The history of my buddy Samson is a long and convoluted one. But for some reason I can’t shake the memory of it. One night recently I was caught up by a certain thread, and followed it up by writing down some memories. After I was done, I realized that I had chronicled the history of a friend which was closer to me than I ever realized
… Months and months ago…
I figure man has a right to some sense of peace, and sometimes a fish too. To explain is complicated. My ex-gf brought me a surprise one night. I had mentioned wanting a pet, like a dog, something to howl at the moon with me and to guard my possessions. She misunderstood and brings me one of her two beta fish. So now I had a fish. I was a fan of horror movies and she enjoyed foreign language, so the fish’s name is a compromise, “la monstroe”, translating into “the zombie”.
One night later that week I arrived home after seeing a zombie movie with my friends. I am all by myself, except for the fish, which is usually the way I like it. I grabbed a beer from the fridge and I wanted to sing some songs or make interesting conversations with shadows but then I remember the fish. I was a fish person now, a man of great responsibility. “C’mon Arnold, we’re going out!” By this point I had renamed the fish Arnold. So it’s just the two of us on the front porch and already past midnight. I’m smoking a cigar to keep warm and telling the fish about the wonders of beer. “You see Dwight (I had renamed the fish Dwight); you drink this, and all of a sudden all your problems melt away like a hound in a kennel fire. Wait, that’s not a good example, but just take my word for it Enson.” (I had renamed the fish Enson) The highlight of the night was when a guy walking his dog walked by and I challenged his dog to fight my fish. He did not accept, therefore he must have been scared. The fish and me felt good about that. I renamed the fish Champ. And the beer was still cold.
Mornings caught up for me too soon for me those days. 35 missed calls, two text messages and three voicemails. The girl always made me pay for it when I left my phone all by itself. And 5 minutes later she was already walking up my stairs. "Whattup shnookums,” I asked. She has a vicoden haze in her movements and every word is pained.
“Why didn’t you answer your phone?” she screamed at me.
“The fish and I were having alone time!” Where was my peace if not in my own room? “Get in bed, you look like shit.”
“I took too much vicoden last night.”
“Just get in bed.”
So she did, and that was nice, searching once again for the peace which I had before her arrival. But she’s stubborn as hell, and demands she cannot rest at my place, so against my better judgment I let her go home again. But she’s on the phone, as always, and we’re fighting again, as always. I was trying to break plans with her so I could spend some time with my family and she is flipping out. My aunt and uncle were going back to Florida in two days and I wanted to see them. But ex-gf is crazy, and making up crazy words, and I was beginning to feel a panic attack. “Calm down!” she tries to tell me, but I don’t want to calm down. She had worked me into hysterics. She wants to talk about everything and I can’t stand all the meaningless words, they just frighten and mock me. “Everything is going to be fine,” she says trying to sooth me. “I don’t want everything to be all right. I want buildings to collapse and planes to crash! I want there to be more orphans and homeless people! I am so upset now and you won’t leave me in peace!”
Luckily she was already home and passing out from medication and sickness, so that got me off the hook for spending like a zillion more hours with her on the phone. “Fuck this shit Freddy,” (I renamed the fish Freddy).
She drove me crazy; her abuse was pushing me into a dark place I didn’t enjoy being in. All at once everything is overwhelming. I didn’t want a phone, a girlfriend, or a family, or friends, or anything. I just wanted to close my door and forget about the world. Just me, me and the fish. I was yelling at the world in my room but that didn’t stop Electro (I renamed the fish Electro) from making turns in his little plastic cube. He swam up, he swam down, and he was wonderful. My air conditioning was wonderful. Everything was so wonderful, and I got back into bed and waited for my eyes to close.
The events that happened next are not so clear. But even a person in a completely awakened state of reckoning would have a hell of a time keeping up with this tornado
I remember the screaming, absolute bottom of the throat shrieking. And I thought, well this isn’t peaceful at all. My ex-gf had come back, found me hidden away in my room after I told her I was with my family. I was the only one in bed though. There was no snuggling or kisses, or any of that good stuff. She was screaming, and pushing everything that was on top of one of my bookcases off.
“I can’t believe you knocked over all that stuff.” I said calmly as I was getting up and stretching out after my initial blast of adrenaline had wretched me from bed.
“WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME!” She screamed. “Why are you doing this to me?” I asked back. Then she hit me in the face, twice. Later she admitted that she really hurt her hand doing so, and that kind of made me proud. I asked her to hit me again, she obliged. It kind of felt nice; I had stopped caring about her physical abuse long ago. Her mental games were much sharper. And I didn’t hit her, never did, but I came very close to later on, but I haven’t gotten to that part yet.
So we’re screaming, and she is throwing everything she can get her hands on at me; books, paperweights, my computer monitor. But I just keep on telling her things she doesn’t want to hear on purpose because I was getting deeply disturbed. “Don’t you love me?” she asked, “Less and less every day!” I screamed. Which really isn’t true, because in hindsight this fight was pretty fun. Usually we argue, just talking, and that is so draining. Now things were airborne, I was getting bruises on my arms, and my face was still sore; it all seemed so much more productive like this.
For some reason I think she could pick up that hurting me really wasn’t doing the trick to hurt me enough. So she ran off to destroy things outside of my room. I chased her around a little, not doing anything just to show her how numb I had become to it all. Everything was so perfect only 15 minutes earlier. Now everything was a mess, and everyone was yelling. I got back to my room and I noticed among the missing and wrecked, that there was no water in the fish bowel.
“Baby, where’s the fish?”
“I flushed him down the toilet!”
“YOU FLUSHED HIM DOWN THE TOILET?!?!? WHAT KIND OF FUCKING CRAZY BITCH ARE YOU?!? HOW CAN YOU FLUSH A FISH DOWN THE TOILET?!?!?” Sure enough, I checked, and there was heaps of fish gravel still at the bottom of my toilet bowel. Now I was ready to hit her. That was my companion, my amigo. What had the fish done? Who had the fish hurt? I took the abuse because I was trapped, but that fish, he had no choices, no grudges. The world just all came down for this one tiny soul. Let it be said that I believe his last name before death was Samson. I couldn’t hit her though, what the heck would that have solved. Even though she looked like she was having a good time when she hit me.
“I’ll be back at six, (it was five at the time) clean this place up.” She said.
“I’ll let you hit me again if you agree to come back at seven.”
“I’ll be back at six!” And then she was gone.
What the hell had happened? It was like a lightning strike, or some other act of god that came down to destroy my little room in my little life. It’s all I really wanted, just a little room all to myself, I didn’t want to bother anyone else, just mind my business and go on trying to save my sanity like the rest of the world. I locked every damn door and window in the place. I was still wearing my pajamas, and I just threw on an old sweat-shirt. I grabbed a pillow and blanket and just walked out of there, I walked all the way down to the park. “Why is everyone else so crazy?” I thought. Why are there younger brothers, and clouds with letters in them? Why is a tree only a tree? And what if a tree was more than a tree? Why can’t the ice-cream man deliver? And where was my peace? I looked for it under a small tree in the park. Just me, the pillow and blanket and no crazy woman around making noises and flushing friends down the toilet.
I knew I had to get away from her, but I hadn’t the strength on my own. She was both the most frightening and loving person I knew, and she could go from one to another in the blink of an eye, but only she knew which way she would lean. I sabotaged it all by telling my mother about the fish, and the very next day had a one-person intervention. The violent confrontation with my ex-gf afterwards is something I have never told anyone about, and this would be no different, suffice to say I still have the seldom nightmare about it.
In a perfect display of her craziness and love there was a gift for me when I got home, something she left before she knew I was going to break up with her. She had spent $60 of her own money, no small task for a college student, to buy me a hamster along with every imaginable accessory needed to be a hamster owner. She must have felt bad about the fish thing and tried to get me a new pet. I cried for about an hour then promptly named this new hamster Samson II.
Samson II carried a lot of my similar qualities, which meant we didn’t get along. He was unsociable and agitated. So whenever I tried to play with him, or spend bonding time, he was constantly in escape mode. I thought I’d try to make him happy. Instead of buying a plastic extension to his hamster home I designed my own from a cardboard box, which I designed to connect to his plastic cage. This way he could get out and play with the various toys I had left, or sleep in the pillowcase I left as a blanket.
This is why 23 year olds don’t make good parents… I had just assumed that the perfect home I tried to give Samson II was safe, without recognizing my own stupidity. I came home one morning after work to find a hole chewed through the cardboard, and a hamster never to be found again. My good intentions, had come back to haunt me.
So Samson 1 was a ghost to me, something to haunt me and make me wonder about the terrible burden of the world. Samson II was missing to me, something to remind me of my irresponsibility, and a final gift from a woman I once loved. My record as a pet owner had not started out well.
Months go by…
I am living in Boston now, trying to start something new and abandon many of my previous mistakes. I am up early for work on a morning just like any other and am walking solemnly through the Davis T-station. The walls to this underground station contain a litany of tiles made by elementary school kids put up for display. There was a host of such monuments post 9-11. With many 3rd graders calling for world peace, or even just to see their father again, all translated into some decorative tile to be displayed in a public area. Usually this is something I largely ignore. But walking though the Davis station one stops me, and I turn to study it…
“…Samson?” I ask, peering at the wall.
There is a tile, one out of two hundred, that I feel like I recognize. In a 6"X6" tile there is the picture of a large shark/whale, with its mouth agape, chasing after the back half of a small, gold colored fish. I felt recognition, I felt pity. There was this small fish, running from this mouth, running from all the larger forces that wanted to swallow it up. Here was a lone fish, that didn’t want to run any longer, this fish just wanted to find it own peace to.
“I’m sorry Samson,” I told myself as I touched it on the tile softly. And all of a sudden this tile represented mine, Samson’s, and everyone’s struggle against the world.
More than a few people have suggested that I have an obsessive-compulsive side to my behavior. And one side of this is that every morning, as I walk on by, I cannot pass this tile without touching it. For me it is myself, lending my strength to this imaginary fish. Telling it, “Hey friend, you’re not alone”. The world is a big and scary place sometimes, whether you’re a scientist, or simply a fish; and we can all use the help of a friend.
Dearest Samson, I don’t know why I remember you, but I’m sorry I let that crazy woman kill you.
Dearest Samson, I won’t let that world swallow you up again.
-Chris
Bosda, what part did I miss that indicated “Professional Dope Fiend”?
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