Some of you, in fact many of you, know that I am a pirate. No, not the Somali kind, but the roguish, swashbuckling kind, harkening back to the romantic era of Errol Flynn and Douglas Fairbanks movies.
When I was dating, this often took the “datee” aback. It’s hard to explain why I play pirate or what being a pirate is like. I would explain it to them, give examples, and often all I got was a deer in the headlights look, knowing that they just don’t get it.
So, it occurred to me that I should write some of this down, since eventually my cables will slip and I either won’t be around to write this or not remember what events led me to “go on account” all these years.
I started out innocently enough. There was a parade group in Seattle called the Seafair Pirates. About 40 working class and professional guys in a fraternal organization who, instead of dressing up as clowns, dressed as pirates. Simple enough. But there was a lot more to it than that. It was an acculturation process, and after your year of candidacy, you often transformed in terms of the way your viewed life and the world around you. Not everyone did, but as one of the guys said, “When you become a pirate, we can tell. And we can tell those who never will.”
I came to the group because I was in a band with my brothers at the time. It was a novelty act really. And one of the Seafair Pirates really liked our act (I think he was drunk at the time) so he asked us to join the crew.
I was 25 at the time. I still remember the day I became a pirate. No, it was the night I got voted in by the group. It was during the Seafair celebration about two months before my vote came up. For those not from Seattle, Seafair is a 10 day community festival. The pirates used to lease out a floor in a hotel and everyone stayed there, well, most everyone. It was a great way to get away from the family and basically, enjoy 10 days of debauchery. I’ll save some of that for another time.
As a candidate, you weren’t a member yet. You were fodder for hazing and doing all the crap work in the group. The guys wanted to test your breaking point by pushing you to the edge so they knew you wouldn’t suddenly snap when you’re out in public and kill someone. After all, we all carried and brandished swords in close quarters with the public, so there was always that chance that we would actually “go pirate” all over someone’s ass.
One of the candidate’s duties was tending bar at the hotel. We had our own private party room that we would invite members of the public (read: Women) back to and pour heavy hard drinks for them.
On the night I became a pirate, I was taking over bar duty at 11 p.m. The party room had to stay open 24/7 in case any member wanted a drink. So there I was, bartending in the dead of night.
No one came in, mind you. It was a dead zone. Just me and 40 some cases of booze. So I would put on some music on the jukebox (where it came from I do not know) and I passed the time drinking Vodka and Coke. There was nothing else to do.
Eventually, I was pretty blitzed. I guess 7 hours of drinking will do that to a guy. And then the light hit me. At first, it was a soft glow, then it became increasingly blinding until my eyes were burning at the sight. “What the hell is that, I thought?” It was really starting to piss me off.
It turned out to be the sun. Morning had come. And for the first time in my life, I didn’t care if I ever went home again, whether I went to work, whether I ever answered the call to life on the outside again. I just wanted to live and breathe being a pirate.
And that was the day I crossed over. The older members said this would happen. You either got it or you didn’t. Many didn’t. I still don’t think my brothers ever did. But boy, did I understand.
Now, 28 years later, I still have that same attitude. I still pillage my guts out, too, performing probably 30 to 40 times a year at events, fundraisers, old folk’s homes, festivals, etc. And every year I spend 10 days in Key West enjoying my own Seafair – this time in the tropics, far away from the guys I once roamed with in the Pacific Northwest.
A lot of people have come and gone over the years. Animal is still with me, god bless his miserable soul. He still gets it, of course. Others never quite got it and either drifted away on their own or had to be tossed over the side forcibly because they never became a pirate… they just wore the costume but never discovered what it was truly like to see the world as we do.
In the almost three decades I’ve been a pirate, I’ve traveled the Caribbean, I’ve performed all over the country (on other people’s dimes), partied with celebrities, ended up in some really, really odd situations, married countless women for 24 hours, sang to literally tens of thousands of people young and old, been on TV too many times to mention, and most importantly, brought a smile to everyone I’ve touched through my piratical antics.
And that is truly what is fun about being a pirate. Making people smile and laugh. No matter how crummy their life is at the moment, I can give them a reason to forget their troubles, if even for a moment. It can be a child suffering from serious burns, an elderly person forgotten by their family or a child whose eyes are wide with wonder. And you think, for just a moment, that you mattered here on earth.
That my friends, is what being a pirate is all about. By putting on your pirate gear, you can suspend belief, eliminate all the barriers of culture, language and station in life, and touch someone else on their most basic, heartwarming and satisfying level. It’s pure magic. I wouldn’t trade it for anything else in this world and there’s no drug on earth that can touch the high generated by these precious moments.
So, it’s a pirate’s life for me, until I die. And hopefully there’s a bar in heaven, waiting for a goofy pirate entertainer with a big heart and a rougish smile.
Running a wayward course somewhere on the lee of the Treasure Coast,
— Robb (aka Hurricane)