Brett Martin

He was bored.

Then one day Alex was walking along the Brighton Beach boardwalk and saw a group of older guys collecting money for something called the Russian Punk Rock Club of America.

Older guys like 25 and 30 years old.

Alex was 12.

One of the musicians he met that day was Roman Gajalov, who immediately took to the young Alex.

Under his new friend's tutelage, Alex began walking around in an old Bolshevik-style hat and trench coat.

And his friends gave him books.

Dostoevsky, Tolkien, Guides to Slavic Paganism, The Beats, and also Robinson Crusoe and Treasure Island.

Alex was particularly fond of those.

And our story today, our own seafaring tale, happens on a boat that Roman owns, a 25-foot white sailboat, which Alex likes to refer to as the yacht.

One cool evening last May, Alex, Roman, and another friend named Alex, Alex Lubachansky, decided to take a nice little boat trip in Jamaica Bay, the body of water that wraps around the southern end of Brooklyn.

Here's Alex.

Roman had a slightly less ambitious agenda.

Things started to go wrong almost immediately.

Before they even left the marina, Roman, who'd been making headway through the bottle of rum, fell into the water and they had to haul him back in.

He was clearly in no shape to drive.

This is Alex.

As a responsible journalist, I should say for the record that Roman does have one objection to Alex's version of events.

Somehow they managed to get out of the marina, gun the engine, and take off across the water toward the Marine Park Bridge in the distance.

Once there, they decided to try to sail to Brighton Beach and headed toward a landmass, but they got confused and turned back to open water.