Let’s face it, my shtick was tired even from the beginning. The beret and shades, the lazy jive slang? No one wants to be around me, with my pathological neediness to be loved. Always trying so hard to ingratiate myself with the embarrassing charade of my “good taste:” the painting, music, poetry. Faked an interest in modern art I couldn’t stand, hired an interior decorator I couldn’t afford. Watched ballet, took up interpretive dance. Pretended to know wine, read great literature. I’m a goddamn fish; what do I know about wine? And between you and me, I can’t read. Not a word. My whole life is a lie.

I even once adopted a pure-bred dog, as if that’s an indicator of good taste in a world where everyone and his mother is pulling a fucking Frenchie through the park. (Not surprisingly, the dog drowned. That didn’t help my depression any.)

If my friends cared about me at all, they’d have intervened. It’s not like there’s a lot of ambiguity here—repeatedly putting myself in harm’s way, trying to get caught on a hook, pulled to the surface and hacked to pieces? If anything, they’re enablers. The walrus who brought me fancy spring water, the octopus who taught me tennis. That goddamn useless snail. And Wally, a big fucking help he was, always telling me, “But Charlie, StarKist doesn’t want tuna with good taste, StarKist wants tuna that tastes good.”

Does he think I don’t fucking know that?

It’s terrifying down here. Cold and wet and dark. And you people keeping dumping your shit. The Exxon Valdez, Deepwater Horizon. And thanks for the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, assholes. How does anyone stand it here? I’ve been trying to snuff it for more than sixty years. StarKist knows I want to end it, and won’t do a goddamn thing to help. It’s not like they’re squeamish: they sell a billion cans of tuna a year, it’s a fucking slaughterhouse down here. Hooked my brother-in-law, and a fish I was dating, right in front of me. It’s deliberate cruelty, is what it is.

“Sorry, Charlie,” my ass. I should just swim into their goddamn propellers. Then let’s see how sorry they are.

————

Ken Pisani is a novelist, playwright, screenwriter and member of the Writers Guild of America West. His debut novel, “AMP’D,” published by St. Martin’s Press, was a Los Angeles Times bestseller and finalist for the Thurber Prize for American Humor. Ken has also contributed to The Saturday Evening Post, The Louisville Review, Salon, Publishers Weekly, Huffington Post, Literary Hub, Washington Independent Review of Books, Carve, Cedar Hills Press, Wallstrait and other publications, as well as the anthology “More Tonto Short Stories,” published in the U.S. and U.K. kenpisani.com @kpsmartypants.bsky.social