Roberto Romei Rotondo
Up Your Fish Teeth
I hobbled along the stony slabbed waterfront where one of the fishers reeled up a two-footer. A trout, by the looks of it, though it might have been a salmon or even an overgrown sardine or a baby tuna perhaps. Not being an ichthyologist, I couldn’t quite be sure as to exactly what kind of fish it was, though it most definitely was a fish. Anyway, the fisher held the fish up by the gills, looked at it in the same way one might inspect a handkerchief after one has blown in it, or straight threw it, as often occurs with paper kerchiefs, or across it, as often occurs with small kerchiefs, or when the kerchief isn’t so small but the nose in question is enormous, or, which would indeed be most unfortunate, both a small kerchie and a cauliflower sized nose, and also depending on the various types of symptoms accompanying the cold, and, not unimportantly, also very much depending on the pulmonary force of the person doing the discharging, as well as the environment in which the nasal releasing is performed; after all, one would not quite expect a dainty mademoiselle of refined pedigree attending a dinner to blow with the same intensity and spirit as a pig-farmer at a he-ha folk festival, and so, having quite deliberately inspected the fish, the fisherman threw the fish my way. For you, he said. As the trout flopped about the pier one of the boatmen yelled out that I should lay my knee on it and pin the slimy thing down, which I did. The helpless creature panted for air, or whatever it is fish pant for when out of water panting , flashing a sharp set of pearly white teeth… Were the teeth extracted from the fish before their heads ended up boiling in the pot? Or were they left to slip off their gums straight into the broth for flavouring?
These questions and my missing socks were enough to keep my mind in a whirl for the better part of the week. For you see my socks had vanished. Now we all of course have had our socks gone missing in the course of our lives. But why of all my socks only the yellow ones. And why had they gone missing -- again.
And were the trout’s teeth left intentionally on its head for flavouring the fish head soup, as I had initially suspected, or might there not perhaps have been some other, more exotic, oriental reason for this strangest of culinary inclusions?
Were the teeth left in as a ‘hardening’ agent . . . for aphrodisiac purposes? Perhaps not as cherished as a rhino’s horn, or porcupine bezoars, or even pangolin flesh, or gecko’s skin, but certainly more accessible to mariners and way way cheaper.
Might this be why over the centuries sailors had acquired such renown as lovers? Is this why the most beautiful Canadian women live in the Maritimes?
Is the sailor’s celebrated virility attributable to fish teeth in his soup and not, as the literature would have us believe, from being months on end out at sea, womanless? In fact one might very well make the case that having been weaned on toothy fish soup our sailors’accented sexual prowess got the gals chasing after them boys so hard their only way out was sailing the high seas.
The more I contemplated the more questions popped to mind, though none as perturbing as the sudden disappearance of my socks. And why only my yellow ones.
From my bed where I lay, sleepless, I glanced searchingly into the offing.
The moon was long past the full, a beautiful round yellow moon, as yellow as my socks when quite suddenly I heard a screech in the night. I gingerly approached the window sill. And there he was. Don. My Chinese acrobat neighbour swinging from my clothes line. But of course, it now all made perfect sense . . . all those hours at the gym, honing his acrobatic skills . . . to steal my socks -- no doubt attracted by their colour to match his complexion? It would never have occurred to me had I not seen him with my own eyes.
And they say crosswords sharpen the mind? Rubbish. It's scrabble for me from here on out.
Or did the fisherman throw the fish at me cause he thought I might need a little toothy fish soup of my own to energize what he interpreted as an otherwise less than seaworthy masculinity?
Questions and more questions. Damn me and when I get to try linking words up.
And what if yellow socks, for some strangest of reasons, were as desirable to the oriental persuasion as the seal’s dried penis?
No. No bloody way. No more doing with word-link of any sort, no more.
Scrabble's out as well I thought to myself, sniffing at my last remaining pair of yellow socks
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