By Jack Roland Costello
My father called it “a little cruise.” I called it “a high-risk experiment in male sociology.”
The crew consisted of my father, two of his childhood friends, and one newer addition, a Marine who carried himself with that Marine balance of discipline and mischief; you never quite knew which was coming next. The first of the old friends was Italian and built like a cathedral — large, immovable, prone to bellowing at anyone and anything in his way. The second was his opposite — wiry, sharp-tongued, and delighted to say what everyone else wouldn’t. Together they had the energy of a sitcom nobody could afford to film.
We loaded up my father’s Grady-White, gassed her, and shoved off toward St. Michaels. I was the designated captain and the only sober member of the expedition, a position roughly equivalent to being the adult chaperone on a field trip to Bourbon Street. While I handled lines and navigated the channel, they opened the first of many beers and began what I can only describe as a symposium on life, love, and whatever else they could shout about, though in practice it sounded more like a congressional hearing conducted by gulls.
At the brewery in St. Michaels, they held court. The Italian pontificated on women (“angels until they’re not”), the smaller friend heckled him like a stand-up comic, and the Marine nodded gravely as if each punchline were a classified briefing. My father, the ringmaster, kept them going with the grin of a man surrounded by people who knew all his stories and still wanted to hear them again.
The Fuel of Friendship
It struck me that male friendship runs on a strange fuel, equal parts argument, exaggeration, and affection. They didn’t need agreement; they needed each other’s presence and the ritual of pretending to disagree.
When the brewery finally closed, I corralled the philosophers into the water taxi, ready to return to our mooring. Only, our boat wasn’t there. The mooring ball was empty, rocking gently like it had seen some things and wanted to forget them.
I stood up in the water taxi, scanning the horizon, a modern-day Horatio Nelson. Then I saw her, our Grady-White, tied up at a stranger’s dock like a kidnapped princess. We motored over, my sense of responsibility growing heavier with every minute that passed.
A man appeared at the top of the dock, staggering down toward us. His face was puffed, his eyes red, and his expression carried the beatific calm of someone who’d made peace with being perpetually drunk. He announced himself, in quick succession, as the owner of the mooring ball, the son of an NFL team owner, and, finally, the owner of his father’s house.
If that last one doesn’t make sense to you, you’re in excellent company.
He accused us of various maritime crimes, claimed he’d “saved” our boat, and said we owed him for the “broken mooring ball.” We explained, politely, that it was a community mooring, we’d paid our fee, and he was mistaken. He squinted at us, nodded like he was pretending to understand quantum mechanics, and stumbled back toward his house muttering obscenities.
As we motored away, the Italian made a modest proposal to the group, or at least a modest proposal for him. He said, “We should come back tonight and shoot his windows out with an AR-15.”
The Marine, ever helpful, grinned and said, “I’ve got ammo.”
I prayed silently to God for patience and quietly adjusted our course home.
Men at Mooring
Years later, the Italian still talks about that night like a family feud waiting for the right full moon. I don’t doubt he keeps a rifle ready “just in case justice calls.”
That same man once let me drive him home from the bar when I was 15 and had just gotten my learner’s permit. He spent the first two minutes explaining how much his car cost and that any scratch would ruin my future. The next twenty-eight minutes he alternated between yelling, “Faster!” and “You almost crashed!” every time I changed lanes.
That’s how it goes with men like my father and his friends. They argue, threaten, and exaggerate, but underneath all that noise is a bond stronger than logic. It’s built from decades of shared laughter, close calls, and unfinished beers.
And that day on the Grady-White, watching them bicker and laugh and nearly start an international incident, I realized something important: Friendship between men isn’t calm or tidy. It’s chaos that somehow keeps floating.
