Manahawkin Vice

by Christina Fulton

Memories of my father often elicit strong scent based recollections of salt, sunscreen, and diesel fuel. My father loved boats. No, he was the reincarnated form of Saint Francis of Paola[1]. No, he wanted to exclusively date Stella Maris[2], a seafarer’s wet dream, and the ultimate woman to bring home to Italian mothers everywhere. No, he was my cheerful water sprite, my menacing Loch Ness Monster, and my spiritual Leviathan.

When I was little I would go with my father and his party pals/employees on boating adventurers in and around the marshes of Manahawkin and Long Beach Island, New Jersey. My mother was hesitant, but I was persistent. He was hardly ever home, and when he was, I wanted more than anything to be involved in his nautical shenanigans. She relented and strapped a little wine-colored life jacket on me, smeared sunscreen war paint on my cheeks, and threatened to promptly divorce him if anything happened to me. I use to hate how she would stand in between me and my father’s famous boat fiestas; complete with floating buckets of beverages, his roughneck entourage, and the bikini gals that everyone always called broads. 

Looking back, she had every reason to fear my father’s seafoam affinities. When she was pregnant with me he talked her into going out on what we use to call The Baby Boat. Just picture a miniature speedboat with a few coats of blue sparkle paint on it. This thing couldn’t even stand up to the wake of other boats, much less real, angry ocean waves. He stopped to let my mother get something to drink, but before she was properly seated, my father took off without warning, hit a wave, and sent my mother and the developing tadpole version of me into the brown brink of the Manahawkin Inlet. He thought it was funny.

Then, when I was a toddler my mother decided that on her birthday she deserved to take a nap and left me under the supervision of my father. About an hour later, I snuck out of the house, crossed the street, and jumped into the bay. Swimming had become my obsession over the summer. However, this was October, and I had neglected to factor in the cold and my lack of arm floaties into this exciting aquatic equation. According to the doctors, I went into shock, sank to the bottom, inhaled the seafloor, and floated back up. I was found face down in the water by my Uncle Bernardo. I was dead for a few moments and had to be revived by him. I was in a coma for twenty-four hours and the doctors told my mother there was a high chance that when I woke up I could be blind or mentally retarded. My father didn’t think any of it was his fault, while my mother jackknifed into an emotional breakdown that would leave her dealing with panic attacks and bouts of agoraphobia the rest of her life.

Luckily, I woke up with my brain still hard boiled, and the only things that got scrambled were my bladder, kidneys, and just a few nerves in my eyes. It translated into the need for glasses and Interstitial Cystitis when I got older. My mother asked every specialist if my drowning may have had something to do with those bodily malfunctions. They would always look at her in shock, and then, slowly nod.

My mother would stand on the dock and wave goodbye to me, as the boat and its rowdy inhabitants prepared to pull away. I think she was trying to reconcile her maternal conundrum of my safety vs. my almost rabid need to be with my dad. Either way, the memories that I have of him out on the water are equally conflicting. 

One memory that circles the drain between nightmares and therapy sessions is the time one of my father’s boats caught on fire. It was on one of the cabin cruisers he named after me. One moment I was sleeping below deck of The Christina Marie, after a long day of making haunted driftwood castles, and the next moment I was being carried up the stairs through thick smoke by my aunt. I remember her screaming, “What do I do?”

I don’t know who ended up answering her, due to all the loud shouting, but they must have had a few beers and absolutely no child rearing experience. She threw me over the side, half asleep, and still holding my blankie. My only saving grace was my mother’s mandatory life jacket policy that, thankfully, I wasn’t even allowed to take off during naps. I quickly surfaced just in time to watch my father’s entourage evacuate in similar fashions using everything from Jet-Skis to partially inflated inner tubes. I was scared, but not of being left behind or eaten by Jaws’ younger brother, like my father’s friends would always tease me about; no, I was scared that my father was going to die. The flames coming out of the engine, which he was fighting with a ridiculously tiny fire extinguisher, had now become as tall as him. It is only now I realize that in the mind of every little girl no one is taller than her father. Those flames might as well have been up to the Jolly Green Giant’s ass.

I never got to see how that little fire fight ended. One of my father’s friends plucked me out of the water and drove me home on his WaveRunner. I was asleep when he finally came through the door, but earlier that night my mother put him on the phone from Sea Tow’s headquarters to assure me he hadn’t been Kentucky Fried.

 My father always looked more at home when he was boating. I don’t want to say “at peace” because that definitely wasn’t it. His elevated and sometimes unnatural level of energy was just not so out of place surrounded by the fluidity and instability of the ocean.  It was the perfect setting for all his manic moments and wild fantasies. In essence, it was liquid camouflage. I love to remember him shouting into the wind,
“Get him, Crockett!”

As a child, I was never quite sure who Crockett was, but apparently he was always after someone. It was only later that I discovered my father’s love for the TV show Miami Vice.

 In fact, I hold Don Johnson (the actor behind the Miami Detective, Sonny Crockett) fully responsible for my father’s transition into the cigarette boat/ painfully flamboyant wardrobe stage of his life. In addition, my father viewed monogamy as a No Wake Zone. Perhaps, a habit he picked up from the fast pace set by Sonny’s Casanova sidekick, Ricard “Rico” Tubbs, played by the handsome Phillip Michael Tomas. There was a lady for every arm and every episode. To give you an idea of how long this Miami Vice stage lasted you should know that in March 2011 my father’s mistress, along with her googly gal pals, and my mother were at his funeral, and he was buried in a suit that even Crockett, himself, might say,

“Damn, that’s too bright even for me.” 

They weren’t all bad memories. My father loved to have fun in, on, or around the water. There was tubbing, skiing, fishing, and more fun trips then any little girl could hope for with him and the more responsible and loving neighbors from down the street. Life was one long beach day with cookouts, fireworks, and one man’s shoulders that I could stay up on forever. He would even let me jump off the tip of the boat and drive the WaveRunners all by myself, which were both things that my mother had expressly forbidden. I remember him stopping for an hour on the way back from Long Beach Island one time just so I could watch a family of dolphins and pretend to be a Marine Biologist.

“Which one do you think is the daddy?” I asked.

“He’s not here. He’s off making all the mackerel,” he laughed.

“You can’t make mackerel. You catch it,” I laughed, not getting his sexist humor.

However, the most vivid memory I have of him on a boat is not as fun. It was back in the years before the cigarette boats. We were taking The Christina Marie all the way from the Florida Keys to the Bahamas for Christmas vacation. My mother begged him to consider leaving the boat and to take one of the Island Hopper planes.

“There’s nothing to worry about,” he laughed, as he picked me up and playfully tossed me on board. My mother was still clutching the newspaper with the weekly boating advisories, as she cautiously boarded. I remember her trying to show them to him over breakfast, and she even circled them with one of my red crayons from my Adventures on The Seafloor coloring book. He just ignored her.

I never saw my mother put on a life jacket before. I always thought that was just a kid rule, but when I saw her dig out one of those moldy, orange neck brace numbers from under the back seat, even the little kid version of me knew something was not quite kosher that day. 

About half-way through the voyage, I remember the waves climbing up to be about piss-in-your-pants high, because I did just that. They rolled over the sides, came up over the bow, and with each one came a stinging hiss of viscous and salty mist. My mother grabbed a rope and tied my lifejacket to hers. I remember her screaming the Lord’s Prayer at every nosy white cap that peeked over the side. Today, whenever she reminisces about that incident, she always emphasizes that she refused to lose me when that boat finally rolled over and let the ocean have its way with us. That was how scared she was. To this day, it is not “if” but “when” in her mind. My mother thought there was an extremely high probability that we were going to die that day on my father’s boat. Even though we somehow made it to The Bahamas, every time my mother tells that story the deluge of time reverses for her, and she is caught in a terrifying trans- dimensional whirlpool.  

I don’t remember my father being scared during that trip. I remember him laughing and whooping it up with the wind. He turned back to check on us at one point, and for a moment, I was caught up in the torrent of his, no, our slippery genetics and could hear nothing but the ocean. Almost as if on some sopping wet cue from the universe I screamed,
“Get him, Crockett!” 

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[1]The Italian patron saint of boatmen, mariners, and naval officers.

[2] A title of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Translated in to English it means, “Our Lady, Star of the Sea.”