the ungodly vehicle who was now standing just beside it and adjusting the driver side mirror.
“My name is Marty,” he said holding out his hand. “I own the safari busses for the dive business and I am also one of the drivers.” He smiled, biting onto a cigar that looked like a dog turd. My gut reeled when I saw his nasty teeth; Just plain rotten. I shook his hand. Marty was small and skinny with a deep dark leather tan that told me he didn’t care too much about getting skin cancer. What looked like fine brown pubic hair puffed out from under his yellow florescent hat. And his nose met Jew specifications. I liked Marty. He was doing his thing, like I was doing mine. He and his wife Carol sold their business back in New Jersey or whatever and bought the transportation part of the dive operation. They escaped the rat race just like I did, just like the majority of the whitey’s you find living in the Caribbean.
“Eric,” I said, trying not to look at his teeth that were as brown as his wrinkly, old skin.
“Welcome to St. Thomas.”
“Okay, let’s go,” Dan said jumping into the cab of the safari bus.
I stood on the white sand of Coki Beach. The warm Caribbean water in front of me was like tinted glass, smooth and blue. I had never seen water this calm and clear. It was as though God dumped massive amounts of chlorine into the ocean. The clouds danced swiftly in the wind. Thatch Cay stood majestically across the channel. The small island seemed to hold a secret mysteriously hidden since the days of pirates. Coki Beach had only a few people scattered about it at this time in the morning. Mainly local West Indians. A few were walking the beach. Some were enjoying a nice early swim. A small group of kids were playing on and jumping off a jetty of rocks into the water: splashing and laughing with no worries in the world. Coral World stood in the background; an underwater observatory rising up from the shallow ocean floor with a huge, flattened dome like a flying saucer.
I was trying to take it all in, trying to savor the moment. But this was hard for me to do while I was huffing and puffing searching for my next breath of air. Dan and I, along with Randy, Taz and Beverly, had just spent an hour setting up the beach with dive gear, snorkel equipment and a small beach gift shop. Holy shit was I tired. We must have set up 29 SCUBA units - tank, BC and regulators. Plus we had at least fifty tanks ready to go that we off-loaded from our big blue coke truck we used as a mobile dive shop. I thought I was in reasonably good shape for being twenty six. I guess I was wrong, although the booze still in my system and the hot sun beating down on me didn’t help much.
Dan came over to me. He was in no better shape. He was soaked in alcohol sweat and his face looked like a cherry red tomato. “How you doing?” Dan asked.
“I’m fucking spent,” I said with a smile.
“Well get ready, because here they come.”
I turned away from the water and saw the first safari bus full of pasty white tourists roll onto the beach. Marty the Jew was behind the wheel chewing on his filthy dog turd. That’s when all hell broke loose.
St. Thomas is the cruise ship capital of the Caribbean. During high season it is common to see up to eight ships converge on this tiny 31 square mile island. It was no doubt an awesome sight. St. Thomas is a beautiful island with its red roof tops situated on top of white houses nestled in the lush hillsides, with windy roads up to scenic vistas that displayed the outer islands and the British Virgin Islands. The smells and tastes, the bars and beaches all made this island a small wonder to me. Ice cold beer at the end of the day and swigging Cruzan Rum late into the balmy Virgin Island nights, watching as the lights of the huge ships moved out to sea became my new routine. However, in the near future I would come to realize that I had manifested a hatred for the immense floating hotels and their ignorant passengers.
But with all its beauty and carefree ways, St. Thomas was also a very dangerous place. The natives got restless. The island was filled with drugs, murder, rape and robbery. Car jackings and felony fights just like a mainland city. I was headed to the Greenhouse Bar one night in downtown Charlotte Amalie with some other dive instructor from the shop. There was about four local West Indian cats hanging out by their car. “Hey white boy,” one calls to me.
“What’s up?” I said.
“Did you know that there is an international airport on the island.” His cold eyes
staring right into my soul.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Well why don’t you use it.”
Still, this didn’t bother me. Shit, I was from Southern California, land of road rage, hand guns and serial killers. The Crips and The Bloods and wild Cholos in their low riders. I was a white boy who went to high school in South El Monte. I was the minority growing up and I felt right at home on St. Thomas. I loved it.
Another safari bus pulled up. Then another one, and another. This is going to get ugly. Dan, Cassey and I were the snorkel instructors for the day. We would be out in the water to show people the reef, tell them what type of fish was what. We would hand out fish food-which was dog food-and provide support for the scuba divers should they run into problems and bolt to the surface before their instructor could get to them, which occurred often. We instructors would alternate between teaching the resort courses and doing the snorkeling class. Once in a blue moon we would have a full certification course to teach. These would usually be crew members off one of the ships.
Before I knew it, I was surrounded by about thirty four oblivious people with dive masks on their foreheads, orange life vests around their necks, holding their fins. The majority had stupid smiles plastered across their faces and cheap disposable underwater cameras dangling from their wrists. I gave them a brief class on the snorkel gear and how to us it and then sent them into the water. A next group of about sixteen came lumbering down to meet me at the waters edge.
“Is there a right and left flipper?” an older lady asked. She had a turned up pig
nose and smelled like a goat.
“Is there what?” I said.
“Is their a right and left flipper?” She asked me, like she was talking to someone who didn’t understand English.
“First off,” I said. “It is a fin not a flipper. Dolphins have flippers. Second, no. But if there was a right and a left I wouldn’t tell you anyway.”
“Why not?” asked Pig nose.
“Because I’d just sit back and watch you swim in circles out there.” I said pointing over my shoulder out to the water. She gave me a dumb look then headed out to attempt to snorkel. Christ. what the hell kind of question was that. I mean come on, snorkel gear is pretty much self explanatory. You put the fins on your feet, you put the mask on your face, you put the snorkel in your mouth and go.
Taz, Mike and Holly had their group of six divers in waist deep water. They were going over the different functions of the dive gear and how to use it. Randy was the beach master. He stayed on the beach and got the next wave of divers ready and helped the divers who were finished out of their gear. All the snorkelers were in the water. All seventy five of them bobbing in the water like champagne corks with their silly orange inflatable life vests. Coki Beach, which was so peaceful only forty five minutes earlier, was now littered with awkward bodies; honeymooners, party girls, old farts and faggots. Rental cars began to line the narrow road that led past Coki Beach and ended a few hundred yards at Coral World. Local beach vendors tried to get the tourists to buy their gold and jewelry. The gold and jewelry that they, no doubt, had rolled a cruise ship passenger
