The Piracy Saga, Part the Third
Here it is. Enjoy. I must say that certain parts of it are still cracking my shit up and hell...I wrote them.
You know, as incredibly awesome as the Carribean is, even one as all about the soft sand, umbrella-laden drinks, and tan-lined asses as myself can get bored with it. Well, maybe for a little while anyway. So it was with mixed feelings that I piloted the Skulls and Asskicks from those warm waters after I dropped T off and met back up with Duia. I was at first a bit unsure of the edibility of her new-found supply of quesadillas but upon a taste and Duia's assurance that they probably weren't people I was hooked.
We were sailing East towards the Windward Islands when Duia went into what I at first thought was an epileptic fit. Turns out her wild hand gestures and body gyrations were a response to her seeing Schleamon's ship (the one with the giant tits on it, if you recall) off near the horizon. Not hard to miss, really. I called to her, "Hey Pavlov, if you're through landing planes do you want to tell me who that is over there?"
"That's Schleamon de los Senos, dur." I looked at her puzzled. I'd heard the name from her but never really inquired as to the importance behind it. "She's the number one dealer in black market Mexican appetizers in the Western hemisphere." That's where I'd learned the name! It all fell into place now....
I'd first heard the name whispered in back alleys of the little islands we stopped on. The deal seemed to be that Schleamon had somehow been employed by rebellious factions of various Eastern European nations in the past to secretly supply them with spicy, southwestern delicacies right under the communists' collective red, alcohol-swollen noses. She'd supposedly gone into hiding for a while but it seems that Duia had broken her cover at some point. I wasn't sure exactly what this information might bring but I filed it away for future use.
Now, the one thing that you probably haven't heard about Piracy in all your whitewashed and sanitized history books is that when two pirate ships meet, dominance is decided by a drag race. That's right. Not one of those messy and potentially irritating inter-ship wars, but a drag race. "First Consort Duia, use your
semaphor to tell Schleamon that she has been officially challenged." 'Jay-Jay,' she replied, apparently trying to be humorous in her alphabetical choices.
As we closed with her, the anticipation in the Skulls and Asskicks grew immensely. We'd not had a race in years. "Now Schleamon," I yelled across the water as we came to a stop a few nautical terms apart, "as the challenged, it is your duty to supply the starter." I'm sure she knew this but I just wanted to be sure. She was fairly new to the whole piracy game and all.
"I know this, jerk," she replied, going on to make a very snide remark about my lineage. I refused to rise to her level, prefering to stay in my own, much dirtier, level. Duia and I watched as Schleamon woman-handled some poor sap to the bow of her ship and threw him overboard. "When he sinks, boy, we go!" As if I didn't know that? I commented on her unusually manly appearance as a comeback.
We waited for the poor man to finally sink to the bottom but it seems that in her haste for glory Schloo'd chosen a person with some dog-paddling abilities. "This is taking too long, Duia," I said to my Consort. "Shoot him on my signal." She grinned that grin...that 'missing two of my eye-teeth' grin...and got ready. "NOW!" She pulled a bazooka from somewhere and blew the guy to seagull chow and we raced ahead. Sure, if you want to get technical we both cheated and red-lighted, but since a) we're pirates and b) this wasn't a sanctioned drag race anyway, it really didn't matter. We ended up winning by a good six boat lengths and I heard Schloo's cries of outrage and "Best two out of three" until we sailed out of range. I now had her for a favor that I'm sure I'd cash in some day or another.
It was eventually decided that we'd head for Europe for our little vacation. Seriously, where else was there to go? We'd done the States for years, found Canada to be a little on the, oh how to say this nicely....boring side, so where else? Africa? Please. No parties in Africa can compare to those crazy Europeans. So we sailed due south before I took the helm from a deckhand and steered us in the proper direction and in a few days' time we'd crossed the giant buzz-kill that is the Atlantic and arrived off the coast of Spain. While a little bit of España would have been nice it wasn't quite what I had in mind. No, I was thinking more along the lines of Holland. The Netherlands to those of you who can read a map. The place of eleventy thousand windmills to those of you who can't. Amsterdam in particular.
See, I'd heard rumors of all sorts of things that would be awesome to get into in that city. You name it and it was supposed to be there. Some of them were legal, most of those just barely, while the vast majority were nowhere near. Oddly enough, two of the more interesting things, slinging and smoking weed and trading in what most "civilized" (and by that I mean backward) countries considered underage smut were legal here. No, it was the seedier side of A-dam we sought out. The lucrative Homeless Man Fights Caught On Tape industry for one example. Underground Keno tournaments were another. I'd also heard whispered rumors of Magic: The Gathering deathmatches where the loser is actually put to death. That was right up my alley! More on those later though. We'd come across the ocean and all needed to clean up badly after someone broke the shower somewhere off the coast of Gibraltar by trying to stuff a pair of socks down the drain. Bunch'a idiots. Oh, and about Gibraltar? By far NOT the coolest Rock ever, by the way.
Anyway, we eventually docked ourselves into a seedy little cove and I was at first furious as I saw a sign that read 'Haarlem' and thought I'd mistakenly steered us to New York City. I then realized that it wasn't pockmarked with bullets so we were okay. I wiped my brow after that scare, I tell you. I packed my rucksack and announced to my crew, most of whom had already abandoned ship as soon as we were tethered, that I was going exploring for a while and that the ship was to Repel All Boarders in my absense. I'd settle for Talk Them Down To A Cool Beer Instead Of Burning The Ship though. I can't ask too much of them. Hell, half of them dropped out of Kindergarten anyway so I'll choose my battles.
I step on dry land for the first time in many weeks and love it. Once I got used to it again, that is. Until then my body wavered back and forth like I was either Boss Hogg's belly or made from Jello. I soon found what I was seeking: a lovely BB&L. That's Bed, Brothel, & Laundry for those of you not in the know. Sure, the building looked like it had seen better days back around the turn of the century, the 16th, not the 19th, but that's supposed to be part of the charm of those places, isn't it? Besides, not only were chances small that I'd get the room beneath the large hole in the roof, but there was an attached laundromat to the Bed and Brothel. Seriously, how could I ask for more? Well, the only drawback could be that I might be required to wash my own sheets after a torid session but even that wasn't completely unacceptable.
I walked through the bat-wing doors ( a very nice touch, I have to say) and into the foyer where I saw a large desk directly before me. Sitting behind me was something I first mistook for Cousin It before she moved her hair out of the way. "You are the proprietor of this establishment?" I demanded of her, taking a cigarette from the pack laying on the desk and lighting it.
"I am," she said. We stood in silence a moment before I decided that those might be the only words of English she knew. "This cigarette is awful," I told her, dropping it on the floor and grinding it out with my heel.
"Local smoke blows my ass," she replied, putting on her Hawt Face. I grinned at her and offered her one of my own smokes, a much higher quality since I didn't buy them from the rubbish bin at a local grocery. She at first hacked a lung up, apparently not used to the full flavor of ultra-lights, then as she calmed down we began what I intended to be room and brothel negotiations. Sassy, as I discovered her name to be a bit later, seemed to have other ideas.
"I require a room, deskwench. Preferably one with ceiling intact and within easy access to the facilities." She could do that for me. "I also require a troupe of young, nubile toys with which to amuse myself. Toys, of course, meaning boys."
"Grass or no grass?" She questioned me, hurriedly scribbling things upon the desk itself with a Sharpie.
"Are we talking about to smoke or on the playing field, woman?" I asked her, narrowing my gaze to insure I wasn't being hustled.
"Which are you talking about?" Aah...answering a question with a question...She'd either been married (to a woman) in the past or was just a plain ol' irritating bitch. I was figuring on a combination of the two, something that made me fight the urge to ravage her atop her ink-stained desk. When it became clear she wasn't going to clarify I took the lead again.
"In reference to smoke, yes. Lots of it. Good stuff. I want my eyes to first cross and then roll from my face and onto the floor where I shall attempt to find them while stuffing my face with whatever you Dutch," Sassy broke in at this point to claim that she a sovereign being but I told her that I didn't care and to not interrupt me again, "whatever you Dutch attempt to pass off as Doritos." I took a long draw from my smoke before continuing. "In reference to my entertainment, yes."
"Astroturf or non-Astroturf?"
"Astroturf?" I was puzzled. Must be one of those foreign things. "Explain this 'Astroturf', woman."
"It's almost the same thing, really. We...how to put this...alter..the appearance of some of the younger workers to make them look 'turfed'"
"Just out of Dread Pirate Curiosity, how does one go about 'turfing' these youngsters?"
"Well, sometimes we use a grease pencil and other times we just hot-glue some salon clippings on them."
"First, no on the artificial turf. Second, it's not nearly the same thing. And I'll tell you what. Just send me your sampler package as I'm too weary to make further decisions this day."
"I will do that. And how will you be paying for this?"
"Bill it to Schleamon De Los Senos," I told her, having quickly determined the favor I would call upon from the loser of our drag race. It was done and before I could so much as put out another smoke on her carpet I was surrounded by my sampler package.
"I hope these will do nicely?"
"I think they will," I told her as I layed my eye over them. And my hands on them. "Do you do wake-up calls in this place?"
"Yes we do," she answered, grabbing up her marker again and using it to point to a bull horn I assumed would be used directly outside my door.
"Well don't. I think sleep will be long in coming tonight." We both grinned at my innuendo and I walked away. "Oh," I called over my shoulder, "if a Pirate Wench by the name of Duia calls for me, you never saw me. Clothed. Got it?" Sassy replied that she did and that was all for the evening.
Before I lost myself completely in debauchery and deflowering (yeah...I know as well as you do that they weren't anywhere near flowered. Still...it's the thought that counts though, right?) I made a note in my little Dayplanner, a Dayplanner with a skull and crossbones over top of copious amounts of graffiti that is, that I needed to discover the location of Adux in the morrow. We had business to discuss.
You know, as incredibly awesome as the Carribean is, even one as all about the soft sand, umbrella-laden drinks, and tan-lined asses as myself can get bored with it. Well, maybe for a little while anyway. So it was with mixed feelings that I piloted the Skulls and Asskicks from those warm waters after I dropped T off and met back up with Duia. I was at first a bit unsure of the edibility of her new-found supply of quesadillas but upon a taste and Duia's assurance that they probably weren't people I was hooked.
We were sailing East towards the Windward Islands when Duia went into what I at first thought was an epileptic fit. Turns out her wild hand gestures and body gyrations were a response to her seeing Schleamon's ship (the one with the giant tits on it, if you recall) off near the horizon. Not hard to miss, really. I called to her, "Hey Pavlov, if you're through landing planes do you want to tell me who that is over there?"
"That's Schleamon de los Senos, dur." I looked at her puzzled. I'd heard the name from her but never really inquired as to the importance behind it. "She's the number one dealer in black market Mexican appetizers in the Western hemisphere." That's where I'd learned the name! It all fell into place now....
I'd first heard the name whispered in back alleys of the little islands we stopped on. The deal seemed to be that Schleamon had somehow been employed by rebellious factions of various Eastern European nations in the past to secretly supply them with spicy, southwestern delicacies right under the communists' collective red, alcohol-swollen noses. She'd supposedly gone into hiding for a while but it seems that Duia had broken her cover at some point. I wasn't sure exactly what this information might bring but I filed it away for future use.
Now, the one thing that you probably haven't heard about Piracy in all your whitewashed and sanitized history books is that when two pirate ships meet, dominance is decided by a drag race. That's right. Not one of those messy and potentially irritating inter-ship wars, but a drag race. "First Consort Duia, use your
semaphor to tell Schleamon that she has been officially challenged." 'Jay-Jay,' she replied, apparently trying to be humorous in her alphabetical choices.
As we closed with her, the anticipation in the Skulls and Asskicks grew immensely. We'd not had a race in years. "Now Schleamon," I yelled across the water as we came to a stop a few nautical terms apart, "as the challenged, it is your duty to supply the starter." I'm sure she knew this but I just wanted to be sure. She was fairly new to the whole piracy game and all.
"I know this, jerk," she replied, going on to make a very snide remark about my lineage. I refused to rise to her level, prefering to stay in my own, much dirtier, level. Duia and I watched as Schleamon woman-handled some poor sap to the bow of her ship and threw him overboard. "When he sinks, boy, we go!" As if I didn't know that? I commented on her unusually manly appearance as a comeback.
We waited for the poor man to finally sink to the bottom but it seems that in her haste for glory Schloo'd chosen a person with some dog-paddling abilities. "This is taking too long, Duia," I said to my Consort. "Shoot him on my signal." She grinned that grin...that 'missing two of my eye-teeth' grin...and got ready. "NOW!" She pulled a bazooka from somewhere and blew the guy to seagull chow and we raced ahead. Sure, if you want to get technical we both cheated and red-lighted, but since a) we're pirates and b) this wasn't a sanctioned drag race anyway, it really didn't matter. We ended up winning by a good six boat lengths and I heard Schloo's cries of outrage and "Best two out of three" until we sailed out of range. I now had her for a favor that I'm sure I'd cash in some day or another.
It was eventually decided that we'd head for Europe for our little vacation. Seriously, where else was there to go? We'd done the States for years, found Canada to be a little on the, oh how to say this nicely....boring side, so where else? Africa? Please. No parties in Africa can compare to those crazy Europeans. So we sailed due south before I took the helm from a deckhand and steered us in the proper direction and in a few days' time we'd crossed the giant buzz-kill that is the Atlantic and arrived off the coast of Spain. While a little bit of España would have been nice it wasn't quite what I had in mind. No, I was thinking more along the lines of Holland. The Netherlands to those of you who can read a map. The place of eleventy thousand windmills to those of you who can't. Amsterdam in particular.
See, I'd heard rumors of all sorts of things that would be awesome to get into in that city. You name it and it was supposed to be there. Some of them were legal, most of those just barely, while the vast majority were nowhere near. Oddly enough, two of the more interesting things, slinging and smoking weed and trading in what most "civilized" (and by that I mean backward) countries considered underage smut were legal here. No, it was the seedier side of A-dam we sought out. The lucrative Homeless Man Fights Caught On Tape industry for one example. Underground Keno tournaments were another. I'd also heard whispered rumors of Magic: The Gathering deathmatches where the loser is actually put to death. That was right up my alley! More on those later though. We'd come across the ocean and all needed to clean up badly after someone broke the shower somewhere off the coast of Gibraltar by trying to stuff a pair of socks down the drain. Bunch'a idiots. Oh, and about Gibraltar? By far NOT the coolest Rock ever, by the way.
Anyway, we eventually docked ourselves into a seedy little cove and I was at first furious as I saw a sign that read 'Haarlem' and thought I'd mistakenly steered us to New York City. I then realized that it wasn't pockmarked with bullets so we were okay. I wiped my brow after that scare, I tell you. I packed my rucksack and announced to my crew, most of whom had already abandoned ship as soon as we were tethered, that I was going exploring for a while and that the ship was to Repel All Boarders in my absense. I'd settle for Talk Them Down To A Cool Beer Instead Of Burning The Ship though. I can't ask too much of them. Hell, half of them dropped out of Kindergarten anyway so I'll choose my battles.
I step on dry land for the first time in many weeks and love it. Once I got used to it again, that is. Until then my body wavered back and forth like I was either Boss Hogg's belly or made from Jello. I soon found what I was seeking: a lovely BB&L. That's Bed, Brothel, & Laundry for those of you not in the know. Sure, the building looked like it had seen better days back around the turn of the century, the 16th, not the 19th, but that's supposed to be part of the charm of those places, isn't it? Besides, not only were chances small that I'd get the room beneath the large hole in the roof, but there was an attached laundromat to the Bed and Brothel. Seriously, how could I ask for more? Well, the only drawback could be that I might be required to wash my own sheets after a torid session but even that wasn't completely unacceptable.
I walked through the bat-wing doors ( a very nice touch, I have to say) and into the foyer where I saw a large desk directly before me. Sitting behind me was something I first mistook for Cousin It before she moved her hair out of the way. "You are the proprietor of this establishment?" I demanded of her, taking a cigarette from the pack laying on the desk and lighting it.
"I am," she said. We stood in silence a moment before I decided that those might be the only words of English she knew. "This cigarette is awful," I told her, dropping it on the floor and grinding it out with my heel.
"Local smoke blows my ass," she replied, putting on her Hawt Face. I grinned at her and offered her one of my own smokes, a much higher quality since I didn't buy them from the rubbish bin at a local grocery. She at first hacked a lung up, apparently not used to the full flavor of ultra-lights, then as she calmed down we began what I intended to be room and brothel negotiations. Sassy, as I discovered her name to be a bit later, seemed to have other ideas.
"I require a room, deskwench. Preferably one with ceiling intact and within easy access to the facilities." She could do that for me. "I also require a troupe of young, nubile toys with which to amuse myself. Toys, of course, meaning boys."
"Grass or no grass?" She questioned me, hurriedly scribbling things upon the desk itself with a Sharpie.
"Are we talking about to smoke or on the playing field, woman?" I asked her, narrowing my gaze to insure I wasn't being hustled.
"Which are you talking about?" Aah...answering a question with a question...She'd either been married (to a woman) in the past or was just a plain ol' irritating bitch. I was figuring on a combination of the two, something that made me fight the urge to ravage her atop her ink-stained desk. When it became clear she wasn't going to clarify I took the lead again.
"In reference to smoke, yes. Lots of it. Good stuff. I want my eyes to first cross and then roll from my face and onto the floor where I shall attempt to find them while stuffing my face with whatever you Dutch," Sassy broke in at this point to claim that she a sovereign being but I told her that I didn't care and to not interrupt me again, "whatever you Dutch attempt to pass off as Doritos." I took a long draw from my smoke before continuing. "In reference to my entertainment, yes."
"Astroturf or non-Astroturf?"
"Astroturf?" I was puzzled. Must be one of those foreign things. "Explain this 'Astroturf', woman."
"It's almost the same thing, really. We...how to put this...alter..the appearance of some of the younger workers to make them look 'turfed'"
"Just out of Dread Pirate Curiosity, how does one go about 'turfing' these youngsters?"
"Well, sometimes we use a grease pencil and other times we just hot-glue some salon clippings on them."
"First, no on the artificial turf. Second, it's not nearly the same thing. And I'll tell you what. Just send me your sampler package as I'm too weary to make further decisions this day."
"I will do that. And how will you be paying for this?"
"Bill it to Schleamon De Los Senos," I told her, having quickly determined the favor I would call upon from the loser of our drag race. It was done and before I could so much as put out another smoke on her carpet I was surrounded by my sampler package.
"I hope these will do nicely?"
"I think they will," I told her as I layed my eye over them. And my hands on them. "Do you do wake-up calls in this place?"
"Yes we do," she answered, grabbing up her marker again and using it to point to a bull horn I assumed would be used directly outside my door.
"Well don't. I think sleep will be long in coming tonight." We both grinned at my innuendo and I walked away. "Oh," I called over my shoulder, "if a Pirate Wench by the name of Duia calls for me, you never saw me. Clothed. Got it?" Sassy replied that she did and that was all for the evening.
Before I lost myself completely in debauchery and deflowering (yeah...I know as well as you do that they weren't anywhere near flowered. Still...it's the thought that counts though, right?) I made a note in my little Dayplanner, a Dayplanner with a skull and crossbones over top of copious amounts of graffiti that is, that I needed to discover the location of Adux in the morrow. We had business to discuss.