my friend chris and i call each other charles. both of us, call the other charles. when i label his birthday present, it says charles. when i call him on the phone, he says, "hello charles." this is perhaps why i was surprised when he named his fish kevin.
allright. all about kevin. kevin was doing just fine until he and his fellow fish contracted parasites. well the thing about fish is that for our purposes, they are essentially genderless. yes, fish have acheived a place outside of our gender binary. well, except that we insist on giving them gendered names.
when i was little, i had many goldfish. i named them all leslie. when i was little, i had a hamster. it was supposed to be a boy. we wanted it that way on the off chance we got a pregnant girl. i named her well, um, er, leslie. she had nine babies. the babies were so small that they kept falling through the metal slats. so, i took the grating out. well, mommy had big girl teeth and chewed through the plastic bottom and they all escaped. i went all through the house with a metal spoon finding little pink babies and putting them in coffee cups. we named them pinkie number one, pinkie number two, pinkie number three... and frank. frank had red eyes, and we were a little nervous to leave him alone with all the other babies.
the thing about kevin is that he was a good fish, parasites and all. the thing about kevin is that we thought he was dead long before he was. the thing about kevin is, well, i never met him. but i know charles would only pick a fish who wiggles and has cute fins.