True Story©... The (Mis-)Adventures of Yachty McYachtFace

 

“Aye, whatchu got going on next weekend?”

That is probably one of the most dangerously vague questions one can ask an individual like me.  The answer will depend PURELY on the remainder of information I am yet to have been provided.
I’mma play along, though…

“Nothin’ much…  Pinching pennies since we’re a single-and-a-quarter income household during the summer months when Wife Person™ doesn’t do summer school.”

     There…  That should tell the person asking me that if they expect anything social to be taking place, that it had better dammit be free or they expect to pay for it.  Makes sense, right?

“Well check, you think you can get away for a minute?  I am being invited to this lil timeshare presentation.  They gon’ put me up and feed me while there and say I can bring one guest with me.  I figured you might wanna get away for a weekend if shit is all paid for.  She can ask my wife, SHE can’t come with because her aunt is in town.”

[Phlip note: something told me not to take this fuckin call on speaker, my wife heard the whole shit]

Wife Person: “I’ll talk to her, but I’ve been telling him he needs to get out and hang with his friends more often.  Honey, you should go.”

[Phlip note: FUCK!!!]

     Okay, let me steel myself for this…  I will be forced to do some “people’ing” for a couple of days.  I will be in position to have to say “no” a lot and pretend to be cordial to some people I might not piss on to put out a fire.  But look at it like this…  I get to spend some time with the homie, I won’t have to drive and food & board will be comped.  “There could certainly be worse problems to have,” I said almost as a cue to the tempting of my own bad fortunes and poor fate.

     So next Friday comes along…  I took a half-day off of work.  The homie comes by the house and I bid the wife and doggies adieu for the couple of days.  Near immediately once on the road, I am in maximum snore mode over in the passenger seat.  What felt like two and a half hours or so later, we arrive to a marina marked as a Lake Yacht Club.  I was THAT-day-years-old that I learned that yachts could even go on a lake, but I digress…
We went in and showed our IDs and were given our room and food vouchers and a schedule for the weekend’s activities.  I knew coming in that I was ONLY here for the free shit so I spent very little time perusing the materials other than to ascertain what I could eat and where I would be sleeping.

     The first presentation of the next day was all gas, no brakes…  We were taken into groups of eight and shown presentations about just how fly a yachting lifestyle could be.  Trips here and there and all over the place.  I swear, there were some of the more glamorous scenes from Below Deck shown in these montages.  They really wanted us to know how great it is to be on a boat, as if The Lonely Island hadn’t already convinced us.  Next they explained that with their program, there needn’t be the considerable and unpredictable expense of OWNING and ostensibly insuring/maintaining a boat through their timeshare-like program, as the group would share in the hit overall.

     Now they moved us to a different presentation, showing the different benefits and other available programs and their various-but-still-opaque pricing plans.  At no point were they as clear on what this shit would cost in the long run as they had been about how fuckin' fly it would be be in it.  Here, they are, looking two grown-ass married-ass men wearing their wedding rings in the face and discussing how many women they could get being a yachty.  I was nonplussed and really just repeating “no thank you” as politely as I could muster, but the homie was here on purpose and had apparently already discussed the possibility of making a purchase with his wife.  Seeing only the surface of this, the salesperson working with both of us tried to lean on him to “show your buddy how great an idea this really is if you get right into it,” like I wasn’t sitting right there and hearing it all.

     As committed as I was to JUST being in for the free shit, I am CURSED with this brain that causes me to not allow much to get by me.  The whole thing sounded scammy as fuck, and my brain-mouth disconnect wouldn’t allow me to NOT say “that don’t sound right” several times over the course of the day.  As someone who respects and has often allegedly conducted a good money making scheme, I wasn’t about to shit on these men’s ability to make their bread on this day.  Far be it from me to stop anyone short of a CLOSE blood relative from making a SEVERE financial fuckup if they’re this fully committed to making it, especially if there are laughs to be gleaned from it in the not-too-distant future but I needed to keep my monetary distance from this one.  I am committed to the free room and board and not being sold on anything.

     Anyway…  We come to the “financials” portion of the pitch and – AGAIN – the homie left his house expecting to buy in.  I THOUGHT I could sit off to the side and collect the benefits of having sat through this long-ass pseudo commercial.  People in the room are offering up their personal information and financial info almost as a “steal my identity”-mill right here to these questionable people.  I will watch and let it happen.  It so happens, again, that the homie and his wife had been planning financially for a couple of years to buy into such a thing and then go on a bunch of trips to make it worth it.  Not having kids can be beneficial sometimes, I guess…
What he HADN’T banked on, however, was NOT BRINGING THE RIGHT DAMNED CARD with him.

Homie: “Yo, can you skate me this ten bands until we get back to the house?”

Me: “Do you want my wife to fuckin’ murder BOTH of us?”

Homie: “I can call and ask her if you need.”

Me: “Or you could call YOUR wife.”

Homie: “Man, she gon’ kill me for being right here and fuckin’ this up!”

Me: “Still better than my wife killing both of us.  I don’t wanna die!”

Homie: “Fuck, lemme call my wife and see if she can transfer the funds from our account to my personal one.”

Me: “… as you should have LED with.”

     It was all for naught…
While he was in the other room pleading with his wife not to hang him by his thumbs, MY wife called.

Wife Person™: “I need you home.”

Me: “What’s wrong?”

Wife Person™: “There’s a flat on the Outback and you know all that stuff is your department.”

Me: “Shitshitshit…  Lemme see what I can shake.”

     Just as I finished that call, the homie was back in the room with what he needed to know.  His wife was transferring the funds, but because it was after 5pm, he would not be able to make his transaction until first thing in the morning.

Me: “Well that’s cool and all, but I got a back-at-home emergency to stamp out, and you my ride.”

Homie: “Damn…  I just temporarily signed my car over to them to hold my spot until my wife transfers the cash…”

Me: “You WHAT?!!?”

Homie: “Yeah, so I technically can’t leave these premises with my car until I get it signed back to me, or they can report it stolen.”

Me: “What the fuck kinda Dick Dastardly bullshit is that!?  That ain’t even POSSIBLE!”

Homie: “They said it was collateral to secure the deal, they got my keys right now.”

Me: “You STUPID motherf--…”

I was interrupted.

Salesperson: “You said you had an emergency and had to go?”

Me: “YES!”

Salesperson: “We can help you and get you back…”

Me: “Good, because I need to be back in Greensboro post-haste.”

Salesperson: “See that boat over there, just hop on.”

Me: “I don’t have time for this bullshit, there is no uninterrupted water route from here to Greensboro…  Where the hell are we anyway!?”

Salesperson: “Listen, we can get you there, just trust us.”

Me: “Look you got this one chance, but you can just as easily become the next body my wife puts in that hole if you fuck this up.”

     Begrudgingly, and without a smidgen of trust that this situation wouldn’t end with me in a body bag or at the very least in the doghouse, I got on the stupid-ass boat.  Once on, they explained that due to issues with some kind of manifest or some such shit, we needed to be in one of the below deck cabins for some vague liability concerns.  Didn't make sense because we weren't in international waters, not that I knew.  Whatever, motherfucker, get me home to my Wife Person™ assappedly!

     Below deck, the ride felt oddly--…  odd.  Almost as if we weren’t on water, though looking out of the windows I could clearly see what appeared to be moving water as if we were on a moving boat.  I will try to relax.
Two hours later, the ride slowed and then stopped.  I look at the porthole window and we were supposedly at a dock.  Again, I have lived in Greensboro my whole life and there is NO way to get anywhere via the water from anywhere in the state, not even to the lakes in the city – neither of which is big enough for yachting but what can I say?

     Whatever…  We’re summoned to come back up and explained that we have had to enter in through a tunneled waterway so as to not arouse above-ground suspicions and be hassled for identification or anything like that.  As per par for the course over this trip, my response was “what?  That don’t sound right” to the belabored expressions of the workers.  I started to follow up with “I need to go, I can catch an uber or lyft from here” before noticing that my phone signal was apparently being jammed.  The more and more I thought and played back this whole weekend in my head, I began to read it as my homie had been played and they took his wheels as a means to keep him (and me with him) in place long enough to--…
Then another guy comes from above deck.  Didn’t look like any boating type of person.  He looked like some kind of heavy, like he had done time or something.

While standing there on the "dock," I SWEAR I thought I saw an F350 towing an oddly familiarly yacht-shaped trailer across the way from where we were.  Were those legitimately "windows" I was looking out of when I was below deck?  What the fuck is really going on here?

     The guy who had been on the "boat" and in the presentation with us the whole time was now speaking to the heavy in hushed tones.  I heard clearly, though…  “Man, we gotta do something about this one with the beard, he knows too much,” to which the heavy responds “don’t worry about it, I got it.”
He looks toward me and motions behind his back as if to reach for a weapon and starts to say “hey, I’m gonna need you to come with--…” and I WOKE THE FUCK UP!

     You mean to tell me this whole shit was a dream?

True Story©’d by my own damned brain…
Ain’t that about a bitch!?