Chapter 4: Yo-Ho-Ho And A Bottle of Rum

You have to be careful about what you let your children read. My parents weren’t.

While they were too busy adulting their best from the rough Soviet 70s through the “Wild 90s”, I chomped through the home library like a white shark through a cloud of mackerel.

I read the whole “Three Musketeers” trilogy at a very inappropriate 9 years old.  All the vivid imagery of the excessive drinking, the spur-of-the moment sword fighting as well as the unbridled fornicating remixed my young brain into a whole new cocktail.  And then I discovered Rafael Sabatini’s 1922 Captain Blood series, with its endless gall, brawl and sailor humor, and I was done for.  From that moment on, I started growing my Inner Pirate.  

Outside, I was a pale-skinned, near-sighted nerd with scoliosis.

But inside… inside I was all yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum. 

The Inner Pirate got me through a lot of things in my teenage years: the parents fighting at home, the country collapsing all around us; moving to America with nothing but a pillow and a hard-cover 2-tome Russian-English dictionary; walking from my university to my dorm in Alaska alone at night, on high alert after the local mother moose stomped a blind student to death for unwittingly crossing her way – the Pirate would steer us forward through it all.

As years went on, the Inner Pirate developed a solid stash of sailor jokes, the ability to take any room by abordage, and the knack to always make it to safe harbor, no matter the violence of the sea. The Inner Child got to retain her thin skin, the deep dislike of big crowds or small talk, and the healthy skill of crying it out before it cooks you from the inside.

Together, we traversed the map long and wide: we got to sleep under the stars, both the Big Dipper and the Southern Cross; learned to shoot guns and ride wild horses; made a friend in every port and drank more wine than D’Artagnan, Atos, Portos and Aramis put together. 

Three years ago a friend mentioned the world’s oldest open water race, the 4.5km across the boisterous Hellespont/Dardanelles strait in Turkey, an annual event of about 1,000 competitors.  You should be an experienced swimmer, said the website, and well accustomed to rough seas. Not everybody makes it to the finish line – those who cannot conquer the strait will be taken out of the water by lifeguards.

No thank you, said the Inner Child, marched straight into the closet and shut the door behind. Fighting through rough water, while avoiding clashing with hundreds of avid swimmers?  We already learned that lesson once many moons ago.  

The Inner Pirate said nothing, just took a swig from his ol’ rum bottle.  

What we failed to register was a glint in his eye.

Some time in January of this year I woke up and found myself registered for this race.

Days to race: 4

#dardadiary