OOPS I CRAPPED MY PANTS AGAIN!!!

OOPS I CRAPPED MY PANTS AGAIN

So, the following, of course, did not actually happen.

So I was swimming in Cruzinha the other day. I had been there to work on the turtle project with INDP (the guys with those matching white T-shirts) and it was HOT. Real Hot. Hot enough to cook things in your shorts. “A little crotch pot cookin’,” as Robin Williams once said. Anyway, so I’m swimming in the little cove in Cruzinha, and mar e brof (the sea is rough). The waves are moving me around quite a bit, and I’m having to swim pretty strong to maintain my position relative to the rock you climb out on. Anyway, I’m swimming there in the brof, and diving down as close to the bottom as I can, which is not very close to the bottom, hoping to spot some cool shells and when I come up, one of the fishing boats from Cruzinha has appeared from nowhere. When I say “fishing boat,” I’m not talking about some big schooner with rigs and nets and sonar, or even an engine…I’m talking about a puny rowboat that you’d rent in Lady Bird Lake or Central Park or somewhere where there is no actual danger should you tump yourself in. Anyway, the fishing/row boat is 10 meters off from me and I see there are 3 men in it , and the guy with the oars I recognize but wont identify here for reasons which will become clear soon enough. I don’t know him very well, but I’ve met him once or twice. He’s hollerin’ something at me, but I can’t quite make it out over the wind and waves and my piss poor kriole. So I make my way over and he’s yelling “Ben Txiga! Ben txiga ei! Ben ma nos!” (Come here! Come over here! Come with us!) with what I mistakenly perceive as anxiety, but which I later realize was amusement. Everyone here thinks white people can’t swim and I think he thought I was going to drown out there. (Particularly amusing considering that, for an island people, almost nobody on this island is comfortable in the water, or a very good swimmer.) But anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, he’s yelling. So for a minute I think about telling him “no I’m fine, lots of white people know how to swim, and if they’re that worried about it I’ll just go ahead and call it a day and get out over on the rock.” While I’m trying to figure out how to say any of that I see that now, having dropped the oars, he’s making gestures with his hands, alternately closing a fist and then opening his hand out flat, all the while yelling “Txiga! Peligros!” (Get Over! Dangerous!) Oh Gawd Lord Let Mary Be With Me. Thoughts and images of a giant moray eel swallowing one of my toes, sinking its fangs into my ass, or worse, ti ta k’me nhes ovus. Like shamoo in the Sea World show, I breach the surface and, nearly overshooting my target, fall flopping and panting into the rowboat. Salvation. The guys in the boat are laughing and now the Captain picks up his oars again. “OK agrinhasin ta dret. No be.” (OK now everything’s cool. Let’s go.) I peer over the bow and look for whatever it was that was going to eat my balls, and don’t see anything. Turning to the Captain, I ask, “modque foi peligros?” (Why was it dangerous.) He says, “No be panya pesci.” (Let’s go catch some fish.) I say “Ma, porque foi peligros? Tenia morae?” (But why was it dangerous? Was there a moray?) He smiles. “No be panya pesci.” So, after a minute or two I’m content to let it remain a mystery. I think fleetingly about my backpack on the diving rock (It has my camera in it), but decide it’ll be alright until we get back.

In this mar e brof our little boat is rocking and bucking like a horse and for a minute or two I’m a little sea-sick, but that passes quickly enough. I turn my attention to learning the craft of the pescadores (fishermen), and begin to take inventory of our little boat. Surprisingly, there is little in the way of fishing equipment. There are now 4 of us in the boat, so it’s cramped, but I’ve got the stern bench, right behind Captain, who’s facing me as he rows. There are several coils of rope, 2 or 3 nets on a stick, a long and wickedly-barbed spear that lies beneath the benches, a small anchor and a big rubberized container in the back of the boat, between myself and Captain, who has produced, from out of nowhere, a huge black cigar. He’s got sort of a wicked grin on his face as he chews the thing, and I get that sort of weird tingling sensation when you know something just isn’t quite right. While I’m contemplating what it is that might be amiss, the guy in the front of the boat unwinds some of the coiled rope and tosses the small anchor over the side. I look around and see that we’re not very far from where I was initially swimming; we’re perhaps only 200 or 300 meters from the diving rocks. The rope unspools quickly and looking again over the side, I see that we’re in not too deep water; I can sort of make out some dark rocks below us. Let’s get to fishin!

So, the guys in the front are talking about something but I can’t really hear them over the wind, but I ask Captain “Oki k’nos ti ta b’usa pa isca?” (What are we going to use for bait?) He looks at me with that weird grin again and, lighting the cigar with an ancient bronze zippo, he nods at the rubberized box and I think he says…“Cinnamon.” Cinnamon. Huh. No, that can’t be it. Surely I’ve misunderstood so I ask again. “Oki k’nos ti ta b’usa pa isca?” This time he clearly says “Diamonds.” Diamonds. Huh. I’m nodding my head like I understand but I’m not getting it and I say “Diamonds?” and he says “Diamonds.” Diamonds. Huh. Maybe the guy is fuckin’ with me or something but I guess I’ll just sit back and watch and quit asking so many damn questions, but that tingling sensation has migrated down to my balls and I’m pretty sure something is definitely not quite right. He shouts something to his shipmates and they nod and now he’s reaching into the rubberized box that holds our Diamond Bait, or possibly some horrid tool to chop me up and use me as chum. He leans forward, smoking, and opens the box. The lid opens on his side and I can’t see what’s inside. But then he pulls It out, and I see It, and I know what It is, and I realize my mistake.

OOPS I CRAPPED MY PANTS AGAIN.

The human body’s natural defenses are wonderous. First I’m infused with a gallon or so of pure adrenaline. Stoptime and a straight shot to my heart, and I’m tensely, keenly aware of every minute detail around me. A sheen of sweat forms on me instantly, to keep me cool in This, My Hour of Need. My life flashes before my eyes; a welcomed, final farewell memory to send me on my way. Also, my balls shrink to the size of peanuts and then get sucked up inside of me somewhere.

What I’ve heard as “Diamonds” was actually the kriole word for Dynamite…which is Dynamite. Huh. Dynamite. As if to confirm my suspicions, he wags It in front of my face, and this time, he annunciates each syllable very clearly. “DY-NO-MITE.” It looks just like It does on the Roadrunner cartoons when Coyote puts on his roller-skates and unpacks It from a big ole ACME crate and loads It onto his hot-air balloon. Captain is mouthing something at me but I can’t hear it over the thunderous booming noise inside my head, which turns out to be my heartbeat. Whatever it is he’s saying, he pauses in the middle of it. Pauses to light the wick, here in our tiny little rocking, bucking, rising and falling rowboat, using the cigar in his mouth. My mouth agape and eyes wide, I see him turn It in his hand to confirm that It’s lit, yes It’s lit, and then, very casual-like, he tosses It. Right Over My HEAD. Behind Me. Where I Can’t See It. Quick like a fox I whip my head around in the boat to see how long I have to live, and I realize that he has not tossed It very far. Not Far Enough. Not Nearly Fucking Far Enough. For an instant I’m encouraged! Surely the water will put out the fuse? But no. I catch another glimpse of it as we come up out of a trough and apparently they have waterproofed It and weighted the bottom of It, because It stands up strait up in the water like a sizzling boner from Hell. We are definitely going to die now. I try to swallow but my tongue has tripled in size and then I don’t have any spit in my mouth anyway. The last thing I see before It goes off is Captain…with his fingers in his ears. He gives me a quick nod to tell me I should do the same. I do.

As you might imagine, the actual event was anti-climactic. More of a really loud POP than an explosion; lots of spray. I wish I could tell you exactly what it looked like, but I realize as I write this that I had my eyes closed and my head tucked between my knees in the Crash Landing Position. What I did see when I looked up were hundreds of dead fish floating to the surface. Hundreds. (See the What a Haul photo for details.) Here and there a moray eel or Red Grouper, but mostly the puny little silver sliver fish. Captain and the guys are laughing at me…I must be ghostly white despite my sunburn. Up comes the anchor and out come the nets and barbs and all the fish and eels are collected in less than 5 minutes and dumped unsurreptitiously into the bottom of the boat. Stone dead. None of the wiggling squirming fighting frenzy you’d associate with ocean fishing. Five minutes later we’re pulling the boat out of the water and onto the rocky shore. I realize I am the only one left in the boat at this point and I look down to see my knuckles are white and I actually have to manually tell my brain to unpry my fingers from the sides of the boat and let go; the effects of Actual real-life traumatization. I think that I never said a single word from the time he opened the Diamond Bait box until now and all I can think to say is “Obrigado. M’tava ta predi muit.” He says “Nada” and flashes that wicked grin again.

I collect my camera and my bag and take a few photos of the haul. Gravity has begun to work on my balls again. I’m watching the activity below, and the men are dividing the haul between them, the Captain taking a slightly bigger pile. Several other fishermen are on the shore as well, and now they’re yelling at him. Screaming, some of them. I look in their boats and they’ve got, like, 8 fish. Total. I try to listen but don’t catch much. My knees are still shaking a little, so I walk a few steps over to Mariazinha’s cantina and she buys me a beer.

Later, Mariazinha explains that the yelling was because it is of course illegal to use dynamite to catch fish. It’s bad for, well, for a million reasons, not least among them the risk to life and limb, the damage it does to the ecosystem (it kills EVERYTHING, not just fish), the fact that the fish they “catch” that way don’t keep for more than a day, and something else she told me about the fish meat, but which I didn’t understand. The guy that had his 8 fish were caught the hard, legal, time consuming way and was obviously pissed at this other guy, the Captain.

So, I guess that’s it for me when it comes to fishing. Not sure what, if anything, would have happened to me had I been in the water when they dropped the Dyno over the side; about what might have happened if they hadn’t seen me swimming in the first place. I prefer not to think about my insides melting in a shockwave, so I’ll shelve that. But, I think that the lesson of all this is clear. The moral of the story applies here, and everywhere else in the world…Know Who Your Fishing Buddies Are.