moved strangely. I was lost in hallucinations for what felt like a long time. Hanuman commented that I always seem so calm and focused, as I sat rigidly on the couch, not reacting, just experiencing. After some indeterminate time, he made a run for the door, more for the jokes than to actually escape. Emily chased and play-wrestled him to the ground. Eventually he decided attempting verticality was too hard and the floor was much nicer.

Emily made an attempt to tend to me. She took my hand and lead me to the rocking chair. I placidly accepted, unsure of what I should be feeling or doing.

“There are two very different highs going on here. I prefer Lucy’s, she’s much better behaved.” Emily commented.

Everyone prefers me for being better behaved. I resent it.

Hanuman took up a running narration of what he was seeing. He seemed to be having the stereotypical mushroom experience, talking about the colours and shapes and how everyone is just energy and everyone should just love each other, maaaaan!

I settled into some Dr Strange sequence where fingers grew fingers grew fingers and other weird body horror. The small rational portion of my brain that had resurfaced wondered if I was so short on imagination that I was just copying Dr Strange. I discovered that if I closed my eyes, I drifted into the visualizations, but if I opened my eyes I could wrestle my way back to some sort of lucidity. Have a drink of water, blow my nose, wipe the tears from my face, and descend back into the trip.

Perhaps because I seemed semi-lucid, me and Emily talked a bit. I couldn’t make myself start the conversation, but I could make myself reply if she addressed me specifically. We mostly just commented on whatever Hanuman was doing.

After more time slipped by, uncountable, I asked to move back to the couch. Sitting up seemed like too much effort. I curled up on the couch.

Visions drifted through my mind. I started seeing tentacles and teeth and red colouring. All things that aught to be a bad trip, but they seemed normal for me. Of course my mind would conjure Cthulhu and Necronomicon stuff and think it comforting.

At some point Hanuman reached for my hand and held it.

He started to come down before I did. Emily propped him against a wall and fed him some pizza. I wrestled myself back to lucidity to answer a call of nature, then went back to crying silently on the couch.

Eventually both of them disappeared down the hall for some reason. I felt crushingly alone, but then I’d been having feelings of loneliness washing over me the entire trip. I pulled the sweater off the armrest where I’d placed it when I started feeling warm, and cuddled it, started bawling in earnest, sobbing loudly.

Suddenly Hanuman was there, seeming confusingly sober. He sat down next to me and patted my back.

“I miss him.” I burbled, not even sure if I spoke loud enough to be audible.

“I know.” He said soothingly.

How do you know? Because I’m crying, when I have so many reasons to cry? Because I’m hugging the sweater?

“I wanted this to be letting him go!” I wailed.

“Your feelings are valid.”

Valid. People always say that, what does that mean? Yes, I shouldn’t punish myself for them, but I didn’t want them. There was no way that still being in love with the Vagabond was enriching my life.

“I feel like such a liar. Everyone keeps asking me why I’m not super excited to go on the trip, but I don’t want to go. I want him back.” I confessed.

That was it in a nutshell. I had all these things – beauty, intelligence, a promising career. My life had been great over the last month, having all these opportunities and meeting all these people I wouldn’t have been able to if I was still twisting myself into pretzels for him. The experience of a lifetime in this upcoming journey. And yet, I’d give it all away to have him back, when I should be grateful.

I sat up and blew my nose a few times.

“I know. But it’s his journey, you can’t make him heal any faster.” He paused and sighed.

In the movies, people are content to wait. Han ran off on Leia because Kylo went to the Dark Side, but no one tries to tell Leia she should move on. Her and Han are the relationship fans are invested in. But in real life, there’s a push; find someone new, move on.

Well… obsession, stalking and rumination are bad. But why isn’t there a space in between? Comfortable loving from afar, needing no new person.

“I don’t understand the nature of the link between you two, but it seems that fate isn’t done with you yet.” He added.

I want it to be done with us. I don’t want to be the manic pixie dream girl, waiting for the emotionally unavailable man. I resented every wasted minute spent pinning over him, the pain instead of joy when my friends who were couples embraced, the way even the Circle Tour signs by the road cut me like a knife.

I went to the bathroom and splashed water on my face. I looked at my bottom lip, which was now adorned with a scar. No one has ever left a mark on me like this.

How would I explain this to my friends? I went into the trip hoping to be cleansed, and came back even more sure that he was tattooed on my soul.

We opened the bag of Hawkins Cheesies I brought and talked about the trip, mostly me and Emily razzing Hanuman for the trip he had been on. It seemed less embarrassing than talking about having spent the better part of three hours crying.

A couple hours later, I had fully come down, but I had a wicked headache and I felt hungover. I stood up and the room spun around me.

I texted Kevin; “Is this normal?”

“Well, yeah! You used up all your neurotransmitters in a couple of hours!”

That’s fair.

I asked Emily to drive me home and then she could just take the car back to her place. It’s not a long walk and I have a spare key, so I could grab it Wednesday. She offered to let me stay there but agreed to drive me.

Sleep did not come quickly when I went to bed.