If Knowing is Half the Battle, I'd Rather Lose

Something that happened:

A few comrades and I were spending a summer night lounging on the shores of a heavily-developed North Dakota lake. A still night, pretty clear—the sort of night where sound can carry for miles across the water. It doesn’t matter what we were doing, because I don’t remember. In fact, I only remember one thing about that evening. From somewhere across the water, a male voice proclaimed: “I am not getting on this fucking boat without my fucking merlot!”

Something that probably didn’t happen:

The weekend wasn’t going as well as Chad had hoped. He had big plans, after all—sure, a gentlemen’s weekend might seem cliché, but it was a rare thing indeed to have the whole crew in one place. Good times would be had on the water.

Things started to go sour when Teddy missed his flight. At least, they were pretty sure Teddy missed his flight; in any case, he never got off the plane. His whereabouts remain unknown. And shortly after, Vinny arrived with his new lady, Tina, in tow. So much for a manly, blue-talking, hard-drinking weekend.

Tina and Chad had a bit of a history, which we don’t need to bother recounting here; suffice it to say things were satisfactorily awkward. Chad was displeased, but committed himself to enjoying the weekend anyway. After all, they had an entire case of wine.

Most of the day turned out to be surprisingly bearable. The wine helped. But having the rest of the gang around improved Chad’s mood to the point that he was nearly enjoying himself. As the sun set the situation deteriorated, though. It started with a friendly game of charades. For some reason, Jim was unable to correctly identify Chad’s exquisite, Brando-esque performance of an emu. Then Tina was clearly mouthing words, in clear violation of charade protocol, while attempting to perform Abraham Lincoln.

Hope remained, though, for the evening boat ride. Chad has always enjoyed being out on the water, so the opportunity to wander the lake seemed like a good way to calm his party game-induced nerves. And cramming a dozen people onto a small pontoon boat would assuredly make for ideal opportunities to casually push people into the drink.

The kitchen had plenty of cooks, so Chad decided to let the rest load up the boat with the essentials: drink, cigars, dice, and some fireworks of questionable legality. Chad and a few others hung back and watched Baseball Tonight. Priorities, you know.

Anyway, after a spell the remainder wandered down to shore. As they were boarding, Kevin was checking off the list of supplies:

“High Life… Black Cats… Canadian Club… Hey, anybody grab the wine?”

Chad stopped. All he wanted to do was hang out on a boat and lay the groundwork for a vicious red wine hangover.

“God dammit,” he said. “How hard could it possibly be to remember to grab a couple bottles of wine? Now I have to go back up for it.”

Tina rolled her eyes. “For fuck’s sake, forget the wine. We’ve got everything else. Let’s hit the water already.”

This proved to be too much.

“No. Fuck this. I am not getting on this fucking boat without my fucking merlot!”

Something even less likely to have happened:

I woke up on the floor.

In and of itself, this would not normally be alarming. I frequently wake up on the floor. This floor, however, was unfamiliar. For one, it was hardwood, and I have made it a point to carpet every inch of my domain—among other things, it’s more pleasant to wake up on. And, there was a dead moose staring out of the wall at me. I found this fact alarming, mostly because it took me a few seconds to conclusively conclude that the moose in question was, in fact, dead.

Attempting to get my bearings, I scanned my surroundings. An associate of mine was dozing peacefully in an easy chair. I gently awoke him.

“Holy hell! Where are we?”

“What?”

“Where are we, and why are we sharing a room with dead beasts?” By this point, I had noticed the stuffed beaver and half-dozen mounted fish. I also seemed to be wearing a high school class ring that didn’t exactly belong to me.

“North Dakota. A weekend on the lake. Don’t you remember?”

“Does it look like I remember? Why in sam-hill would we go to North Dakota? That’s the shitty Dakota.”

“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. With the amount of tequila you were putting away, I’m shocked you woke up at all. Anyway, just relax. These people are friendly.”

“These people? What people? And how did we get here? And since when does North Dakota have lakes?”

“For chrissakes, calm yourself. He’s an old friend. Works in oil now. We flew up in his Cessna last night. He was in Colorado for the weekend. Any of this ringing a bell?”

“I remember the tequila. Foul stuff.”

“Fine. We’re here for a bit of relaxation. I think we’ve earned it. A weekend on a heavily-developed lake, free hooch, some meat cooked over fire. Don’t worry. We’ll be back in Denver by Monday morning. We can finish it then.”

This all seemed reasonable enough. A weekend out of town sounded fine, and the whisky he’d pushed into my hand during the reorientation was unwinding the vise clamped around my skull. Things were looking up.

“Okay. So where’s the oilman? I should thank him for this hospitality.”

“I think he’s putting gas in the boats. I heard him leave about an hour ago.”

“Hmmm. Boats, you say? What kind of equipment are we—“

I didn’t have to finish. The rumble outside answered my questions. We strolled outside to soak in the sight, near-comical: a slim fiberglass beauty with a pair of monstrous out-boards. To say the machine didn’t fit its surroundings would be a crippling understatement.

“What do I call him?”

“Just Jim.”

Jim slid the boat onto the lift and clambered ashore.

“Holy mother of fuck, I didn’t think you’d live through the night. We made sure we had you on your side, at least; you can put away a hell of a lot of shitty tequila.”

I just nodded and tipped my tumbler of whiskey in his direction. “Breakfast of champions,” he said. At least I knew he could read.

A proper breakfast was prepared. Jim got some wood out of a plastic bin in a clearing on the east side of the house, flame was created, and bacon was fried. Eggs were cooked in the fat. I was fortified.

“Well boys, I think it’s time to hit the water.”

My associate and I agreed. We stocked the boat with cheap domestics and a bottle of scotch and took to the lake. The lake itself was less an open body of water than a winding series of connected bays, which only heightened the absurdity of such a high-powered aquatic beast—with the throttle wide open, it was rarely more than a few seconds before we would need to rapidly change course.

This is exactly my style. High speeds, twisting turns, constant vigilance: a true test of a man’s reflexes. Since I had a free hand (with the scotch in my left), I commandeered the controls and pointed us west towards one of the more expansive stretches of water.

My associate wasn’t too amused by my talent of spooking water-skiers with a quick weave, but Jim seemed to be enjoying himself. My senses were running full-tilt; the lake was pretty shallow, and most of the points hid some serious rocks at minimal depth—at the speeds we were going, they’d be enough to rip a fresh asshole right down the length of the hull. Luckily, Jim seemed to be a man of grit.

“Fuckin’ a, boy. They aren’t used to this up here. There’s another one—eleven o’clock!”

As it happened, our morning boat ride had started around three in the afternoon, so after a couple hours of raising hell on the water we retired to shore to begin preparations for a proper evening feast. The house had a fully-outfitted kitchen, but we were committed to doing this properly—thick, heavily-peppered stakes in a cast-iron pan, cooked nice and rare; thick Idaho golds wrapped in tinfoil and tossed in the coals, with another bottle of Scotland’s finest malt.

This process, as you might expect, took a few hours. Can’t rush these sorts of things. And besides, by now there was wine to drink—essential to mellow us out for the coming evening. After all, there was a whole ‘nother boat to test.

This one fit its surroundings a bit better. A modestly-sized pontoon boat, albeit one that suited our need for luxury. Comfortable seats and more than enough cup holders boded well for our future endeavors. After polishing off one more round of dead cow, we began preparations. This excursion would require endurance, so we packed accordingly—plenty of sugars, carbohydrates, and most importantly, the wine. It would be crucial to steady our hands while docking afterwards; a good red wine calms a man and brings clarity of thought. Especially since we’d be dealing with no light.

I briefly retired to the lavatory to attend to some business, leaving my companions to stock the vessel. When I returned a short time later, things seemed to be in order.

“We have the potato chips?”

“Indeed.”

“Both of the cakes?”

“Check.”

“The wine?”

“Ah, I think it’s still inside. Forget it; we’ve got plenty to drink.”

“No, you don’t understand its importance. I am not getting on this fucking boat without my fucking merlot!”

Thoughts:

Wasn’t that fun? I know I enjoyed myself, and for a very specific reason: I don’t have the slightest idea who wanted his fucking merlot, or why that bottle of wine was so damned important. Every time I think about sitting on that lake and overhearing that snippet, I ponder the endless number of possible backstories that bubble up in the back of my mind. (Kind of like the bends, actually.) Since no single one is true, any of them could be. That lack of knowing opens up fantastic possibilities.

Think of your favorite suspenseful movie. What’s the best part? The big reveal at the end? Doubtful. Sure, there might be some satisfaction in finally figuring out what was going on, especially if the ending is particularly well executed. But I’d be willing to wager that the real reason you like that movie so much is the way it leaves you knowing so little about what’s actually going on. That lack of grounding context opens up fantastic possibilities.

I’m particularly smitten by the TV show Lost. The reason is simple. Lost does an excellent job of giving you just enough information to be able to dream up all kinds of fantastic theories, without revealing so much that you’re forced to settle on one interpretation. (This is becoming, inevitably, less true as the show hurtles towards conclusion, but that doesn’t detract from the earlier seasons’ excellence on this front.)

All art is improved by contextual ambiguity. Would knowing why the Mona Lisa grinned, or to whom Shakespeare wrote his sonnets, add anything to our interpretation? Of course not. This may be a rather uncontroversial statement to make about art, but we treat all sorts of everyday happenings the same way, glorying in what we don’t know.

How else to explain people-watching? That’s most of the appeal of state fairs, after all. When we consider the visage of someone we’ve never met—and will never meet—we’re filling in all sorts of little pieces of backstory on our own. That sickeningly-sweet couple over there, or the father ready to rip his own hair out because his kids won’t shut up, or the guy riding the impractically tall bicycle, are all interesting insofar as we can imagine just what’s going on with them. If we found out, any appeal they may have would depend on how they really were. Those interesting people we imagine could be lost forever.

We have entire websites devoted to this phenomenon, which just allow us to further satisfy our desire for contextlessness. We don’t have to bother moving to be able to create all kinds of wonderful little worlds, populated with interesting people, right in our heads.

Now, the wonders of context-free living do have their limits. In certain situations—romantic letters, foreign policy negotiations, capital murder trials—context can be everything. (Context free: “I’m going to kill him,” says the accused. Context: “…in that next game of parcheesi.”) So we must be willing to occasionally allow context to guide us to more accurate conclusions.

But we shouldn’t let our natural desire for knowledge constrict the wonders of our imagination. Context replaces what could be with what is. Without it, we can spend our time pondering the significance of a certain bottle of fucking merlot to our heart’s content.