The object that probably, more than anything else, defines my past, present, and future is the book Roxanna written in the early 1970s. It is a well researched book about Dirk Courtney, a Virgin Islands' buccaneer, and the woman he became involved with; the redhead Roxanna Marshall.
First I'd like to tell you how I came upon this book. In 1993, just before the Badgers took the Rose Bowl, I went into State Street Brats to have a beer. A redhead came up and served me a Leinie's Red Lager. It is, by far, my favorite beer. I found out that she was French and her name was Jeanine.
Two days later, I asked her if I could come in on a Friday night, when she works, and get to know her. She said sure.
I was unable to make it that night because I was bullied into planning to go to the nude dance hall here in Madison the same night. The gentleman never showed up.
I was sitting at the bar, still wanted to talk to her, when suddenly she comes stomping up to me and says other guys look at me and she doesn't want me looking at her. Like a psychiatrist interviewing a patient I replied, "You mean other guys do this to you??"
She later went to the Rose Bowl with this unfriendly boyfriend.
When it became clear to me that she was going to the Rose Bowl without me, and in a very uncivil fashion, I called her and gave her two choices. Ladie's Choice. Either I will kill you now or at the end of your present life you will no longer be existent. I was arrested after sending her many letters about reincarnation, U.F.O.'s, and telling her that I believed she and I were an Irish romantic legend; the Legend of Naoise and the redhead Deirdre.
I was incarcerated for one month in a mental hospital. One afternoon, I was in the day room browsing abstractly over the books scattered in the shelving, when I noticed an exact portrait of Jeanine on the cover of the book Roxanna. I got curious and found out the book had been well researched, both Roxanna and Dirk lived and that many of Dirk's buccaneering exploits are recorded in this book.
It was a rare find. And I did believe in reincarnation. I wondered also now if Jeanine wasn't a reincarnation of Roxanna and I a reincarnation of Dirk Courtney.
I am an English Major and plan to be a creative writer. I have already written several well-researched papers on King Arthur. I believe that Dirk Courtney was employed by the newly begun British Secret Service and eventually came away with 2 million pounds of Spanish gold including their smelting operations in Panama. I would like to write a novel outlining Dirk's anti-slavery position relative to the dispossession of his family estates in Great Britain, his own enslavement in his youth, and his later taking secretly the gold smelting operations of the Spanish in the colonies. After preliminary investigation, I have determined that it is highly likely that, along with Inca, Aztec, and Mayan support, he took the Spanish governor's fortress, gained possession of the governor's seal, and used that seal to surprise the Spanish in Panama.
We were involved in the Battle of Panama and Arica.
We fought in one of the many battles of Panama and so did Captain Morgan...
I would seriously like to probe the British Secret Service and see if they will reveal to me authentically what I have gathered by research the last three years.
It would make a great novel. I also believe that Dirk was the main individual responsible for the eventual freeing of the slaves in the islands and in America.
Because I have a "know" of reincarnation, I will be taking a very personal interest in portraying accurately the truth surrounding Dirk Courtney as if I were writing about myself as I was then.