Brokeback Ocean – An Aquatic Love Tale

Looking back, a human/octopus relationship could never work. I can’t breathe underwater, my ink tolerance is pedestrian at best and who can compete with all of those appendages?

Nevertheless, my aquatic rendezvous with Oggy the octopus changed my life forever.

The night seemed to be coming to a close as I bid adieu to my seahorse friend, Krista. We shared many tales, long and short, over mugs of grog at a local pirate bar until she was forced to return to her pregnant seahorse husband (the male seahorse has the babies, which is gross).

As I began my solitary trek back to my human domicile, I was assaulted by what appeared to be a living pile of spaghetti. This was no plate of sentient pasta, however, this was an octopus with lust in its tentacles and sex on its beak.

“Graggle, graggle!” my eight-legged assailant screamed. It’s harpy-like cry echoed throughout the empty streets of Pirateland.

“Excuse me, spaghetti creature, but I am human, straight, and slightly intoxicated, so I’ll be on my way,” I replied with haste.

Oggy, however, refused to permit my passage and wrapped his surprisingly spry tendrils around my reluctant body. What took place next was an oily blur that would take years of therapy and a snorkeling vacation in the Bahamas to recall.

Immediately following my sexually confusing Oggy encounter, I sought the consul of Murtha, a homeless killer whale who beaches herself behind the dumpster at SevenEleven.

“Murtha, what should I do? While traumatic at the time, I now find myself playing with suction cups in fond remembrance of Oggy. Should I call him tonight or wait a couple of days? And when did you get a creepy hook hand?” I asked with befuddlement.

“Eeeeoooh, eeeeoooh,” Murtha replied as she blew Marlboro smoke from her weathered blowhole.

“Thanks, Murtha. You always know how to cheer me up. Now, please stop chewing on my pant leg,” I replied. Sadly, I never saw Murtha again. Blowhole cancer.

Later that evening, staring at my cell phone and anticipating its inevitable vibration with equal parts trepidation and tartar sauce, I decided to make the call.

“Hi, um, is this Oggy?” I inquired sheepishly.

“Graggle, graggle!” his suddenly familiar voice yelped.

“I had a great time last night and I was wondering if you aren’t busy eating shellfish, would you want to meet up for grog at the pirate bar? Do octupuses drink grog? Oh my god, I didn’t offend you, did I?”

“GRAGGLE, GRAGGLE!!!!” Oggy yelled as he slammed down the phone with one of his powerful, yet tender tentacles.

Which tentacle? I’ll never know. One thing I do know is it embraced my land-dwelling body for the first and last time.

And that was that.

Months later, I returned to the scene in an attempt to reenact the events of that fateful night. With a mop in one hand and leaky ballpoint pen in the other, I did my best to recreate the feelings of unexpected cephalopod love but only managed to humiliate myself in front of a school bus of horrified children.

Perhaps three o’clock in the afternoon on a crowded street was a poor place to simulate sexy octopus actions typically reserved for coral reefs.

But regardless of my lack of gills or affinity for coral, I often fantasize about what an oceanic relationship would be like. Sometimes, I manage to convince myself Oggy was my slimy soul mate that slipped away and other times I think he was merely a hallucinogenic manifestation of my inner craving for spaghetti dinner.

Nevertheless, I’ll always remember my night submerged in a salt water affair – partly because I crave attention from forbidden places but mostly because I can’t get the ink stains out of my puffy pirate shirt.

The End.