A Soft Core Failure

Sitting in the coffee house I come to everyday to apply to jobs and work on getting ready to move on to the next phase of my life, I remember a story about my friend Vinny I haven’t thought about since he died last August.

Standing in the lobby kitchen of my sophomore dorm, I had a grey New York City sweater on over a denim, polka dot dress. Vinny Kurtz, natural science major, close friend, and general genius, stood next to me in denim jeans and his iconic green tee shirt. In between us was a jar containing one bitchy cow fish. This was our covert exchange. It was Joy that suggested we go to the pet store the weekend our third roommate, Kate, was out of town. We sat on the floor in front of a tank full of fish, looking at all the black and white spotted fish, trying to find one that was identical to Becky, the terror of a fish currently sitting in our room, swimming in our time out jar newly christened “The Bitch Bowl.” At the beginning of the year, Joy, Kate, and I bought a five gallon fish tank and filled it with snails, gold fish, an ill fated blowfish, and the cowfish we were currently trying to replace. Each of us had chosen a favorite fish and regularly doted on them. So, when the cowfish, Becky, began to terrorize the other fish in the tank, Joy and I shuddered in horror as Kate manically laughed and cheered her devil fish on. Joy and I knew something had to be done. Then we found her, Becky 2.0. We acclimated her to our tank and held our breath as she was released among the others. We both sighed as she swam among our gold fish without trying to dive bomb them. And then we turned to the original Becky, furiously swimming in the Bitch Bowl. Vinny arrived within fifteen minutes of getting my text. There was a fish that needed a home, and although his reputation of being unable to keep a fish alive preceded him, Joy and I handed Becky over to him. We documented the moment and sent him on his way.

Six hours after leaving Becky in Vinny’s charge, I received a text message. Becky had managed to die. Undoubtably drawn to Vinny’s penchant for being able to kill any fish he’d ever owned, she had continually rammed herself into the side of her jar.

“Don’t worry though, I donated her body to science,” Vinny’s text was meant as a reassurance that the fish’s death had not gone to waste. He saw an opportunity to observe the inflated swim bladder of a fish, something rare in the specimens regularly dissected in the science department. He gathered his scalpel and several of his friends and performed an autopsy of the bitch fish Becky.