C H A P T E R O N E Stranded and Conscripted From my bunk, I found myself staring at the weepy ink of the Blue Öyster Cult tattoo that stained Donny's buttock. Donny Lucy was a repellent man whose sole topic of conversation was the genitals of various races and ethnicities. Some were prodigious, some were toothed, some toothsome, and a few had a unique tang that was best appreciated by he, himself. It's difficult to believe he'd done much field research into the subject. Down East islanders have a way of implying a worldliness that their biographies do not support. A few of us - well, many of us, considering that most of us are related in some way or another - have actual genetic links to voyagers to the archipelagos of cannibals and unclad princesses, and this seems to lend license to authoritative pronouncement where others might merely speculate. Donny had applied the speculum of his imagination to the orifices and organs of humanity with such vigor that he had lost sight of much else that the rest of the world considered suitable to discuss. I was hoping hard that Donny was asleep, that his rhythmic motions were due to the waves. I was probably right, and he had probably moaned "motherfuck" and wiped his belly with one of the rank communal T-shirts due to a dream about maternal taboos and personal hygiene. Some boats have crews that are actually frisky masturbators. Masturbation is an enduring topic on most boats. Every single aspect of it, with the exception of the pleasure one might pull from it, is routinely discussed. But on some boats - say, one with a fado-crazed Portuguese - a beautiful night with flying fish and falling stars inspires the crewman to make his own arcing deposit overboard, as if to say, "I too am a resident of the Milky Way; here's my contribution to the sublime fecundity of the cosmos." In most retellings of this episode, this is the pescadoro's last thought before he's gored by a leaping swordfish....