“I don’t get you, kid.”
“I’m twenty-nine.”
“Alpha-Boom-Train? Flies ain’t supposed to have names like that.”
“Customers are supposed to buy things. What a paradox.”
He directed a finger lazily in the direction of my fly-tying vise. “Need you to make me oneuh them boom trains then,” he said, issuing an edict as if I were his personal river Sherpa.
“Sure thing, Jim,” I answered. “Will you be paying for it or just putting it on layaway until the rapture?”
“I’ll pay if it looks right,” he said, heading out. He pushed the door open, then stopped, half-in, half-out, sending the electronic chime into a recursive death spiral. “How you know so much about spawning river fish, anyway? You ever even been out of Kansas?”
Now I could tell him the truth. I could explain the things I know – that my knowledge goes way beyond fish sex. I could tell him, for instance, that the flatworm Macrostomum hystrix reproduces by fucking itself in the head. It’s called hermaphroditic traumatic insemination. I could tell him that the practice isn’t isolated solely to hermaphrodite worms either. Sea slugs,2 also hermaphrodites, fuck each other in the head. They do it with a two-pronged dong, one of which is called a ‘penile stylet’. I could shock his system with the revelation that earwigs have two dicks.3 Or take him on a tour of class Mammalia and into the dens of prairie voles, who are affectionate and monogamous with each other unless the male is drunk, in which case he pursues anonymous hookups. That dolphins will fuck literally anything. That porcupines flirt via golden shower. I could tell him these things I know, but then I might have to explain why I know them. And that I am unable to do. So, I answered his question with the simple truth. “I just know, Jim.”
“That internet, then,” he said, answering the question for himself. “See ya in a few days, kid.”
I flipped down the magnifier. “Jim.”
The truth is I was jealous of Jim. Of his obliviousness, his ability to step into the world from the shop and move on with his life, while mine never changed. Wherever I went, my brain came with, bringing along its innumerable tidbits of faunal knowledge which infected my every thought. There was no explanation and no apparent source. And it would have been completely useless if I didn’t work in a fishing shop trying to figure out new ways to get post-coitus fish to bite at fake bug larvae.
I’m no fly-fishing fanatic. I’m just too distractable for any other job.
Every waking moment is a constant barrage of intrusive thoughts with even the most innocuous stimuli churning up commentary from deep within the folds of my brain.4 See? I’ve tried training myself to think of it as background noise, but it’s tough to tune out when your overactive brain is also an asshole.5
The door chimed again as if it were being strangled. Through the magnifier came a giant yellow blob that I immediately recognized as Patton, my never-employed stoner friend. He wasn’t a stoner by choice – well, it was by choice, but it wasn’t just for getting high. Weed legitimately helped him function. Patton was the only person I’d ever met who got paranoid as a consequence of not being high. Also, weed is generally pollinated by wind, not by bees.