Outbound

Long distance sailing has been justly described as sailing to exotic ports and doing extensive maintenance, and after fifty years I can say I've pulled apart more engines in obscure places than I'd ever care to admit. I've replaced Troubadour's original engine four times in fifty years, too. I maintain the things, do all the fluid changes at twice the most conservative intervals -- like changing engine oil after every fifty hours of use -- but I don't run my engines often and the salt water environment simply kills them faster with little use. Yes, that's correct. Marine engines are cooled with seawater, one way or another, even so-called fresh-water cooled engines, and salt kills metal, period. So, rule number one: shit don't last and it's got to be replaced. That's why sailing is also described as standing in a cold shower -- ripping up hundred dollar bills just for the sheer fun of it. That's the nuts and bolts, but here's the grease: the more you can do yourself the more affordable sailing becomes. The corollary? When you pay someone else to do the work, about 90% of the time the work is poorly done -- or was just plain wrong, leading to more expensive repairs. When we made New Zealand a year or so later, I took a diesel mechanics course; it was the best six weeks I ever spent -- in terms of saving money. I still have zero interest in engines, but I've always had tons of interest in saving money.

Anyway, Jennie was as good as her word. She wanted to explore. She wanted to meet people. And Jennie was an RN. A real, honest-to-Pete nurse. When word got out in the village she was an RN someone from the local hospital came down and asked if she would mind working on Hiva Oa at a clinic for a month or so. She looked at me and I shrugged 'why not', and off we went. There wasn't a doc at the clinic there, it turned out, and she was doing front line work under a docs supervision -- by radio -- and she loved it, had never been happier. One month turned to two, then three, then her replacement -- from France -- finally turned up and we were free again.

Rangiroa was our next stop, inside the northeast pass by the village of Tiputa, and we stood by and watched Jacques Cousteau and Calypso maneuver into the lagoon and drop anchor a few hours after we had -- and about a hundred feet away -- and Jennie wound up working on the boat for two weeks while Cousteau & Co dove on the reefs just outside the pass. One night we heard Electric Karma's second album blaring over an onboard hi-fi and when the crew found out the next day who Jennie's main squeeze was we had a blowout on the beach that night that was truly epic. We became good friends and ran into Calypso several times over the next decade or so, yet that experience came to define most of the people we ran across out there. After a few months we both realized we'd be running into these same people time and again -- because we were all like-minded explorers on the same path. We might not see John and Jane for a few months, but then there they'd be, in some out of the way anchorage no one had heard of before, and we'd exchange information and ideas, maybe some rum, too, then be on our separate ways.

During the three months we spent on Hiva Oa I got this Paul Gauguin thing going and started painting. Yeah, Gauguin spent most of his time in the Pacific on this island, and yeah, you could buy art supplies there. So I did. An old French gal taught me the basics and I started painting, and I've not stopped once since. When he dropped the hook someplace nice I'd start sketching anything and everything interesting, and in time we began searching out anchorages simply because they had scenic appeal. By the time we hit Papeete I was running out of places to store canvases.

Because of the time Jennie had worked on Hiva Oa all sorts of bonds and fees were waived in Tahiti, and we were extended the offer to spend more time in Moorea, in the village of Papetō'ai, if she'd work for another month or two. Okay, look at pictures of Cook Inlet on Moorea, then factor that getting a permit to anchor there was next to impossible, then hit enter. Now, you've just been given a permit to anchor there as long as Jennie was working there, plus a month. Free, as in no charge. We ended up anchored by a waterfall -- for six months. I shipped fifty canvases back to LA; when my lawyer saw them she asked if she could buy a couple. Then she told me she had shown them to a gallery owner. They wanted to represent me. Please send more, they said. Bigger is better.

I already thought life couldn't possibly get any better than this -- and now please paint more? A month later word came that thirty plus paintings had sold, and the next time I sent in a batch I'd better count on returning to LA for a dedicated showing.

Then the inevitable happened.

Jennie's parents, and two of her three sisters, announced their coming to Tahiti to meet the latest member of the family. And the two sisters were huge Electric Karma fans, too.

Oh happy day.

So, I rented a house for them to sleep in, and figured we'd take them sailing on the days Jennie had off, and on the day of their arrival we got on a Twin Otter at Temae and hopped across the channel to Papeete.

Warren Clemens looked like he'd just been called up by Central Casting to play the part of a midwestern preacher with an attitude problem. Problem is, looks can be deceiving. Warren was a hard drinking ex-Marine with a seriously deranged sense of humor. He was also a physician, a skilled general surgeon who also taught at the medical school in Green Bay, Wisconsin. He was also a Green Bay Packers fanatic. I mean a real fanatic, not some half-assed wannabe. And as soon as Warren learned his baby girl was working at the local clinic he had to go see what she was up to.

And yeah, you guessed this one already, didn't you?

As soon as they leaned he was this hot shot surgeon some kid gets pulled off a reef after a white tip reef shark tried to eat his legs off, and the kid's half dead by the time they get him to the clinic. No way he'll make it to Papeete, someone said.

If only we had a surgeon here?

And there goes mild-mannered Clark Kent into the phone booth, emerging seconds later in his red cape as Super Surgeon, ready to save the day. Yeah, he saved the kid's life. Yeah, he did an appendectomy three days later. Then gall stones, then he repaired and set a compound fractured femur. Another appendectomy followed -- and, mind you, he wasn't getting paid for any of this -- and he was having the time of his life. Long story short, for the next eight years Warren and his wife, the first mother I'd ever really known, came back to Moorea and he volunteered for two months at a stretch. He stopped coming -- eight years later -- only because he died; there's a chapel in the forest overlooking Cook Inlet named after him. He's buried there, and so is his wife, and my wife too, for that matter.

Mind you, all this happened because I forgot to pack some books on Troubadour. I mean, are you following along with the chorus here? It's why my next solo album was called Serendipity, why a butterfly sneeze in Tibet comes across the Pacific as a typhoon. Everything is part of an endless chain of cause and effect, so trying to find the root cause for something is as pointless as asking what happened before the Big Bang. Who the devil knows? And who cares? It's pointless and silly to ask the question, and Buddhists are on the right track when they say: accept what is. If you can't handle that, go get an enema, flush your brain and get right with God. You ain't gonna know, so chill out and paint another picture.

Warren's two week trip stretched out to three, by the way, and he wept when he left.

Okay, enough about Warren. Let me introduce you to Michelle. My mother. Well, you know what I mean.

Michelle liked to play cards. She also taught physics. Quantum mechanics, to be more precise. She was one of a handful of women to work at Oak Ridge -- on the Manhattan Project. To say she was smart was like calling Einstein a bright kid. To say Jennie came from the deep end of the gene pool was as scary as it was misleading. Scary because she was serving steaks at a waterfront restaurant in San Diego, waiting for me to come along. What if I'd gone to a bookstore in Westwood? Misleading? Because she had turned her back on all that, yet that's who she was.

Michelle also liked to paint. Watercolors. Nothing but, and usually simple flowers. She taught me her techniques, and I was hooked. We spent hours walking off into the forests around the inlet and she'd find something new, sketch the rough outlines then pull out this monster Nikon F and start shooting away, getting just the colors she needed down on Kodachrome 25 for later reference.

So, time to meet my new sisters, Niki and Taylor. Both into music, seriously. Both teaching music. Both in love with the idea of me, the rock star, even before they met me. Both went nuts after spending a few hours with me on Troubadour. We spent evenings on the boat cooking and talking shop, then I'd pull out the old backpacker and start playing through the newest ideas, sounding my way through the classics and bridging the divide to rock, and they were all abuzz about Yes and ELP and Pink Floyd, and had I heard Dark Side of the Moon yet? Niki set me straight, and Us and Them became my new favorite when we found a cassette in Papeete a week later.

There are jagged spires around the island, some of the most inspiring peaks I've ever seen, yet many lack perspective unless seen from the sea, particularly along the west side of the island. We circumnavigated Moorea, all of us, slowly, over a two day period, and I should have bought Kodak stock before we set out: I don't know how many rolls we blew through. Hundreds? Maybe -- maybe more. It was nonstop -- blow through 36 exposures then dash below to rewind and reload -- and as I'd never seen this part of the island before I was just as pathetic, just as consumed. My only regret? I shot Ektachrome as there was no place to get Kodachrome developed out here, and some of the slides were fading fast by the time Jennie passed.

Still, some of my most cherished memories were captured during those three weeks. As I've mentioned, I'd not had a mother and father, let alone sisters, but by golly now I sure did. I would have fallen in love with them, all of them, simply for that reason, but they turned out to be really fun, really interesting people, and all of a sudden life felt complete. To put it succinctly, I'd not felt this good since Electric Karma's heyday -- and no stage fright, too. A year away and life was evolving into the best sleigh ride possible, not a care in the world and everything was just as easy as sliding along a country road in the snow.

Of course, shit had to hit the fan. It just had to.

And it hit from an unexpected direction.

Terry. My 'grandmother.' She'd married and divorced an old English movie star and was now simply destitute. He'd bled her dry and walked away, walked into the arms of a younger, more economically productive actress, and Terry was about as low as a human being could get when she got word to me through my lawyer that she needed help. I bought her a ticket from New York City to Papeete and she arrived two days before the Clemens clan was due to leave. By the time she got to Troubadour I'd told them my grandmother was coming, but not who she was, so when Terry McKay showed up onboard Warren clammed up tight, Michelle tried to act nonchalant -- but failed, and the girls gushed. All in all, it was exactly what Terry needed. She was entranced by Moorea and I made an offer on the house I'd rented, bought it outright and she moved in -- with the understanding that we'd all consider the place kind of a home base going forward. When local officials heard they had a genuine Hollywood legend in their midst...well, let's just say they were very supportive of the idea. Warren was still tongue-tied every time he was around her, though.

We said our byes at the local airport, and as I said, Warren was a basket case. The experience had been as draining as it was fulfilling, and I hugged Michelle and the girls in a way that said everything. I was happy. They were too.

Terry was beside herself, of course. She and destitute were not on speaking terms, and I talked to my lawyer who talked to some people at Universal who talked to -- yada-yada-yada -- and she had an audition if she could get to it. She said she couldn't, she wasn't strong enough.

Could she if I went with her?

"Yes."

So off we went. We stayed at the Beverly Hills Hotel, a first for me, because she had to 'keep up appearances.' The studio picked her up and I went to visit my gallery, dropped off a few new canvases. Visited my friend at Pop's house, then my lawyer, and by the time I got back to the hotel Terry was in the room, out of her mind with anxiety. She wouldn't hear for a week or so, and if she prevailed her presumed co-star would be none other than her ex.

"Let's leave tomorrow," she cried.

"Let me make a few calls," I replied.

She got the part and her ex was passed over, the part going to David Niven instead, and she was suddenly ecstatic and destitute no more. Shooting would begin in two months so we returned to Moorea, and as I had a real workspace to set up a studio I started painting. Huge canvases this time, like six by ten feet, and this series was all Moorea, all misty mountains and rain forests full of furiously blooming flowers. Terry and I started walking the forests, she started photographing flowers and soon got into it, then she too wanted to learn watercolors and when I passed word along to Michelle she was over the moon too. Next summer would be fun, I reckoned, assuming Warren didn't lose Michelle due to his obvious infatuation with Terry. I mean...Peyton Place, anyone?

Jennie was the one who picked up on Terry's infatuation with me.

I'd never seen it before, obviously, but then again -- what about Jenn. Jennie, on the other hand, was adroit at picking up these things. She read people and didn't miss much, and she could spot a phony in two seconds flat. Terry was a phony. Insecure, not really talented but cute as hell. She was, in Jennie's mind's eye, a pretender. Terry'd made it this far on her looks alone, not to mention her ability to enchant men, and that was why, Jennie guessed, the old Englishman had ditched her. He'd seen through the bullshit and moved on. Jennie doubted the guy had swindled her, too; more likely she'd try to buy the guy off, keep him interested by buying him things. Classic, she said. Now she'd turned her attention on me -- because I was safe. Because I'd give her all the attention she needed. Because of Pops. She was, in short, taking advantage of me.

Yeah. Maybe. I wasn't buying it quite yet, but I could see her point. Regardless, she'd been a part of my life for years, some of the most important years of my life, and I wasn't going to turn my back on her. If I had some justification to call her family, then where's the line between being taken advantage of and doing one's duty?

Funny thing, that. I'd never talked to Jennie about Jenn. Jenn and her razor blades, but for some reason I decided to that day. I ran down the whole sordid chronology, from the toxic relationship with her dad to the last attempt, and the abortion, in Vancouver.

She was appalled, I think.

Mainly, I reckon, that we'd not talked about it before. That led to a talk about abortion. We both hated the idea of it, but we both supported the idea that it was ultimately a woman's right to choose. No big deal so far, right?

So why had I, in effect, ditched Jenn when she decided to have an abortion?

Because, I countered, I considered that child 'ours,' not just 'hers' -- and by taking unilateral action to take that child from me she was declaring in the starkest possible terms I wasn't part of her life.

"But she's ill, Aaron. Couldn't you see that?"

"But she was considered well enough to make that kind of decision? If she was well enough to consider the implications of ending a life, why wasn't she considered well enough to take her own? I don't get all these moral inconsistencies. They don't make sense. How is it okay to kill a baby at four weeks but not at four months. I don't get it...?"

"But still you think it's okay if the mother wants to?"

"I think it's wrong to butt into other people's lives."

"But it was okay to force someone into having a baby, because it was yours, too? But you were not going to carry that baby, were you? Or care for that baby if you two split? Maybe she was never secure enough in the relationship to think you'd always be there? After you split up in Honolulu, went back to LA...do you think she felt real secure about things?"

"I was disappointed, but we never talked about splitting..."

"Oh, come on, Aaron. How do you think she felt? And then she's trapped on the boat with the one man in the world who was bound to torment, then abandon her -- again. And what do you do? You abandon her, too? So yeah, why bring a kid into that world? What else is she gonna think? Her life has been one threat of abandonment after another, and all you did was validate her fears."

I looked away, looked at a mist-enshrouded mountain across the inlet, and I could see Troubadour sitting comfortably at anchor beneath the rolling fog. Immediately I wanted to get out to her, pull up that anchor and set sail, head to New Zealand...hell, why not Antarctica? I could just keep on going, because circles never end, do they? Electric Karma was not supposed to end like that, but we were aborted, weren't we? Five kids' lives snuffed out by an air traffic controllers little mistake, another hundred kids' lives ended by carelessness -- so run away. Everything is endless circles, when you get right down to it. Everyone is scared shitless of being abandoned.

I didn't sit with Jenn and try to help her reason things out. I ran away. I tossed an ultimatum in her lap -- like a hand grenade? -- then I ran from her room. I needed to run away, didn't I? I didn't fulfill my end of the bargain with Electric Karma. I ran away. Ran back to Pops, but I left them in Cleveland and they died. I should have ended when Deni and my mates did. But I ran. When Pops needed me most, when he got sick, I ran. I ran to Deni and my mates.

Abandonment? Guilt? Did I have issues?

Phew!

I was running in circles, too. I had nowhere to go, nothing important to do, so I was running in the mist, running into mountains of guilt -- and trying to paint pretty pictures of my aborted life. But what life was I talking about? The life my parents wanted. Oh yeah, those parents. The parents I never knew. Had I been running ever since? And what about them? -- had they been running, too? Away from me? Away from their responsibilities to me? Just how far back did these circles go?

So...what's out there on the other side of the Big Bang? What's on the other side of all that sky? What would happen if you put all the matter in the universe into a suitcase, then waved a magic wand, said a few magic words and poof -- you made the suitcase disappear. What would be left?

Silly, huh?

Like running in the night is silly, hiding from the answers right in front of your face. Running in circles. Running into endless answers in search of all their questions.

+++++

So, I painted for a few months, helped Terry read through her lines -- and this was comfortable for us; it was something I'd helped her do since forever. I still felt close to her, still liked to bask in her glow, and when it was time we flew to LA together. I dropped off some paintings at the gallery, sat on the soundstage and watched David and Terry work some screen magic, and I sat in the Polo Lounge that afternoon and watched people watching Terry, still proud of her for being so beautiful.