‘Fuck! There’d be tuna down there for sure! Can’t believe I didn’t bring rods.’

‘Why didn’t you?’ I asked, somewhat bemused by his ranting. I couldn’t decide what to watch: the sky, the birds, the play of light on the water, or this strangely charismatic man in front of me. He won out.

‘Because I’m an egg,’ he said, laughing at me or him or the situation, I wasn’t sure. And I couldn’t stop looking. Something in me was drawn to his energy, to the liveliness of his smile. I say liveliness intentionally; his smile radiated life.

‘It was bloody stupid of me. I was just going for a fang, but it wouldn’t have hurt to chuck the rod in,’ he rambled on. ‘It’s probably too early in the season for them to be about, but fuck, you never know, do you? If only I’d been a boy scout as a kid. I’d always be prepared. But who gives a rat’s really; it’s enough to just be out here, isn’t it? Like, to just be here. It’s so beautiful. I honestly don’t think there’s a better place in the world. I don’t know why anyone would ever go anywhere else.’

It was rare, I remember thinking at the time, to hear a man speak so passionately and unashamedly about beauty. As I watched him, ranting and gesturing, the image of him carved out a space inside me where, I suspect, no matter what happens between Jem and I, it will shine forever: Jem, wild in the golden light, wild with tuna-lust, a cloud of birds around his head.

Perhaps it’s because this image of him is so flint-sharp that I was shocked when, later, I heard him talk scathingly about recreational tuna fishermen, and even more shocked to find out that one night he and some of his mates, before a major tuna-fishing competition, had oiled the boat ramp.

‘They’re rank, cashed-up bogans. Fucking Bar Crusher central. It’s so unwholesome. So unsustainable,’ Jem always says.

When I point out that he loves catching tuna too, he responds: ‘It’s different. I only catch them to eat. It’s not about the photo op. It’s not about the competition: whose dick’s bigger.’

At the time I’d been so infatuated by his impulsive environmentalism—the raw energy of it seemed so real compared to the pretentious intellectualism of the urban greens I’d hung out with at uni—that I didn’t dwell on his hypocrisy. But now all I can think is: Surely people with Bar Crushers for boats, surely bogans, be they cashed up or otherwise, eat the tuna they catch too.

What’s so wrong with Bar Crushers anyway? They’re mass-produced, but then so is nearly everything else.

Jem can be funny like that. He gets these strange sets against things and then there’s no convincing him otherwise. Like microwaves. I’m pretty sure that the myth that microwaves give you cancer has been thoroughly debunked. I’m pretty sure the fact that we had a microwave when I was a child didn’t contribute to me getting cancer. Nor did the fact that I take paracetamol when I get headaches—I asked the doctor.