Jell-O

My mom made orange Jell-O with shredded carrots and chopped celery and I did love the jiggle and crunch of it in my youth. But as a teen it became synonymous with Christmas potluck in other people's overwarm houses: uncomfortable sweaters and gluttony. Artificial colors and a texture not found in nature. I rebuffed Jell-O just like I spurned my parents when I quit college and, very near Christmas 1990, bought a one-way ticket to Puerto Rico with some guy I'd met in fiction-writing class.

After trekking around Old San Juan and Fajardo for a week, we worked our way over to St. Thomas with two dusty backpacks and a dwindling supply of cash to look for work on boats. How we, two soft-palmed, would-be writers from San Francisco with the combined nautical experience of riding the ferry to Sausalito thought we'd get hired as first mates on luxury Caribbean yachts is a testament to the optimism of people in their twenties.

We rented a berth on a derelict sloop. It was moored close enough to the docks that we could thumb rides from people dinghying ashore. We checked the job board daily. It was conveniently located next to the Ramada Yacht Haven's pool bar. There never was a posting that said "Inexperienced crew wanted for the sailing gig of a lifetime," but we kept checking anyway. It became our ritual to belly up after each disappointment and nurse a $1.25 Miller Lite for a couple of hours.

For this we were sometimes rewarded. If you happened to be sitting by that impossibly clear blue pool in that tragically run-down pink hotel when one of the cruise ships embarked and blew its horn, a chorus sang out. "Boat shots!" A small plastic cup full of Jell-O cut with vodka waggled enticingly in front of every bar patron, every time the horn sounded. It cost you nothing but time. And oh, how it slid down your throat like a balm. And how good the life seemed on nights when the Nordic Princess or the Oasis of the Seas felt excited enough about leaving Charlotte Amalie behind to blast off five or six or seven times.

There was a place for Jell-O in my life after all.