The Faith Inbetween: Part 1 --- Role reversal

There's a huge yacht from another country visiting the marina. I've been here about a year and seen lots of big boats coming and going in all that time, but I've never witnessed such a minor hysteria of attention as this vessel has attracted.

Let's just say that it's so big that I'm not sure its crew (yes, they're full-time and they're paid) could be carried from the marina to the grocery store in two minivans.

Let's just say it's Huge.

--

So the other day around 5PM I was shuffling back to my boat and happened to pass a female crewmember walking in the opposite direction. She was tall ... tall enough in her flat shoes to look me square in the eye, and athletically slim in the genetically-fortunate way as Salukis and Greyhounds are built, with the kind of long blond hair that only comes from months of exposure aboard the teak decks of an ocean-crossing yacht.

I did't say this to describe her appearance; I overheard someone else say it: "That girl has the kind of looks Elle Macpherson would die for." Other speculated that she absolutely had to be the daughter, or some other relation, of one of the world's hundred wealthiest men.

Then as we passed in our opposite directions and got within arm's length of each other, that sun-kissed girl glanced at me for almost a milli-second ... just long enough to turn her face into a harpoon of contempt and disdain like I've never seen (outside of a rabid racoon), as though my ball cap, ratty sneakers, grease-smeared jeans and sweaty t-shirt shouted that I'd just climbed out of someone's bilge after troubleshooting a leak in their holding tank (sewer tank).*

Which is just what I had been doing ... but that's beside the point: she looked at me like I belonged inside the sewer tank, instead of working outside of it.

But then she wasn't my idea of a woman worth pursuing, honoring and cherishing for a lifetime, either.

----

Walked by that massive yacht again this afternoon, just as the same girl was welcoming a young couple and their two daughters aboard. And she treated them much differently than the way she treated me.

Couldn't help noticing that this time she was wearing an apron ... the kind worn by by folks who serve food.

Before it comes out the opposite end at the holding tank.

* My own, that is. I only turned off the sea-water seacock.