by David D. Horowitz.
I think a mermaid’s stuck in our net! I hollered to the deckhand of my little trawler. It was our tenth day at sea. We had just emptied our catch into the storage tank and ice bins and had put the net back into the water, when I saw her: golden tresses flowing alongside her pale torso, her fish tail thrashing. We immediately hauled up the net, and there she was, flailing amidst a few flopping small fish. We held the net just above the deck behind the wheelhouse.
“Release me!” she yelled.
“Mermaid,” I asked, as she tugged at the net, her golden hair curling around her bosom, “haven’t I seen you on a tuna can label?”
“Maybe. I used to be a model—before I got so fed up with men that I glued on my fish suit and abandoned land. Oh, please just let me go, and I will grant you a wish, any wish!”
“My wish is for you to be happy, mermaid. Tell me, then: what causes your hostility to men?”
She glared at me, blue eyes pierced by a dot of sun’s reflection. She thrashed her tail, pulling at the mesh, and hissed: “Because they are selfish, blind, clutching bores. Because they fake sympathy for women to gull them into sex and then discard them once their egos have fed. Because they bawl their loneliness and struggle, as if women do not have their own, and as if their difficulties entitle them to your eternal companionship. Because if you try to end a romantic relationship, they put a fist under your chin, play with their video games and pistol triggers, and scoff at your independence.”
“Are all men like this?”
“Yes.”
“Can anything be done to help men improve?”
She futilely tried to tear the mesh and sighed: “It is perhaps not impossible—and here’s where you can help me fulfill my wish, and your wish.”
My deckhand now urged her, “Please, tell us how.”
“Help your fellow males,” she began, “better manage their loneliness after an ended romance.” She shook her hair free of some seawater. “This is a learned skill. Do not isolate; broaden your social network. Cultivate new hobbies. Start a support group. Take classes in subjects you enjoy. Join organizations whose purpose you respect and share. Keep a journal. Hike cities. Learn to use your pain to deepen empathetic awareness of others enduring similar loss. Appreciate—a clamshell, a seaside sunset, a world map, a blade of meadow grass at dawn, conversation about travel, a bee pollenating a field. Now, imagine someone resenting your loving anything besides her, locking you in a brig of guilt because you don’t adore her every second.”
“I can imagine that. But why don’t you teach men?”
“They would call me a—you know the epithets. No. You teach them. Now please let me go!”
“Into the sea, then!” With that, my deckhand and I moved the net to the trawler’s starboard side and dropped her and the net’s few fish into the foaming backward-sliding waves. She swam into the deep and was gone. Oddly, I couldn’t help but think some women behave like the men she described, that loneliness and clutching are larger human problems.
Oh, well: she’ll relish her freedom, and I’m glad we released her.