David Rattray

Turned away from Main Beach on Friday night by a giant party featuring a Trojan horse, a friend and I headed to Georgica to enjoy some Hampton Chutney takeout. Georgica was busy, but not overly so. Several small groups picnicked here and there, and a larger, catered party for what looked to us like an extended family was just getting going off to the right of the lifeguard stand, with a bar, food-prep tent, and tables lit by tiki torches.

I was Patient Zero — at least in the Northeast, I believe. Long before the bite of a lone star tick was discovered to trigger an allergy to meat in humans, my case was an oddity, so strange in fact that I was once included in a morning television segment about people with weird reactions to certain foods. My first attack was in New York City in the early 1990s.

The past few Sunday evenings, a friend and I have been taking Cerberus out for a sail. No matter how often I observe it, one thing consistently surprises me. Dropping back from the mooring, the mainsail fills, and the sloop begins to push forward through the water. Hordes of dish-shape jellyfish slip by, otherworldly, inches below the surface. Two powerboats, each pulling a person on a wakeboard, are moving in the distance. Other than those, we are alone.