The future is unknowable, the present changes from minute to minute, but ah the past!! Shapeshifting, constantly receding and sometimes coming into sharp focus, we can embrace what we like and ignore what we don’t. As we age, we forget, we throw away stuff, we’re constantly dealing with health-related issues and, for our sins, we’re stuck with the orange-skinned monster until 2028.
So let’s go back 64 years to 1961, when my 20-year-old self was dealing with lots of options, many of them exciting and fun, as well as some that seemed awful.
Thanks to a family trust fund that fell unexpectedly into my lap, I was financially secure. I could go adventuring, I could move to California, I could date beautiful girls, I could move to New York and write the Great American Novel, I could finish my final year at Wesleyan, go to grad school … but a somber cloud hovered over my head.
The United States was at peace for a change, but every male over 18 was eligible for the draft. To avoid it, you had to have a medical reason (Donald Trump would famously dodge the draft because of “bone spurs”) or be engaged in a scientific, medical or educational enterprise that benefited the nation.
My friends and I spent months trying to figure out a way out. One suggested that five of us move to Canada and start a Rock group (which I’d finance, of course) to be called Big John and the Draft Dodgers.
C’mon, that’s ridiculous … but I had another reason for wanting to avoid military service. I wasn’t afraid of potential armed combat, or being bossed around by sergeants, or almost anything about serving in the Army, with one exception; I was afraid of the toilets. Growing up in a big house with my own bathroom, I cherished privacy. The idea of sitting on the pot in a massive bathroom with 20 or 30 guys at a time seemed repellent and awful, so how could I avoid it?
My solution: buy a sailboat, sign up a couple of friends to come along, and sail to barely inhabited islands in the South Pacific and collect insects. I bought a 56-foot wooden ketch in Connecticut, named her Paisano, and launched the Paisano Expedition to the Pacific. It wasn’t as crazy as it seems now – I was a published lepidopterist, and had nominal sponsorship from the Carnegie Museum. I’d been sailing a few times, thought that I had a knack for it, and set about learning to navigate. It seemed easy enough, and, most importantly, there was a head in the Captain’s cabin where I could poop in privacy and peace.
First reported in the Hartford Courant (“They’re tall, tanned and twenty-one, and they’re sailing around the world.”), we even got half a page in the New York Times. My local draft board was happy to give me a temporary deferment, so I was ready for fabulous adventures.
We left Rowayton in the Fall of 1962, ready for adventure and headed for the South Seas. As it turned out, the insects were safe, the original crew jumped ship, I married the most beautiful girl in Tahiti, we sailed around the world, and, as it turned out, the adventures had scarcely started. And most importantly, I’ve managed to avoid overcrowded bathrooms along the way …!
