Alpha: John Fairfax

When I read the NYT obit of adventurer John Fairfax, as amazing as it was, I knew it had to be a white-washed piece.  Remember the motto of the New York Times : "All the news that's fit to print."  I'm pretty sure that a bunch of John Fairfax's best stories ain't fit to print.  High testosterone people create good material for biographies -- ups and downs, achievement and failure, tragedy and comedy.  That's the nature of risk-taking.

 Sure enough, here are excerpts from a book on Fairfax: violence, women, gambling, drugs, achievement, perseverance, greatness.  Go read the whole thing, it's gripping.  Here are a few great parts.

On his first day of rowing across the Atlantic, Fairfax is having second thoughts:

"How had he gotten into this mess? he wondered. As though prodding Britannia [his boat] to answer, he kicked her, but she remained mute. He remained despondent. He was hungry, thirsty, damp, sore, sleepy--and no Sylvia to look after his needs. "How silly, this going to sea without a girl," he muttered, resolving right then and there, only twenty hours from shore, that the next time he rowed an ocean, if there was a next time, he would travel with a woman."

Given the nature of high testosterone people, I have a sneaking suspicion that "hungry, thirsty, damp, sore, and sleepy" weren't his only needs.

Sure enough, a few years later, when he rows across the Pacific, he takes his lover along with him.  I wish I could have been there for that conversation -- persuading his girlfriend to get into a tiny rowboat and row across the Pacific.  Now that's charisma.  I'll bet they had mind-blowing sex out under the Pacific stars, the night after a shark attack.

As for sharks, here's the time that Fairfax lasso'ed a mako shark and got it to pull his rowboat:

"As the great fish swam alongside Britannia, he passed the loop round the snout and past the gills. Before it could pass over the dorsal fin, he tightened the loop with a pull. The shark reacted with a paroxysm of fury, towing Britannia on her fastest ride ever. She skimmed the waves like a torpedo, with John hanging on for dear life. It was hard to believe that even a shark could generate such power.

Then he killed the shark, cut her open -- and finding offspring, killed them all.

It was soon over, the shark spent. Sharks get their oxygen from the flow of water over their gills. Since the gills don't move independently, they achieve this by swimming. A shark prevented from moving freely in the water, as Dusky was, will eventually drown.

Curious about the contents of its stomach, he slit it open and discovered about two dozen tiny sharks in her belly, tiny replicas of their mother. Wriggling about, they appeared in perfectly good health. His last entry in his log that day reads:

...killed them all and dedicated my victory to Venus...Well, it's now sunset, the wind has almost stopped and, yes, my beautiful star, thank you, I shall row all night. 

Lesson learned: do not mess with John Fairfax.

I like the journal entry on his birthday:

May 21 121st day

My birthday--thirty-two years that feels like a hundred--and one of the worst days at sea. I ran out of tobacco; had a bit for half a pipe only, which I had kept to celebrate--and it got wet. A tin of raspberries I had kept for today gassed, and I had to throw it away. And just as I was about to have a sip of brandy to celebrate my birthday, an enormous wave, about 15 feet high, hit Britannia squarely broadside and washed me overboard. Lost the bottle and hurt my leg and foot very badly.... Apart from that, a very happy birthday!

Rowed eight hours. 

So British.

How does a man like John Fairfax come into the world?

He was, he admits, a horrible kid, an only child spoiled rotten by his mother and nanny. "We had money," he says, "and I got everything I wanted. What I lacked was a father for an authority figure. It made me an opinionated little brat. To this day, I don't like children because they remind me of myself as a kid." 

He never learned how to channel his testosterone.  It's a good thing Fairfax was crazy enough to row across the ocean, otherwise he probably wouldn't have gotten an obit in the NYT.  Remember that for every one John Fairfax, there's a hundred like him who got eaten by sharks, thrown in prison, or killed in a bar room brawl.  But the ones that succeed, sure do make life interesting.  Go read the whole thing.

Hat tip to Gawker for the link.