Cal’s Spearfishing Tours, Part 1
Shot through the heart, and I’m to blame
It is my ninety-eighth day in this parallel universe known as the Marshall Islands. I no longer relate to the person I was three months ago when I thought this would be a fantastic adventure. I want to take a tuna and slap my former self squarely in the face.
By most definitions, I live in paradise. The tropical ocean cradles me. I am comforted by the constant applause of coconut palms. I see sharks trolling the reef as I sip coffee and gaze out my kitchen window. Fresh fish is a staple and wearing a muumuu is fashionable.
If you overlook the nagging need for green vegetables. If you don’t stand too close to the heavy diapers that roll in and out with the tide. If you steer clear of the delusional expats with criminal records. If you lower your expectations and often eliminate the need for logic, justice or deliverables. If you are here for a week, this is paradise.
In this paradise, I live in a trailer. This luxury accommodation is an upgrade from where I stayed the first week on island. Because my housing wasn’t quite assembled when I arrived, they put me in a sort of mixed-use complex. It was a motel, a shop, a nightclub, and a brothel. Always home before dark, I kept to myself and never felt pressured to be a client or a service provider. My room had a beige tile floor, a view of a shipping container, a painting of a woman reclined on a leopard, and most importantly a deadbolt on the door.
Any time I get sick of the trailer, I remember the whorehouse.
I work at a tuna processing plant. I found the job online, which was advertised as a temporary HACCP intern. HACCP, or Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point is a jargon sandwich. It’s the Food and Drug Administration’s technical way of saying that my job is to make sure the seafood doesn’t kill anyone.
I am the only Texan amidst a gaggle of ladies from Wisconsin. My cheesehead friends and I are in charge of educating the public about seafood safety protocol. We design educational programming about how to safely handle and prepare seafood. We visit schools, community centers and events and we are affectionately known as The Tunabelles. We have fun and the kids love us. Who knew talking about the dangers of tuna consumption could be so entertaining?
Part of the job involves being Tina the Tuna. Most of my co-workers loathe it, but I love dressing up. Yes, the inside of a tuna costume is a smelly sauna. However, there are worse gigs than getting paid for photos ops with grandmas and politicians. And I don’t even have to do it with a smile on my face. The only creepy bit is when the 7 year-old conspiracy theorist (there is one in every crowd) gets real close, points to my mesh eyeballs and declares, “There’s a lady in there!”
After a morning assembly at the high school, I go out for lunch with my best friend, Fawn. She has curly brown hair, freckles, and ten different kinds of smiles each with a positive take on any bad situation. Fawn is the perfect ambassador for the Midwest. We walk to Laura’s Diner and order a veggie pizza to share.
Feigning confusion, Fawn declares, “I wonder what day it is today…”
I preemptively interject, “I’m busy.”
“Sunnye, you always say that. You’re coming out with us tonight.”
A group of girls from the factory always went to the Lanai on Thursdays for sushi and karaoke. More often than not, I make an excuse for why I can’t go.
I’m painting the cabinets in my trailer tonight.
I have to unclog my sink with a palm frond.
I have to give English lessons to that Japanese mom up the road.
Or, the tried and true excuse: I’m tired and I smell of fish.
Our pizza arrives.
“You’re going,” she says in the nicest possible way.
“I’m not. I can’t.” I fold my pizza and take a huge bite.
Fawn furrows her brow as she chews. I interpret this as disappointment, but then she put her fingers into her mouth and takes something out. A slice of onion? She inspects it, flashes one of her ten smiles, and laughs.
With the sweetest sarcasm she says, “Gosh, you know…I think this is a fingernail. I don’t think this was a choice of toppings.”
I watch in horror as she places it on the floral vinyl tablecloth. We lean over the nail to inspect, and fight the gag reflex.
“Nah, that’s not a fingernail,” I say. “Too thick. It’s a toenail.”
Given what we know about food safety, it is a suspension of self-preservation that we eat out at all. However, because this is a small town and the owner is not someone we want to involve, we take a pic for posterity, pay the bill, and return to work.
On our walk back, she takes an opportunity to loudly reflect. “Dang it. Sunnye turned me down and I ate a toenail. This just isn’t my day.”
“Fine. I’ll see you tonight.”
Red top, black skirt, mascara, lipstick, earrings, fingers through my cropped hair. Done. I slipped on my Marshallese flip-flops, which read Iakwe on the top, a Marshallese greeting.
Like a joyful parole officer, Fawn waits for me outside.
We walk through one of the many featureless limestone fields lining the main road of Majuro, the capital. As we approach the road, a large man in a tiny taxi arrives. We could walk, but we spring for the lazy option. To pay penance for such a splurge, we pinky swear to walk home at the end of the night.
We arrive at the Lanai to drunken cheers. It’s Jayne’s birthday, the daughter of a prominent, American expat businessman. She wanted to “slum it” at the fish factory for six months to see how the rest of the world lives. She is nice enough, but I can’t quite scratch the itch of resentment that comes over me in her presence.
Obligatory hug, obligatory sake bomb.
The sun hasn’t even set.
We are in for a long night.
I park myself at the bar while Fawn joins a group hovering over the songbook. Despite the shadiness of the Lanai, the sushi was damn good. On a coral atoll, the tuna makes a very short trip from ocean to plate.
I grab a pair of chopsticks and domino my way through a few nigiri and sashimi. The first trio of drunkards belly flops into their best version of Kiss by Prince. With a mouth full of sticky-sweet sushi rice, I try not to choke. Forgive them Prince. They know not what they do.
It’s not that I don’t like Karaoke. I hate it.
I was vaccinated against this viral cacophony in college. During my first year, I took a class called Survey of Jazz and Popular Music and I was never the same. I could feel myself becoming better than other people with every class I attended. At the very least, this class taught white kids the fine art of how to clap on 2 and 4…not 1 and 3. Never 1 and 3, unless you’re at a Toby Keith concert and rhythm is the least of your problems.
I order another round of sake.
So many told me to lighten up, that it was just good fun, but I remain dark and steadfast on this issue. I am one step removed from starting a cult against Karaoke. I conjure a proverb as I watch the second pair of idiots with weaponized microphones…
“My son, if they say ‘Come with us, let us sing loudly songs from the 80s, let us ambush the innocent with our tone-deaf reverberations, let us swallow them alive with our best impersonation of Bon Jovi’s ‘Livin On a Prayer’,’ do not walk the way with them. Their feet run to a stage undeserved and they hasten to shed blood from thine ears.”
Rattling me out of my vision, Fawn and Jayne scream over the local guy screeching out Take Me Home, Country Roads by John Denver. As if begging for their lives, they plead, “Sunnye! C’mon! Sing Summer Lovin’ with us. Please!!”
I smile and politely decline indicating that I am a horrible singer and I need more alcohol. At that moment, a tanned, muscular arm attached to a hardworking hand slides a tequila shot my way. I look to the source. He is a Simon Baker/Taylor Hawkins mixed breed. Exhaustively handsome, totally not my type, and yet I am mesmerized.
He smiles mischievously, looks me in my widened eyes and says, “If you can wear a tuna costume, you can karaoke. Stop being such a penis.”
My face flushes hot. I reserve the insult of “penis” only for my closest friends. I don’t even know this guy. And yet, I give a flustered smile, take the shot, and relent to the screaming mass of females.
The next morning, I wake up next to him.
Stay tuned for Cal’s Spearfishing Tours, Part 2
