The Lion Tamer of Woodwind Jazz Hits a Rock Out at Sea

In the spirit of full transparency I must admit that I have never been deep sea fishing. In all the times I’ve gone fishing while growing up on the Alabama Gulf, visiting the Georgian Low Country, or spending holidays on the Florida panhandle, not once have I traveled far enough out onto the water and cast a line into dark depths unknown.

In fact, I can’t recall having gone fishing since the time with Uncle Alan somewhere in the Florida Keys when I caught two fish at the same time; one on the bobber, one on the hook. They were so little and so yellow against that blue-blue water. We let them go—we had to. They have rules about that kind of thing.

There was a time before that when I visited Uncle Mark in Ft. Lauderdale and he took my brother, cousins, and I lobstering. We got caught in an oncoming storm out on the water. The rain felt like lashes.

When I was very young I fished off a pier in Pensacola with Uncle George and Uncle Pete. I cut my ankle on a barnacle and the sun went down while I sat drying on shore waiting for it to stop bleeding. That night I got to watch fish circle in a light on dark water, the shadow of a net being slowly dragged forward. This is my first memory of fishing. I still have that scar on my ankle.

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Tinder is a compelling place to spend time with its many fish in the sea. What I’ve come to learn in all my time casting lines is that fish don’t care for lighthouses nearly as much as fishermen do.

Nathan, 27. Cute dog, cute smile, great mustache. Lives 130 miles away, but damn fine mustache, really.

Me: I once heard that on average it takes a lighthouse 20 seconds to

rotate. Doesn't that seem like a long time?!

Months have gone by. No reply.

It's important to remember that fishing is no longer just a means of survival but that humans, with our enduring competitive nature, have now turned it into a sport—a game. I have made my own rules.

No cops, no christians, no kids. No gym pictures, no fedoras, no white men with dreads. No one traveling through, too exhausting trying to coordinate. No military, no MAGA, no people with the names of my exs. Or my brother. No bios that say “just ask.” No pictures of dead fish.

I've broken most of these rules for a good mustache.

Coleman, 26. Cute dog, nice beard, wears a chore coat but probably doesn't do his chores. Claims to live “somewhat off grid.” I reserve my doubts.

Me: Do you wanna hear my lighthouse bit that I think is a top tier Tinder

opener but no one else is ever as charmed by it as I am?

Coleman: A T^3 opener?! Let er rip

Me: Ok ok. I heard recently that it takes a lighthouse an average of 20

seconds to rotate. Doesn't that seem like a long time?!

He sent me a GIF of a cricket. I really doubt he lives off grid.

My favorite bio I’ve ever written about myself told the story of how when I was a little girl I would get almost instantaneous diarrhea from cantaloupe, but I loved it so much that I kept eating it and now I don’t get diarrhea anymore. I was careful to specify that I did in fact still get diarrhea, just not from cantaloupe. This did not turn out to be as charming a story as I thought it was.

I ask myself a lot why I still try, still row my boat out. It can’t all be the ups and downs of competition, the siren song of casting a line and anticipating a bite. I ask myself a lot but don’t ever really let myself come to an answer. Is asking questions you don’t really want the answers to similar to competing? Is it also an enduring nature?

Sean, 33. Nice eyes, traditional tattoos, skateboards.

Me: My friend recently told me that it takes a lighthouse an average of 20

seconds to do a full rotation. Doesn't that seem like a long time?!

Sean: Yeah! So how are you?

I don't want to talk about me. I want to talk about lighthouses.

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I try to pull forward every lighthouse I have stored in my memory, pull them forward like jackets in the back of the closet, but I guess I've been living in too warm a climate. There just aren’t many jackets in there—not many memories.

Tybee and Daufuskie Islands. Dolphin Island. Pensacola Beach. These are the lighthouses I recall, but whether they function, whether they rotate, I can't say—can’t remember.

Why does the idea of standing beneath them and waiting an entire twenty seconds for the light to spin seem like too long? What is it about that that seems like such an exasperating time? And why am I the only one? No one else looks up at these colossal creations and can’t control the pull of their jaws--sights up and chins down like a dog learning to sit? They watch the inanely slow round and round without awe and don’t consider twenty seconds a long time?

I’ve never been deep sea fishing, but picture it: out to sea, the night surrounding, lips cracking and dry from the salt water splashing, soaking your stiff and scratchy homespun, patches in the elbows and the knees. It's so cold and the pit of your stomach is empty with dread. Anything could be out there, is likely out there. And you just want to go home.

I have never been deep sea fishing but I think about what it must be like all the time. I think about how beautiful a lighthouse must be, how painful that brightness is, after being out there in the dark. On the scale of want to need, it's a need to see that light. Doesn't the chance to hit a rock within twenty seconds seem entirely too possible?

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Alex, 29. Nice mustache, tattoos, only three pictures: a loaf of homemade sourdough, a cute dog, and him holding a baby. His bio said, “Whatcha reading? Whatcha growing?”

Alex: I really respect your commitment to cantaloupe.

Me: If you think that’s impressive you should see what I would do for some

broccoli.

Alex: That sounds like a really interesting first date, broccoli and

cantaloupe.

My goodness was I charmed.

On our first date we took our dogs for a walk in the woods. What I really mean by that is we met at a heavily trafficked public trail and ambled along a mountain river. It was mid May, the sun on its way down. He had studied literature, written a dissertation on Faulkner. He didn’t talk much, but he laughed when I pulled the tupperware of cantaloupe out of my purse and taught me to look for smoother parts of the water to skip rocks on. When he pulled down on a fallen tree so that I could hoist myself onto it to sit on it, I lost my balance. I caught myself, though, ankles and wrists clasped tight around the trunk. The inside of my forearms were scraped and stinging. His mouth hung open. A fish with a hook in its cheek, bait in its belly.

He was sweet to me in quiet ways, ways that felt comfortable. Like driving because I hated it, or letting me stay in bed even after he’d gone to work. He gave me books to borrow and was better at talking about them than I was. One morning, on a weekend, he woke up before me and when I rolled over he was sitting at his computer working on a play he was trying to finish. The sound of his keyboard was better than birdsong. He felt like having one on the bobber and one on the hook. But he was tired. He was always tired.

One night, after seeing each other for about a month, we made french fries for dinner and ate them sitting on his back porch in the late blue light of clear summer. I remember the breeze from that bench in his backyard as if it were a childhood memory. The way those trees danced.

“I don’t think I can keep seeing you romantically,” he said.

I held my breath and waited for the rotation of the light to swing back around, to show me where shore was. I held my breath for a really long time.

“Ok.”

I can’t tell you what it sounded like when my boat finally hit the rocks. I couldn’t hear it over the wind and the waves, couldn’t hear it over the dark.

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How many times in life can you say you're filled with nothing? With dread, silence, loneliness, with an electric frizz down your spine telling you to run away before someone sees you cry. These things, these nothings, permeate, fill up the cracks in your floorboards, flood each tiny groove of the gravel in your throat. Inherently they are lacks. Maybe not dread, maybe dread is tangible. But silence, loneliness, shock, these things are nothings and they empty you out like a melon baller, nestle their way into your flesh and fruit.

Do other empty and yet active spaces come to mind? Empty spaces filled with nothing, like a clarinet spewing sound or a fan pushing air. Like light in a bulb. Forces that can't be held.

But what force, really, can be held? Can you cradle a competitive drive? Tuck fight and flight into the crook of your arm? Stuff sound into a sack and swing it over your shoulder?

And what inclination is it that would compel a person to want to hold a force? Where does that kind of hubris come from? The endless golden cornfields that center it all? The sinking swamps mucking up the edges, our thick spittle borders? From the breathless isolation of hilltops too high? The hot tar of the loudest rooftops, neighbors to rooftops even louder? The dry plateaus of places and spaces only seen by collapsing, dying, thirsty men? Where do you have to spend time in order to think you're the lion tamer of a thing like woodwind jazz?

Tinder maybe. Maybe out to deep blue sea.