Like Good Goddamn

I’d seen the old fisherman around the wharf but never talked with him. Then one afternoon while sitting at the bar he began telling me about the time his trawler was taken down by a great and terrible sea monster. I watched his thin chapped lips move, observed the darting of his rheumy eyes. I felt lucky to be confided in. When someone who is grizzled and rheumy confides in you, it feels special, like you’ve been selected, even if the reasons for your selection are foggy. I wasn’t a fisherman and knew nothing of the sea. I liked saying anemone, of course, but wasn’t entirely clear on what they were—I thought maybe jellyfish or coral reefs. I sold screen doors back then and still do.

That sea monster really took down our trawler good, said the old fisherman. It was great and terrible, that sea monster.

The old fisherman whistled, then. It wasn’t a first-rate whistle by any stretch—the volume of concomitant spittle is what ultimately held it back from highest honors—but it got the job done. The whistle started high and went low, like good goddamn, like a human life.

Eventually, the whistle ended. It didn’t stop on a dime; it just kind of pffflllizzled out.

The old fisherman dove headlong into his plate of nachos, then.

Not as much cheese as last time, said the old fisherman after his third nacho, with a slow downturn of his grizzled face.

I think the cheese was spicier, too, said Owen, his fishing partner, who was seated on his starboard side. Wasn’t it spicier? Am I making that up?

No, you aren’t making that up, said the old fisherman. Last time it was spicier.

A lot spicier.

Damn right. You’re goddamn right it was spicier.

The old fisherman offered me a nacho.

I accepted his offer, chewed the nacho, and, without even really thinking about it, commenced the digestive process.

We were such miracles back then.

I sipped my beer. I waited for the old fisherman to continue his story of the great and terrible sea monster. I adjusted my buttocks on the barstool to make myself more comfortable. My understanding back then was that when grizzled old fishermen start telling stories, they don’t fuck around. They tell the shit out of those stories, and you’d better be ready to listen, and listen for a good long while, because narrative concision is not their forte. They will wring every last bit of drama and detail out of that anecdote and leave no anemone unturned. That was what I thought, at least.

But the grizzled old fisherman showed no intention of going back to his story.

Damn, he said after a time, and in the moment I wasn’t sure if he was talking about the great and terrible sea monster or about the nachos. Or something else entirely. But then I noticed the cheese stain on the front of his fisherman’s frock.

Cheese on your frock, I said.

It’s not a frock, said the fisherman. It’s called a cummerbund, dickweed.

The grizzled old fisherman was not wearing a cummerbund. I wasn’t even sure it was a frock, to be honest. There was so much I didn’t know: about the sea, about men’s fashion, about love and death. I wasn’t even sure what I was doing here, and then I remembered: to sell goddamn screen doors. I took the brochure from the aft pocket of my vestments and said, Hey.