ABSTRACT
There I was in Port Kelang, Malaysia, about to board a freighter for the States. Sleep had been fitful, a port-of-call crosscurrent of my boyish stirrings of going to sea and the next-door neighbor’s stirring passions of having been at sea. Up close, he was possibly the ugliest son of a bitch I had ever seen. His looks hadn’t stopped him, however, from entertaining a succession of young Asian girls from the ground-floor massage parlor through the night. I can only guess this seadog’s maritime motto: rough women and smooth seas, perhaps.
