You, sir, are a fishmonger.
I'm told that one of the tenents of Buddhism dictates that one mustn't earn one's living from the flesh of another. One may not be a pimp, then, or a butcher. I like the logic that places the two side by side. And I will admit that this is likely the best reasoning I've yet heard on why I oughtn't do what I do. I do not mention this because I intend to stop doing it, but rather by way of introduction.
In the morning I rush into work alone when the drunks are still driving home and the busses are barely crawling yet. I haul and shovel a couple of tonnes of ice. I arrange my trays neatly and work them into the case. I put last night's order away, hauling fish from one side of the room to the other and back, scaling, filleting, chopping and twisting through bone, and generally enjoying myself and laying out the dead. I do the thousand other small things that are required of me. But my favourite part of the morning might be displaying the whole fish in the display case, a knee-knocker ice island, a box about the size and shape of a distressingly long coffin.
I enjoy blasphemy, you see. So every morning I arrange a lotus made of between three and six flounder, interspersed with flamelike petals of red and yellowtail snapper. Char, headless wild salmon, striped bass, dried out and oozing black bass, pompano and butterfish fan out around them, supporting the flower in a motif reminiscent of tattoo flash, fleeing in schools from its glory.
Sometimes it's a perverse celebration, a smirking nod to what I ought not do, but enjoy doing so well. And some dark mornings it is simply worshipful, an acknowledgement that I would not know this flesh if I were not selling it. I take in my fish the way that I take in my lovers, with something of a promise that this exchange will not be entirely mutual, and that if all goes well we'll both suffer for it.
In the morning I rush into work alone when the drunks are still driving home and the busses are barely crawling yet. I haul and shovel a couple of tonnes of ice. I arrange my trays neatly and work them into the case. I put last night's order away, hauling fish from one side of the room to the other and back, scaling, filleting, chopping and twisting through bone, and generally enjoying myself and laying out the dead. I do the thousand other small things that are required of me. But my favourite part of the morning might be displaying the whole fish in the display case, a knee-knocker ice island, a box about the size and shape of a distressingly long coffin.
I enjoy blasphemy, you see. So every morning I arrange a lotus made of between three and six flounder, interspersed with flamelike petals of red and yellowtail snapper. Char, headless wild salmon, striped bass, dried out and oozing black bass, pompano and butterfish fan out around them, supporting the flower in a motif reminiscent of tattoo flash, fleeing in schools from its glory.
Sometimes it's a perverse celebration, a smirking nod to what I ought not do, but enjoy doing so well. And some dark mornings it is simply worshipful, an acknowledgement that I would not know this flesh if I were not selling it. I take in my fish the way that I take in my lovers, with something of a promise that this exchange will not be entirely mutual, and that if all goes well we'll both suffer for it.