Sweet Delphinium

Upon the fall of night I rode my bicycle to the Breeze to play some pool with the prospect of female companionship, as I had recently met a twenty one year old Austrian girl a few weeks earlier, there had been romance between us (we had fucked in the filthy outback, my roommate grumbling about the stench of her pussy mid coitus, her leaving in the night, scared of the gravel, fish scales, bundles of line: it would have been a dirty shed for a lawnmower, yet two men slept and a twenty one year mountain rescue adventurer laid awake, staring at the duct tape covering the particle board ceiling, wondering if all fishermen lived in such conditions), and the feeling of female companionship was something I had lost and often longed for in my days among men, days spent carrying the burden of fish, fresh yet dead, their temperature (cold), the timing of their death (1-2 days for salmon, irrespective of its species, 3-5 days for black cod and halibut, 1-5 days for pacific cod), their capture, their internal organs, how they live to spawn and how, as many see it, how their reason for being—the spawning, the sperm and the egg, the fertilization of eggs spread into the river: men call these eggs ‘roe,’ and the Japanese, specialists in identifying what is to them ‘fresh,’ high-grade roe, evaluate this still birth, this displacement of the salmon’s reason for being, more mechanical, frenetic and calloused men stand over the refrigerated saltwater bins and speak about the similarities between men and women of the human race and their apparent counterparts in the ocean—“We all eat, consume water, work, have sex, and die. That’s about it.”—and the same man spoke about these fish, these creatures who are seen only after their recent death, as protein sources, no different than a body builder would speak about quality protein and his whey powder, one must not simply question the judgment but the sanity of such a man—indeed such a man believes his vision, his informal analysis, to be quite coherent, yet the man has already, as we have witnessed above the refrigerated saltwater bins amidst the hum of the sorting belt, bins open and filling and soon filled with hundreds of thousands of ‘pinks’—a short name for the momentary glace at the lives but certainly not the world of these fish—likened men and women, with their general goals, habits, and patterns, their key characteristics as this man sees men and women (his fellow men and women?; or perhaps some general vision of a globe, of an earth—a scientist, perhaps?) as roughly being the same as salmon, only differentiated by their shape, environment, their noises—why wouldn’t such a man see other humans as a protein source, or at least a configuration of protein to be used as machinery?, call him evil, or, generously, call him insensitive, but why not call him crazy?, why not say that the man does not see what is living in the ocean but what is only ‘freshly’ dead, that he might as well be a hog farmer were it not his supposed love of fish “Look at that pink, what a beautiful, beautiful fish, aren’t you a beautiful fish? (he brings the pink salmon close to his face, and speaks) “If you were a woman, I’d marry you," and indeed it would be his third marriage, or “She spawns her eggs out there and all the guys have a go at her”—not quite at her of course, but at her eggs—he has taken great meaning from the womb of woman, he has culled her for her egg sack, had her for a product—sujiko, for example, or ikura, as another—

The first time I saw her it was her companion who took me with her youth, her sweetness, her glasses, she was a Ranitzstava and her friend, her friend was a Ralitca, the spelling not quite the same in English but the transliteration identical and the Bulgarian spelling the same, the same as my perfect woman, the one who I had abandoned and ruined,that night I told them both my perfect woman was Bulgarian, I hadn’t ever recovered from her or what I had done to her, and, and the night grew blurry, rather than my being concerned for the love of this replacement, I reached for a wall, found an openening, discovered the expanse of outside, I wandered from the bar and walked towards the ocean and found my rest in a park shelter and slept on a picnic table, how I leave my Ralis standing, hopeful, heartbroken, bitter, poison. 

Two weeks later, dancing to local-sung music, I encountered the two again, but they were new to me. Ranitzstava had grown deeply in beauty and I fell deeply in love with her, the girl in the glasses, but again she spoke of her husband and she meant it, there was the Ralitca, again, but this time with her long hair, her long black hair to her buttocks, and I spoke her name twice, and she said she was to leave in a week and why didn’t I come with her to Veliko Turnovo, the great capital of the Bulgarian empire, the town I knew with Ralitza and her high school class, why not come with her, 23, come with her, give her a child, find something right in Bulgaria, find a woman who loves me, right in front of me, she said, come with me, maybe it didn’t work the first time, but I am your Ralica, here is my Facebook, look, I am your Ralica, I could not stand and the room blurred again, do not hit the floor, again the outside, on my bicycle swerving back and forth between the mountain and the sea and between the shrouds of cloud covering the harbor.

In the morning I was manic as I spoke in the hold pitching black cod and halibut, I was manic that I could pitch fish despite my sleepless, alcohol filled night, my hands no longer ached because my heart hurt throughout, let the tote fall on me, let me go as Felix, I threw the fish into the totes and the buckets, the skipper said I was the “fastest fish pitcher on earth,” I pointed to Hughes, crouched under the hold, throwing fish my way, and said “No, that guy, you’re looking at him,” we finished the boat and we sat with Gil and I drank three cups of coffee and read the paper.