Vertigo of My Soul: A Tale of Tres Vivos

By Nicole Alexander

Paradise is found in a vivid, colorful world under clear blue tropical waves, as sea turtles and bright fish become her dive buddies. She finds serenity in the serenade of a hot, young musician. His beautiful soul carries her to the outermost galaxies, but is this love or just her imagination? Love is delayed and faith is tested when a second musician enters the picture.

She is caught between self-interest and national security—a decoy that makes Big Brother’s ever-watchful eyes cross. Solace is found beneath the placid Pacific until climate change brings winter waves, currents, and surf so strong that there may be no returning from the sea. How does one distinguish between coincidence and the intricate connection of life’s unseen undercurrents?

Time moves on. Peace found beneath the ocean is not found on dry land as health concerns and bills overtake her. In her darkest hour, lessons are learned. The world crashes in on her soul like a tidal wave tossing her around the sea. She is caught in a tsunami, wave after wave after wave, with no way back to shore—or is there?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Mar 23, 2023
• ISBN: 9781665734127

Nicole Alexander

The author is a Single woman always looking for love in the wrong places, overly tied to her persona as an engineer, SCUBA Instructor, Sea Captain. 15 years swimming, diving, boating in the Caribbean teaching and taking my diving family to favorite watering holes leads to me buying a little bar on a remote desert island until hurricanes and a drastic change in the country’s leadership blow me back to the real-world where I can’t help but try to make the world a better place. Someone’s gotta do it. Long accused of overactive imagination, as I remain stuck home alone, first with COVID and now with lingering debilitating injuries and inexplicable down-for-the-count head pangs, I’m turning years of fun-loving life into books. What’s a girl to do, but journal and go Listen to Music, except when one can’t.

Book preview

CONTENTS

Prologue

Chapter 1     Catch Dat Lobsta!

Chapter 2     The Circus

Chapter 3     Just Being Frankie

Chapter 4     Season

Chapter 5     The Honeymoon… And The Issues

Chapter 6     The Universe

Chapter 7     Life Choices

Chapter 8     Music

Chapter 9     By The Light Of The Silvery Moon

Chapter 10   Life Changes

Chapter 11   Fly Me To Another Galaxy

Chapter 12   Yes Deanna There Is A Glass Ceiling

Chapter 13   Enter Raag

Chapter 14   Which Way Did He Go?

Chapter 15   New Job Same Ol’ Sh*T

Chapter 16   Dr. Jerkyll I Presume?

Chapter 17   Escape

Chapter 18   Bounce

Chapter 19   The Threat 6 Jan

Chapter 20   Relief, Release, Double For Mi Trouble

Chapter 21   Work Body Teasing

Chapter 22   One Month Later

Chapter 23   Whiplash

Chapter 24   Downward Spiral In Bureaucratic Nightmare

Chapter 25   Send In The Big Dogs

Chapter 26   Blackout

Chapter 27   After S.O.B. That Would Be After Second Opinion, Baby!

Chapter 28   When It Rains, It’s A Deluge And Sign

Chapter 29   Mood Rotten Apple

Chapter 30   Gimme A Break. Oh Wait

Chapter 31   The Wait – And Hopefully Nightmare – Is Over

Chapter 32   Exit Stage Underwater

Chapter 33   The Awakening

Chapter 34   All Aboard

Chapter 35   The Call

Chapter 36   Finally At The Recording Studio

Chapter 37   Hope Realized. Dreams Come True

PROLOGUE

Scene opens to a beautiful golden-brown cat with dark tipped tufted ears and a baby Siamese kitten 3 feet behind her playing follow the leader. The mountain looking cats slither out between louvers in a Spanish casa window. If you’ve never been to outer islands, windowpanes are akin to slats on blinds, where louvers are the panes of the window itself. It’s easier for the 4-month-old top cat o da litter to squeeze through than it is for mama. Single file on tip toes, they tightrope walk the 1-inch top of the black wrought iron balcony railing that spans the house. It’s a 20 foot drop below. In sync, mama and her baby jump 8 feet to the pool house roof next door. They scamper across only to jump down an angling tree branch then prance down to the lawn below.

No fireman is needed to get these cats down from anything. If you didn’t see it yourself, you’d never believe it. They let themselves out that way every day after they come to greet me when I get home. Never did catch them inside, so not sure if this is only a one-way routine. I do often come home or wake to gifts on my front doorstep. Mostly dead baby chicks. The little one is so much smarter than mama. The first time that baby kitten brought a half dead baby chick inside mi casa, I screamed GET THAT OUT OF HERE loud enough to wake the dead, as my beloved grandma used to say. I chased him out before he set it down. He never brought me such horrific gifts again. Mama cat is not nearly so bright. She keeps bringing n bringing these unwelcome gifts.

Me, I’m inside, sitting in my red recliner. I didn’t pick it. Came with the house. Too high quality to toss; too expensive to replace. I’ll just live with red leather in an otherwise not red room. Seriously? A glitch in the software again as I turn on the computer. OMG almost lose the whole file. WTF? Plus, 3 days in a row, a large heavy indoor palm plant moved all by itself. The one right in front of the window. The second night I awoke from that unsettling dream -- someone running across the hall. Or was it a dream? Did they plant a bug in my computer? Try to crash it? Are they copying files?

Or are they here to check out 5000 pages of draft copy? That fits with the couch moving on its own again too. Really? 8 inches forward and 6 inches to the side? Yes, a man’s 8 inches. Right where you can reach my diary, log, and drawings. Sure makes accessing my papers easier. It appears someone is interested. If only I knew who. The crazy thing is that there are so many unusual suspects who’d benefit from my schtuff. This ain’t no Clo-Dumbo episode with only one suspect. NOTE: Since I submitted this to the Publisher, they reviewed old records and busted the guy who took down the PanAm flight that took down PanAm. Not implying causation, just citing facts.

So many possibilities exist that it blows one’s mind. My diary, pictures, visualization boards are rife with great sex scenes, stunning underwater panoramas a lot of drama-trauma from love unrequited and requited. There’s quite a bit about how men mess up the life of a good woman, and vice versa. Well not so much versa. Its love stories. Its corporate plagiarism. Its paintings. Its pictures of paradise found in a vivid colorful world under clear blue tropical waters. Serenades abound from a hot young musician’s guitar that transports me to outermost galaxies. The trip is now in full color thanks to NASA’s recent release of Webb Telescope photography. Before my flight was in a black box, now it’s in full color as I hop n skip from galaxy to cartwheeling galaxy.

The hard part, the pain, the death-grip hold someone puts on love unconsummated by outlandish deals crosscutting underground drug dealers, prescription and otherwise, international intrigue, all under the auspices of Big Brother’s ever watchful eye. How to distinguish between coincidence and intricate connectivity? Does he want me as much as I want him? Or is it just another illusion to trap me in this limbo where everyone else profits from my work and disability? Damn even Rehab is happier with me home 95% of the time. Even my cat’s life is better than mine! Not that I begrudge him that for he is my little lover boy. Yes, even that statement was twisted by those inclined to discredit me, as though that is a sexual statement. I mean, REALLY. When there are so many hot willing young men, why would I need a cat? Gimme a break!

I’m just a dive instructor who wanted a Mom n Pop Scuba Shop of her own and couldn’t get it together with the right Pop. We can all agree, not for lack of trying. Oh, the stories I will tell, but I’m getting ahead of myself. Another habit I just can’t kick. I’m either ahead, behind or doing 3 things at a time. FOCUS, they say.

My reply? I am focused. Just on many things at once. They say most people can handle 2 or 3 things going wrong at once. Many can handle 4. 5? Very few. 5 or more is where that universal answer lies to a plane crash or inexplicable ship run aground, Pilot Error. Me? I’ve gotten pretty good at handling 8, 9, even 10 crises at a time. Can’t seem to get out of that rut. So many hurdles leaves no time for taking care of me.

That sliding glass balcony door ain’t moving itself either. The rail is NOT self-cleaning. It was way too heavy for me to move it before, much less now that I’m hobbled. House Bound. Chair Bound. Can barely walk. Unless you call it walking and normal when you must use bands to lift your legs so you can take a 12 to 18 inch stride, lift your legs more than 1/2 an inch and crutch for a block once, maybe twice a day. I don’t.

My crutching is pretty much limited to what you can do with Achilles Tendons, hamstrings and toes. Toes strong and skinny now after 2 months balancing my full body weight on crutches. No longer my typical 125 pounds, 139.9 ain’t bad, but it’s more than I’d like and now mostly about my middle. UGH. That is until this injury. One teensy tiny sliver of silver Christmas tinsel in an otherwise long, bleak winter is my middle looks better. Yes, that is a palm tree against an emerald green volcanic mountain backdrop, or as they say here, Esmerelda Verde, in the background. Bleak is a matter of perspective, is it not?

Unfortunately, the Workman’s Comp doctors are calling that walking, and normal. A far cry from my former yoga dancer-cise routine, which to jazz it up included doing the YMCA with my legs and cheerleader high kicks and splits. Yes, still can do the splits. In high school, I was the one they’d lift to do the splits across two sets of shoulders. I’ve done some version of leg exercise a couple times a day ever since. Tina Turner legs don’t just happen, now do they? Had I only taken out the policy she has with Lloyds’ of London all my worries would be over. But who would ever think after all those daily leg exercises my entire adult life either leg would ever fail me, much less both. At the same time! I could leg press 220 pounds, for heaven’s sake.

Yes, I finally get back in the pool by dropping down on my bum and bouncing in. Then I do a few bounce laps. A week after I start my bounce, Big Miracle hit my music feed again. That’s the movie about saving three whales trapped under the ice where they bounce out of the water just long enough to catch a breath before going back under. Must be what I look like if you’re flying a drone over or watching from a neighboring high-rise. Couple weeks later a new reggae song, Bounce a collaboration of 3 favorite musicians hits the radio waves. Next thing, all the little kids in the pool are bouncing too.

I didn’t make the connection at first. These things take time. Human Nature is to disregard the first several of a series of coincidences. It’s what gives those inclined towards, NO GOOD, a head start and makes it so much harder for the good guys to catch them once there are too many coincidences to discard. Up to NO GOOD was Grandma’s way of describing all sorts of atrocities. Her mantra was, If you can’t say something nice about someone, don’t say anything all at.

Getting back out of the pool? Now that’s a nightmare. Thank God when I bend at the waist my palms lie flat on the floor. The only way for me to get back on my feet is to push up with my left hand, right hand on the crutch, as I back into standing. That’s a one-a-day maneuver too. And, no, not every day. In the pool? Can’t do any standard kick. Not flutter. Not scissors. Not whip. Fins in the ocean? Out of the question. This really sucks because swimming has been my livelihood and life since I was a kid. More importantly, the ocean is my salvation and outlet. But other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?

Now the City is trimming the palm trees at my eye level. 11th floor of a high-rise condo? Seriously? How about the 2 palm trees right in front of my unit cut down last week, or the pink balloon that suddenly stuck in the palm tree that points right at my window? Someone adding or taking out cameras? Or both? Taking down the bad guys’ cam and putting up the good guys’ cam? Vice versa? For city trucks and a whole Spectrum crew are parked in the complex round-a-bout today. Again.

OMG. What’s that? Dude in a palm tree? Hanging by jamming climbing cleats into the thin spiky tree trunk? He’s going round the palm tree knocking down dead branches in a tree is practically arms reach from me. Now he’s dropping down. Uno, dos, tres bounces. He’s on the ground in like 1 second flat. Up the next tree he goes. Up in a split second. Uno, dos, tres. Right up that tree like Rehab did as a kitten. Split second and gone. Easy entrance and exit, ain’t it? Unreal. You seem so secluded and safe in a high rise. Until you don’t. Until you aren’t.

Like most traps, it’s much easier to get into than out. That’s usually a one-way tactic unless you succumb. Even then you’re stuck inside under someone’s thumb. Beck n call. It’s only because good people stand by in silence to protect their own self-interest or to get a few crumbs for baby’s new shoes that those Up To No Good get away with it. All’s well and good until the silent bystander suddenly finds himself under that spotlight. Then he sees that now, he too stands alone against an army of thousands, most of those who already succumbed. One by one the numbers change. No one stands for him either. Soon no one left to fight the good fight for the Greater Good. Now none left standing. How many left standings does it take? Fifty? Thirty? Ten? One? Three?

Gotta do more than send prayers, nods and weapons to sitting ducks. Someone’s gotta take the bad guys out at the top. But then the danger is that the bad guys do that before the last few good guys can. Who decides? The constitution? Apparently, no one reads or follows the Ten Commandments anymore. Well very few at the top, it would seem. So, can we still please at least adhere to the Rule of Law, applied equally to everyone? Fully Transparent. Please?

Who’s brave enough to do that? Hard to find. Even our favorite good guy Tom Hanks has something to say about that, A Hero is someone who voluntarily walks into the unknown. You can do a lot do with that. You can add on, for a good cause, to help a friend in need, or less virtuously, to cover your own lily arse. Sages have added that the hero usually ends up dead. Thus the advice, never be the first to volunteer. None of this matters when you have the blessing of the Big Guy. Said blessing include a cat’s nine lives. Then too, not all heroes are voluntary. Some are put in a pressure cooker situation until they declare which side they’ll play. Some heroes are volun-told. Problem with that? You never know what, or who, will sway them the other way. Especially in gale force winds. We get a lot of gale force winds in the tropics.

Last week Number 1 in a Number 2 business was here cleaning out the septic system. We are close to the ocean, it’s gotta be pumped. Can’t have it back up, can we? The week before that someone was rerunning electrical lines that were perfectly fine. Just like the year they ran the new fiber optics cables that never hooked to anything. Nor did they pull the old ones. Right before the big drug bust that took out everyone across the street at a little off-sale joint. Bad timing. Adding extra weight to telephone poles right before a 185-mph hurricane hit, gusts to 225. But who’s counting? How many poles left standing? In 8 tough miles, you could count the standing poles on one hand.

That was another island another day. Not that it matters to the Feds. If that’s who’s here. It certainly doesn’t matter to contractors or corporations. They’re just here to collect profit on contingency on profit on contingency on profit and avoid safety, liability and accountability regs by transferring risk and uncertainty to subcontractors. So much for regulations designed to protect the working class. Few left intact in application, although the laws are still on the books. Does it matter to the street guys? Not at all.

Then there are my front door locks. Hard to open again. Always happens when someone new opens them. Appears someone jimmied to get in. If only Rehab could talk. Motion activated surveillance doesn’t work. Just get 10,000 picks of my lil domestic mountain cat. He’s beautiful, but clogs up the disc, little attention manimal that he is.

Copying files, photographing documents? Doctoring MRI’s? Or are they planting something? Like the Mailbox Drop. Use someone else’s mailbox to drop and receive snow, ice, cash and other valuables. Just like the Breonna Taylor debacle, local graft and corruption uses this trick. Another favorite? Using a house listed for sale with a lock box. Now that mistaken entry is a story for another day.

No Mercury Retrograde. No Friday the 13th. So, what else can explain that I can’t get into any portal today? Can’t retrieve doctor’s medical notes. Need if for the big Second Opinion. Can’t get into my electronic log. Haven’t tried the printer yet, but that’s gonna be an even bigger nightmare. What a morning. Then suddenly computer fine, but now the DUOLINGO APP is down? You can’t make this shit up. Although when I talk about this to my friends, they tend to believe it more if it’s just my imagination. Human Nature. To state the opposite and to give the benefit of the doubt to an outsider.

Who’s checking for what? Why are so many people I barely know asking extremely detailed questions about my legs, health status, recovery and doctor’s visits. Then again, it’s prolly just my imagination. All agree that mine is overactive, especially when cooped up AGAIN for months on end. First COVID and that whole drill. Now I’m chair and house bound because some doctor who graduated in the bottom half of his class messed up evaluating and treating what seemed to be a simple ankle sprain. It’s been months and I’m struggling to stay positive. Learning español and bass guitar only goes so far to keep me going.

Or did this good doctor graduate at the top of his class and he’s doing corporate bidding to punish me for trying to do the right thing? Either way, Dr. Jerkyll is wrong. It’s not a sprained ankle. It’s a bone contusion. If you didn’t know, that happens right before a bone breaks. I didn’t either. It takes 6-8 months to heal instead of the 6-8 weeks for a sprain to heal. That’s without the same good doctor putting me on crutches using my still injured ankle. He refused me a wheelchair even though my knee is also tearing. He ignores this from months one to three. My knee finally gives way at month four. My other knee rebuilt years ago did great while I could do my exercises. That is 5 months ago. It fails 10 days later. House and Chair bound. Crutch a block out n back every day or so. The rest of the time I’m trapped in a tower.

My strong bones must be from all those years of drinking farm milk as a kid. Or was it the 9 months eating mint chocolate chip ice cream to settle my stomach when nothing else would. All those gastrointestinal tests, if valid, said my stomach was ok too. Or was that not legit either? After this, that seems much more likely than my doctor assessed it last year. Was that another set of doctors doing Corporation bidding? So hard to tell. What I do know is that my stomach trouble didn’t stop until I controlled for substances by cutting out salt, coffee, and all food but chicken noodle soup, potatoes, peanut butter and crackers, for 6 months. Yes, that means no spices, no alcohol, no life. I’d come home sick and exhausted more nights than not. Doctors’ appointments for 3 months led to nothing. No cause.

Once I rule out food, alcohol, coffee, spices, and life, it becomes obvious that I get sick at certain places. Mostly work. Even though I only drink bottled water and eat peanut butter and crackers every day for 8 months, it takes me too long to realize I still store a peanut butter jar there and leave my bottled water unattended too often. The building is under lock and key, but we all know locks and keys are dummy locks intended to keep honest men honest. Any dishonest man or criminal can pick that lock and make it appear as though it was never touched.

My point? Anyone who watches Clo-Dumbo and pays attention to details can tell you, unattended foodstuffs creates an opportunity for someone to switch out the bottled water for tap water. Tap water is found contaminated with gas and likely other chemical substances not tested. It also creates an opportunity to slip in a mickey, or something harmless like Imodium, Exlax or Visine, doesn’t it? Not that I’m saying anyone did. Can we agree that anyone so inclined could have? Or is it more likely that my most recent stomach attach, after 8 months good, could be a sudden visceral reaction to the peanut butter and crackers I’ve had for lunch ever since I started controlling for food.

One good doctor says my stomach problems are age and exercise related. I should do more. He picks the wrong person for that. I swim an hour in the ocean a couple times a week. I’ get up and do 2 sets of 22 sit-ups and wall push-ups, the second set in full dancer pose. This along with a daily 20-minute leg exercise and balance routine. Seriously? What a gimmick. Sell people medical insurance and then tell them anything bothering them is age related, but we have drugs for that. You can buy them here. I hate drug peddlers, legal or illegal.

If my problems are age and exercise related, then what about the 60% of the country who does very little exercise? Seems that the insurance industry gives more similar sage but not applicable advice instead of rendering actual medical care. Where is the premium money going? It builds many fancy offices, homes, and vaca villas. Sorry, but Medicare, and Medicaid, is breaking Social Security and together breaking our country. How much money can you print? What are we getting for this money? Drug sales appear to be the basis of modern-day stateside medicine. It’s NOT a good substitute for overpriced healthcare. Put otherwise easy to return to good health people on drugs so they do less until they wither away in a corner and die? Damn what happened to the world while I was diving?

Rip Van Sparkles. Leave for twenty years and come back to, well guess that’s what happens when lobbies, lawyers and special interests take over the economy. Now there are great doctors, great lawyers, and causes that need lobbyists. I have fabulous friends in those 3 trades who I’d swim to the galaxy end to help, and have. That there are such amazing doctors only makes the grifters more obvious and paltry by comparison. Good and evil exists in everything. But when something reeks of a septic tank spill, and there’s a gap between what happened and what should have happened, likely a problem exists.

As I write all this the administration acts finally to reduce inflation. The Fed alone can’t control it; you need good strategy and policy too. We have six weeks of first in decades or first ever new legislation. Yay. It includes Medicare script drug price negotiation, Affordable Healthcare Act continuation, and alternate clean energy incentives to reduce dependency on foreign oil. Finally, fair-share corporate taxes passed. A new campaign trail, both sides. Just like two years ago when I penned my first book, delayed by, well that’s a story for another day. For this book will hit the streets before that last one will, Soon Come.

Pardon my drop to the dark side, but I literally limped in with an apparent sprained ankle that wasn’t healing and a sore hip and knee from sitting too wrong too long because of it. Now I’m confined to a recliner. It should be a motorized wheelchair or seated scooter, but workman’s comp won’t open the purse strings. Not even for a rental. So, I’m stuck in this hole, lucky to hobble 10 feet to the kitchen and make a couple trips to the bedroom and bathroom a day. A whopping 25 feet. Days I do it too many times, well I crash in a pile on my bed and wait until I can pull myself to bathroom.

Karma’s sense of humor is even more cutting than mine, or maybe that’s where I learned it. Oh, all those boxes of Depends I bought for all those Over-the-Hill 40 and 50 birthday parties we used to throw. Make Plans, Live Wrong, Hear God Laughing. As I type that, literally a Depends ad appears. One of those adult diaper ads, newly cartooned in bright colors set to sweet music. A renewed use of bright colors, sweet music, certain phrases, even dancing, appear after my designs appear on island. So many copycats mimic my work. Another coincidence? Surveillance now puts many eyes on my work. This island’s eyes rival a casino’s for detail. These Eye’s in the Sky are way more proficient than those typically found in a small island community. Our coconut telegraph here is hypersonic, faster than the Metaverse. Seriously, the Metaverse is just a new telegraph line without old privacy protections.

Better question than whether this good doctor was in the bottom or top half of his class, or even whether he’s volunteered to get the gold or whether he’s saving his hide after being volun-told, is why are profits on ever escalating sky-high premiums going to stockholders instead of lowering insurance premiums or providing medical treatment? Especially since insurance rates spike year after year. There used to be a watchdog over that. Someone is feeding that Rottweiler some Kobe Beef steaks. Nothing worse than a fat, spoiled watchdog, or mouser. Man, if the drug dealers on the street had gigs that easy. Crazy. I’m not condoning illegal drug dealing, but at least the street dealers have risk and uncertainty, yet the cartels run amok. Don’t get me started.

Man trapped inside a high-rise tower, ain’t no life. My life is ground down to a grain of sand. Issues thrown at me grow and expand exponentially daily. There’s another good quote, The likelihood of someone being right is inversely proportional to the number trying to prove her wrong. No, that doesn’t sound like Tom Hanks. It’s been many moons now without a life. Yes, we all took a hit during COVID. It was hard for me, since I’d just moved into a closed culture where older single women are viewed as threats who take away men and jobs away from local women. Something like that. As though you can belong to a country, but keep your state entirely to yourself. You can’t get all for one, unless one gives what they got for all unless you’ve got some sweet deal rigged up. Sweetheart deals must be exposed and destroyed.

Double alone’s effect on me since I work in a traditionally male field, not as many women in the workplace to meet. But for music at sunset a night or 3 a week I’d qualify as a hermit. Since I landed, except for work, I’ve been mostly on my own. Even at work I’m pretty much on my own. Toss in a couple trips to swim in the ocean each week, and that’s my lack of life. Before I was hobbled. Now I’m lucky to get out once a week and down to the pool a couple others. Thank God for Rehab. No, not physical therapy or detox. Rehab is my cat. Just like my favorite musician, that little kitten came into my life when I was praying for love. Carrying him around as a baby rehabbed my wrist.

Not only was I praying for love, I was studying love. Researching definitions, reading on the existentialism of love. What love is. I was even Feng Shui-ing for Love. Right after I read up on Feng Shui. For that is the fun of the internet. Pick a topic and see where it takes you. Look up every nook and cranny it takes you to. Six degrees of separation. Well I picked love, studying what it is and what it isn’t, because I had hit the proverbial wall. Familial, agape, romantic. All three loves collided simultaneously into one large side, high brick and rock wall. After reading as many authors as I could find, Martin Luther King, Gandhi and Christ’s versions are my favorite. 1st Corinthians has the best definition of love. Reading that shocked me because I first heard those quotes in LOVE STORY. I thought that was an original thought from that book’s author. No. Nor is A house divided against itself cannot stand original to Lincoln. He pulled that from the Good Book as well.

There are no original thoughts at this point in humanity. Everything is just recycled and updated with incoming new technology. Human Nature hasn’t changed much since one of the first two siblings killed the other or since the first husband cheated on his wife with his daughter. I think that was about the 13th generation of modern human beings. Not that it matters. Pick your myth. Stories are the same whether Greek, Roman, Indian, Chinese, Norse or Hebrew. For the most part, the same sins dominate all cultures, regardless of whether sin originated from eating an apple or opening Pandora’s Box.

Another truism, this isolation is torture. I’m a social butterfly. My youth spent playing sports outside or playing the field in music venues. I’d be playing every night except for about once every two weeks when I’d finally crash on the couch to recover. Back at it again the next day I’d be. My twenty-something years living it up in the city were pretty good too. The 10 plus years taking people SCUBA DIVING and Boat charters to the party spots, the best. Quite the switch was that little bar I owned. Yep the one across the Mason-Dixon Street from the big drug bust where I earned an MBA education in business, street life, and music from the School of Hard Knocks.

Speaking of diving, reminds me of liability releases and disclaimers. So, before we go further, please humor me on these caveats. There is no character in the tales to follow based on any one individual, not even the female lead. Characters are fictionalized accounts and composite sketches of many different stories and lifestyles mish-mashed, cut and pasted from juiciest tall tales told about town all rolled up into one. Even the villainous heroine is not as much me as it is what many say about me, including those who want to call my empathic soul a narcissist. Or is she? For yes, I have been played by narcissists all my life. Many of those tricks are described herein. Yes, occasionally I do turn the tables on one, or two bad guys. Even a saint’s patience and tolerance has limits. And I ain’t no saint, nor do I claim to be.

Some accounts are whitewashed, until they too are cut down to earth. Some accounts are blackwashed, for without a villain, how can there be a hero. In the end, we all know that villainizing someone helps us to deal with our drama trauma disappointments in life. So, does drawing, journaling, and as I’ve learned, creating fictional accounts after the fact. Just stop selling my stories without giving me my cut! So, before you jump to any false conclusions that this is a tell-all tale, please remember that this is a teacher’s tale sharing life lessons learned by observing my own as well as human behavior around me, all rolled into one so that others may benefit from the knocks I have endured, some with more class and grace than others. Everything discussed herein applies to so many, past, present and future, all the way back to the first brothers.

In my haste to get this book out the door editing ceased after ice-pick in my brain headaches began, leaving me in a pile on my bed for several weeks pretty much unable to function. This causes us to develop a scientific method process to detect patterns in hopes of identifying root cause. Happy to say CT scan ruled out tumor, stroke, and bleeding (whatever that is). Unfortunately the neurologist waived recommended follow-up testing when I finally got in to see him. He is quite content to whitewash this and lower body weakness away as TMJ headaches. Uh, yea, right. This just another plausible deniability evasion of performing much needed medical evaluation. Or is it that my annual medical ceiling is met? Did they not want to step into someone else’s liability? Again, we are left with, or is it? Bureaucratic warfare at its worst.

Thus please accept my apologies for a NOT FINAL EDIT version. The Publisher declined to edit since I used two formats, story for the most part and conversations for flashbacks. Time became more important than editorial quality because of ice-pick like headaches well correlated to computer use and milestones. And I keep losing days and weeks of edits. Somehow. Crazy. Even today. Perfection the Enemy of Good. Please accept my apologies and feel free to send editorial corrections to my soon to be established website.

I’m no Shakespeare. I’m just borrowing his use of the good and evil in each of us theme, which he borrowed from the Bible. Sometimes, I borrow directly from the Bible, since likely this is Divinely Inspired. So, to those who try to find out who these characters portray, there is no one real live person found within. Each aspect of the personality belongs to many, and to none. Ponder whether it is more admirable that the villain occasionally does something heroic or that the hero who does his good deeds every single day, one day acts out ever so badly? Said actions are often worse than the worst villain on his worst day.

Back to incestuous nonsense, OMG. Why is anyone interested in me?

CHAPTER ONE

Catch Dat Lobsta!

Clear aqua water. A man and a woman who’ve been told more than once they look like Demi Moore and Will Farrell. Demi’s ok but I’d rather be told I’m like Jacqueline Bissett. Frankie on the other hand gets off on being called Will Farrell. That I don’t understand his fascination with Farrell is matched by my needing his translation to actually get these comedies. The guy can make me laugh at anything. On my own, well let’s just say Comedy Central is not usually where I spend my time. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Frankie and I are diving. We’re swimming together, matching our motion to the ocean. Kicking when the surge goes our way, floating above an amazingly beautiful reef when the water goes the other way. My gaze is fixated on the purples, pink, oranges, and a few smaller bright red crown-like corals that encrust the underwater canyon walls. It’s like flowers lining a Monet Painting. Bright fish surround us decked out in every color -- translucent yellow, fluorescent royal blue polka dots, oranges and yellows so vivid, so vibrant there no flower garden compares. Huge waves crash only a few feet over our heads onto sharp pointy rocks that erupt through the water surface. It’s like an underwater peaky Swiss Alps scene, with only the uppermost tips breaking the surface. When you’re on the boat it looks like the peak of the Matterhorn.

We swim to the closet. Our name for a little coral dugout in the canyon wall where lobster love to hang out safely out of reach watching what swims by. Turtles use it to bunk up for the night too. Every so often, sharks buzz by. Usually it’s just a nurse shark. Nurse sharks appear scary, but really are in the ray family. They don’t even have pointy teeth. Theirs are more like saws designed to cut through lobster and crab shells. They pretty much leave people alone, except if you pull their tail. But then if you pull my pigtails, you’ll prolly get a reaction too.

Just like when the school bully walks into the room, when those sharks pop in looking for tonight’s dinner, everything ducks and tucks backwards into openings in the coral or rocks. Only an unlucky few get caught not paying attention. The rest pop back out about 5 minutes after the sharks leave the scene. Somehow they know. They must pick up the energy, or the movement.

Divemasters have a different spins on sharks, including one who asked me for a job long ago. He literally tells me a story in the interview, bragging, that one day he when a bull shark swam up, he grabs the closest diver by the arms and moves him around in front of him like a shield. I flip. ME? I tell divers nervous about sharks to keep me between them and the shark. That I have a written agreement with the sharks-- If they don’t bother me, I won’t bother them.

Lobster are equipped with a hyper-sensitive trouble radar. They know when we’ve got our snares along. They disappear. The little guys must pick up our energy. Usually they peer out at us from under colorful ledges watching us looking at them. Until we get a little too close. Then they bolt. Pfft. They are gone, tucking their tails under themselves and snapping backwards closing tight like a clamshell. These guys jet backwards and bounce 20, 40 even 80 feet in a single second bounce.

Lobstering. Who’d ever thought it’d be such fun. If we get one, we’ll splurge on champagne. The big guy is home today. He’s 25 pounds if he’s an ounce. He’s so fast. No one can catch him. That’s why he’s so big. But it’s been a good week. Might be our time. Everything’s flowing smoothly. I work my way into the orange and pink coral encrusted cutout in the wall that’s like a Monet Painting. Can’t reach him. I debate, but the only way to get to him is without my tank. I take my gear off to sneak in behind the big guy. Frankie is there after all.

Definitive Trust. Trust is all-important. It must be backed up with follow-through, consistent and effective action. You gotta know he will be there, and you for him. At the critical moment. I’ve gotten used to it. When I look over my shoulder. When chips are down. There you gotta be. Frankie distracts the lobster, waving 2 fingers between two long antennae as I slip the snare over his body. I pull the noose tight. Feeling the trap, his whole body flares open. Every muscle tightens like a ballet dancer in full body leap across the stage. The wire holds.

Must get regulator back into mouth. It’s been a minute. I find it. Clear it. Just like I’ve taught students 10,000 times. Slip back into my gear like the pro I am. Only then in amazement I remember and smile! Damn. I caught the big guy! I should let him go, pops into my monkey mind. That thought zips out as fast as it zips in. Just making way for new thoughts. I’m too hungry to let him go.

Getting the big guy into the bag ain’t easy either. He flares open as soon as he barely touches the bag. This guy’s almost as big as the opening and he’s not holding still. Frankie reaches over and skootches the bag over his body. Granddaddy lobster almost slips the noose, but I’ve got the death grip on the snare. The string is holding him tight. He tries to use his scissors-sharp antennae to cut the tie, but I know that trick. I’ve lost other lobsters that way. I’ve learned how to hold the noose at the bottom to keep the moment on my side. He’s finally in the bag.

On our way back to the boat, we find a hole with 4 lobsters standing watch. Antennae peeking out gives them away. All zip back into the overhang when they see the big guy in the bag. But curiosity gets to them. They creep back out again one by one. They just can’t resist coming out to glimpse with glee. Now one of them has a chance to become King of the Hill, Cream of the Crop and all that. You can sense the testosterone flow. Now what do? The Do I let the big guy go? thought pops back into my head. We could happily feast on the smaller 4. Thought