I have seen them schooling. Hundreds of them. All blindly intertwined in the shallows, rolling over one another’s’ backs. An individual mermaid cannot stand out from the mass of mermaids for long. One will rise: long flowing yellow hair matted along her back, the radiance of her bust arched dangerously forward, and the beat of her huge fluke flat on the water like the bludgeoning of a cymbal. You will think this the most lovely and seductively brine explosion you have ever seen. And then a raven haired mistress of pure oceans will slip out of a clutch of her mates and break into the air with an authority that churns drowning-man waves across your carnal expectations, speaking sex like a shark shadow, and erases the beauty from the moment before.
They furiously mingle and twine as though mating, but they cannot. In the great mass of them there are nothing but mermaids, and no male to be seen. They frolic and swap tales of the great colder water just out to sea an hour’s swim farther, exchange plans and experience, pass warnings. They press all other life out of this part of the sea when they come together like this in one sisterhood. They bunch, and there is more flesh than wet, more will than wave, the blinding catch of air-constrained sunlight on glisten.
I watch from a rock above. I do not know if they have seen me, if they know that their place of gathering is no longer secret. I think their joy is too great for them to notice details on the shore. I do not hide myself, but I am but a speck on a weathering outcropping, a man whose clothes flap around him like a nestling’s wings. I am to them perhaps just a scent in the air when the air is blowing their way. Perhaps I am seen and ignored. I settle myself for the duration of their lesson, and watch for as long as my basic needs will stand it, or until they disperse: straggling off first in groups of five or six and then drifting apart until each mermaid is a lone projectile, heading back to sea, beginning as an undulation at the surface and then slipping ever dangerously longer beneath until she surfaces no more.
I have thought to climb down, to work my way along the edges of the rock, find the protection of the cove’s small, impotent strip of beach. On that beach I could lay out my clothes and edge my brittle nakedness slowly into their midst. As I walked into the water, would they embrace me, or head back to sea, or part to see how fine I might swim, how agile I would be in their home? I could see myself in each scenario, presenting myself to their thousands: a curiosity similar to those curiosities they have on long nights sung to, as ships mermaids could never understand drew clumsy lines along charts of the distance from land, and unthinkingly scarred the face of their continent.
I might be taken up, supported. Or I might be crushed in the joy and energy of their revival. Or I might be drawn down, sleepily down, and drowned. Or I could be abandoned.
I am a man of no muster. I use both legs to stand. There is more in this that might fail than might succeed, but the need to try is etched in my biology: my plumed biology, no less grand than theirs, no less special for being ordinary. I am a man of simple needs and simple perceptions.
All these things I imagine, and I consider my frailty. I, with only two feet to use as fins. With arms that cannot fill my shirt sleeves and a chest that thumps hollow. To swim against the current would be an end to me; to swim with it would be to belong to the current.
So with me I bring a net. And with one choice, I site along my arm and extended forefinger, finding in the shallowest water one disturbingly distracted mermaid: one that hurls herself into fouling foam, awkward and inexperienced and rapt with her own failings, who seems to be the one surely most easily mastered by a man, any man, and especially a man put to one side like myself. And I make another choice.
They furiously mingle and twine as though mating, but they cannot. In the great mass of them there are nothing but mermaids, and no male to be seen. They frolic and swap tales of the great colder water just out to sea an hour’s swim farther, exchange plans and experience, pass warnings. They press all other life out of this part of the sea when they come together like this in one sisterhood. They bunch, and there is more flesh than wet, more will than wave, the blinding catch of air-constrained sunlight on glisten.
I watch from a rock above. I do not know if they have seen me, if they know that their place of gathering is no longer secret. I think their joy is too great for them to notice details on the shore. I do not hide myself, but I am but a speck on a weathering outcropping, a man whose clothes flap around him like a nestling’s wings. I am to them perhaps just a scent in the air when the air is blowing their way. Perhaps I am seen and ignored. I settle myself for the duration of their lesson, and watch for as long as my basic needs will stand it, or until they disperse: straggling off first in groups of five or six and then drifting apart until each mermaid is a lone projectile, heading back to sea, beginning as an undulation at the surface and then slipping ever dangerously longer beneath until she surfaces no more.
I have thought to climb down, to work my way along the edges of the rock, find the protection of the cove’s small, impotent strip of beach. On that beach I could lay out my clothes and edge my brittle nakedness slowly into their midst. As I walked into the water, would they embrace me, or head back to sea, or part to see how fine I might swim, how agile I would be in their home? I could see myself in each scenario, presenting myself to their thousands: a curiosity similar to those curiosities they have on long nights sung to, as ships mermaids could never understand drew clumsy lines along charts of the distance from land, and unthinkingly scarred the face of their continent.
I might be taken up, supported. Or I might be crushed in the joy and energy of their revival. Or I might be drawn down, sleepily down, and drowned. Or I could be abandoned.
I am a man of no muster. I use both legs to stand. There is more in this that might fail than might succeed, but the need to try is etched in my biology: my plumed biology, no less grand than theirs, no less special for being ordinary. I am a man of simple needs and simple perceptions.
All these things I imagine, and I consider my frailty. I, with only two feet to use as fins. With arms that cannot fill my shirt sleeves and a chest that thumps hollow. To swim against the current would be an end to me; to swim with it would be to belong to the current.
So with me I bring a net. And with one choice, I site along my arm and extended forefinger, finding in the shallowest water one disturbingly distracted mermaid: one that hurls herself into fouling foam, awkward and inexperienced and rapt with her own failings, who seems to be the one surely most easily mastered by a man, any man, and especially a man put to one side like myself. And I make another choice.
