Before moving to this city I'd never heard it put that way. So, for a while, I had this vision of chowing down on chunks of the poor sap who drew the shortest straw and was bopped on the head, put out of his misery, sliced, diced, cupped, and shared among the rest of us in the lifeboat. Y'know what I mean, like we were in that film directed by that British chap - the profile poser - the guy whose mugshot floated by in a newspaper; picked up by the Rachel, the devious-cruising Rachel, that in her retracing search after her missing children.... - at least that's what it says on page 536 of my copy of that lit hit subtitled The Whale - found this dude clinging to some savage's coffin, and a couple hundred knots beyond, found us, and impressed us into service - wouldn't y'know - on that creaky, water-logged, whaler-wannabe, that skimmed the Horn, and eventually dropped anchor off the coast of Tahiti, where the not-so-friendly natives wined and dined on us, after introducing us to this banker-turned-painter, who brewed a titillating pot of coffee and proceeded to drone on about various exploits he'd shared with some red-haired-maniac-artist-Kirk-Douglas-look-alike, whose spectacles kept sliding over the hole where his ear shoulda been, shortly before we were cauldroned while enjoying this incredible extemporaneous exhibition of drumming and chanting.
