Taking THE CAT for a walk

It is still dark out when I am woken up .....confused….There are pebbles hitting my window. I pull the shades up, to peer down through the screen at what is causing me to have to be conscious at 6 in the morning.
There is my father, with a cigarette ( as promised) tucked in his hand. The grip of his smile, is much like the grip on his rope in his other hand, as he starts to badger my name
” Des, Des…”
My eyes are adjusting, although my alertness is not. The sun has lent just enough light to the grass for me to see the incident in which my Father is urging his humor toward.
There is a poor, orange fat cat sprawled out.....dead stiff on our lawn. My brain cells don’t have to register the rest. I am used to my Father, and albeit to his whims because I have been conditioned to do so....and so, I wait for it I wait for him to cast his staged look of shock, and confusion. He throws cigarette and rope hands up to declare
“ What?”
Again “ What?” drawing out the sound it as if disappointed.

“-You don’t want to take the cat for a walk with your father this morning?”

My response is to shut the blinds annoyed, then pull them away again on a second thought barely managed out of exhaustion, but prompted by instinct.
“ You need professional help…”
I pause to draw out my part in this improve scene.
“-- 6 ‘o clock in the morning is way too early to be taking the cat for a walk…why don’t you take it over to Borderline Beverage and see if they want to take the cat for a walk with you when your buying your case of Camels...I am sure they would love to take the cat for a walk.”
His mouth turns up to deepen the smile, that always brings out my own. Throwing his sea bag through the open door of the driver side, he salutes me with a casual hand meeting the red bandanna on his head, wrapped around a mess of disheveled sea hair… “ Take care kid.” He looks up and nods.
“ Have fun fishing, Dad.”
“ I think I will.” He concedes while coiling in the " cat-leash" rope carefully, as it now must be put to some other use on his boat. He then bends down to grab his the blue beaten duffel sea bag, through driver side door to have it as a passenger, salty, eager and carefree. They are off to chase this morning out in the open water of the world.

He lights up another cigarette with thrill and meditation.....each breath in, another exhaled step up the latter on to another life.

I push away the blind, and roll back on to bed…I am tired enough to hit dreams the second I close me eyes .
I listen his car start to leave the driveway, then:
“Des, Des…”
I set myself up for this. I have to pull black the damned blind one last time…and see what he wants
His window is down and his head is sticking out of it, mischievously.
“ Be, Careful out there.”
I chime in knowing: “ The world can be a cruel place”…
We both acknowledge the truth of this statement said between us since of the dawning of anything I can remember, in surveying the cat…who’s luck was not so good.
He pulls out of the drive way, and I again push back the blinds.

Jesus Christ, I think as my lids stick heavy back to sleep.


I’m a definitely a fishermans daughter….

The skate Vs. The Mortgage industry

“ I traditionally don’t hire women, because I don’t want to end up sleeping with them..”
I couldn’t tell if he was calling me while on a motorcycle or the massive engine of his car was purring so loud it revved up the proposition with that much more muscle for his attempt at prowess-driven authority….. It sounded like he was flexing all the way from L.A.

I had heard that line before…when I first got in to the mortgage industry…. I was introduced by a smooth talking ,
very bachelor, very Italian man…we will call him “ The Italian”….for now…
That phone call happened after I had just come in from my last fishing trip in Chincoteague, Virginia….
I was picking fish scales off of my arm and extremely disappointed in the puncture wound a small bastard- skate had inflicted upon my left hand.
It refused to stop bleeding. (Skates have a blood thinner they excrete. This encourages the gash they inflict to continue to ooze blood for three days to four days…

My father said these wounds “really suck”. I have to agree. As a result of this wound, coupled with one a few days prior involving me reaching in to the open mouth of a maaco shark…

Side note> the maaco was dead…so yes,…I was bit by a dead shark, because I was being a deckhand-dumb ass)

….Ended up hosting an infection from what ever sea bacterial fish shit, successfully nested in it due to the fact you can not protect injuries….there isn’t a bandage in the world that will stay adhered to your hands, when they are getting soaked …except for duct tape….which I did use…but still didn’t do much to protect me as the wounds did heal…..
A month later my hand turned purple and red, and started streaking…and I almost lost it…
When I called my Father and told him the news….
His response was
“ well, which hand do you write with?”

….so back to the “business proposal…..
My head balanced my fish bait smelling cell phone, against my shoulder as I was expressing my concern for my bleeding hand, and maybe finding a new job.
The Italian was modest in his approach…He knew he had to be…I rifled through the bull shit men spit at me so quickly that most of the time, past disarming them I also ended up with at least one of their balls…sometimes 2…
…of course that is only to say if their manhood consisted of brazen showy pride that resembled an ape in a suit banging his chest.
Since it is not civilized to hit a woman, I could get away with “emasculating murder”….and yes….I am an asshole….everyone that loves me concurs with this fact.

SIDE NOTE> I do not dislike players…I am actually rather intrigued by their guile…There is a manner of spreading your seed that is your God given right in this world…watching men speak to me or other women with their verbal prowess is like a good show on Animal Planet…I love hunting…being hunted…up to a point…like most things in my life…it depends on my mood..


The businessmen smoothed through the words casually, as if to propose a certain kind of cereal he should maybe have for breakfast, before the big meeting. I almost didn’t even hear it.
That sneaky prick.
“ Well, I am looking for an assistant to work some of my pipeline, and maintain business, so-I mean if-“
Yes….I will be redundant and dig in to the aforementioned statement immediately.
Essentially he was saying he needed an ass.isistant…that he could lay his pipe line in.
To maintain his business of being top dog -that part is the same, now dipped in the correct company ink..

How wonderfully, one can package the craft of their actual motive when dressed in the suit of a business proposal. It’s the nature of how, every one gets fucked when they are being told lofty political worded descriptions to elude the prick of finer details.

Time to trade in my sea bag, for a Gucci purse. I think I can handle that for awhile.... Judging the infection from my oozing wound. I was about to Go from fishing dirty , to saucy sophisticated. Eating flank Steak with gut soaked, hands and a diesel stained jug of water---- to filet mignon , a nice bottle of red wine…....and acrylic nails

I was 22...and decided I wanted to take it easy....
If you wanted to throw me "a bone" that I didn’t have to work to get. I’d fetch it…just don’t ask me to bring it back….for too long. The thing with fishing is
Take the girl off the boat, but you can’t take the sea out of the girl…ever.

so...the story of the mortgage industry, living in a penthouse suite, and being "pretty"..... is extremely relevant, but outlived, by the sadistic thing that happens once salt water gets in your veins...
and so the story goes.....

Fish first diggity

The first time I ever was “out” to sea to work my father is a trip still rocking .

I had a light blue bandanna on…The boat was dancing calm with the ocean…a quiet song of the morning sea… My father was wearing his “ salt-water” cowboy hat—a filter less cigarette dipped off to the side of his mouth…these cigarettes were part of him…they were also killing him…he wore the warning of death on a daily basis…with a smile, he laughed in the face of it…and surrendered himself to the unknown, flirting tirelessly with Camel cigarette, after cigarette, lighting one up with the other. I would catch him doing so, looking at me saying “ what?”
…Butts as he called him…his eternal pack of butts.

All of my senses were heightened, the high of the ocean…perked by the electricity of being able to see my father in his element..in his dance.

I remember the rush of the engine and waves in my bloodstream… the stern eye of my Father finding his first string of gear to retrieve..
He was quietly singing to himself the song Stagger Lee…coughing, singing, laughing--
owning everything around him, with the fearless blend of a lit up child, and wise sea-versed man.
There was still shadows on deck…my father leaned over his post to flip on the switch to the lights…and the music
“ You ready for this kid.” ....A moments time, he turned a brief piece of his attention toward me…a smile as he pulled his cigarette from his lips to spit out a piece of the tobacco..
Lights on…gil net being hoisted on to the lifter…thats when the bass kicked in..PRESS PLAY>>>YOU HAVE TO

...and this is how it all started....I shit you, NO Diggity, no doubt.
This part of it was obviously enough to make me feel very fishermen gangster.

BEWARE THE FISHERMEN Roadtrip"

This is an ode to the two year anniversary of a PREVIOUS
birthday celebration that ended in
“ RoadTRIP”


Once upon a time…..A few Years back, my friends and I went about the business of celebrating my 25th birthday drinking straight through the whole week prior to, and after the BIG DAY…
In the midst of this, One my friends and I made the excessive beer induced brilliant decision to take
a road trip to Virginia.
I was due to arrive there by plane, to continue to work on writing about my fishing book….

Side note> I was actually mostly just drinking about my fishing book at that point in time. The truthful extent of my writing was usually just in the form of signing my name for a bar tab at the end of the night…but I think the word “writer” also spells out alcoholic, lazy, manic, crazy-what have you….
So, as to make a great story….even if you are to too drunk to write it…at least you are living it…right?

…Either way….Ben ( the beer partner)….and I collectively schemed a road trip while slumped over a bench at Gritty’s ( the Irish bane of an existence bar, almost all of my life altering decisions in life have spawned from...thus the reason, I am in Minneapolis)
( I also have an Irish bane of my existence ex-boyfriend that had his four leaf Captain Morgan, clover charm effect on aiding the journey of my life…but that serves an entire chapter of my book…ode him….which I will only share in my book…when it is finally fucking published)
Blah, blah, blah…
Back to the road trip.
Ben decided he wanted to drive back to California ( which is where he resided)…and that he was more than willing to drop me off in Virginia along the way.
I get really excited about the “ idea” of glittery words such as roadtrip….especially when drunk…so I gave him the salute of a “ fuck yes”
…..
The journey to Virginia was 15 hours, of me with my head out the window somewhere between dry heaving, and trying not to have at all….because of the birthday binge blitz I had been on at Gritty’s that entire week before…
During the drive
I tried to give Ben a head’s up warning in reference to:
A. the few times I thought I was going to successfully heave to the point of producing puke--- so he could pull over and avoid me getting any of it inside, or on the side of his nice new Leather seated Range Rover.
And
B. To Beware the Fishermen.

To be honest…I didn’t get to give Ben enough information about statement B…due to the many alarms of statement A….

So when we arrived in Virginia, to greet the 60 or so New England hard- edged fishermen that flocked here this time of year to do the “ Monk Hunt”-
( which is also something I had my go at a few or so times…-- another story…only going to be told in my book)
Ben wasn’t so sure how to take it all in at first….

Part two of this story, is titled:
“ BEN Vs. THE Fishermen, Vs VIRGINIA VS.….the Pussy Magnet Kite and the American flag”…. which I will post when I am not nursing a SUSHI hang-over due to my 27th Viva “ way too much fucking sake” birthday celebration….
BUT I WILL LEAVE YOU WITH A PICTURE OF HIM HOLDING IT, ON THE BEACH


p.s. Ben is going to fucking kill me, if ever he finds out I am "blogging" his spot up...but I doubt it will happen anytime soon due to the fact that he is living somewhere in Northern Maine right now...and no body has teeth or computers fifty miles past Portland...

Get me a nurse

For years, I had smelled My Fathers “other life”, with a question mark that burned an ever peaked curiosity to know this salty mystery of his soul… This piece of him, that weathered everything that he was, as a Father to me.

He would come through the door of the house…a tired light in his smile…I would run to him, and accuse “ Dad, you smell like fish.”
This was my way of taking out on him, the mild and painful anger of him leaving me. But I adored him just as much every time he would walk through the door, in the same breath.
“ Hey kid…” He’d ruffle my hair, thick rough hands that softened everything inside of me the way he could,
and to acknowledge my feelings…both of them…then eagerly wave it in to the wonder of his clever humor…to “make light” with saying:

“No, I smell like money…”

Sometimes the lack of sleep, mixed with the delirium of his watery soul descending back upon land, after yet another hard- fun and soul-trying adventure owed to his love affair with the sea… He would return to his life and equally undying love for his family back at home---
Completely Fu#k’ng exhausted…I remember the look on his face, trying to seep back in to the homestead, while the gears were still turning on sea time in his head…Two very different times…I would later find out..
He would grab the old steak ( My Mother often broiled and left out) with his bare hands…eat it…then pass out on the couch. This was when I would tend to him. I would carefully bead up and roll “bandages” on to anything on his exposed skin that I perceived to be a wound…There were so many!! Tiny cuts, gashes, anything I perceived to be wound…)…a lot of the “bruises” were actually diesel stains…but I couldn’t tell the difference …. This was my sense of daughterly purpose and pride to bandage his boat- beaten up body.
And in the middle of the night…well after I had already gone upstairs to fall asleep, myself…
He would wake up, on the couch…with delicately placed, tiny bits and pieces of
toilette paper covering his body…
And so this is a story of my endearing, and not so much adept attempt at being a nurse…thus the reason that, unless you want The soft touch of Charms stuck in to your gaping wounds, which I think possibly might actually stifle the scabbing and healing process…don’t come and ask me to bandage you up physically…the same is said of any emotionally bandaging as well…
I like to use toilette paper…either way.

The monk vs. the knife

It’s pitch black, I can’t discern if it is the salt water, pouring rain, or the fish guts that has left me more cold and soaking wet than I had ever been before.
I am out in the middle of the ocean…and it’s a storming, shitty night…
I am ripping through as many monk fish as I possibly can, quicker than I am capable, fighting more than I probably should, to do so.
That is the thing…with fishing…you can’t bound through it with brute force, you have to be fluid…and save your energy.
Because here I am,
19 hours deep in that day…and my fingers are bleeding…I don’t even feel like my arms are attached to my actual body any more....only connected by my brains will to keep fucking going…everything hurts….
I am trying to cut my way through the thousand pounds of fish before me, at such a pace that I am not paying attention to everything I am supposed to be paying attention to.

Thus the infinite danger of having any business being out on a boat, if past being crazy you are in any way an idiot….

And so, the pools of guts that are spilling out on to the deck area from where I stand, have not been cleared properly to keep stable ground…I lean off to the right to get a hold of yet another thorny monstrous looking creature that has it’s mouth open completely pissed off and ready to bite with sharp teeth intention…
Let me tell you...Monk fish are ugly and slippery bastards…
You have to handle them, by digging your fingers in to their eye sockets. If you handle them any other way… the thorns will tear you open…or even worse- The Mouth.

The Mouth will lock it’s pitbul jaw down on your hand…where you then are faced with having to
not panic,
but ever so calmly
take a knife, to forcefully stab through their head so that their neurological function collapses…thus releasing their clamp on your hand.
I know this because it happened to me…
but that is not the point in this story…


I had successfully turned the fish over to have at it with my knife, when I slipped on the guts that I had not cleared out of the way. I fell back, my hands flew up…
The thing that caught me from falling off the boat in the middle of the sea, in the middle of the night, in the middle of a miserable fucking storm, was my knife…
As it had launched itself in to the underside of my fathers arm while he was working next to me to cover the weight I wasn’t pulling on my own.

I was relieved, then panicked, to pull the knife out…and so I did...
which is the point that mortified me…because my father just looks at me with a slightly begrudging, but mostly stoic smile….completely un phased, as far as I was concerned and says
“ Thanks Des, I didn’t really need that muscle”…
And then he turns to continue doing what he had been doing for the past thirty years of his life.
Fishing.

Pirate

A "fish-bit"
of an interview with my Father:

THE TAIL Beginning the FISH:

“ I wanted to be a pirate”

My Fathers says to me, and I can hear him, spitting out the bits of tobacco from one of his camel filter less cigarettes...he is always smoking..
he takes another drag, and continues:


...."That’s what got me in to it… ...ever since I was in fifth grade….That was what I wanted most….”

“First time I saw a boat unloading fish I was with a friend of mine….I was fifteen, maybe sixteen years old…
And, I wanted to climb up the mast and dive off the top of that ..it freaked my friend out
…he was like
‘ no way…you won’t do it.”
…and I did it….

I just wanted to a part of it…in the worst way….”

What was your first trip like?

The first time I ever went fishing, the biggest piece was…I had never been out of sight of land…I had been on boats many many times…but never out of sight of land

And I got to watch it disappear….

That was my whole thing…to lose it…the land…
Watching it disappear…
I stayed right on deck….and watched it until it all disappeared.
And I don't know....it was just.... really fucking…cool...."