Call me Ishmael. Some months ago - never mind how long precisely - having little or no money in my purse, or my wife’s purse, or my IRA, or my sock drawer, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would jump into the old Ford pickup and go see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation, plus I can get drunk and, for a brief three-day period, tell the old wolf slobbering at my door to go fuck himself.
Arriving late in rough and tumble Walton County, I hoisted flagon after flagon of Scotland’s finest so as to catch up with my besotted mateys, then returned to the Inn at Bella Vita where I attempted to find a bunk amidst the cacophony of snorers and drone of infernal CPAP machines… ‘Tis better to sleep with sober cannibals than drunken Christians, said I.
The next morn I met the harpooners - Queequeg, a massive Birmingham insurance executive, and Tashtego, a more compact, but no less impressive specimen of a Birmingham insurance executive. Both appeared fit and ready for a merry chase at sea. They took to the shores in search of the elusive White Whale.
No sooner had we reached the shore and shaken off the Red Bar fog than we heard the cry from the crow’s nest, "'Thar she blows!- thar she blows! A hump like a snow-hill! It is Moby-Dick!'" Then later.. “Nay! Nay! ‘Tis a whole pod of White Whales a-feeding!”The Harpooners set forth with vigor, leaving behind the relative safety, conviviality and oath-bound monogamy of the crew. “Starboard gangway, there! Side away to larboard- larboard gangway to starboard! Midships! Midships! Throw out a chumline of tequila and buffalo wings, there, ye bastards!”
Are they mad? Hell is an idea first born on at least 15 digested Bud Lights; and since then perpetuated through the hereditary dyspepsia nurtured by parenthood, private school tuition, disapproving in-laws, NCAA probation, a plummeting stock market and looming foreclosure. After them, lads!!
We heard their ravings during the chase - “Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering and drunk and sunburned Whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for the sheer hell of it, I pour my last beer on thee! Let other harpooners seek the smaller, younger, svelter whales! We seek the Great White Whale!”
Editor’s note: From here, accounts of the outcome differ.
