Go fish

I had an extremely varied weekend. I came home late Friday night and finally finished Lincoln, and I’m not ashamed to say that when he was shot, I started crying and had to put the book down for a minute. On Saturday I saw the boringest play ever in the history of history -- so boring that even the onstage nudity was dull and so boring that even my usual before-bed daydreams got old -- and my Saturday night was straight out of a Lifter Puller song, but I think the high point of it all was Saturday afternoon, when I bought the new Magnetic Fields album and a shiny blue fish that I named Bishop Desmond Tutu.

I chose Bishop Desmond Tutu because, unlike all the other fish, when I picked up his tiny jar, he stopped swimming and stared right back at me and his eyes plunged the depths of my soul and wrote my sins in the book of life with a gold-quilled pen. Also because he has a tiny scar on one side of his body, like he was in a cute little fish knife fight. Even now that he’s home, whenever I stop and look into his bowl, he stops and gazes back at me, no matter how long I stand there, which is a little uncanny, and also makes me want to abandon my original plan of just being detachedly amused by him and instead sort of love him, even though he’s a fish and will probably die in two weeks.

While I was holding Bishop Desmond Tutu on the train ride home yesterday, I sat next to a guy who looked like I had asked God to design just for me, and if there was ever a good and easy reason to strike up a conversation with a girl next to you on the train, it would be because she was holding the smartest fish in the world in her lap, but he didn’t say a word, so I’ve determined that Bishop Desmond Tutu is a truth serum, so I’m not going to patronize him by putting stupid shit like fake divers or treasure chests in his bowl. I mean, number one, we’re keeping it simple, and number two, the man won a Nobel Prize: let’s give him a little credit. However, calling him by his full name seems a little too formal for around the house -- “Grab me a beer, Bishop Desmond Tutu” doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue -- so I’ll probably just call him Desmond. I have high hopes for Desmond, namely that he’ll start eating his food soon. We don’t cotton to eating disorders in this house.