That isn't funny, at all

Goop Slathered Shrimp

I waited for her there, outside the place, a dockside bar on an inlet feeding the Delaware, forgotten, even by the locals. Last night’s storms had kicked up the debris, dropped some old branches which were ready to give up anyway, and had scattered the beer trash around. An older fellow told me they’d be open in a couple of hours as he collected the trash.

Part of the dock had been rebuilt recently, the wood, still fresh. The rest, grayed and splintered with age, rode wobbling, on faded-blue floating drums. Peering over the edge, looking through my reflection, I saw several fish were swimming. One had a bent spine, curving to the right, a poor-fuck of a fish, destined forever to swim in wide, clockwise circles. Though, forever is seldom as long as we might think.

Finally, she arrived. With a kiss, followed by a bit of incredulity that the place was still closed, we wandered off in search of another bar. She looked beautiful. She always does. A bit up the way, we found another quiet place. A man with a pink bandanna and a large mustache stood near the doorway, inviting us to stay and have a couple beers. They had no food, and she hungry, but we stayed for a while, drinking and talking.

She told me about a person she knew who knew someone else who wrote a TV show once, many years ago. I was to send my work to this third person, she instructed. I rubbed her leg under the bar, slipping my fingers beneath the seam of her dress. It was the snug black one with the tempting zipper in front. She told me I was to send my poetry to the publishing houses listed in a large, intimidating book that she’d bought for me. It looked like the Manhattan Yellow Pages, and weighed ten or twelve pounds. I tried to count the freckles on her arm, and listened to her voice sing soft hymns as she spoke.

Two beers in, it was time. The other place, the one by the water, was open by now. We headed there. She ordered jumbo shrimp with some sort of exotic goop slathered on it, and moaned exquisitely while eating. It was quite distracting. I had hot wings to go with my beer. By the end, my face was covered in hot-wing sauce, my forehead was sweating, and somehow, she’d ended up with hot-wing sauce lip prints on her left bosom. We ate and drank and talked and laughed and watched the turtles float past haplessly, sucked out in to the Delaware’s deeper waters by the current.

Somehow, she’s convinced me to eat one of the goop-slathered jumbo shrimp. I told her no one else on this planet, nor any other planet, could get me to eat that. But, I did. It tasted funny, but I told her it was alright. We’d both places to be, and we left each other with the afternoon’s memory. 

At least I made it home before it started. I felt tired, beaten, liked I’d gone ten rounds with Tyson. My gut was making gurgling sounds, and I thought of the bent fish swimming in circles as the room spun around me. I ran for the bathroom, clutching my ass, making it there just in time. I noted that the acoustics were quite good as my hot-wing sauce screams echoed off the tiles. 

She later insisted it was the wings which had made me ill, but I knew it was the goop-slathered shrimp. I’d write a poem about it, if only I could think of a word which rhymes with “goop”.