I missed it. I usually know, but I've been off my game, I guess. The full moon, I mean. The night I consorted with The Whiskey again and stayed up listening to music and writing all those crazy emails. It was the Full Corn Moon which is probably why I was drawn to The Whiskey.

* * * * *

There was nothing of note that semester, my last at the Local University, except that my grades improved. I took two classes that I had made "D"s in the previous semester over, Organic Chemistry and Statistics, and this time did fine. I had redeemed myself as a student. I also took a class with a young professor who was the world's leading expert on chitons. He was very popular and cool as a cucumber until he gut up before the class. Then he went stiff and mechanical and would stutter over words. It seemed this was his first time teaching. We all felt bad for him and tried not to be embarrassed, but that was difficult. He would get better, we told ourselves. He was part of an academic heritage. He was a twin whose brother was also a Ph.D. as was their father. They were from the Northeast. It was in the blood.

The class was Marine Biology, and it was what I thought I wanted to do. The big event that term was an outing the professor had arranged for us on the State Oceanographic Research Vessel. Our project was to dredge the Gulf of Mexico and catalog the organisms we collected off the bottom. The boat was a trawler big enough for all of us to sleep over night. And that is where it started going bad. On Friday night, we all met at the docks with great anticipation. We met the captain and his wife who showed us where to stow our things, and shortly we had put to sea. Everyone was nervous and excited as we sailed into the Gulf through the night. We were going to sleep on the ship like the crew of The Calypso on Jacques Cousteau. We were working scientists, almost. This would be grand.

But when it was time to turn in, we found that the hold of the ship smelled badly of diesel gasoline, and several of my classmates got sick right away. Some stayed on deck all night in order to breathe air instead of fumes. During the night, the weather turned so that we tossed and jerked in the short waves of the shallow gulf. Nobody slept much that night.

But the captain had a real sense of humor and in the morning fed us all cinnamon buns and orange juice to get the old stomachs going. Sunrise was rosy which bode ill according to the old sailing cliche about "red sky at morning." And that was the last we saw of the sun, the gray clouds building as the wind rose, the waves crashing over the bow. But for some reason, I was feeling fine. I went to the front of the ship and held onto the rigging singing songs to the rhythm of the sea feeling the wind and salt spray on my face. I may be made for this, I thought. I may be a marine biologist.

As we sailed on into the miserable morning, the professor plotted with the captain about the day's activity, the ships railings lined with greenish students. Nobody said much, all eyes trying to find someplace to settle in hopes of quelling the epidemic of vertigo that was plaguing the ship and that had, for some reason, passed me by.

One of the fellows in the class who was a buddy of mine, a big fellow from the wrestling team, had been sick so long that he had decided to return to his bunk, and feeling magnanimous, I decided to go below to check on him. My feeling was that the diesel fumes were making him worse. I thought he would be better off on deck. And so I ducked through the hatch and down the metal stairs to go below and get him. And that is when it all began to go wrong. As soon as I lost the horizon, my world began to spin. It was pretty rough below and as I stepped off the bottom rung of the ladder, I found myself pitching left and right like a drunk, arms flying, fingers searching for something, anything, to hold onto.

I found my buddy in his bunk, lying on his side facing the boat's steel wall, and I asked him how he was doing. He made some moaning noise that was just gibberish, and I told him that the fumes were doing him in, that he would be better topside. But by now the fumes had gotten to me, too. It was a mistake this coming below. I could feel the unfairness of it in my bones. I had come on a mercy mission. Now this.

Back on deck, we stood at the railing, me trying to regain the composure I had felt mere moments before. "Hey," my buddy said, and I looked over to see what he wanted. And just then, he puked. That was it. It was all I needed. At the sight of him, my gag reflexes kicked in. It was all over now, and I was heaving up orange juice and cinnamon buns with the rest of them.