ruckus the beta
She sat me below their second dryer as the distinctive smell of the bleach on my hair seemed to clear my nasal passages. Except she didn’t turn the dryer on, which I found pleasing. The bulbs always smell funny when they are alight and the red-orange glow casts an all-too-obvious artificial tan glow on my skin. I don’t really believe that the bulbs are piercing my mind or that aliens are penetrating my thoughts when I sit beneath that glow, but it does come to mind. Eerie brightness. I embarrassingly laugh and remember to not consider it next time. Although I will.
I am glancing at her two-toned hair that she has confessed to me is actually a wig, then she smiles at me and I ask, “What is the fish’s name?” She tells me that the shop has had him for a while and that his name is Ruckus. I smile back and think of all the hairstylists and their perfectly imperfect hair, and wonder how they came about their own cuts and colors. I wonder who named Ruckus, and suppose it might be the girl with the pin in her hair that looks like a combination of a jewel-encrusted dragonfly flower. Not that I know of a flower called a dragonfly flower, but if a flower and dragonfly were to breed, her hairpin would be the offspring. Would the act be called sexual pollination?
I open my book that I’ve marked my place with an old utility bill that has my unit identified as FN (first north, I think), and recall sitting with my dad as my car pulled a U-Haul from Texas to Missouri, calling to set up my utilities and internet and power. I tried to explain to the customer service representative that it was unit A. I didn’t know why it would be called any other letter(s). She shared with me just what FN stands for, but I have since forgotten and have replaced it with what is likely what I made up in an effort to make some sort of abbreviation that makes sense to me and perhaps even others, if it is even front and north of something or anything. The book gets better and I soon run across what is now in my Top Ten Favorite Lines in a Book. It is in “A Wolf at the Table” by Augusten Burrroughs, page 34. “She might have been mad at me because earlier she had let me lick an envelope and it was so good so I went into her study and licked all the envelopes in the box.”
I look back over at Ruckus and wonder how often the girls clean his fishbowl. I can see rings on the glass that once represented the water levels before it evaporated to the level at which it now sits. The water looks foggy and I wonder what it smells like. I had a friend also named Kelly who had a turtle for a pet. Kelly was really skinny and ate Little Debbie Swiss Rolls everyday. Her sister was Marsha and once left Kelly a note on her turtle’s cage-bowl that read, “Clean this… it smells like cow ass!” I think it was in all capital letters. I didn’t smell the water that seemed to magically suspend Ruckus, but did begin to wonder why this fish seemed so content to sit in the same spot. Since he had just a tiny bowl for a home and the creepy dryer lights for his sun and appeared somewhat neglected (due to the water and rings visible from my chair), I thought he might be depressed. I ran my fingers along the glass just above his predominately anterior eyes, but he did not move. I really started to believe that he was depressed, so I stroked circles on the glass following his head and tail and back, hoping for any sort of reaction, but he showed nothing.
My left index finger met with the cool water and I reached down to soothe his back and dorsal fin. Movement. He shot forward several fin strokes in his tiny bowl then just sat. And sat. I know fish don’t really blink, but his eyes just seemed so fixated on something that just was not likely there. Maybe Ruckus could see something with his tiny fish eyes that I could not see with my human eyes. I started to wish that I could, for just a moment, have the visual acuity of an ostrich so that I might see what Ruckus was staring at. I don’t know if it is quite possible to achieve fulfillment of such ideas as that, but I do often wonder what sort of prayer or karma or whatever it is that it may take. Then, he slowly started drifting backward. It appeared as a strange vision of a dead fish floating upwards. I wondered how large the air bladder of a beta was versus its body size and if it would be possible that they took time to turn upside down upon death. Or maybe they had recently fed him, so his stomach somehow weighed him down temporarily. That would explain some of the cloudiness in the water. And, if he truly was depressed, perhaps he was an overeater.
Did my touch give him a fish heart attack? I had made a concerted effort to lower my index finger down slowly so as not to startle him. But, nonetheless, he may have not been used to touch from a human. I thought of the rings on the glass and wondered again at just how long it had been since it had been cleaned and how long it had been since he had been handled.
Though his pelvic fins remained motionless, his pectorals began to twitch like some sort of monkey undergoing experiments with methamphetamines. I was sure this was all the sign of a heart attack of a fish his size. I am unsure as to whether or not fish can have heart attacks or not. Perhaps they do not live long enough for such things to be studied. After a few seconds that seemed painful to the both of us, he stopped. His eyes returned to their familiar fixation, but somehow seemed a bit more alive than last he and I had spent such time together. I saw some motion in his tiny red-purple body, then my stylist appeared and cheerfully announced that she was ready to wash my hair.
She sat me below their second dryer as the distinctive smell of the bleach on my hair seemed to clear my nasal passages. Except she didn’t turn the dryer on, which I found pleasing. The bulbs always smell funny when they are alight and the red-orange glow casts an all-too-obvious artificial tan glow on my skin. I don’t really believe that the bulbs are piercing my mind or that aliens are penetrating my thoughts when I sit beneath that glow, but it does come to mind. Eerie brightness. I embarrassingly laugh and remember to not consider it next time. Although I will.
I am glancing at her two-toned hair that she has confessed to me is actually a wig, then she smiles at me and I ask, “What is the fish’s name?” She tells me that the shop has had him for a while and that his name is Ruckus. I smile back and think of all the hairstylists and their perfectly imperfect hair, and wonder how they came about their own cuts and colors. I wonder who named Ruckus, and suppose it might be the girl with the pin in her hair that looks like a combination of a jewel-encrusted dragonfly flower. Not that I know of a flower called a dragonfly flower, but if a flower and dragonfly were to breed, her hairpin would be the offspring. Would the act be called sexual pollination?
I open my book that I’ve marked my place with an old utility bill that has my unit identified as FN (first north, I think), and recall sitting with my dad as my car pulled a U-Haul from Texas to Missouri, calling to set up my utilities and internet and power. I tried to explain to the customer service representative that it was unit A. I didn’t know why it would be called any other letter(s). She shared with me just what FN stands for, but I have since forgotten and have replaced it with what is likely what I made up in an effort to make some sort of abbreviation that makes sense to me and perhaps even others, if it is even front and north of something or anything. The book gets better and I soon run across what is now in my Top Ten Favorite Lines in a Book. It is in “A Wolf at the Table” by Augusten Burrroughs, page 34. “She might have been mad at me because earlier she had let me lick an envelope and it was so good so I went into her study and licked all the envelopes in the box.”
I look back over at Ruckus and wonder how often the girls clean his fishbowl. I can see rings on the glass that once represented the water levels before it evaporated to the level at which it now sits. The water looks foggy and I wonder what it smells like. I had a friend also named Kelly who had a turtle for a pet. Kelly was really skinny and ate Little Debbie Swiss Rolls everyday. Her sister was Marsha and once left Kelly a note on her turtle’s cage-bowl that read, “Clean this… it smells like cow ass!” I think it was in all capital letters. I didn’t smell the water that seemed to magically suspend Ruckus, but did begin to wonder why this fish seemed so content to sit in the same spot. Since he had just a tiny bowl for a home and the creepy dryer lights for his sun and appeared somewhat neglected (due to the water and rings visible from my chair), I thought he might be depressed. I ran my fingers along the glass just above his predominately anterior eyes, but he did not move. I really started to believe that he was depressed, so I stroked circles on the glass following his head and tail and back, hoping for any sort of reaction, but he showed nothing.
My left index finger met with the cool water and I reached down to soothe his back and dorsal fin. Movement. He shot forward several fin strokes in his tiny bowl then just sat. And sat. I know fish don’t really blink, but his eyes just seemed so fixated on something that just was not likely there. Maybe Ruckus could see something with his tiny fish eyes that I could not see with my human eyes. I started to wish that I could, for just a moment, have the visual acuity of an ostrich so that I might see what Ruckus was staring at. I don’t know if it is quite possible to achieve fulfillment of such ideas as that, but I do often wonder what sort of prayer or karma or whatever it is that it may take. Then, he slowly started drifting backward. It appeared as a strange vision of a dead fish floating upwards. I wondered how large the air bladder of a beta was versus its body size and if it would be possible that they took time to turn upside down upon death. Or maybe they had recently fed him, so his stomach somehow weighed him down temporarily. That would explain some of the cloudiness in the water. And, if he truly was depressed, perhaps he was an overeater.
Did my touch give him a fish heart attack? I had made a concerted effort to lower my index finger down slowly so as not to startle him. But, nonetheless, he may have not been used to touch from a human. I thought of the rings on the glass and wondered again at just how long it had been since it had been cleaned and how long it had been since he had been handled.
Though his pelvic fins remained motionless, his pectorals began to twitch like some sort of monkey undergoing experiments with methamphetamines. I was sure this was all the sign of a heart attack of a fish his size. I am unsure as to whether or not fish can have heart attacks or not. Perhaps they do not live long enough for such things to be studied. After a few seconds that seemed painful to the both of us, he stopped. His eyes returned to their familiar fixation, but somehow seemed a bit more alive than last he and I had spent such time together. I saw some motion in his tiny red-purple body, then my stylist appeared and cheerfully announced that she was ready to wash my hair.
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