Carl Franke

The night before was a merry stew. We left Ocean City and cruised to Sea Isle City to roam around some shops, play miniature golf, and then drink it up early at some place called the Dead Dog Saloon. We were there pounding pints quite early in the evening, eating greasy appetizers. Allyson was pregnant, so she was our driver.

The Dead Dog was a step above a dive bar, low key. But after a few beers, I was told by the manager that I had to either wear a collared shirt or vacate the premises. My Jameson Irish Whiskey graphic t-shirt that I remember vividly getting on my 30th birthday was suddenly equivalent to a swastika at 8:00 pm, and it needed to be covered.

Of course, they sold official Dead Dog Saloon polo shirts there, so I bought a white one and wore it sloppily over my t-shirt. I flipped up the collar, buttoned all the buttons, and mocked the notion that a collared shirt was necessary, as if we were in a private country club. I walked around the bar, chatting with others that were also notified and enjoyed my drunken glory.

I awoke early the next morning with a slight headache, but I needed to get up, as I was going on my first deep sea fishing trip with Harry, my father-in-law, and my bro-in-law Ray.

Now, if you angle it right, everyone can be deemed the black sheep of their family, but for me, I felt I always ran a bit blacker.

With my family growing up, my Mom, Dad, and sister were all nurses. We’d sit in the dining room in my late teens and eat saucy lasagna while they talked about blood and bodily fluids, which always led to a shush from me, or I’d just stammer off with my plate to the den.

My sister was a socialite in high school, always throwing parties and going out. I just stayed in my bedroom and reorganized my baseball cards, waiting for the promise of college freedom, watching Friday sitcoms that nobody watched.

During the holidays, my sister, Mom, and Aunt would dance to pop stars, like Bon Jovi, joyously after a glass of wine, as I sat in the corner wishing I could blare the Pixies. They would call me “Jesus” as my stoner long hair, scruffy beard, and flannel effortless wardrobe clashed with the whole look of the family. I didn’t really care, though, but I just felt like an oddball, although mighty comfortable in being just that.

Now, I was married and had joined a whole new family. The in-law dudes (father and three bros), were all heavily into hunting, fishing, home repair, and sports, particularly NHL and NFL. All of those items resulted in a big fat zero of interest for me, so I was quickly lost in their conversations.

Growing up, none of my friends or family hunted, so it was very foreign to me. I’ve never even held a gun, except for the fake one that I often whip out and shoot my cat with. Once you’re in your mid-30s, you know what you want to pursue in life, and you easily check out and dive into what you dig the most. For me, I could care less if I ate another piece of meat for the rest of my life. And, NASCAR and televised sports — it really didn’t matter to me if they all vanished and were replaced by non-stop Cosby Show reruns.

It’s not that I was a black sheep with my newly expanded family; I was a black sheep with the typical Philadelphian male, I suppose. My interests didn’t lay in building additions to a home or car repair. My focus was on HTML5, CSS3, jQuery and building the best web sites possible for modern browsers, as my livelihood depended upon it. My career as a web professional was taking over my life. It was the only way to thrive in that profession. Pixels and code were my building blocks. Coffee and beer were my engine. Writing and music were my release.

So, now here I was, about to embark on an early AM fishing trip with some seasoned deep sea fishery folk. I’ve always been easily car sick as a kid, from the days of my parents driving me around town. I originally thought that my parents were just bad drivers, but they weren’t.

I always preferred to drive. I insisted for the fishing trip and took us to a Wawa for some grub, although I was the only one that seemed to be craving anything. I bought a coffee and a bag of Fritos Corn Chips.

While waiting to load the charter boat, I crunched down the chips and pounded the coffee and I felt, well, shitty, but at least more awake. Soon we were on the boat. I felt glad that I had finally joined Harry in one of these journeys, as he was always asking me to come along. Maybe it was the long lost missing link of my life that I needed, I thought.

The charter boat filled up with about forty people and we all hung along the railings as the engine chugged us out deeper into the ocean. The deep sea fishing poles seemed simple enough, as you just dropped your baited hook into the water.

Eventually the boat stopped, as if we had reached a precise destination. With the engine off, the boat instantly started rocking heavily with the wind and water, pushing the horizon up and down and jostling instant nausea into my system, as if something was jarred in my brain and I could no longer focus.

I darted to the men’s room, the one tiny men’s room on the boat, and vomited heavily the full yellow corn chip mush into the toilet — well, as much as I could into the toilet. My extended arms held onto the walls for support, as I would have fallen over otherwise. I tried to clean up the mess the best I could and then proceeded back out.

Harry had a baited pole ready for me and immediately knew I had yacked, pointing out that I was pale and unstable looking.

“Yeah, I got it out of me,” I said, grabbing hold of the pole. I was proud that I had made it to the toilet on time, getting it out of my system and ready to catch some bluefish, tuna, weakfish, flounder — anything. Maybe we could grill it up later, I thought.

We all hovered over the railing looking down at the water. But then it hit me again. The nausea was instant and relentless. I threw up into the water, leaving a trace of vomit alongside the boat, holding tight to my pole. Holy fuck is this embarrassing, I thought. Chunks of puke lined my sweatshirt as I couldn’t help but act like a 17-year-old girl that did shots of whiskey for the first time and was ruining the party for all.

Suddenly, I felt tension on my line and knew that I was either catching a fish or a heavy piece of debris. Harry noticed I was fading out and helped me reel in the sucker as I could barely hold onto the rod.

Out of the water wriggled a testy slimy black eel, about four feet long. One of the crewmen came over and told me to just pull it in and I dropped it on the deck. The damn thing writhed around relentlessly. It was like a massive piece of black licorice that had come alive, trying to slap us all in the face. The crewman held it down with gloved hands and then pounded several times on the eel’s head with a mallet. Blood spurted around the deck and it eventually relaxed. The crewman tossed the eel back into the sea and then cleaned up the mess with a mop and bucket.

Now the nausea that had overcome me, leagues above any flu or hangover barf scene that I had ever experienced. With the flu, you may vomit for twenty minutes, but then you fall back asleep for hours. This was a non-stop assault that I couldn’t escape. In fact the vomiting part was actually the better part, allowing me to attain temporary relief. The waiting in between gags was the hell.

I wandered around the boat trying to find a sweet spot of relief, but such a location didn’t exist. I tried to smile at the people happily fishing, acting like was ambling towards a destination. I went into the dining area where I heard they were selling Dramamine. I bought a couple pills and swallowed them down. Some old fella chuckled and told me the pills needed to be taken hours before getting on the boat. “Those will just make you sleepy at this point.”

I sat in a booth for four by myself, gripping the table, and tried to focus on the horizon. It didn’t work at all. Also seated were a couple other seasick guys. I saw one dude vomit and I immediately gagged and tossed up some more onto the floor. Liquid chunky orange goo cascaded back and forth…and back and forth…sliding back and forth on the floor. One kid was about eye level with a trash can and stuck his whole head inside of it to yack.

Just a little over three more hours of this, I thought, holding onto the railing toward the end of the boat. Nobody was around there. Harry came over eating some scrambled eggs from the kitchen as the wind blew towards him. I warned him that I was about to hurl and that the wind might blow it towards his face. He got out of the way, letting me know that he was being easy on me. He described how he originally wanted to shove bait into his mouth and talk to me.

I already felt like a douche because my chest and back were sunburned from trying a new “spray” sunscreen. It was like cooking spray, but didn’t work on my pasty skin at all, leaving a large red spot on my chest and stomach that resembled Pangaea.

Finally we were headed back to the dock. I was happy to hear the engine roaring and seeing us zip evenly across the ocean. At the dock, I stepped onto the deck and slipped and fell. I laughed at myself and got back up. What the fuck did I care, really? Nobody had caught one single fish. It was just the black eel and me, bloodied and butchered.

Back at the beach house, my wife and I decided to go out to eat at some Italian place down the street. We sat at a table outside and dipped bread in olive oil and watched a fender bender occur, right in front of us. Everyone was fine. A cop showed up. Traffic built up. Waitresses brought out entrees. Fresh water with lemon. Peppered cheese. Prodding jokes. Focused eyes, a goofball back on firm land where he belonged.