Jules: So what’s it like being a fish
I delete the message. Then I type again.
Jules: So what do you have underneath those shorts? Is it normal like a person?
I laugh a little and hold down the delete button. How about that? I like the feeling of typing these never-to-be-sent messages. A little part of me is tickled with joy at the inappropriateness. It’s freeing. Unserious. Fun.
I type some more.
Jules: So how do you fuck though?
But like, for real. How does he fuck? Is there a dick under the shorts? I know it’s none of my business. But alas, I’m only human. We all wanna know what we don’t know.
I go to delete the message when I’m interrupted by a phone call.
My mother. A-fucking-gain.
Hastily, I ignore the call. She’s the last person I need to talk to. I know she’s been trying to get a hold of me, but I don’t fucking care.
A memory flashes from the past, but I push it away. Photo shoots. A man’s hands. My mother’s back turned conveniently away. I don’t want to think about her. And I don’t want to think about what she did to me . . . what she allowed to be done to me.
The screen clears, but when I look again, my stomach drops.
Because yes, I’ve ignored my mother’s call, but I’ve also done something else.
I sent the fucking message to Mack!
There it is, in a little blue bubble on the screen, like a little whale peeping above the water.
Jules: So how do you fuck though?
I clap my hand over my mouth, and a series of maniacal, horrified laughs burst from me.
Really, Jules?!
You meet a perhaps mythological creature, make friends with him, stalk him at his own house, get his phone number, get banished, and then the first message you send to him is so how do you fuck though?
Really?
I’m beside myself now, fallen to my mattress and laughing like I’m on drugs.
If only I had drugs to blame instead of whatever mental illness this is.
Now, I stare at my screen.
What can I do? I can’t unsend the message. Should I send another one and try to cover it up? Or does that only deepen the transgression?
The cover-up is always worse than the crime, isn’t it?
But nothing’s happening on the other end anyway. He’s not responding.
Then it occurs to me.
He’s in the tank.
He’s in his tank! He probably never even looks at his phone. When I was at his apartment, he had his computer propped up eye level to the tank. I imagine him floating to the top, propping his hands out and typing on the computer. At the very least, he must’ve done that because he chatted with me almost every single day.
But his phone. Maybe he keeps that somewhere else? Maybe he doesn’t use it as much.
I don’t know anything about the social life of a fish monster.
I stare at the nothingness beneath my inappropriate question.
I shouldn’t call him a fish monster. I’m a monster, after all. Look at my behavior.
I’ll call him something else instead. How about a fish king?
Fish King. Sure, why not . . .
No, what about a fish daddy?
Oh my god, I laugh in that horrified way again.
What is wrong with me!
Then . . . typing bubbles appear beneath my message.
Chapter 9
