⠀⠀⠀Today I realized I’m a little too much like the male angler fish. The sea devil. Except it sounds cool when you say it like that.
⠀⠀⠀Shannon, our tour guide, takes us to a nearly blacked-out corner of the aquarium, a dark place away from the sharks, the groupers, the sea turtles, that’s meant to simulate the very bottom of the sea. The fish in this tank are benthic, she says, which means dwelling close to the sea floor. Cool, I think. Dark, mysterious, brooding. Benthic.
⠀⠀⠀Shannon introduces us to Gilda, a female anglerfish of the order Ceratiitae. When you first look at a sea devil, they look awesome, terrifying. All those teeth sticking out, like a fistful of broken nails. Those whited-out eyes, the way bioluminescence lights the whole thing up. Like neon on some sort of souped-up, undersea Batmobile. Now, that’s something you wouldn’t want to mess with.
⠀⠀⠀For a moment I look away from the sea devil and to Shannon. She is wearing the aquarium’s uniform of a blue polo, brown slacks, and she is cute rather than hot, attractive in the girl-next-door way rather than the supermodel way. Brown eyes, long, brown hair. She is of the type who could only appear on television as the chubby best friend, but what the actual world would simply consider a real human with an actual body. In other words, she is my type, and being such, makes me wonder if she would be impressed if I displayed some sort of knowledge of fish.
⠀⠀⠀I say, aloud for everyone to hear, “A shark’s skeleton is made entirely out of cartilage. So, they’re not so frightening if you just think of them as enormous, swimming noses.”
⠀⠀⠀I am glad to have gotten at least a few sparse chuckles.
⠀⠀⠀Shannon’s face twists up for a moment, and she says, “I don’t know if the idea of giant, swimming noses is any more comforting.” But she says it with a smile and a laugh, and then tells us more about the sea devil, “The bioluminescent organ that gives them their name is called an esca.” She points to Gilda in the tank as hers lights up. She says, “Sea devils can actually distend their jaws and stomach and, owing to their thin, flexible bones, swallow prey twice as large as their entire bodies. They’d do great at Thanksgiving.”
⠀⠀⠀The small, gathered crowd gives the typical oohs and aahs that you would expect, and Shannon’s joke gets more laughs than my own.
⠀⠀⠀But then Shannon tells all of us gathered how the genus of angler fish Ceratiitae practices something called parabiotic reproduction. In my head I do the word-math, which is the only time math ever makes sense to me, or even comes up in my life at all, beyond figuring out how much to tip.
Solve for X:
If para = besides, or with and biotic = living, then parabiotic = X
X = living beside.
⠀⠀⠀Oh! So, that bizarre fact about angler fish mating habits I do not entirely remember learning and do not entirely remember retaining until this very moment is true after all. That is, if my guess based upon etymology is correct.
⠀⠀⠀I blurt out; “So, that’s true? The males really do merge into the body of the female?” I ask it as a question to not appear as a know-it-all, even though I am pretty sure it is true.
⠀⠀⠀Some members of Shannon’s audience seem oddly enraptured by this information, like you are when you find out Edgar Allan Poe married his cousin. Others, like the small group of children present, are clearly horrified, as if they had bought tickets to a movie with talking animals and their parents, clearly not paying attention, not excited at the prospect of yet another talking animal film, accidentally guided them into the theater showing the fish version of a David Cronenberg film.
⠀⠀⠀“They do,” Shannon says in a high, lilted voice, of the kind you reserve for talking to children. “But that’s because the girls are always bigger and stronger than the boys.” She says this winking at a girl in the crowd, one who is tall for her age. “That’s called sexual dimorphism.”
⠀⠀⠀In my head, there’s suddenly something of how those children feel when they see the first couple frames of that theoretical horror film, before their parents entirely realize the grave mistake they’ve made. Shannon says males may have trouble finding food without females. I stretch my back, try to look taller in the middle of our small group of aquarium onlookers. I’m trying not to think about how I stand at five-foot-five, and how my last girlfriend was four inches taller than me before heels. I try not to, but I think about how that has been a pattern with me, taller women. It makes me look at Shannon and see that, I think, yes, she is in fact taller than me. Certainly not by four inches before heels, but perhaps one or two. I feel something worming around inside me, some realization I have bumped up against without entirely understanding. A blind man handling an elephant’s tusk. Or an angler fish’s esca.
⠀⠀⠀I raise my hand and Shannon looks at me. She smiles, and I know I did not have to raise my hand to ask a question, but she does not say that to me, only points and asks, “Yes, sir?”
⠀⠀⠀I say, “Is it sexual dimorphism if it’s not an entire species?”
⠀⠀⠀“I’m sorry?”
⠀⠀⠀Suddenly, the crowd around us is ten thousand times bigger, and all their eyes have turned to me. I try not to look at my feet, try instead to look at Shannon. “Say, like, if a male sea devil always picks female sea devils that are taller than him for mates.”
⠀⠀⠀Shannon, curious; “Taller?”
⠀⠀⠀Me, correcting. Poorly. “Larger.”
⠀⠀⠀Shannon, with a decidedly shifted tone, “Larger?”
⠀⠀⠀I look away. “I mean, like—” Back to her, “You see, the thing I meant—” Away again.
⠀⠀⠀She interrupts me with a laugh.
⠀⠀⠀“All female sea devils are larger than males. So, if we’re talking about something like, say, a sea turtle, that would be less sexual dimorphism and more personal preference. Like blondes over brunettes.”
⠀⠀⠀“Actually, I like brunettes over blondes.” I wonder why I said that aloud. What does that have to do with fish, with anything? That thing inside me—is it a fish? Some benthic creature? —wriggles, trying to get closer to the surface. I am a blind man holding an elephant’s tail, knowing it is not a paintbrush.
⠀⠀⠀Shannon says, in a tone that I do not fool myself into thinking is more flirtatious than factual, says, “So do I.” It is merely as if she is listing another fact about sea devils. She resumes talking about fish, but it doesn’t matter, because I can hardly hear her. I am entirely consumed, instead, by Gilda in her tank. I watch the way she’s bobbing in the dark, those lights whooping along her sides. Those lights hypnotize me, and I am concentrated only on playing Where’s Waldo with potential males hiding all along her body.
⠀⠀⠀He must be there somewhere, I think, searching for a raised bump, a little blister, anything that could be him. I wonder if I’m going to see two little eyes, like something out of those warped 90’s cartoons I used to watch as a kid where they would anthropomorphize a tumor or something. But I see nothing I can readily identify as such, only Gilda. I am aware of her (?) as less of single entity and more of an amalgamation (really, is she not an amalgam already, fused as she is with another male? What do we call her now that she is no longer only, she, now that she goes everywhere with a little gendered backpack?).
⠀⠀⠀I think about how when humans meet, when relationships begin, they merge in a similar way to the anglerfish. I wonder; what happened to his sea devil friends? Are they out in the ocean somewhere, wondering why this vanished male won’t come out to the bar with them, even though there’s a special on crustaceans and the teleost fish he loves?
⠀⠀⠀Gilda and her invisible mate make me think about more than that simple feigning that begins a relationship, more than light, harmless pretending. Of the kind when I was in high school, when I dated Christina, the metalhead, and for two months was into the kinds of bands that wore extremely elaborate costumes that you usually never saw beyond October. Or when I would sit down with Melanie, who I met in college, and watch stoner comedies for hours at a time while I pretended like I understood that kind of humor or found it funny at all. This feigning went the other way as well. Christina accompanied me to film festivals and Melanie attempted to understand Surrealism, but I could tell it only went so far. Those are the things people do at the beginning of every relationship, when you want to pretend everything your new partner does is so incredibly interesting. I wonder if they knew about my pretending as I knew about theirs.
⠀⠀⠀What I’m worried about is different, is something connected to Gilda, and the three (!) mates Shannon tells me she has living like spineless little parasites inside her body, but I don’t know entirely what it is. That thing inside of me is wriggling inside its egg, ready to break free, to finally hatch and see the world, ready to tell me what it is I’m so afraid of. I am a blind man holding an elephant’s ear, and yet knowing it is not a fan.
⠀⠀⠀The shell of this benthic thing inside me cracks, and I wonder, in a moment of simultaneous self-reflection and -flagellation, if I am little more than a blob of fish flesh waiting for the nearest esca to flash seductively in my direction? Even Shannon, our tour guide, had me thinking these parabiotic thoughts just moments ago. Fish are interesting sometimes, but let’s be realistic; I don’t think much of my life would be able to revolve around them.
⠀⠀⠀What I’m worried about is Taylor, who actively attempted to distance me from my friends, but I’m more worried by the fact that after awhile I began to let her. I allowed night after night of dodging, of excuses for my proposed plans, while hers never fell through. Sent apology after apology to people I knew, people I loved, who I knew full well knew what was happening. I allowed my circle to close, allowed myself to become surrounded with people I barely knew, people who meant nothing to me outside of someone else. We spoke recently, and we both said honestly, we’re better without one another, that we weren’t what we wanted, even though we thought we were.
⠀⠀⠀What I’m worried about is Diane, who would take me out drinking every single weekend, and the fact that I tried to keep up with her. Closing down bars, watching it empty out my wallet and my body until I couldn’t handle it anymore. Watching as both of us slowly succumbed to alcoholism and denial under the pretense of cool, of fun. I don’t know where she is now.
⠀⠀⠀What I’m worried about is Liza, who convinced me to experiment with polyamory, and that I nearly convinced myself I liked it. Meeting with other people, being with other people, when I knew from this start this was not for me. Gilda, with three Ceratiitae males fused into her body, reminds me of Liza, in what I’m now certain was little more than an attempt to see what other fish were out in the sea without tossing her own catch back. Gilda seems happy enough, as does Liza, now that she’s found people who want the same things as her. The last time I saw her, her and her partners were moving in together. I couldn’t be happier for them, truly, even if her motivations did seem corrupt in the beginning. I would never begrudge anyone else their happiness, certainly not a nontraditional fish-family, nor any nontraditional human families. I would only ask that they understand why I choose what I choose, and now Liz does.
⠀⠀⠀But what I’m really worried about is myself. What I’m worried about, as I look in on Gilda and the three males somewhere inside her, is all these times I had ceased to be myself, and had instead become someone else, some amalgam I did not recognize. This isn’t what other people are for. This isn’t what I’m for. It’s not fair of me, and it’s not fair of them. It’s not fair to me, and it’s not fair to them.
⠀⠀⠀Something is happening inside the tank, with the little fish-me lodged somewhere in Gilda’s back. I can see him/me now, a larger lump, as if he has grown suddenly. He is pulsing, throbbing inside Gilda, and she squirms ecstatically right alongside him. The people nearby begin to take notice, and Shannon notices them noticing, and she turns towards the tank just in time to see.
⠀⠀⠀The bioluminescent lights all along Gilda’s side light up in spectacular fashion, in colors and hues I had no idea sea devils were capable of: oranges and blues, and deep, royal purples. The entire tank brightens and boils, and we’re a part of some underwater firework’s show, watching as Gilda suddenly balloons and explodes. Not entirely, just her back rupturing, and it is both fascinating and disgusting, like when you pop a pimple. Except this is no pimple, this is the tiny, miniature fish-me that has exploded out of Gilda’s back.
⠀⠀⠀Except he’s not fish-me anymore.
⠀⠀⠀He is human me.
⠀⠀⠀Emerging from Gilda fully formed and exactly like me, except that he is six inches tall. I see my curly hair, long and wavy under the water. I see my dark skin and my sneakers and my button-up and cardigan that people say makes me look older than I am.
⠀⠀⠀And little me see “Me” me, and everything suddenly makes sense.
Travis Tyler Madden is a graduate of Towson University’s Professional Writing graduate program. Their work has appeared in Writer’s Digest, Ligeia Magazine, Alternating Current, Paragon Press, Queerlings, and Castabout Literature.
Main Squeeze Literary Journal 