Strange Fruit

So they don’t call me by my name.  I’ve had one name my entire life (except for a few years during my awkward youth when I went by my middle name) and nobody here uses it.  On every ship they’ve used my actual name- I have been “A Watchstander” or “A Dayman,” but I’ve been known by my given familiar-to-me-and-thee, fill-out-this-form, what-is-your-name? name.

Here and now, however, they call me “The Boatswain.”  Like “The Mate” or “The Chief” or “The Captain,” now I am a title that denotes my place in the chain of command; I am a description of a piece of machinery that serves a specific function that makes the ship go.  I am not really me.  The Filipinos also call me “Boss,” but it is either used affectionately or derisively (situation depending), whereas “Bosun” is a word with weight to it.  A physical thing bigger than the meatbag it describes.  

In every way it is the same job I did for many years in my last career- I tell people what to do.  This is the process we’re going to use.  This is why we’re using it.  It is better than the bullshit they did before because...  There is a big difference, however, between telling a foreman to build it per plans and telling a sailor to man a line- I am much closer to the bottom of the pecking order right now than I am to the top.  I am still a sailor in the truest sense of the word and not management.

As I took a launch to shore in Singapore I casually took a photo of the ship.  I saw the rust on the stack, how badly the house needs to be painted, the steepness of the gangway, how she squatted stern-heavy in the water… but it was when I returned later that night that I realized with a shock exactly how big my ship actually is- the dwarfed bunker barge offloading heavy fuel oil to her was a couple hundred feet long with a five story house above its deck!  

And I help make that big boat run.  I have, figuratively, lost my name to her.

While I was ashore I bought some fruit.  One type (I can’t remember the name of it) was infested with ants when I got back to the ship and it took me awhile to murder them all with crushing blows or suffocation, after which it was indescribably delicious and I saved their seeds for my sister.

The other, as I have subsequently come to know rather well, is called (please forgive my spelling if you know it to be otherwise) “durian.”  In appearance it resembles a much spinier pineapple, minus the cute little hat.  It is about the size of a cantaloupe and clearly built to ward off hungry animals- which any thinking person might assume means that what’s inside the protective shell must be remarkably desirable.  I did not know it was banned from busses or most public places at the time I spent 28 sing for it (about 20 bucks).

To get to the prized treasure you must battle spines that conceal a tough, fibrous pith and a hard shell that reduces the green, anemone imitation into a fleshy delight about the size of an apple.  Durian- the meat of the fruit itself- smells like a camel drank a bucket of goat urine and then pissed that into sun-baked portable toilet to let it ferment.  And then did it again for good measure.

It’s texture is like that of an avocado gone to mush, reinforced with mats of hair all wrapped around an unripe banana.  Worst of all, however, is the taste, which is so foul I can only describe it with the image of a dog licking its own butt.  That gag-inducing touch upon the tongue, sadly, lingers for hours afterward and I was repeatedly cursed by the shipmate I convinced to try it with me.  

One bite and 28 sing worth of durian went into the nearest garbage can.  I have since learned that all the Filipinos aboard like it but I’d be damned by the whole crew had I brought that malodorous custard aboard.  They laughed when I told them I tried it.

Currently I am headed toward Hong Kong with hints from the Mate that we might be there longer than anticipated and we could potentially get to go ashore for a few hours.  I won’t be holding my breath for that to happen, and I won’t buy any unrecognized fruit without a sample.