How I Trained a Mermaid

After nearly a month stranded on this island, she was by far the ugliest mermaid I’d ever seen. I felt sorry for her. It. Is it is an it or a her? Whatever the case, she’s hideous and I don’t mean to demean or belittle her. She’s truly an overripe fruit that was left in the sun.

I first saw her when the initial rescue lifeboat left the fuel tanker to come rescue me. This little dot bobbed on the horizon in front of a mega ship, and I thought, “That’s what they sent?” I was in the national news – “Local Sea Captain Found Alive on Island.” They had to brave an entire month of storms before they could safely send a search party out to find me. With the kind of press I got when they discovered me here, I had hoped they would have sent news crews on a yacht or something. Instead, a bunch of scruffy seamen came bobbing on the waves while this mermaid hissed at me.

Since you’ll all be wanting a record of this, probably to vet my sanity, I’ll give you the details straight. I started seeing mermaids a week or so after crashing here. I wasn’t hallucinating from hunger or anything – I’m a fisherman for crying out loud, I can take care of myself out here. It wasn’t out of loneliness or anything like that either. Look, I’ve floated on the ocean for weeks at a time. I much prefer solitude. Everyone on land pesters each other with, “How’s it going?” and “How’s business these days?” So annoying.

I had suspected Duke and I were being tracked by mermaids before the crash. These ladies showed themselves to me as I was digging into a stale MRE I had yanked from the wreckage. They were singing softly, then swelled into a chorus of voices, about 200 yards off the shore. They’d inch toward the shore slowly – I’d say six of them – and sing and sway together, before disappearing back in the water. They started doing this every day for a week, always at mealtime, and they were definitely singing to me. They wanted me.

A week goes by, and their mealtime song and dance was getting more elaborate. I could tell they were getting frustrated that I wasn’t taking the bait. Maybe they thought I was deaf, so they got closer and closer. They started singing louder, too.

And look, they were good singers! I was getting excited for my nightly dinner and show, but they must have been getting impatient because one day they didn’t show up, which kind of ticked me off. So, I marched out into the water up to my knees and shouted for them. They heard me, you bet. A couple of them popped their heads to the surface. I kicked some water at them and hollered some more, then they ducked their heads back down for a bit.

Next thing I know, about 25 feet from me, this gorgeous brunette shoots out of the water and props herself on top of a rock. She’s sitting there stroking her long hair – mind you, she’s topless and working it – and she’s singing the most incredible aria to me. She started waving me over, but I headed back to shore, grabbed my fish, sat down in the shade of a palm tree, and just enjoyed the music.

Well, I guess she realized I’m not going over to her because

I don’t want to be eaten by those creatures like Duke was, and

I was just using them for entertainment.

She stops singing and lets out this sweltering, frustrated scream. Just awful. Her face shape-shifted into what I can only describe as Medusa on a bad day, and she throws a shell at me. I can tell she’s asking me, “What gives?” in whatever fish language they speak. So I shouted back:

“I’m gay!”

She rolled her eyes and dipped back into the ocean. There went my entertainment.

I spent the next few days just miserably bored. That’s why you’ll get all the stone etchings and whittled stick figurines if you check out the island now. I just needed something to do.

Eventually, the mermaids came back. It was the same lot of them, but they got a new one with them. I spotted them keeping their distance one evening and making this new girl head closer to shore on her own. It was like a dare they made her do or something. She gets close to shore, and I walk to the shoreline to meet her. It was hard to see her face and all but I could hear her. She started to sing real quiet but, hot dog, it was bad. Way out of tune, but I didn’t care too much because it was better than nothing. The other mermaids further out start snickering, and the one close to me gets bashful and dips back in the water to swim away. I was annoyed because I could tell those other mermaids were real bullies to her so I flipped them off but I don’t think they cared.

Next day is when those seamen were bobbing toward me from the fuel tanker to rescue me. (Oh yeah, there was a part about the helicopter search party, they found my SOS, dropped some supplies, everybody was excited and all that. Back to mermaids.) So they are coming toward me and lo and behold this mermaid from the day before shows up. I get a good look at her. Woof. I know I’m gay and all but even I know she’s a 1 out of 10 at best.

That’s why I think they are shapeshifters by the way. She looked like she was mid-shift between Medusa monster and drop-dead model when she got her monster mojo stuck, leaving her face all contorted and a fang hanging out the top of her lips. Don’t know if the cause of her condition is a monster disease or something but you have to feel sorry for a creature like that. A real shame.

I said hi her. I’m not a jerk. Might as well be cordial. She started singing to me but still out of tune. The guys on the lifeboat were getting closer. I looked back at her and she’s still trying to sing like a bagpipe scratching out flat notes. I got the sense that she was trying too hard to seduce me. It was like, if she could get me in the water and eat me then she would finally get street cred with the other mermaids. Of course, it wasn’t working and I felt pity for the thing.

That’s when I made the call. I could have gotten on the boat that was coming to take me home or I could stay there for a bit and help this poor girl… poor beast… whatever she was.

By the time the lifeboat got within shouting distance, I broke the news: “Come back in a week!”

“What!?”

“I said, give me a week!”

By the time they got that close, I had already taught the creature how to sing three notes on pitch. I wasn’t going to give up on her. She was clearly a fast learner.

For the next week, I taught this thing how to sing. We weren’t doing arias, mind you, but I got her into some American standards and basic chord progression. Part of me taught her out of spite. I knew those other mermaids were what seduced my fishing partner, Duke, into steering our boat into a rock the night we crashed. I knew they ate him whole. They left only his stupid, dingy ball cap to wash up on shore. Dummy didn’t listen to me – always wear your PPE, I told him. If he had a life vest on, I could have saved him from being eaten.

Anyways, part of me was grooming a mermaid out of spite for the monsters who ate Duke. The other part of me felt bad for her. She was different than the others. Look, I’m a gay fisherman. It’s not like you see a lot of boats with pride flags out there, do you? So, bleeding hearts of the world unite. We misfits have to look out for one another.

She came every morning to learn. Even brought me a tuna as payment. I’m not kidding, the whole thing. She tossed it right on the beach. A week together turned into two weeks. Two weeks became almost another month. She got decent with some lessons.

Then one day, middle of the night, she came swimming up, causing a commotion. I jolt awake and run to the shore, where she throws me a boot with a human foot in it. She’s tickled pink. So excited to bag her first sailor and she had to show me how all of our hard work finally paid off.

It was totally disturbing, mind you, but there was a part of me that wanted to well up with tears. The poor guy died, but that’s the circle of life. Humans are not the apex predator on the ocean. We need to remember that.

As for this mermaid, she’s going to do alright. I kind of doubt that those other mermaids will ever treat her well, but you know, forget them. Who needs that kind of negativity in life? I gave my mermaid a thumbs up and she swam back out to the open water to tell the others or to go catch another desperate fisherman. I hope she finds a nice sea turtle or something to make friends with along the way. She’s alright, that one.

By the way, I’m grateful you all have checked on me from time to time these last few weeks. Thanks for the care packages. Hopefully, when you get this letter, you don’t think I’ve completely lost my mind because I haven’t. I’m in better shape than when Duke and I crashed on this island. I think I’ll be coming back to the mainland soon, so if you have another tanker floating by, send a boat my way. I’m ready now.