Panamah Peat died recently. (Yes, that’s how he spelled it.) His liver gave out on him long after his family gave up on him, and that’s why he disappeared for six months after his death. His real name was Peter Hill, and no-one seems to know how old he was; although -- with his bird’s nest beard and hurricane hair -- he looked like a desiccated old pirate for as long as anyone could remember.
Panamah was widely-known in Key West as a talented jewelry designer, a skilled photographer and a hopeless drunk. What makes him cogent to this narrative is that he was also a founding member of The Chartroom Gentlemen’s Club and Occasional Choir, known locally by the acronym CGCOC (which is commonly understood to mean ’Fuck You’ in Klingon).
But before acquainting you with the club and its members, I should introduce you to The Chartroom Bar and to James ‘Whistle’ Cox. Also a drunk. Also deceased.
Imagine for a moment that deep in the intestines of a big resort hotel -- a hotel replete with beach bars, pools, and lush tropical gardens -- there is a dingy low-ceilinged room that could pass for a large storage closet. You enter and find -- parallel to one windowless wall -- a heavy mahogany bar with seven battered bar stools ending at a popcorn machine last cleaned during the Carter administration. On the wall opposite are two windows blocked by louvers and a small door leading to an empty hallway. Crowded into one corner: a round table with sagging chairs; an old TV mounted from the ceiling like a monument to obsolescence. The floor is carpeted with shells from a huge barrel of peanuts; the walls are covered with cracked and fading photos of patrons past, and the air is permanently saturated with the acrid essence of booze, beer and cigarettes. No sunlight has ever intruded here.. ever.
Welcome to The Chartroom.
In the late 1970’s, this darkened retreat was the socio/political center of the city and was frequented by an egalitarian mixture of bankers, artists, shopkeepers, fishermen, politicians, treasure hunters, real estate developers, cops, street musicians, smugglers and occasional tourists. But by the early 90’s -- as the city began to emerge from a long catatonic stupor -- the bankers, politicians and big dealers deserted it for the privacy and prestige of the Key West Yacht Club; leaving behind a poorer but more interesting bunch of inebriated eccentrics of whom ’Whistle’ Cox was one.
’Whistle’ -- nicknamed after the tiny whistle he attached to each pair of ’cabana pants’ he made for local clothing shops -- loved to sing, and lubricated his vocal chords each day by consuming a quart of Smirnoff vodka. His was the original idea to start an invitation-only, once-a-month dinner for Chartroom regulars and irregulars. The Dutch-treat dinners would be held at whichever restaurants he could persuade to feed twenty-five or thirty unruly misfits. It would culminate with the entire group standing (if they could) and singing songs a capella from lyrics Whistle distributed. He himself would conduct the choir with dramatic sweeps of his arms that occasionally caused him to lose his balance and sink from view.
The Chartroom Gentlemen’s Club and Occasional Choir proved to be a great success; although -- as time passed -- more and more persuasion was needed to get restaurant owners to host it. But the dinners nonetheless grew to be quite famous; and invitations became highly-prestigious and sought after, even by the traitorous yacht club defectors.
And then, suddenly, shockingly, Whistle Cox, only in his mid-forties, died. And although everyone swore the Club would continue, everyone knew it would not and could not without his leadership.
His family -- which had repudiated him long ago -- came to Key West to attend a memorial service and a reception at the Chartroom before taking his ashes back to a Midwestern town he was known to hate. To them, despite decades of being detached, it seemed ’the right thing to do.’ But to the Gentlemen‘s Club, it seemed a sad, undeserved and unjust end to their friend’s life.
Until …
Someone somehow got into one of the hotel’s guest rooms while the memorial service was being held. And that someone somehow knew that Whistle’s ashes were in an urn in that room. Yet the intruder, whoever he was, took nothing that anyone would notice and left without a trace. In fact, the room’s occupants never knew he’d been there.
A week later a second service -- very private and attended by only a few people -- was held in The Chartroom. The louvered blinds were shut, the door closed and locked, and the lights made as dim as possible. A plug was drilled and withdrawn from the mahogany bar rail and a whisky glass full of ashes poured into the empty hole. The plug was then refitted, sanded and re-varnished. A moment of silence was observed.
Finally, a brief but satisfying toast was proposed because Whistle Cox was home … and properly buried.
As expected, the monthly dinners became bi-monthly, then quarterly or worse, and finally petered out entirely. Although a few old regulars like Panamah still drank at the Chartroom, Whistle’s saga and his myth slipped quietly from the local consciousness.
Not much of a surprise, really. Alcohol fogs memory; and Key West in any event is a town of transient passions and temporary people.
But one night years later, I stopped for a drink at the Chartroom. It was as dim and dingy as ever; and presided over by Rosie The Buxom Bartender, a self-proclaimed witch of a certain age who owned a hundred T-shirts and managed to display her cleavage in each of them. The bar was quiet; only a little knot of locals, a few tourists and Panamah. He was regaling one of the tourists with a story about the good old days of catching ‘square groupers’ (floating bales of marijuana) in the Gulf Stream and was scratching absently into the bar rail with a jewelry tool dangling on a chain from his neck.
He finished the story with a twisted smile, took a sip from his empty glass and looked expectantly at the tourist. I suspect he was waiting for the man to offer him a drink. But instead, the man said:
What are you doing?
Panamah looked puzzled, then followed the man’s gaze to the bar rail and realized he was still scratching into it. He dropped the little tool and studied his hand for a few moments as if it belonged to someone else. Then he nodded to himself and ran his fingers through his tangled hoary hair.
Finally, he met the tourist’s eyes.
I think I might be digging my grave. he said.
When Panamah died in a Veterans’ Administration hospital early this year, no-one claimed his remains until a loyal female friend contacted the ex-wife from whom he’d been divorced for thirty years. The VA was planning to dispose of him in whatever way it disposes of the unclaimed dead. So, in the nick of time, the friend and ex-wife intervened; and after months of bureaucratic haggling, the hospital agreed to release Panamah to them. They took him back to Key West and divided his ashes among old friends and relatives. But his obituary, published shortly afterward in The Key West Citizen, said: ‘one of the urns … will be buried at an undisclosed location …’
You know, of course, where that location is and where Panamah’s remains now rest.
And here this narrative ends: two men .. two Key West characters .. two lives revealed and resolved. If there’s a positive lesson to be taken from their odd and often alienated lives, it’s one we all accept and understand, but sometimes forget:
Be thankful for true friends, whoever and whatever they are and for whatever form their friendship takes. They, more than anything or anyone you’ll encounter, last … if you’ll excuse the word … forever.
AFTER DINNER MINTS
In all, five gentlemen are now interred in the Chartroom bar rail, the most prominent of whom is Mel Fisher who discovered the Spanish treasure ship, Atocha. In addition to Mel, Whistle and Panamah, there’s also General Geof -- commander of the Conch Republic army -- and someone named Bob Smith. Rosie the Buxom Bartender probably knows who he is, but she is long gone; retired to the safe boredom of rural Oregon.
The present bartender/sexton of the Chartroom bar/cemetery is a charming local pixie named Emily who suffers fools gladly, as all bartenders must, but whose dainty velvet glove nonetheless hides an iron fist.
Finally, as of this writing, two other men have had the foresight to reserve burial space in the bar rail; and holes have already been drilled to accommodate them. The first -‘Che’ Kohen - is a fast-talking, gravelly-voiced New Yorker who is also a founding member of the CGCOC. The second is James Cox, Jr.; a banker in Houston, Texas, who apparently and improbably is Whistle Cox’ only son. So just think of that!
One day in the indeterminate future, the Chartroom can celebrate what will be one of the most unusual reconciliations of father and son since Jesus Christ pushed aside the rock and ascended.
Can you imagine?
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Until next time, salud, cheers, and down the hatch.
