Tele Aadsen

writer - fisherman - listener

When the Kath­leen Jo pulls out of her stall at noon, I am there to see them off. My five year old ship­mate waves wild­ly through the star­board win­dow. As soon as they turn the cor­ner, I begin the trek to my new home, eager to get set­tled in a pri­vate writ­ing space. Mike’s sail­boat lives in the neigh­bor­ing har­bor, the first har­bor I called home as a child but have rarely vis­it­ed since. It’s a pant­i­ng raven kind of day, corvids parked in the dusty lot with their beaks hang­ing open, oil-slick feath­ers radi­at­ing heat. I stroll down the main float with sun­burned shoul­ders and a broad smile.

A smile that freezes as two men approach me.

I know these men. Sam­my, a gold­en can of Coors clutched in his hand, worked at a local busi­ness until drink­ing cost him his job. The oth­er is Carl, a man I crewed with a life­time ago, then re-encoun­tered last sum­mer. A man who’d expect­ed that sex would be part of the pack­age, work­ing with a woman.

Both men move toward me with the ursine lum­ber of the wast­ed. Maybe it’s fresh­ly achieved today, maybe it’s the result of life­time pick­ling; I can’t tell and it doesn’t mat­ter. Their blur­ry gazes sharpen.

If you’re a woman read­ing this, you and I know how to do the same math. With a sin­gle sweep­ing glance, we can mea­sure a side­walk, divid­ing width by threat. Where am I? What time of day? Any­one else in sight? The research that says female stu­dents test low­er in math­e­mat­ics doesn’t con­sid­er our apti­tude for equa­tions like this. Painful­ly prac­ticed, we’re at the top of the class.

Here, though, stan­dard cal­cu­la­tions don’t apply. A dock is not a side­walk. Cross­ing the street is not an option. The water I usu­al­ly look upon as a friend is now an oppressor.

This harbor’s wood­en walk­way is gen­er­ous. There’s ample room for two peo­ple to pass com­fort­ably if both fol­low the rules of per­son­al space. But this equa­tion involves three peo­ple, two of them, one of me, and Carl is not fol­low­ing the rules.

I step to my right, hug­ging the far side.

Carl steps to his left.

I veer to my left. No. Not that way – don’t put your­self between them. I over­cor­rect back to the right.

Again, Carl mir­rors me.

In anoth­er place, using dif­fer­ent math, this awk­ward step-shuf­fle-step would make me laugh. “Go ahead!” I’d grin, and my acci­den­tal dance part­ner would sweep their arm out, “No, please, you!” Here, I am not laugh­ing. Here, Carl stands before me, block­ing my path.

His voice is raspy, words spilling quick and loud. He asks if I know Sam­my. “I been telling him how I worked with you when you were just 20 – god­damn, that was 15 years ago! – and I got­ta tell ya, Tele, I do a lot of crazy shit, but I nev­er meant to dis­re­spect you. You know, like when I got you that T‑shirt from Rosie’s?”

An Alaskan leg­end, Rose’s Bar sells clothes embla­zoned with her red-hot ink urg­ing, “Take Your Pants Off… Let’s Have a Party!”

My words step out slow, sev­er­al pitch­es low­er than usu­al and bal­anced on the cen­ter of my tongue; they are care­ful not to rock this boat. I tell Carl no wor­ries, dude, I don’t even remem­ber, and it’s true. I don’t remem­ber any­thing about that sea­son, oth­er than how it end­ed.

Sam­my tugs Carl’s arm. “C’mon, man, let’s go. Let her walk.”

I won­der if Sam­my is per­haps not as drunk as I’d thought. I won­der how far I can count on him, a man so slight­ly built he could prac­ti­cal­ly fit in the pock­et of Carl’s Hawai­ian shirt. I won­der why I’m look­ing to a man for an ally.

Carl shakes loose. “Nah, man, I’m talkin’ to her! I got impor­tant things to say.”

His eyes are over­ly intent on mine, shin­ing too bright, as he admires my tat­toos and claps my shoul­der. Skin, burn­ing skin. I will myself to become part of the dock’s weath­ered wood, to hold his gaze, hold my cen­ter. To not flinch.

Sam­my prods Carl again. In his dis­trac­tion, there opens a win­dow. I move around him, cir­cling wide as the dock allows.

The cool dis­missal tossed over my shoul­der is remark­able in its non­cha­lance, but a new self-con­scious­ness pilots my feet. Approach­ing the sail­boat that had been such cause for excite­ment, all I see now is its iso­la­tion. I take care to mem­o­rize the stall num­ber. I make a show of knock­ing on the hull, paus­ing for an imag­ined invi­ta­tion to come aboard. I open the door with warm chat­ter, as if my friend is wait­ing inside, not head­ed out on his first long­line trip. Not gone for the next six days.

Stop it, sweet­ie – don’t go down that road. Don’t feed your ener­gy into those scenarios.

I am sud­den­ly very aware that there isn’t a good way to lock the sail­boat from the inside.

*****

On my last trip on the Kath­leen Jo, we caught 4000 pounds of hal­ibut one day. Jeff mock-com­plained that he and his male deck­hand had once put in a 9000 pound day. I teased him over our rock­fish tacos. “Sor­ry we didn’t get more, Jefe. Must be my vagi­na.” He ducked his head, blush­ing bright. The next day, strug­gling to heave a 75 pound hal­ibut onto the hatch, I cursed, “Dammit – if only I had a penis!” His wife and I delight­ed in team­ing up on our cap­tain, who wished he’d nev­er said a word.

With these friends to whom I have noth­ing to prove, gen­der shrank to a joke we lobbed across the deck. Beyond our 53-foot sanc­tu­ary, it swelled into a grenade.

Tick tick tick… The cap­tain whose black cod I helped unload, observ­ing, “You’re sure pret­ty for this kin­da work.”

Tick tick tick… The man on the VHF radio snarling that anoth­er fish­er­man had yelled at him on the drag. His out­rage wasn’t over the exchange itself, but that it’d been “by a fuckin’ woman!”

BOOM. The com­mer­cial fish­er­men slap­ping bumper stick­ers on pick-ups, vow­ing that they’d rather have a daugh­ter in a whore­house than a son on a char­ter boat.

Dodg­ing the shrap­nel of encoun­ters like these, I won­der how a per­son can find her great­est love and truest iden­ti­ty in a world that con­sis­tent­ly says she doesn’t belong. How can I saunter these docks with more con­fi­dence, more cer­tain­ty in who I am and my author­i­ty to be here, than any­where else I’ve known?

Gen­der doesn’t mat­ter here. That’s the par­ty line. Men and women alike insist, “It’s about who­ev­er can do the work.” Grow­ing up fish­ing, it was easy to inter­nal­ize that refrain – even when I knew bet­ter. The val­ue of all things – all peo­ple – exist­ed in their rela­tion­ship to masculinity.

At 21, I crewed for a cap­tain who, in more than 30 years at sea, had hired one oth­er female deck­hand. When I peeked into his log­book at the end of our first day, blue scrawl assured me I was “a fine hand, as good as or bet­ter than any man.”

Male was the yard­stick, and I was deter­mined to mea­sure up. I drank the Kool-Aid: dis­parag­ing fem­i­nin­i­ty, mim­ic­k­ing mas­culin­i­ty, uncon­scious­ly pro­mot­ing the tox­ic think­ing that con­struct­ed these bina­ries in the first place. Believ­ing that “one of the guys” was the best me that I could hope to be.

Of course that was a lie. But it was a lie I inhab­it­ed enough for my own con­vic­tion. Even if the sur­round­ing fish­er­men knew bet­ter, they allowed the illu­sion. Theirs was a gift of omis­sion, wrapped in affection.

Carl shat­tered that illu­sion when I saw myself as he saw me: not as a crew­mate, but an oblig­a­tory sex part­ner. Fif­teen years lat­er, he’d done it again. In cor­ner­ing me on the dock, Carl effec­tive­ly cracked that mea­sur­ing stick over his knee and tossed it into the drink. He forced me to remem­ber that in a cul­ture where gen­der, pow­er, and vio­lence are all con­nect­ed, even the strongest fisherman’s vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty is nev­er as dis­tant as she’d like to imagine.

*****

Step­ping off Mike’s sail­boat and call­ing good­bye to the no one inside, I skulk back up the dock. The sun still shines. In the park­ing lot, the ravens still sit with their beaks agape. As if they can’t believe what they’ve seen. As if they don’t rec­og­nize me.

I feel the same way.