To the Beat of My Heart

Tidal Wave

Is it wrong that my boyfriend is snuggled right against me, but a new email from Leo is all that's on my mind?

Scratch that. Clay is very warm and very lovely.

From: bulgogimaster@yahoo.com

To: flemingo69@gmail.com

Re: Re: Subject: Hey!!

Shit. I'm not ready.

I lift Clay's arm from my neck and pull the phone closer to my face.

Now I miss his arm being there. I lift it up, plopping it gingerly down on my chest this time. Warm and in its proper place. The airplane-vibe guitar thrum that sings through your entire body is there, but it's less noticeable.

Um, awesome fact. K. I got this. Uh, maybe not awesome. But you'll (probably) get a giggle out of this.

I drank fish jizz.

K so let me go back a bit.

I work at Seattle Aquarium. Have since I was 16. So one of my tasks was to clear out a dead Anemone, you know, those nasty little invertebrates. Cnidarians don't have a medusa stage like jellyfish... but you don't need a lecture.

Anyway, anemones are oozy, disgusting, yet beautiful, like freaky little aliens. They're also pretty venomous. So that's the preface. I mean, I've already told you I drank jizz. Aha.

So like I was cleaning out the poor dead bastard and here's the thing: they don't leave behind a corpse. They change states to this liquid, gooey, thick... I mean it's already giving you jizz images, right? But there's also little streaks of red in all the white ooze, like bloody jizz.

Please don't think I'm some sex freak. Just hold out on me. Please.

It smells atrocious. Let me just get that out there. Almost vomited into the tank. And cleaning the anemone is already hard enough. Cause it's liquidy now, a net just won't cut it. I had to syphon it with a hose, sucking on my end. I sucked too hard and yep, dead fish jizz in my mouth. I freaked. And swallowed. And then the vomit came for real.

My colleagues gave me shit for weeks. I vowed to never do that again. Up until a month later when I had to clear out some gravel in the bottom of the tank. Fish poop isn't the worst. Kinda uh, whatevs about it. Just another part of this disgusting job. Which I love.

I have many, many more of these stories. I already told you the most awkward, so glad we got that out of the way. You didn't ask, or need to know. It wouldn't have changed anything.

Peace,

Leo.

P.S. I got no problem with you having Tourette's. I knew basically nothing about it so I did go to Wikipedia. Not gonna lie, I used to think people with it were faking. It's just a prejudice I grew up with, the people around me. Not everyone in Seattle is so progressive. This is an educating experience.

I had to pause reading every couple of seconds to laugh my arse off. Clay rolled over, grumbling, but he didn't open his eyes. I curled up with the sheets to my chin, gleefully eating up the rest. Working at an aquarium sounds absolutely mental!

The postscript is... Interesting. I get it, the prejudice. Not a lot of people know about the condition. I got so fed up explaining it to people, only for most of them to say I was bullshitting and I was an attention-seeker. You just can't win. You live with this alienating, anxiety-inducing neural disorder, a constant fight with your body and mind, twenty-four-seven, a battle that exhausts you utterly. And then you have to rock up to school five days a week and get called a liar and freak because the noises I make in class are obviously just so much fun.