Portuguese White

The summer of 2023 was unusual in the sense that my buddy Josiah and I switched to drinking full bottles of wine, glass to lips, instead of the usual Mexican Cerveza that we had drunk in such proud quantities the summers before. What didn’t change was our spot to drink such fine beverages, right on top of the Josiah family garage, looking out over a gully that ran past his house and, in the springtime, still carried a small creek that bled out into the icy, beautiful Puget Sound of Washington State.

We used to sit up there with a single two-by-four between us that was about, if I were to guess, four feet in length and starting to get ergonomic at one end where we would grip it and swing at the empty Cerveza cans and homerun right into the gully. This was usually around dusk in the early summer. The sunsets would streak past the maple trees and the lone crabapple tree and shine right back at us like a theater prop light, illuminating our naked torsos. In these moments of great everlasting beauty we would pause our scheming, and I would turn back and see Josiah leaned up on the two-by-four and his black tattoos on the right of his chest pressed deep among his glowing pale skin and I’d see the crucifix. I’d see an angel’s wings and I’d see the name in cursive of a girl who had birthed his child three summers ago and who had up and left a year after the birth.

This was a time that felt true enough that I can now sit with it and reflect on it.

The wine summer was notable because Josiah had it in his mind that really anything was possible, that there was a new opportunity being presented to humanity, something that had been withheld from us until then. Specifically, we had a new friend in artificial intelligence. Or rather, he did. That was our crux. He really believed. We would get drunk on Portuguese white, all wine nameless to us, either white or red, and we’d sit in long silences broken by small fits of laughter. When we were good and drunk enough, we’d start having these real serious conversations and at that time, yes, our little computer friend would come up.

We’d sit there, three bottles on the roof between us, and Josiah would start saying things that had no business being said. Facts. Insights. All of them completely removed from any kind of humanity that he or I had been a part of. “I’m trying to fix everything,” he would say, “for the first time in my life I want to fix everything.”

I owe much of my life to these drunken moments, especially to what arose that specific summer. Josiah eventually got smart and started to prey on my competitive nature, and there on the roof we made a bet on who could make the most money using AI. I was, at the time, a Serious Person. Drunk, yes, but a drunk Serious Person, someone willing to go the distance, someone willing to win at every opportunity presented.

My plan was well thought out, with aid, but really, what is the little guy except the internet distilled down into something that answers questions with a bit of zest. What it takes is drive. What it takes is an order of operations. What it takes is a connection to maritime construction. What it takes is an uncle.

Let me spell all this out in simple terms.

An uncle in maritime.

Stimulants and 100 hours studying crane operation and construction techniques.

Experience building a house.

An aging man willing to risk everything.

An aging man with money who needs talent.

An aging man with a barge and a crane.

Revenue split.

No debt.

No strings.

Cash flow.

Twenty thousand dollars per day, per job.

Thirty jobs a year for five years.

Graduation.

Leasing my own medium-sized deck barge. Leasing my own crane, midrange lattice. Everything else came together smoothly. OSHA requirements. Structural inspection. Rust mitigation. Hydraulic system overhaul. Load testing. Marine certification. Let me tell you, it all came together.

I haven’t heard from Josiah in over two years. I don’t care anymore. I’m building a house on the barge. I’ll float out there all night, my little smoke shack, my little love cabin. I’ll dock for a bar night and all I’ll talk to the patrons about is how I want to drift away, that’s how I want to go out, the mooring giving out in the middle of the night. Just letting go. No motor. No compass. Let the waves speak, my boy. Let the waves speak.

I don’t believe in much anymore. I believe in what isn’t said. I believe in what is suggested. I have my own barge and I have my own crane and soon I will have my own bargehouse. I didn’t share this plan with anyone. I can’t point at any one moment and say, this was the truth. That is not how it works. The center was lost long ago. Our ability to look it straight in the eyes is gone. There are murmurs, there are waves that shake my barge on summer nights that don’t feel familiar at all. They feel like movements from a lost world, from a time when it was all sea, all water.

Some say that I am prepping. That I am hopeful for the end, the Flood.

Well, I guess I am.

_____
Drew Mosman lives in Washington State.