Winedark

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I WISH I were a cynic, too.

I'm sailing my tired old boat back to Mykonos by myself; the crew quit in Santorin. The cook was already gone. Fortunately, it's the end of the charter season.

The crew was a college boy from Indiana. A degree in animal husbandry, he told me. Took a year off to see the world, before he returns to get his degree in advanced cow-kicking.

Anyway, he said he couldn't take it anymore. I asked him what «it» was, exactly.

«You’re not lovable, Bradley,» he told me, with a look of unbecoming relish on his healthy young face. «You think you’re better than you are. Maybe you were worth a shit, a long time ago, before you drank yourself into the vegetable kingdom — though I never heard of those books you claim to have written. But now you're just a fat old drunk, playing Cap'n Bligh.» He shook his head. «The drunker you get, the meaner you get — you know that? And I've never seen you without a glass to hand, have I?»

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