catfish 13

 Beagles is right as far as he goes, but he is missing the point of lost democracy.  Before agriculture the staple food was meat.  But you can't store meat like you can grain because it soon goes bad.  Before agriculture if you got lucky you could only eat so much, so you might as well share with your neighbors, and they would do likewise and everybody was more or less equal.  The chief was only the chief as long as the people permitted it, and the chief did not lie around in a bed of roses, he had to hunt his own meat like everybody else.

The guys who had to work the soil for the king when agriculture was being pursued were the lowest of the low.  If they tried to unseat the king their heads rolled.  They probably never ate meat, and they were certainly not allowed to trespass on the king's hunting ground.  They were shorter and did not live as long as their forbears who hunted the land.

Well this all give us civilization with the arts and vaccines and all so maybe it is worth the trade, but those on the bottom may not think so.

At last a little romance in the tale of Catfish.  I hope this pleases my audience.  I wouldn't mind a little feedback as to what they like and what they don't like, but I know that is hard to come by here in The Institute.

 Kind of set myself up a little schedule on that going out to the union hall thing.  This going out every morning at five was just too much, so I decided I would only go out like Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.  But Friday you know that was prime time at the Great Wall, and getting up at five in the morning, well I was just nodding out too early, so Monday and Wednesday then, but Wednesday, well so close to Monday, why bother, so Monday then, and mostly I made it out on Monday.  But after that big hiring earlier, nothing much was going on.  The talk at the hall was about sector five, whatever that was, but it was going to open up a month or so later, so I was just going to wait on that.

 And I'd picked up on this girl, Gina, short little girl, hair as dark as coal hanging low over her forehead, eyes as dark looking up over that mop and oh yes, big breasts.  Smart girl, music major, sang opera.  Not an opera man myself, but one night I heard her singing.  Well it sounded like screeching to  me, I thought someone was being attacked, but it was just her, sitting alone at the end of the bar, a waitress at the restaurant counting up her tips after her shift on a slow Sunday night, and apparently she had done really well, and a little loaded, and that and the way the deep breathing swelled her white blouse, well I just drifted right over.

 The Song of the Valkyries, that was the song she was singing she explained to me.  The Valkyries were those women you saw in the cartoons with the horns on their pointed hats.  They scoured the battlefields and swept up the dead, and loved them up.

Loved them up?  She had my interest right there, and I told her that.  She kind of frowned, too fast, I had to slow it down. I mumbled something apologetic.  Mumble is good, encourages her to lean a little closer, but then you have to come up with something.  "You sing like an angel," I said, first thing that popped into my head.

And she saw right through it, some dumb guy with some dumb pickup line, but I followed up quick, "I really mean it," and I gave her that aw shucks Catfish look, and she paused and gave me a hard look.  Damn this wasn't going well.  "All right then, I didn't mean it.  As a matter of fact the only reason I came over was because it sounded like someone was killing cats."  That was my exit line, as long as I was going to get turned down I might as well go out with a little glory.

"Well aren't you charming." she observed.

"Well I try to be."

"Well maybe you could try harder."

"Well maybe you could sing better."

"Like this?" she asked and out came the song of the Valkyries again. 

"Oh those poor innocent cats." I responded.

"Like Buster?" she wanted to know.

"Who?"

 "My cat, my sweet little cat, he just passed away," she bit her lip, "this very morning."

 "Shit, I'm sorry, I didn't know, I didn't mean anything, I..."  What had I walked into?

 "Poured him a little saucer of milk and stepped into the next room and broke into a little aria, and when I came back into the kitchen he was dead."

 "How?"

 "Well like a doornail.  On his back, his little paws stuck up into the air, his poor little mouth open."

 I just stared at her, I think my mouth fell open.

 "I can only hope,  We can only hope," and here she put her hand on mine, "that there are little kitty Valkyries, and they carried him off and that right now he is sitting on the banks of that big white cream river while they feed him peeled mousies."

 And those deep dark eyes that she had fixed me with tweaked at the corners and then she was giggling like a naughty school girl.  "Oh you should see your face," she said.

 Damn, the bullshitter, bullshitted, but I was still a little unsure, "Buster?" I asked.

 "No Buster."

 Maybe I should have been pissed, but hell there she was all laughing and happy.  "I'm Catfish," I said.

 And I kind of liked that she was a bullshitter just like me, and I went on and she went on, beers were drunk. last call came and went and then I was walking her back to her apartment, but then when she got to her door she just kind of stopped you know, with her back to the door, her face turned up for a kiss and I gave her one, but it was like that was it, a good night kiss.  "Thank you for a lovely evening," she said, and I thought maybe she was joking, like she'd been all night, but that was it.  She put the key in the door, gave me a little smile as she went in and then closed the door behind her and I was left standing out there in the dark.  What the fuck? 

 Things were just not working out for Old Catfish.  No late night romp, no calls of "Oh Catfish. Oh Catfish." late in the night, pink toes curling up, and no bacon and eggs in the morning.  Truth was in the two weeks I'd been back, the only time I'd gotten lucky was with Pukey Tammy, who had never fixed me up with any breakfast either, and now she was with that no good Ron.

 And damn I'm not proud of this, but Claudette's old apartment was just a couple blocks away and I walked them.  Lights were out, was I even sure she still lived there?  Labels on the mailboxes were faded, couldn't make them out in the dark, but there was the button, the button I used to push coming back late and unlucky from the bar towards the end there when things were not so hot between us but she was always glad to see me.

 But I wasn't sure she was still living in that old apartment, kind of a musty apartment to tell the truth, but comfy, plenty comfy for old Catfish with the blues.  Maybe some other girl was living there now, that might kind of work.  I could tell her I was looking for some old girlfriend, dress up the story a little, look woeful, shuffle and sniffle a little, might just do the trick.  But then it might be some guy, some drunk guy pissed at being woke up this late, that wouldn't work out so well, better to just move on which is what I did.