Bluegills, Blue

Abstract

Bluegills, Blue Annie Raab (bio) I have to stick around my hometown until summer, so I can see the lake Jordan describes. The lake where the old men wear pasties in the water because the pan fish bite their nipples. In the way he tells it, the men launch off the side of pontoon boats and swim hand over head to Party Island in a frantic stroke to outrun the fish. If one of them stops to check the water depth or catch his breath, he yelps and waves his hands across his chest. Jordan describes finding tender marks along the abdomen on the banks of Party Island. A sport fisher among the group might ask, "Well, what were they? Bluegill or sunfish?" to which the bitten man replies, "The ones with teeth." Jordan points to the bluegill in the aquarium tank. They're spiny and round, but no teeth. We ate pressies five minutes ago—big blue pills containing some combination of ecstasy and other drugs, pressed into a square I had to bite through to swallow. I'm not really sure what it contains, but the neon lights around the room start to defy their own boundaries. They glow. "Tell me more about the lake," I say. These are his experiences, not mine. But in a way familiar to Wisconsinites who know at least one person with a boat on a lake, they are also mine. He touches a fingertip to the glass. The bug-eyed fish gapes and flicks its tail. Spines gather algae. "They don't have teeth," he says. "And nobody knows why they bite nipples." Summers on Okauchee Lake begin as they end: saturated mornings, hot afternoons, fire and fish and lovers fucking on the wooden bed frames that still retain their nubs of former branches, worn smooth by the generations. Everyone arrives in shifts. The aunts with dips and bottled water. The kids with friends and water toys. The uncles with beer and fishing poles. Latecomers bring their tents and sleeping bags, but more often than not, they sleep outside, on the boat or the dock or the hammock strung up in the ash trees. My forehead starts to bead with sweat, and the people wandering around the aquarium produce trails of their own bodies that shiver and bend in the darkness. He leans closer toward the glass and I catch a glimpse of his pupils. There is no more blue in his eyes. Just a round black coin in white. "I feel it," I say. "I feel it too." I reach into his pocket and feel the other drugs in the folds. A baggie of coke, still hard like sandstone, another pressie for us each. We're going to go all day if we can. Maybe into the evening. "It's been so long since I rolled," I say. "The last time was in Kansas City. I got a call from my ex who said he was drunk on a tractor in Texas [End Page 105] with a gun to his head. He said his girlfriend was pregnant and he wanted to name the baby after me. I had to talk him down. The whole night was ruined after his empty threats." "Jesus," Jordan says. "So you have a crazy ex?" "That's not the point," I say and together we crouch to observe the seahorses gathered at the bottom of a cylindrical tank. "The point is they named her Tiffany." I'm starting to live a more confident version of my life. I feel I've hit my stride. Gone with my 20s are the insecurities about saying something that might lead to judgment. Those fears turned me into something small and gross: a panderer. I am now a woman with a tiny coke spoon, with a bad hot take on everything, and with little interest in being right. I'm leaning into my shittiness this year, my unlovability. We're not supposed to be here, at the aquarium, on drugs, in the middle of a pandemic. I, especially, am not supposed to be on drugs. When I take drugs, my own personal line between life and death becomes a thin...