Fish Story

I met this girl who looks like a fish and smells like a fish. That's not as bad as it sounds, because I've always wanted a fishy girl.

The story goes like this. I went to Vietnam for a two week vacation. I'd been there before, years earlier, and I felt nostalgic. Sounds normal, but it was supposed to be a lot more than a vacation. And a lot longer than two weeks, if I could swing it. It was supposed to be a permanent escape.

I'll get into 'from what' later. Now I want to talk about my new girl. My fish. After all, she's the kind of fate I wanted to escape to.

I met her a week after I got in-country. It was at a place where men go to drink beer, eat snacks, and rent the company of young women. Not to fuck, just to sit with, fondle and kiss. Like fake girlfriends.

I was with my Vietnamese friend Tran; the place was in the backstreet labyrinths of Ho Chi Minh City, off the beaten path, where lonely white guys looking for exotic thrills seldom know to tread. I could tell because of the stir I caused with the rent-a-girls.

Tran and I were led upstairs to a private room with long leather couches and a big table. First they brought the beer, then the snacks. Then the girls. They brought them in one at a time for us to choose from.

My fish was the first girl they brought in. Now, when it comes to women, especially of the Asian extraction, I tend to lose my critical faculties, turn into a lust-crazed fool, and jump all over the first one I can get my hands on. It's a fault that has caused me beaucoup trouble in the past. So when my friend asked me if I wanted this creamy-smooth Vietnamese woman in a very small black dress, high-heels and erection-inducing makeup to stay or go, it was probably not humanly possible (for this human) to send her away. Even if she hadn't been a fish.

But as it was, she looked like a fish. An Asian fish. And, as I've mentioned, I've always wanted a fish. Girl.

I have to be candid here. We all know that some Asian women look like fish: round watery eyes, architecturally extreme high cheekbones, clownishly giant lips. No, I couldn't tell you exactly what kind of fish they look like. Maybe clownfish.

I don't think I'm being racist or sexist. It's just a fact that women of certain races tend to sometimes resemble certain other species. Probably men do too, but I don't spend a lot of time looking at men.

So a fair proportion of Asian women look like fish. And a goodly herd of white women look like cows. My point is that I'm not putting Asian women down for tending to resemble our ichthyological cousins. I'm just making what I think is an appropriate comparison.

So why would I lust after women who look like fish? Well, high cheekbones. Big eyes. Big lips. These are some of the features that set Asian women apart, give them their distinct look. And fishwomen, as I've noted, have them in the extreme. So, if, like me, you've got a thing for Asians, then what's not to like? What's not to drool over, crave, jerk off over? What's not to absolutely helplessly adore?

So I saw her fishy face and said yes, yes, yes. She sat down next to me, giggling nervously. I guess she'd never been that close to a big white orangutan before. And I had never been that close to a fish. So we were both nervous, giddy, excited. Interspecies introductions tend to go that way, I suppose.

Then they brought in another girl. She wasn't very fishy; her lips were big enough (to understate horribly), fat little puckers glistening with ruby lipstick, like the best thing one could ever conceive of to stick a cock in. But she also had little eyes and plumpish rounded cheeks. Not fishy. But gorgeous. I wanted her, fishy or not. But she was for Tran's consideration, not mine. I had already hooked my fish, or vice-versa. We were both wriggling, but we weren't going to let each other go.

The new girl also had something else sizable. Two things. So even with my fish in hand, I felt a bit envious of Tran: I like Asians, and they aren't known for their huge chests, but an Asian girl who does have a healthy shelf definitely gets me going. So imagine my shock when Tran said flatly (so to speak), without hesitation, "No. Sorry."

Jesus, I thought, maybe he's a fish man too. Or maybe he's going blind.

The next candidate was quite petite, much more so than my fish, who seemed downright jumbo for an Asian lassie. Her breasts were bigger than Fish's, though (which isn't saying much), and her features were fine, in the sense that she had small, regular eyes, nose, mouth, etcetera. She was an Asian doll, no doubt, but an Asian Barbie doll: unquestionably but (to my eyes) unspectacularly beautiful. Tran laughed and invited her over.

She started to sit near him, but he launched her toward me, laughing explosively. "Two for you! You want two girls, right? Ok?!"

She nestled down next to me on the other side from fish. Like Fish, she kept giggling and glancing at me. If I had known this was Tran's plan I'd have told him to choose the second girl. The one with the ineffably fuckable pucker.

But I'm not the kind of guy to send any girl away. If she's Asian. I had heaven in each hand, a heavenly Barbie and a heavenly Fish. Who was I to complain?

Tran took the next gal for himself, a round-faced cutie with a very respectable volume of titflesh and a dress that left no doubt of it. If I were marketing her I'd use the name 'Top Shelf.' Normally I would have been envious, but I didn't have time for that.

Even with the small-breast factor, I had my hands full. I had never really been with two girls before. Not two girls that I was free to kiss and fondle at the same time. I hadn't realized how hard it was to give enough attention to both. I knew from the start that I preferred Fish, but any man gets turned on by any new pretty woman, and Barbie was not exactly hideous.

I would spend a few minutes with her, kissing her face, feeling her breasts through her dress, whispering sweet nothings in her ear. They really were nothings, because she had no idea what I was saying. Then I would remember Fish (as if I'd forgotten) and give her the same treatment. Then I would relax for a bit, sip some beer, chat and laugh with Tran, enjoying the feeling of having my arms casually wrapped around the waists of these two sweeties.

I was reasonably close to a state of nirvana. It wasn't perfect; of course I would have preferred that these bright flowers let me revel in their exotic charms completely of their own free will, not just because they needed money. Because they were doing it for a living, they weren't exactly returning my attentions with fervor. They were probably crashingly bored, just like I always was back at my job in the States whenever I had to enter yet another piece of data into the computer.

But at one point Barbie got up and left the room to pee. I decided to take the opportunity to really concentrate on the fresh young Fish that sat beside me. I had already told her she had beautiful lips, with Tran translating. Now I began kissing those lips lovingly. I massaged each one in its turn with my own lips, then both, coaxing them to open. Finally they parted a little. I kissed the wetness that was revealed, holding back my tongue until I felt hers push indolently into my mouth.

Her tongue was thick, sluggish, sticky. She just sat there with it lolling in my mouth like a sea cucumber lying on the ocean floor. Her mouth tasted slightly sweet, slightly like rotten teeth, slightly like fish. I felt like a deep sea diver who had found the treasure he was looking for. The treasure was a Fish, and I was kissing her.

That's when I knew that this gorgeous young fish wanted me to make love to her.

After a few minutes Barbie came back and we casually pulled apart. I went back to alternating between the two. But fish and I knew, and even Barbie could tell, that Fish was the one I really lusted for. She suddenly blurted out, "I love you."

I know, given the circumstances, that it is absurd to think that she was even remotely close to loving me. But I loved hearing it anyway from the big sexy mouth of that soft young fish girl.

After that we just did some more cuddling, kissing, giggling and the like. At one point Fish and Barbie huddled, I'm sure to decide which one was going to try to hook up a pipeline to the white ape's cash. I had no fear that they would come to the wrong conclusion.

After a while I mentioned that I was hungry. The girls excitedly agreed to join Tran and me for dinner. They ran out to change. I looked at Tran and said, as seriously as I could, "I love the Fish."

His English is pretty good, but he didn't get my analogy. "Which one you like?"

When he finally got my drift he told me her name. It was difficult, but it sounded like "Quan Yin," the female Chinese Buddhist deity, which is pretty appropriate. But I preferred Fish.

I sat there anticipating tasting fish at a restaurant. But then somebody got the hilarious idea of introducing me to all the rent-a-gals who worked at that fine establishment. I went into there holding pen, where they were lined up on a long couch watching a throbbing dance video. There were seven or eight of them including Fish, Barbie and Top Shelf, and they all started laughing wildly when I stepped into the room. I guess I really was, to them, like some massive white ape on the loose. But with all that firm young Asian flesh grinning at me I felt like an ape in heaven.

Then someone had the further cute idea of dancing to the throbbing video. I got up and danced with abandon, as usual, but all they did was laugh. And laugh. Until they were falling over. I prefer to think that they were laughing with me, not at me. But I didn't really care. I love to perform for young Asian girls. But through it all I kept an eye on Fish. She's the one I really wanted to perform for.

But then the manager of the place, a nice guy who looked like Chairman Mao, started asking me if I could track down an old American buddy of his from the war days. Before I knew it all the girls had slipped out, and after about the twenty-third round of telling Mao that I'd try to find the guy but it wouldn't be easy, Tran suddenly said, "Let's go."

I feebly inquired about our plans for a grand banquet with Fish and the other assorted savories, but he just said, "Okay, but then the disco happened; no more dinner."

I was too baffled to even get him to explain. Besides, I thought that maybe they didn't want to be seen in public with me after the show that I had put on. If that was the case, I didn't want to know it for sure. So I reluctantly got on the back of Tran's bike and we headed off into the night in search of beer, Tran's favorite substance.

I was of course devastated about having let that amazing young tuna with the undersea lips slip through my net. I wasn't content with being able to tell my chums back in the States about the one that got away. I had to have her, I had to let her scales fall away and plunge into her raw pungent sweat-salt fish-flesh with my ravening harpoon. I had to. But I didn't think I'd get to do it the very next day.

Some of what I was feeling must have gotten through to Tran's beer-pickled brain, because the next morning he called to say that he had set up a meeting for me with Fish. She was coming to my hotel at about three pm. I was overjoyed, thinking of how I would fillet her, but I was also a bit worried. My hotel had once been a residence for American military officers, and so the Viet Cong had inherited it when they took over the city. So now the Vietnamese military still ran the place. So the security was great, with imposing-looking guys in uniform protecting all the entrances, elevators and stairs. But it also meant that, unlike at the privately-run hotels in Ho Chi Minh City, guests were frowned upon in the rooms. I foresaw trouble when fish swam in.

But my concern was hard to communicate with Tran over the phone. I decided to just let whatever happened, happen.

I went downtown to stroll around, have some tea, try to get my mind off of Fish. But it was no use. I was obsessed with the idea that she would soon be surrendering her strange beauty to me.

I was back in my room by noon, on my bed, tossing and turning in the rising heat, baking in my lust for her. Hot weather doesn't exactly act as an aphrodisiac for me, especially in the afternoon, when I turn sluggish even in polar weather. But thinking of Fish cut through all that. She was so cute, so firm, so beautifully weird-looking. I tried to deny my erection its due, tried to save all my passion for the real thing, but it was no use. I got up and jerked off at the bathroom sink, then flopped back into bed feeling sullied, spent, drained. I was running with sweat, gulping for air like a fish out of water. I had betrayed my Fish, spread my tartar sauce on a barren platter. Her juicy secrets awaited me, anticipating, but now I might have nothing, no lust with which to fill her underwater cave. I was deboned, a jellyfish with no sting.

I slowly drifted off in a fog of self-loathing. I had come six thousand miles to this exotic land, burning bridges behind me, building new bridges toward gorgeous ecstasy, only to jerk off into a sink. I could, as I often did, have done that at home.

I woke up in a haze of ringing bells. It was the phone.

"Hello?" My voice was marshy with phlegm.

"Hello Misa Bob. I'm here. I'm Quan Yin." Fish's splintered English was even harder to decipher over the phone. But I'd know the voice of that sizzling minnow anywhere. I told her I'd be right down. My heart was pounding madly.

She was sitting in one of the elegant lobby chairs. She looked dangerously young in her fashionably torn jeans, tight bright sweater and tiny fashion-statement backpack. I realized with panic as she jumped up, her fishy grin huge and ecstatic, her arms outstretched, beckoning, that I didn't even know how old she was. I had never asked. But she could easily have lied anyway. What if she were underage?

I was hard enough for a pampered albino ape like me to live in a Vietnamese hotel, let alone a Vietnamese prison. Jesus, they would have no mercy on an American interloper caught desecrating their young Quan Yin. She might be a fish, but I felt like I was going to be the main course at the fish fry.

I responded to her succor half-heartedly, and she seemed to get the picture right away. Luckily, the Fish had a head on her shoulders.

She led me over to the front desk, where they explained what I already knew, that room visits were usually not permitted, and in any event Fish didn't have her ID with her. That last bit of info got me sweating and pounding anew. Why else would she 'forget' her ID, except that she didn't want her age revealed? I felt sick. I felt as if all the eyes in that place, those of the front desk staff, the other guests, and especially the guards in their martial uniforms, were trained on me. Me and Fish. I looked at her weakly.

"They think something's fishy."

Of course she didn't understand, but she understood exactly. With hand gestures she told me she was going to make a call. I knew she would try to get in touch with Tran. She went to the public phone. I sat in a lobby chair off to the side, but I still felt under the gun, under the scrutiny of those stern young members of the People's Army. I tried to will myself not to exist, but my meditation skills weren't quite up to the task. Not even close. I felt huge, a beached white whale surrounded by army ants who would waste no time in stripping my carcass to polished ivory if they got the chance.

Fish came back.

"I call Tran. Tran come. We wait."

"Oh! Okay."

I loved her voice. It was the essence of bubble gum, pink elastic sweetness popping from her mouth in a spray of fishy spittle. But right now that bright pink music just made me cringe.

I tried to smile casually. We sat there next to each other, thankfully separated by a mirror-polished coffee table. Fish looked happy. Innocently happy. But I thought I detected an edge of worry too. Maybe she was reconsidering this tryst with the hoary money-laden ape from far away.

I kept trying to look casual, normal, reassuring, cool. But I wasn't doing something normal. Maybe I had known that all along. Maybe it was really her youth and not her strange fishy beauty that had lured me. And I didn't want to look too reassuring. Too in-control, too smug, too—fatherly. And I certainly couldn't really feel cool, even with the hotel's frigid air conditioning. Sweat was running all over my body, making my clothes slip and slide every time I moved an inch.

After an infinite number of eternities Tran showed up. Fish explained the situation to him. He laughed and said, "Don't worry, sir!" That was his favorite line of reassurance, but with his shock of unruly hair, beer-ravaged eyes and careless grin he looked an awful lot like a greasy pimp arranging a tawdry screw for his hot little property and some well-heeled trick. Actually, that's pretty much what he was, except that he was working pro bono. What a guy. But I couldn't blame him. He was only giving me what I wanted, what I had been seeking all along when I boarded a plane to fly far away from the troubles, sadness and chaos of my life in the USA: a ticket to the far reaches of the sexual wilderness. But was it going to be a one-way ticket?

"Come with me, sir!" We followed Tran to the front desk, where the gorgeous clerk in the immaculate blue ao dai didn't seem to react too reassuringly to whatever Tran said. But he kept grinning.

Fish and I followed him again, sheepishly, like two ludicrously mismatched innocents who had bonded solely through the shared knowledge of their impending slaughter. The uniformed guards seemed to multiply, until they outnumbered the milling crowd of hotel guests, until they filled the lobby, pushing the guests aside, a platoon of young men drilled and trained to stop Caucasoid ogres like me from plucking and ravishing the beauteous flowers of youth that grew rampant in the lush green hills of the motherland. In their starched uniforms they looked a lot more like NVA than VC, but they also looked fully capable of engaging in warfare, whether in a muddy jungle or a spic and span hotel lobby. I kept following Tran to the elevator alongside fish, wondering when they were going to bare their bayonets.

We got on with several other guests. Tran smiled and pushed the button for the second floor. It looked like we would soon be cruising upward toward heaven.

Then one of the stern guards jumped into the elevator, barked sharply at Tran, reached up, jammed a big red button that froze the elevator in place with the doors open.

I froze too. The sweat that swam on my body turned to ice. My heart, plunged to absolute zero, stopped beating.

I felt like the guy in Midnight Express, with all the eyes, guns, and hatred in the country focused upon his hashish-laden body. I had no hash. No illicit substances concealed from sight. But I did have a seemingly innocent, sweet, virginal, fishy-looking young woman beside me. And, truth be told, I had really pursued her because deep inside I felt her youth and her bizarre beauty would be an intoxicant, an opiate, a tonic against the pain of the open wounds that covered my soul after the mocked promises, the humiliation, the crushing deaths, the love found and lost that filled the bitter years since my last visit to this place.

But Fish was not a drug, and she was not some lower species. She was a woman. I broke through my icy fear, broke apart that frozen moment, to smile at her. She smiled back.

The guard ordered all three of us politely but firmly off of the elevator. I started wondering what the food was like in Vietnamese prisons.

Tran laughed and headed jauntily for the front exit.