plenty of fish

Oh goody! An aquarium in Rockville has recently received a new shipment of puffer fish.  Made plans to go out to pick out a new one and then go to grab sushi later.

I like the poetic-ness of taking my newly acquired pet fish to a raw fish consumption orgy. Sort of like bringing your new puppy to a Chinese restaurant. Or taking a fat, meaty travel companion on an inadequately fueled plane and flying aimlessly over the Andes.

Currently I have two puffer fish and a whole bunch of other fish, none of which have names of note. In a previous tank, I had a school of five angel fish:

1) Fishy Cent – the one that started it all… a big black angel fish with a giant chunk missing out of his top fin. Seemed fitting.

2) Ludafish

3) Swim Shady

4) Ja Pool

5) Lil’ Fin

Apparently you’re not supposed to put angel fish together in the same tank because they’re territorial and/or fight and kill each other. In hindsight, maybe it was sort of racist to give the fish rapper names and then set them up for turf war and east/west tank rivalries.

When we moved and had to give the fish away, we put an ad on Craigslist. The guy who responded was this cut black guy who rolled up to our little apartment with his hoochie rap video extra of a girlfriend. Was it progressive or apologetic of me to be sort of embarassed by the fish names in front of their new owners?

For some reason I always feel as though black people have a rightful monopoly on all things hip and cool.  Even though I am a “woman of color” for the purposes of distinguishing me from the type of white men I tend to work with (golfing, brandy-swilling lawyers wearing pleated trousers belted at nipple height), I’m constantly reminded that I’m not what the coiners of the term had in mind. Kind of like when my mom got all excited by a shampoo sale at CVS and bought a dozen bottles of New Pantene Hair Care for Women of Color, then had to shuffle shamefacedly back to the store and return them all, explaining to the store clerk in her broken English that she thought the line was for dyed hair.

Well, all this talk about fish and Craigslist brings me back to my original task that I had gotten sidetracked from: exploring a dating site that my friends introduced me to this past weekend, plentyoffish.com. I’m going to go check it out – stay tuned…