You’ve been dating this thirty-
something guy for almost a year.
You now fight on a daily basis,
and here “fight” means
you screech at him for not working,
not cleaning, not really doing anything
more than aimlessly roaming around the beach,
quoting The Endless Summer to his random
buddies,
and smoking up a jungle’s worth of pot,
while he sits stoned, silent, and sometimes
falls asleep before you storm out,
and the only reason you started dating him
in the first place is that you thought
he was one of those Olympic-minded
surfers or beach volleyball players
because he had shaggy blonde hair
and a killer tan,
and he was always around a bonfire,
strumming a guitar,
sitting near either a surfboard or a volleyball.
And only after you moved him into
your beach house when all he had to move
was a knapsack of boardshorts and ripped tees
with no surfboard or volleyball
did you find out
that he was always on the beach,
not because he loved the beach life,
but because he was homeless,
and the only surfing he did was
the couch and channel kind,
and he was always around the bonfire
so he could “borrow” a guitar
to impress the girls by strumming
one of only three chords he knows,
and also so he could steal marshmallows
and beer, and, of course, fish tacos,
and he would eat them, sand or none,
and whenever you complain about sand
in your own fish taco,
he reminds you that it’s only natural,
and to be able to take the beach inside
is a beautiful thing,
which at first sounded deep and profound,
but now sounds completely ridiculous
as does everything that was once cute,
like how he seems to be in a stoned army
of one, beginning and ending
everything that comes out of his mouth
with the same words
but instead of “ma’am, yes, ma’am”
and “sir, yes, sir,”
he starts everything he says with
Dude
and ends everything he says with
Man.
Like:
After boning in the bathroom
at the beach club he likes to
sneak into, he says,
Dude, I could really go for some
waffles, man.
Like:
After a quickie near the bonfire
on a stolen towel that he swears
was a gift, he says,
Dude? I would love
a bag of barbeque chips, man.
Then you gradually notice
that most of your conversations
revolve around food,
not the elite-Zagat-Guide-type,
but the snack-machine-munchie-type
because when he’s not smoking
or strumming a stolen guitar,
he’s eating.
So one night before going to the bonfire,
you’re eating dinner at your beach house
and it’s the one day of the month that he cooks,
so, of course, you’re eating fish tacos.
And as you bite into your greasy treat,
you hear crunching, you feel grit,
and you spit out the sandy fish taco
right into his plate.
He reacts with
Dude? Since when do you spit?
I thought you were a swallower,
man!
And as he laughs at his own joke,
you start screeching about how
you don’t understand how he could
get sand in the fish tacos
when you’re both sitting inside
away from the sand,
but because you’re so frustrated,
you start crying and screaming
all at once,
and as soon as the sobbing starts,
your saliva and snot run all together,
all over your face,
and while you think you’re making
a very valid argument,
it comes out more like,
AIIAIYYIIIIYAIAAIIIIIIIBAHBAHBAH,
causing him to put his hands
over his ears, squint,
and shake his head,
which only makes you angrier,
causing you to jump out of your chair
and throw the fish tacos into his lap,
which causes him,
finally!
after almost a year!
to react with more than falling asleep.
He jumps up from his chair,
knocking it into the fish tank
that he insisted you buy for him
and you did because
you thought it would teach him responsibility
but all it did was contribute to
fish cannibalism
because he never fed the fish
and they all started eating each other—
thousands of dollars of exotic fish
all turned on each other until
there was only one left,
and it’s a miracle how he’s now surviving.
So with the chair smacked against
the aquarium, the fish tacos falling
from crotch to the floor,
the fish-taco-connoisseur points directly at you:
Dude! Do NOT. Harsh. My. Mellow.
Maaaaaaan!
And before you can scream even more
about how dare he accuse you of
harshing any kind of mellow—
which again would come out something like
OOUOUOUOUOUFFUUFUFFFFF
through the snoliva all over your face—
the hairline crack in the fish tank
gives way
and gallons of water
explode across the floor,
the last starving fish standing,
the one he named Bodhi
after Patrick Swayze’s character
in Point Break,
slides across the floor
and under the door,
onto the porch and out on the sand,
and the wannabe-
surfer-guitar-volleyball-player
who for almost a year
you’ve called your boyfriend
flings himself across the floor,
the most effort you’ve ever seen him
put into anything he’s ever done,
yells at the top of his lungs,
Dude! Don’t go, man!
and then can’t stop himself
and slams his head into the door,
knocking himself unconscious.
You immediately stop crying,
wedge him out the door,
sit back down,
and finish your sandy fish taco,
because you realize,
to bring the beach inside of you
is far better than
putting up with a guy
who will never yell after you
with the same passion
he uses to yell after
a fish he named after a surfer
who doesn’t even really exist.
