Slip 51 – Part 3

Mystery Gives Way To Conspiracy

New York City was proving to be nothing short of a playground. Bars. Restaurants. Cool little shops. And squares filled with marble, tin foil and the ghosts of writers, musicians and lost souls inspiring a new generation lounging on the benches and grass. Some evenings I would just walk out the door of my office building and head into nowhere, because before long - usually not more than a few blocks - nowhere became somewhere. Times Square or Union Square. The Flatiron Building or The Empire State Building. SoHo or the West Village. Each night brought a slice and/or a drink at some quaint little place. Sometimes with friends. More often not. It was simply beautiful.

Perhaps it was this blossoming experience that kept my mind off the difficulties at the marina. My senses were untethered and wild. Maybe it was inevitable that a little chaos was bound to rub off on the homefront. I took it all in stride. And as I strode down the main dock of the marina, close to midnight, two days after the second aborted move, I certainly didn't expect any change in the status of the boat situation. But immediately I could tell that something was different. The boat was no longer in Slip 9, or anywhere near it.

I chuckled to myself as I approached the inner gate. Where was it today? At the other pier? Submerged at the bottom of this one? Or floating helplessly down the Hudson River somewhere, with a Rastafarian dullard and a grinning Latino kid at the helm? I would have put my money on the second scenario - only because the ruin of my belongings would be certain, thus adding a layer of poetry to the whole affair. But before going up to the marina office to get a wet suit, I decided I would go down to Slip 51. You know, just for laughs.

But lo and behold, as I walked down the pier, I spied a vessel of cream vinyl siding, in the shape of a camper and with a stripe of sea foam green. Har, me grand dame of the sea was in sight - and the bitch was parked right in Slip 51!

Like the Ancient Mariner in Coleridge's masterpiece, my heart leapt as if I had just sighted the rocky and familiar bluffs of my home shore. As if I had finally been delivered from my long ordeal. As if the penance for my good fortune had finally been paid. I approached incredulously, and with caution. What demon's design was this? What sleight of hand? Maybe the boat was rigged with dynamite and would explode at the touch of my foot upon the deck into a spectacular floating roman candle of vinyl, floral prints and flesh. Or perhaps it would be swallowed along with its resident by the angry slip - churned under into a muddy morass of evil and, of course, the human waste that LD had mentioned.

On the other hand, maybe the phone was working.

It was worth a try. I stepped onto the boat, which did not sink or explode, unlocked the door and went inside. Everything seemed to be in order. I dropped my bag and eyed the phone. Good fortune had visited me this evening, but to what extent? I picked up the phone, and the dial tone came through loud and clear, so I dialed my friend in Hoboken to test the line. Her voice confirmed that the call went through without triggering the rejection mechanism that LD's dodgy line activated. It was my line, the one I had had installed almost two weeks previously. Everything had finally fallen (however haphazardly) into place. It looked like I'd be buying that white linen suit and pink sleeveless tee after all. In my bones, I sensed the beginning of a good run. Turns out, it was definitely the beer talking.

I woke up the next morning refreshed, but trouble was already brewing. The boat was rocking significantly, and I could hear the howl of the wind and the patter of rain on the roof. A tempest was beginning to stir. By the time I returned home that evening, it had grown into a full-fledged gale. I was actually on my way to the airport to go to Chicago for the weekend. I had a presentation in the Loop on Monday, and figured I'd steal a weekend at my old apartment. I left for the airport hoping for the best, but got the worst. My flight was cancelled, and I wasn't booked to leave until 3:30 the next afternoon. My friend came to pick me up, and I stayed at her place - which was closer to the airport - for the night. In the morning, I discovered that I had forgotten to pack my checkbook, which I would need to pay my Chicago rent, so we endeavored to beat the clock and race back to the boat to retrieve it before my flight.

When we arrived at the marina, there was a small crowd gathered by the inner gate. Numerous boat owners and residents were discussing the damage to their respective boats. When Rasta saw me, he stood up.

"No power," he said. "The wind snapped the cords."

"For the whole marina?" I asked. The reply was almost academic.

"No. Just you."

Awesome.

I grabbed my checkbook from the boat and hit the road, thankful that I hadn't spent the night there after all. Rasta assured me that LD knew all about the power and phone cords, and was planning to get new ones the next day. There was little I could do but hope that this mess would get straightened out before Tuesday evening, when I planned to return. But I couldn't help but wonder if Slip 51 was trying to send me a message.

On that Tuesday, while still in Chicago, I sent LD a message asking about the status of the cords. He replied, saying that the new power cord was in place, but that the phone cord was not (again with this goddamn phone!!). With at least power confirmed, I knew I could head back. But I also remembered that some of the change of address orders that I had put through when I moved in were probably beginning to take effect, and that I hadn't "officially" told anyone at the marina what my name and address would be. Furthermore, my friend in Hoboken had sent me a housewarming card, but it had been returned with an "addressee unknown" stamp on it. I did not want my credit card bills to suffer the same fate. So I called the marina to sort out the issue.

I ended up talking to a guy who we'll call CC (the first C is for Captain, the second can be for whatever you wish, though personally, I prefer "cocksucker" for reasons soon to be elucidated), who, like Rasta, seemed a little slow on the draw. I explained that I would be living on LD's boat, and that any mail sent to the marina with my name on it should not be returned to sender, but rather placed with the other resident mail in the clubhouse. He didn't seem to understand at first, and asked a litany of clarifying questions. I answered the questions without pause, until he asked me very deliberately if I was a "tenant" on the boat. "Yeah!" I blurted out, wanting to add "You fucking moron!" But something in the emphasis on tenant alarmed me. I tried to soften my answer by saying that I didn't have a lease or anything formal, but just that I had paid LD some money to stay there while I looked for a place in Manhattan.

"No, no, no. No problem," CC replied. "I just like to know who's going to be around, you know."

"Oh. So you're sure it's alright to have my mail forwarded there?"

"Sure. Like I said. It's no problem," he repeated. "In fact, I look forward to coming down and meeting you in person."

"Yeah, that sounds good," I said, thinking that all I needed was another half-wit to pal around with during my down time on the boat.

With the mail dilemma seemingly settled, and a burgeoning friendship with CC to look forward to, I headed back to New York relaxed and ready to get into a groove. It had been a good weekend, and domestic harmony was just a phone cord away. That cord was installed on the following Sunday. I returned from a weekend upstate to find it, patched together from the remnants of the old one, hooked rather precariously to the boat. It didn't work at first, but I went outside and tied the exposed wires together in a different arrangement and voila - it worked. A little electrical tape and we'd be good to go for the summer. Slip 51 was finally mine.

The very next day, Monday, marked the first day of the new month; time to pay the rent. Still basking in the glow of my newly achieved domestic harmony, I had forgotten to write the rent check. So when I received a call on Tuesday morning from LD, I figured it was for the purpose of arranging payment for the month (perhaps he didn't have to time to pop down to his P.O. Box this month).

But LD had a very different purpose for calling. The marina had sent to him, through their legal counsel, a letter informing him that he was in violation of his lease. Renting boats to third parties is STRICTLY PROHIBITED by the marina's rules, which are printed in the lease document he signed. Either his tenant or his boat had to go. Translation: I was ASS OUT.

I don't know why this did not surprise me, but it didn't. LD, on the other had, expressed mild shock to me, but also did not panic. He was "pissed," and he was going to find a new place for the boat, because this was "total bullshit." In fact, he was going to look into docking it at either Chelsea Piers or at the World Trade Center Marina - both of which would have kicked ass, honestly. He said that I might have to leave the boat, but only if he could not find another place for it. In his LD way, he made this sound like the most remote of possibilities. "Don't worry, my lawyer's working on it right now." If anybody would have to have a good lawyer, it had to be LD, I thought. But I immediately went online to the Village Voice classifieds anyway.

This sucked. Instead of enjoying the summer on the boat, I would be forced to spend my free time apartment hunting. In Manhattan. By most accounts, finding a decent, affordable place in Manhattan is one of the most frustrating, least satisfying endeavors a human being can undertake in this day and age. And with the market booming like it has been for the past few years, rents were even worse. Optimistic estimates put the timeline at two months. Two months to find a place that you could afford, but also did not despise. Now, instead of having six months to play with, as I originally planned, I figured I'd have only two. So much for a fun adventure. Still, though, I knew from real estate classes that I had taken that it was unlawful to evict a person from a dwelling that had no place to go. I figured that I would probably need to get a place by August 1 to avoid a really ugly situation. But the clock was ticking.

On Friday, the search "process" escalated into a scramble. At 10:16 am, I received an email from LD with the obvious, yet still ominous subject: "houseboat." I hesitated for a moment and contemplated the little cyber envelope that would cast the die of life for the next few months. Was I ditching my Jersey digs for the posh piers of Chelsea? Or was I hitting the pavement to scout out Lower East Side rat holes? (Which, according to my mini-moving guide (copyright 1996), would be the cheapest.)

The answer was the latter, and with a bullet: not only was LD unsuccessful in finding a new home for the boat, but the marina "wanted me out" by the end of the month. This took a little time off the clock, so-to-speak. LD was apologetic, but unruffled. His suggestion was to stay as long as I needed, and just buy time for myself by dodging the security people when possible, and when not possible, answering their questions about my imminent departure date as vaguely as possible. Hmmm. Vagueness and subterfuge. Was it any wonder we had come to this point? Obviously for LD, there was nothing quite like riding out on the horse you rode in on.

Needless to say, I was pretty pissed. How can you not know the terms of your own lease? Or worse, if you did know, why not tell your tenant to keep it on the down-low, especially when I came right out and asked at the very start? LD swore up and down that he told the marina exactly what was going on, and that they did not express any misgivings about it. He played the victim well, but the letter from the marina seemed to prove that he was full of shit. Furthermore, I was the only victim here, and I wasn't going to let anybody get that issue confused. In fact, I decided to call the marina and make that very clear, and hopefully, buy some extra time for myself. It was time to jump ship, so to speak, and make some friends on the other side of this battle.

So I called my good friend CC at the marina office to get a read on the situation. I explained that LD had informed me of the letter, and that I had to go, but that it had come to as a complete surprise to me, and that I hadn't even begun to look for a place to stay. I punctuated this explanation with some ill words about LD and his approach to business deals. But this did little good.

"But now Mike, do you understand what is going on here?" CC asked in his slow, seemingly bewildered style. He spoke to me as if I were standing on the far end of another pier - even though the phone connection was fine.

"Well, I just explained to you what I know," I replied, sensing that bullshit was on the way. "Why don't you tell me what's going on, buddy."

"It is illegal for [LD] to rent his boat to somebody. We don't have a problem with you. This is between him and the marina. It's nothing personal."

"Yeah, I understand," I said. "But I still have to leave. I'm just asking the marina to be realistic about how fast I can find another place."

"Yeah, now Mike. I don't have a say in that. Did he tell you when you had to be out?"

"He said by the end of the month."

"Well, the letter that was sent to him clearly states that you have to be out by next Wednesday, or the boat will be removed from the marina."

Next fucking Wednesday!!! That was in FIVE days. What's more, LD had known how serious this was from the very start. I was becoming furious.

"How the fuck am I supposed to find an apartment in five days?" I asked. I received no reply. "How did this all start?"

"Well, the word was getting around that [LD] had a tenant. And when you called me the other week, that basically confirmed it."

"Wait a minute. Did you know it was against the marina's policy to rent when I talked to you?"

"Well, yeah."

"Why the hell didn't you say so back then?" I snapped. "I specifically asked you if it was alright to have my mail sent there and everything. And you said it would be fine."

"Well, now Mike. I didn't know what was going to happen. My boss handles this stuff, I just told him what I knew. [LD] told me that you were a guest - that you weren't a tenant. But you told me that you were."

"That is NOT the point. The point is that you KNEW it was against the marina's policy - you were 'on the case' so to speak - yet you told me everything was cool. I could have been looking for an apartment already. Now I've got five days!"

"Now Mike, nobody here is trying to screw you..."

"Yeah, well I'm already fucking screwed! You don't need to 'try!'"

"Mike, I've got to go back to work now, but I hope everything..."

I slammed the phone down with rage. CC, the dullard, was not a dullard at all - just a dickhead. His vacant mannerisms were just a front. Fucker.

I even had a face-to-face with him the next day. He came down to "clear the air" and to make sure that I understood that the marina didn't bear me any ill will. But he still evaded my basic question of why he hadn't told me from the beginning that my arrangement with LD was illegal and would have to come to an end. I used words like "common courtesy" and "basic human decency," but he gave me the same dumb act. In fact, the guy even looked the part - walking around the marina with a captain's shirt (a la Captain Steubing from the Love Boat), coaches' shorts and white tube socks pulled all the way up to his knees. He looked like a spaced-out Jimmy Buffet groupie, leftover from some show ten years ago. What fucking fantasy was he living out?

So there I was, caught between a rock and a hard ass who liked to play dumb. I was unsure of LD - not because I thought he was trying to screw me over, but rather because I suspected that he would tell me anything to avoid getting sued. And I certainly couldn't trust CC and the marina, either. Who was telling the truth? Did CC have it out for LD and tell him things were cool, so he could get LD booted from the marina? (Perhaps LD had borrowed a Buffet record last year and never returned it) Or was this an LD scam on the marina gone bad? If LD were trying to scam the marina, why not let me in on it, especially when I asked in the first place? That just didn't make any sense (LD later used this same line of reasoning in his own defense).

But then why would CC tell LD it was OK, and then turn on him, when the only consequence would be that I would have to leave? What was in it for them, outside of incurring some legal fees for the marina? There was simply no credible source to provide answers to these questions. At that point, I would have trusted the Cigarette-Smoking Man before I would have trusted either of these two.

So on Sunday, I moved out - taking all my belongings and a few snapshots of the boat and its view, and leaving behind nothing but sour grapes (literally, I left a some grapes in the fridge). Slip 51 had won - or at least the forces behind it had. And as I laid on the wood floor of my friends' Hoboken apartment after the move that afternoon, with my things heaped in their basement and the prospect of crashing from place to place over the next month or more on the horizon, I couldn't help but think of my cavernous Chicago apartment, my cavernous empty room, and how, on a day like this one, I would be there, jamming a 2x4 into the space between the living room window and the top of its frame, to ensure that the air conditioning unit would not fall out and plunge to the sidewalk below, killing some drunk, sunburned and barely coherent Cub fan on his way home from the latest Cubs failure.

Weren't those moments worth toughing it out at the Chicago WG until I could find something else to do for a living? More to the point, was this whole adventure an exercise in chasing my dream, or just another attempt of mine to put it off in lieu of a new adventure? There, on the bare wood floor, with the sun beginning to set, the verdict - like me - remained out.