JAWS was on TV on a Saturday Morning

“‘The time has come,’ the Walrus said,
‘To talk of many things:
Of shoes–and ships–and sealing-wax–
Of cabbages–and kings–
And why the sea is boiling hot–
And whether pigs have wings.’”

“The Walrus and the Carpenter,” Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass

when my mother was pregnant with me, my grandpa tried to convince my parents to name me allison. because then my name would be allison sunderland. alice. in. sunderland. and it’s not like i would’ve ended up going by that, anyway, but i think about that every day.

The time, has come

To talk of many things.

I am currently a shark. I have lost my fins. Did you know that when shark fin soup is made, they throw the shark back in the water to leave it to starve to death? the monster feared of jaws movies is defeated but he was never the human terror.

when i was, i think, six, i turned on the tv because i wanted to watch the saturday morning cartoons. but, instead, there was a shark. a shark eating somebody.

it was jaws. jaws was on the tv on a saturday morning. i don’t know why. that is the only time i ever have seen jaws. i don’t plan on ever watching it again. it’s a really terrifying childhood memory. i don’t feel like facing it again. like, i imagine at the age of eighteen, i probably wouldn’t be as terrified by it, but, considering the fact that there’s a whole lot of change that goes between six and eighteen, i didn’t have the life experiences to brave a tv shark. that’s the problem with childhood. you don’t have the experiences that teach you. life is very dangerous, even when it’s just a shark on tv.

and, yes, i do know it was jaws. jaws is very difficult to confuse with any other movie, even when you’re six.

a few years later i got a webkinz shark from my grandmother and i named him jaws, despite the horrifying childhood memory. what else does one name a shark? i also, had, like, over six webkinz named fuzzy. fuzzy, fuzzy2, fuzzy3, the list went on. why is it that there is this universal little kid stage of naming your stuffed toys the same name? my brother went through a similar phase. is it the comfort of repetition? as a child, one doesn’t know much. the familiar is a comfort. the name fuzzy was a comfort.

i named my walrus webkinz “alice” and i only now realize that was probably a subconscious influence from wonderland.

i tried to name my orca webkinz “killer.” i mean, he was a killer whale. but, no, the site told me that name wasn’t allowed. too violent. i mean, it is a kid’s site, after all. kid’s sites are in kid’s sight.

killer whales bite at the surface. jaws bites at the surface. we are on a boat and it is currently sinking. you are in the water and a shark bites for your body. you scream and i try to grab your hand and save you. we are on a boat and it is currently sinking.

a walrus appears. there isn’t any sign of the walrus having swam ashore to the dying ship. we are about to become a sinking ghost ship. the ruins at the bottom of the sea.

this walrus has appeared. it has dissipated out of thin air. the ship is sinking. the ship is sinking. my grip on your hand is losing. you shriek as you lose grip and i try to grab you again but i instead fall on my face. the waves are rocking and the world is madness. i don’t ever find out what happens to you. but i do hear one very cut off shriek. your body sinks to the bottom of the ocean. the shark decides not to eat you and the killer whale leaves you alone. the animals do not touch your body. the walrus has appeared.

you live at the bottom darkness of the world but no animals dare touch your drowning self. you cannot see the world anymore. you are at the bottom of the undiscovered of the world. we know so little about the depths of the ocean. you have entered where your body should implode but doesn’t. you suddenly understand the beliefs in the mermaids and the naiads that lure us away. this walrus has appeared. you don’t die. instead, you are dormant. you are a dormant being paralyzed at the bottom of the sea. you have one single shark bite in your torso. you should be dying of the shark bite, but you are not. you are perfectly fine, other than your inability to move and your shark bite. this walrus has appeared.

this walrus has appeared. your name is uttered among the naiads when they walk the ocean floor.

my shoes are gone. but somehow the ship has survived. it sails on like how it would have before. but the killer whale bites are still there in the ship. they just don’t fill. there are no shoes on the ship. i’ve checked. i need my shoes back. the floor is made out of wood that splinters my feet and tears them apart. i am bleeding all over this ship that pretends nothing happened. a trail betrays me. if pirates come, i am a goner. all they will need is to follow my blood and bring me into oblivion.

we romanticize pirates a lot. but did you know that pirates were sea rapists?

did you know that pirates are still here and they are everywhere?

remember that time when you were an innocent fourteen-year-old and you didn’t understand what it meant when the so-called entertainers known as the seattle seafair pirates at your marching band parade told you that you could touch their sword? remember how your fellow band members told you about how they chased down and terrorized a high school band kid before a parade? remember how those pirates definitely knew you were a high schooler? remember how years later you found out from a seattle times article that the seafair pirates had been known to capture seattleites and tie them down and terrorize the general public? remember how your entire non-cis-man population of your summer marching band of high schoolers was terrified of what was supposed to be just another part of the parade?

why the fuck does seattle just have this group of pedophiles dressed as pirates for every seafair parade?

remember that stupid joke we’d repeat in fifth grade? hold your tongue as you say, “i was born on a pirate ship.” (i wath born on ah pile af shit.) i tried to teach my dad that one at that age and he said he already knew that joke because when he was a kid it was, “my dad works at the shipyard.”

when my brother was in fifth grade, he discovered how to hold your tongue and say, “apple.” that was how he tricked me into saying the hold-tongue-apple-word in a room full of third graders. i was in seventh grade. to be fair, he was trying to censor the word he heard our mother said in the other room. she was complaining about donald trump.

i met my childhood sexual abuser in third grade. he was one of my closest childhood friends.

he was a pirate. but, hey, you know, let’s humanize him. the same way we do for other pirates today.

i want to send a message for my help. but we are all out of sealing wax. the letter will die without sealing wax. i have learned all too well that corks don’t work. i don’t have any of them, anyway. i have a bottle, but it is fragile and breaks easily. i have paper and pen but the words don’t come easily. and without sealing wax, i cannot seal the bottle shut.

i am lost at sea. my bearings are gone and i need sealing wax.

.

i have lost the last two cabbages i had. i cannot eat anymore. i am all out of food. i am going to starve.

us sailors, we don’t eat like kings. we don’t find treasure by the islandside. we aren’t rich and we seldom have proper vengeance on our pirates, if any.

you came before the pirates came. and i never saw you again.

.

because, eventually, when you sank to the sea, the pirates did find me.

my world is kings and cabbages. kings are just a more primitive form of presidency and cabbages are just a more ancient form of capitalist pain. it is a system that beheads the survivor rather than the aggressor. the public hanging of the sexual violence survivor is everyday.

it is the scorching sealing wax pressed against my burning skin and it is the broken glass bottle that fills my mouth. i spit out blood and i have escaped but i do not know how. it has been a lifetime of pirates.

the sea is boiling hot. i am boiled by the sea. i burn by the sea salt and i burn by the tears that fill the ocean. i burn myself with blades and i burn my dignity.

.

pigs don’t have wings. but i wish you did. you weren’t murdered. but you might as well have been. at least then i would have closure. i don’t know who you are.

that’s the truth. i don’t actually know who “you,” per se, are, really. “you’re” a lot of people. and in many ways, not really a person. “you’re” a lot of things. and a lot of people. a world all at once.

.

when i was a child, i had an alice in wonderland phase and a wizard of oz phase. i think that was some of the trippiest shit i’d loved as a child. a lot of children’s stuff is trippy. i’ve always been someone who loves trippy. trippy expresses me well.

when i was a child, i had an alice in wonderland phase and a wizard of oz phase. i had a webkinz phase and a repetitive names phase. i love repetition. repetition goes well with trippy.

when i was born, my grandpa tried to convince my parents to name me allison. because then my name would be allison sunderland. alice. in. sunderland. and it’s not like i would’ve ended up going by that, anyway, but i think about that every day.