A Slightly Tangential Story

It began with a conversation with a male sea nymph in a sauna, and it ended with Ms. Wiggle becoming the adopted mother of an octopus. And by ended, I mean began, because in fact, this story is about Ms. Wiggle and her aquatic indiscretion. It also has to do with octogenarians somehow, but that will make more sense (insofar as anything in this story makes sense) later.

Ms. Wiggle was an odd person, as you might expect, though not perhaps in the ways you might expect. Her oddness began right at birth, which took place at 11 am on the 11th of November. Besides being an incredible coincidence, the elevens were also all odd numbers, which were interpreted by her father--a very perceptive, professional astrologist--to enhance her aroma of oddness.

There were other odd things about Ms. Wiggle, such as her uneven frown, but also her name--though you probably already suspected that. Although she was only nineteen at the time of this story, she went by “Ms. Wiggle” because her first name was too mortifying for her to disclose even to the IRS (leading to several highly inconvenient audits). The one time she was indiscreet enough to speak this name to someone was while performing other indiscretions alluded to earlier, which we shall enlarge upon soon.

Ms. Wiggle's morbid fascination and revulsion with her first name led to other oddities, chiefly in the realm of artistic achievement. Her psychology of fearing and detesting something, yet being completely gripped by it and unable to turn away--all this served as excellent stimulation for the production of artwork for the sorts of people who think that modern art is art. That and her parents' unhappy divorce that dominated most of her childhood memories.

All of this does not explain why Ms. Wiggle found herself alone one night in a sauna with the only male sea nymph ever to exist. But it does explain why it is that she did not immediately run screaming from the room. Instead, she found herself staring at the creature before her with long, lean legs and arms, shiny green skin, and an extraordinarily handsome face, marred only by the presence of a mess of slimy tentacles where his mouth should have been. Once more, she was gripped by a fascination that blended attraction and revulsion.

"Impressive tentacles," she said. Her voice came out in a sort of melancholic singsong--the sort of thing that it takes many depressed artists years to cultivate, but which she came by quite naturally. "What are you exactly?"

"I am an octogenarian," the octopus-man said rather grandly. His words marched out one after the other in an imperious drawl. "It comes from the Latin octo and genaritatibus meaning octopus generator."

Ms. Wiggle frowned. She wanted to say I’m not sure how that’s how Latin works, but she only managed to get out "I'm not sure--"

"Yes. You strike me as the sort of young woman who's not very sure of things." The octopus-man casually rubbed a bead of sweat off his eye with one of his mouth tentacles. Somehow he managed to make Ms. Wiggle feel inadequate for not having face tentacles to rub her brow with.

"Well, I'm not sure what you're doing in the woman's sauna," she said defensively.

He shrugged. "What is a woman?"

Ms. Wiggle had to concede this expertly argued point. "Well, what are you doing with face tentacles then?" She pulled her towel around her more tightly. That was another of her oddities--the towel. Her greatest fear was exposing the skin under her left bicep in public, and so she always was copiously clothed, even in saunas, making the towel wrapped around her very odd indeed.

"I'm here for you, my beautiful creature.”

At this point in the story, all the facts would suggest that Ms. Wiggle ought to have immediately evacuated the sauna and called security (and perhaps a clinical psychologist). All the facts, that is, except the fact that she had not already done so and had instead continued to talk to an octopus-man with a dubious grasp of etymology.

However, there are other facts—facts that do not remotely explain Ms. Wiggle’s behavior but do grant it a vague air of plausibility. Okay, well, maybe not. But they did to Ms. Wiggle’s mind, which was accustomed to implausibilities.

In any case, here is the first fact. Ms. Wiggle had only ever received compliments from advertisers and salespeople, and she had always had a sneaking suspicion they might not have been very sincere. Why she had never received any compliments from ordinary, decent people remains a mystery, even to me. She was very pretty in a fragile sort of way--sharp cheekbones, soft, round eyes full of a tempestuous and mysterious charm, and a petite frame. She was intelligent, well-read, and usually polite. There were no obvious defects either to her body or mind, except her lactose intolerance and interest in poetry. And those are the other two facts, which Ms. Wiggle thought explained what she said next:

“I don’t normally talk to strange men with tentacles for a face, but I’m a poet, and my lactose intolerance is acting up. I’ve been sneezing and itching all day, but I guess it comes with the seasons.”

The octopus-man frowned and stroked his tentacles with one of his other tentacles thoughtfully. “I’m not sure—”

Clearly, he wanted to say “I’m not sure that’s how lactose intolerance works”, which would have been very presumptuous of him, considering he himself had never had lactose intolerance, and therefore was unqualified to talk about it.

“Yes,” Ms. Wiggle said. “You strike me as a man who is not very sure of things.”

“Toupée,” the octopus-man said.

“I think you mean touché.”

“Touché.” The octopus-man wrapped his tentacles around themselves bashfully. “Then again, I’m a man who’s not very sure of things.”

Ms. Wiggle stared on with that gripping fascination of revulsion and attraction.

“Maybe, we could be a man and a woman who together are not very sure of things.”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” the octopus-man said.

“I’m not sure it’s a good idea, either,” Ms. Wiggle said enthusiastically, which suddenly seemed like very good evidence that it was a good idea. The sudden vivaciousness that bubbled up inside her quite surprised her; it came upon her so unannounced and with such force that it reminded her a little of fear, except that she liked it.

The octopus-man’s face turned a violent green, which took Ms. Wiggle a while to work out was his version of blushing and not preparation to provide her with the contents of his stomach. He looked at her with his deep, dark blue eyes and seemed to be working himself up to something. And then, he reached out with one of his face-tentacles and took her hand.

There was something about the moist, oozing texture of the tentacle that sent a thrill all the way up and down Ms. Wiggle. Her heart began beating rapidly and hard—so hard that she could feel it all the way down in her little finger and under her left bicep. That extremely private area, whose exposure had been the subject of so many scarring nightmares, astonishingly decided to reveal itself. That is to say, she unzipped her jacket around the arm, which for some reason had a zipper there.

One would’ve thought Ms. Wiggle would’ve been inclined to avoid such a jacket. But then again, Ms. Wiggle’s psyche was the subject of many unsolved riddles.

The octopus-man regarded her left bicep with surgical passion. That is, he looked rather like a drugged addicted surgeon who had been tasked by a drug lord to perform surgery on his son before being able to get his next hit or something like that. In any case, this surgical intensity did not lead to any surgery, though it did lead to an extremely intense interchange of affections.

The octopus-man told Ms. Wiggle his whole life story. Afterward, she couldn’t remember a single thing, only that it had been very tragic, very sympathetic, and somehow a good reason for why she should raise his octopus-son as her own. Yes, that was a fact I neglected to mention up till now, mostly because the octopus-man had also neglected to mention it up till now, and so it’s only fair that you should be as shocked as Ms. Wiggle was. It was shocking to her, too, that he never visited her or his son afterward as he promised.

And in that spirit—of abandoning unfinished works and breaking promises in a shocking and incomprehensible fashion—the story here.

Tough luck? Unfair? Imagine how Ms. Wiggle felt. Her struggle with raising an octopus-child who was constantly dehydrated and bullied by other kids, and who eventually abandoned her to live in the sea, was worth it. Unlike this story.