Website © 2003 by Tyler Carey
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Gareth Edel Presents
Goldfish
I am strangely effected by the recent and sudden death of my goldfish. Or would that be affected...which one is emotion? Either way, I am actually quite depressed and, if not the cause, certainly the catalyst is the death of an animal I wouldn't really feel bad about killing and eating. I suppose it is a matter of familiarity, I wouldn't eat a cat who was my pet, but one I hadn't met, I might give a try. So back to Goldie the Goldfish, Goldie was short for Goldman, which was short for Emma Goldman, who was purchased the same time I got a flaming Red Beta named "the Red" short for Karl Marx. Some times I actually called him Karl. The third fish (and only survivor) is Train, named train not in imitation of a person, but instead, in honor of my older brother's fish when we were little kids.... Train is a small catfish as was the original. I purchased these three fish around my sophomore year of high school. This was about ten years ago, a bit over. So I guess that Goldie had a long and as far as fish go, full life. She had rocks and seashells to hide in, plants, a nice filter which circulated the water, and company. In general, I was overly generous with her food, but how could I deny that sweet face? You see she learned early on, that if a person stood by the tank, and she came to the edge and looked up at the person with big eyes, she would get fed. Don't you doubt it, she knew how to beg.
I got the fish when the tank full of feeder gold fish I had before them was accidentally killed by soap left un-rinsed on some shells and rocks. I hadn't planned on replacing them, but our cat at the time: Catsgang Amadeus Mozart (Mozart for short, missed having fish around. See, when Mozart was a kitten I had just gotten a fish tank, and he and his sister Samantha Fox (named both for her red shading and the bad British pop star) would drink from the water in it. They both drank, and we would worry about them eating the fish, but they never did, and over time we realized that Samantha had no interest in the fish. But Mozart was another story. He would sit there watching the fish swim. Alternatively, resting his nose on the water so they would come up and investigate and he would bump heads with the fish, and go back to watching them. They became, over time, as much his fish as mine.
When the first fish had their accident Mozart mourned them, and I did not. He would sit by the tank. Run to a person, run back to the tank, as if to say, "where are my fish?" We caved under the pressure and refilled the tank, and I purchased three new fish. As mentioned above, Emma Goldman, Karl Marx and Train, were the replacement fish and for a while I didn't really want them. But when Mozart died less than a year later I was sort of glad I had the fish, because they were a tribute to him. Since then Samantha has gone MIA and is presumed dead, while she was in New Hampshire for the summer. The Cat we have now is their Grandson, and he also drinks peacefully from the fish tank.
After I left NYC to go to college I worked at a Summer stock theater and dragged the fish up with me, they became the mascots of the kitchen, and you can't imagine, how over fed they were. But they were beloved by all. I'll never forget the day I came in and found a hand made paper doll of a fisherman perched on the tank, trailing a line of dental floss into the water. I never found out who made it.
For spring break that first year, a hall mate was staying on campus and I arranged for him to look after the fish. Much to my surprise he was ecstatic. It eventually surfaced that he had never had a pet, but his excitement only allowed this to bubble through after I returned. At which point he had fallen head over heels for the fish. During most of my first year I didn't lock my door much. The habit came from my first semester, when my roommate would show up late at night stoned off a party sized bag of pot, with ten or more people in tow, and have forgotten his keys. My hall-mate the fish fetishist broke me of the habit. The third time I woke up in the middle of the night to the light of my open door and his silhouette squatting by the fish tank staring at the fish, in much the same contented way Mozart had, I began locking my door at night.
In the intervening years between then and now, the fish traveled with me to a second summer at the theater, and two more of my years of college, and then back to NYC to the shelf they started off on. But what is weird is that I was just blasted by grief when I found Goldie passed away. Silly, she was just a fish.