next time maybe use a shovel

In 2003 I went on an expedition to tag great white sharks. The trip involved two days of sailing and 7 days at Isla Guadalupe to observe and try to tag great whites.

On the boat was a really, really hot guy named Dave. He worked in an emergency room and so was the medical guy on our trip. All the women were completely enamoured with him from the moment he showed up on the dock. He was good looking, had an amazing body, and was very polite and sweet, characteristics rare for guys in general, and super rare for good looking ones. He was also one of those people who never drink, swear, fart, or do anything bad. Like Jesus, except that he didn't hang out with whores or have stigmata.

At first Dave made me nervous. If he was in any area of the boat I would move to the farthest away area from him. On the few occasions that he would try to communicate with me I would look at my feet, mumble something stupid, and walk away.

But then I was enlisted by the woman running the kitchen to let her know when Dave was getting out of the shark cage so she could watch him strip down to his bathing suit. I agreed to do that because she had to make me a special dinner every night due to my allergies. And since I didn't want Dave to think that I was spying on him I started bringing him tea when he got out of the cage (I didn't do that just for Dave, actually, I did it for all the divers, but Dave always got his tea first).

He asked me to play cards with him one evening. I declined because I don't know how to play any card games. As the days went by he started sitting out on the deck with me in the late evening while everyone else was in the galley playing games or watching movies. When ever I'm on a boat I always like to look at the stars and would spend as much of the evening as possible laying on a deck chair and staring up at the sky. Dave and I would sit in complete silence as if we didn't know the other person was there.

At dinner, all the other women on the boat took turns sitting at Dave's table. Patric, the trip organizer, would arrange who sat where. I always sat with my team and wondered why Patric never let me sit with Dave. When I asked him about that he sighed and said "Franki, you know you will say something."

"What do you mean, say something?" I asked.
"Dave is very reserved" said Patric, and he walked away.

The last night on the boat my new friend Cat and I devised a plan where she pretended she wanted to sit at my table so Patric was forced to put me at Dave's table. Then, after I was seated at Dave's table, Cat changed places with the person sitting next to Dave so we could both sit with him. She was supposed to be there to help me not be a stupid engineer saying dumb things like "I was reading an article the other day on small number theory".

Patric saw our little scheme, and stood behind Dave mouthing the words "Do NOT do anything bad" at me. I gave him my most innocent look and shrugged my shoulders as if to indicate I had no idea what he was talking about. During my secret communique with Patric, Cat had engaged Dave in conversation about the emergency room where he worked. Talking about work seemed to make him feel less shy.

In an attempt to join the conversation I turned to Dave and said "So, what's the most interesting thing you've ever pulled out of anyone's ass?"

Patric looked like he wanted to throw me over board. He pointed his finger at my head like he wanted to make contact with my forehead. Everyone else in the galley got really quiet. Cat blanched and kicked me as hard as she could under the table.

Without pausing in his attempts to cut up his tuna steak, Dave said "A rake." He went on to recount a story about how two guys came running into the emergency room and said their friend was injured and needed to be moved with a gurney. Dave went outside with the guys to a pickup and found their friend laying in the bed of the truck with sweat pants down to his knees and a rake sticking out of his ass.

The guy said he had been raking leaves when he stopped to take a piss. Somehow while he was doing that the rake slid off the tree where he had leaned it and ended up in the guy's ass. The guy's friends just happened to be around and took him to the hospital.

Dave said there was no way that scenario could have been true. The guy ended up having a perforated colon and had to have major surgery.

By the time he was finished with his story Cat and I were laughing hysterically, as was almost everyone in the galley. He went on to tell even more stories of that caliber, and even had a beer when I offered it. People were looking at him like "what happened to goody two shoes don't swear don't drink Dave?"

I spent the rest of the evening hanging out with Dave on the deck talking and laughing. We stayed up until 5 in the morning since we were sailing back the following day and didn't need to be awake for any particular reason. I ended up waking around 11 AM, but by 3 PM Dave still hadn't emerged from his bunk. Cat went down to check on him and said he was still asleep. He finally rolled out of bed around 6 PM. When he came up on deck he whispered to me "I was waiting for you but you never came".

Too bad this story doesn't have a happy ending. I had just broken up with a boyfriend when I went on the trip and made the absolutely stupid decision to try to work things out with him instead of giving Dave a chance. By the time I realized my mistake Dave was dating someone else and was mad at me for jerking him around for two months.

The moral of this story being don't stick a rake in your ass.