Hagfish

Hagfish have been around for over 300 million years and they’ve barely evolved. Researchers believe this is due to the fact that they have a defense mechanism so effective, there’s been no real need to change. When under attack, glands lining their body release a protein that transforms into slime the moment it hits the water, expanding 10,000 times its original size. This means a few tablespoons of protein turns into into a five gallon cloud of snot. The gills of the predator get clogged and the threat of suffocation causes them to flee.

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If you google “hagfish,” you’ll see pictures of the most common species, an eely looking freakshow with anemic-pink skin attached to its body like a loose tube sock. Comblike-teeth that move horizontally and what’s called “a rasping tongue” allow them to rip flesh from carcasses foraged from the ocean floor. Boring holes into carrion face-first, they eat from the inside out. 

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A YouTube video shows a group of hagfish tearing flesh from the bloated carcass of a whale. 

In a different video, a cloud of slime blooms within the jaws of a shark, hagfish slipping away.

One article describes their anatomy. Five hearts, boneless, and blind. 

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What does it feel like, the teeth of a shark closing down over you?

I shut my computer and stare into the dark. An undertow pulls at my ankles. Wants to sweep me out to sea.

Will my daughter know it too?

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Hey! I want a defense mechanism so effective evolution is unnecessary for millions of years!

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Where on my body would slime glands go, I wonder?

Glands in my nose would be too gross.

I picture them budding from the smooth surface of my cervix, enhancing its natural slip.

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For 10 years, my husband and I have had a recurring fight.

He always ate 80 percent of the cookies, always chocolate chip and always baked by me. 100 percent of the time, he finished the last one. 

Once, I’d rushed home from work anticipating the pleasure of a choco-chipper microwaved for 10 seconds and consumed in three bites, only to find he’d eaten the last one again.

How can you do this to me? I hissed at him under my breath.

I’m not doing anything TO you, he hissed back. I wasn’t even thinking of you.

*

One reason I love my husband is that when he’s an asshole, he’s an honest asshole. He ate the last cookie a dozen more times before the issue surfaced in couple’s counseling, and he admitted to this pattern without shame.

My love language is you not eating the last of the fucking cookies that I baked, I said, kicking my commitment to nonviolent communication to the curb.

*

After 10 years of eating the last cookie, my husband finally apologized. 

I was an only child, he said, and I’m not used to accommodating others. But I understand eating the last cookie, every time, is inconsiderate.

His apology moves me. Within minutes, everything slips.

*

Hagfish are called snot snakes, I say aloud, searching under the comforter for my underwear. 

Huh? my husband asks, wobbling on one leg, his foot probing for the leg-hole of his jeans.

Suddenly halved by pelvic pain, I sit on the edge of the bed until it passes.

*

Growing up, I had a neighbor who loved to make his pecs dance for the ladies.

On hot summer days, he’d strut down to the beach in a Speedo, where he’d tan on a square of reflective foil. He’d occasionally stand to flex his lats and slather oil over his quads. Mostly, he loved to assess the physicality of any woman in a bathing suit.

I’d submerge myself underwater to avoid his gaze, lifting just my nose and eyes above the surface, like a crocodile. I’d imagine sprinkling salt over his oiled body, extra pepper. I’d cinch the four corners of the reflective foil, sliding him smoothly into the hot oven.

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Would you get a look at those gams, Speedo said to me. Keep at it, he said, winking, because if you don’t, you’ll end up looking like them.

He pointed to a group of women I loved.

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He used to go door to door selling knives, my mother told me. Can you imagine?

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What did he say, anyway, in his polyester suit, holding a display case of knives? 

Ma’am, why don’t you clear your kitchen table and fix up a nice pot of coffee while I show you how these knives will improve your days. Oh, you already own a set? Let’s take a look. Haha, aren’t you sweet, these are cheap, so cheap they’re dangerous. I’m going to offer you a 15 percent discount, since frugality is a virtue until you lose a finger. No, no. No need to wait until your husband comes home, I don’t like it when my time is wasted and I’m sure he doesn’t either, how about another coffee while you grab your checkbook, that’s right, you need the right tools for the most sacred room in the home, a woman’s kitchen. Congrats, hon, we just made your life better, and before I leave, I’m sure you have some friends who need an upgrade to their happiness too?

Slime would work well against high pressure sales, I suspect.

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An 81-year-old friend recently shared a secret with me that she’d only ever spoken within the wooden box of a Catholic confessional.

She’d birthed eight children, all of them still living. The birth of her seventh child was so difficult it almost killed her, as well as her baby. At 31, her vagina was prolapsed, her blood pressure out of control. Her husband worked 80 hour weeks to put food on the table, yet there was still never enough to eat. Her church did not allow the use of birth control, since artificial contraception was considered evil.

When she discovered she was pregnant for the eighth time, she did not tell her husband. Instead, she got the name of an out-of-state abortion doctor. But she could not afford the travel, the cost of the procedure, or the time away from her kids. The birth of her 8th child was excruciating - a three day back labor followed by near-fatal hemorrhaging upon the baby’s arrival. Within a month, her new son was diagnosed with cerebral palsy and a seizure disorder. In his 50s now, he still lived with her. He’s the most charming of all my children, she told me. A wizard in the kitchen.

Her secret was not that she loved him best - which was true - but that she’d believed for most of her life that her son was born with disabilities because God had punished her for seeking an abortion. 

When she confessed this deep-seated fear in confession, the priest behind the anonymity screen scolded her. God does not give us more than we can handle. 

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The skin of the hagfish is loosely attached to the body along the ridge of its back and filled with almost a third of its blood, making it look like a blood-filled tube.

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In the late 80s, the toy I loved most was called the Water Snake, a pliable plastic tube filled with liquid. Designed to allow movement within the tube, it was nearly impossible to hold, which is what made it fun. The moment you applied the grip needed to hold it, the pressure would displace liquid and send it slipping from your hand.

Unless you practiced, of course.

Catch! I’d holler, and fling the Water Snake through the air to my sister, who would snatch it from its projectile but find it impossible to hold long enough to fling back.

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When I met my 81-year-old friend’s son, I was attracted to his dry sense of humor and his green eyes.

We connected over social media, connected more due to a shared love for French cooking and Ricky Gervais. There’s nothing more arrogant than praying to a god who didn't stop the Holocaust, thinking he’ll help you find your car keys, he posted.

I hearted it, then hearted a photo of his beef bourguignon, considered the mother of all stews.

*

It was an especially boring CCD class that I skipped in order to take my mother’s car without permission to my boyfriend’s house, where I smoked my first menthol cigarette and dry-humped him on the hood of her car.

On the way back to CCD, I prayed to God to wipe the shit-eating grin off my face.

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When I was 13, I spent the summer kicking everyone’s ass at Spit, a lively card game dependent on quick hand-eye coordination. 

On the last day of our summer, before we packed up to head home, my sister beat me. She punched the air with joy and I lunged across the table, slapping her across the face.

Her expression proved I was godless. For the next two days I spiraled with self-hatred until I got the oves to apologize.

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Occasionally victim to their own friendly-fire, hagfish can sneeze to clear mucus from their single nostril.

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I had a boyfriend in my 20s who was so committed to poetry, he once rhymed “bitch” with “Filet-O-Fish” and the poem was about my pussy. After telling him the poem was humiliating, he read it again in public a week later.

After refusing to speak to him for a week, I caved and agreed to a walk through a park to hear what he had to say. After a stretch of silence under towering pine, he wheeled around to face me, his face pink with fury. If I wanted to be his girlfriend, I could not police his writing.

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Five years later, I attended a reading he gave at a coffee shop.

Time tends to bleed men of immaturity, I convinced myself, struggling to get comfortable in a thin plastic chair.

This is for Lauren, he said to the small crowd, grinning. It’s called Filet-O-Fish.

*

He sent me snail mail. 

In one poem, handwritten on the back of a napkin stained with coffee, he rhymed rabies with labia. The poem was about girls giving him head in a dirty van.

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Some hagfish species are endangered due to destructive fishing practices. This is especially problematic in areas where cod, haddock, and flounder are commercially fished and bycatch discarded. The water suffers, since the bycatch rots at the bottom, and there just aren’t enough hagfish to clear away the death.

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A flat mate from northern England once told me he’d put pubic hairs in my milk if I refused to go on a date with him.

It was my first week in a new country, so I chalked up the strange behavior to cultural differences. Perhaps some Monty Python absurdist humor, must be.

Later in the week, suitcases unpacked and excited for classes to start, I went out for a pint and a game of snooker with a group of friends. At the end of the night, he tried to kiss me, and I politely refused.

The next evening, when I got home, he was in my bed. If you want to sleep, he said, you’ll have to go somewhere else.

As the weeks went on, I became skilled at avoiding him. During long stretches at the library, I satisfied my longing for sweetness by stuffing my face with English chocolate and tea biscuits, gaining twenty pounds in under six months. 

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Some research shows hagfish can absorb nutrients directly through their skin.

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When I returned to the states after my year abroad, I sat across a dirty table from my ex-boyfriend, whom I was still fucking. Over a coffee, he told me that he and his friends had rated most of the girls on campus.

I was a 5/10. If I were 30 percent smaller, I’d be a 7.

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At work, an old man with lips the color of raw liver told me he’d looked at my website and saw a picture of me with short hair, which he did not prefer. I moved his walker out of the way and supported his elbow to help ease him into the reclining chair, where he’d receive the medical treatment I was trained in.

Cripes, did he ever hate it when women styled their hair like men! 

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Home after work that evening, I touched the cotton gusset of my underwear. I’d ovulated a week early.

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A middle-aged man inquired if I would give him a better treatment if he paid more.

When I told him that wasn’t something I did, he laughed and assured me that money was not an issue for him.

So what will I get if I pay more, he asked.

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When hagfish slime is stretched and dried, it makes a soft thread that can be woven into durable fabric. One website claims garments prepared from hagfish fiber have bulletproof properties, like Kevlar.

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When I finally saw a D.O. to address neck pain I’d been ignoring, the doctor, a man in his 60s, was holding my head in his hands when he began venting about our country.

The downfall can be traced to women entering the workforce, he said, his voice thinning, thumbs pushing into neck. I know you own a clinic, he acknowledged, clearing his throat, but‍ ‍the truth is that -

Before he could say another word, I pulled my paper gown aside, spread my legs, and covered him in 5 gallons of snot. 

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On the way home I sat on a garbage bag so the driver’s seat wouldn’t get soaked.

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After devouring two tins of sardines, their silver flesh smothered in ground mustard and smeared over sesame crackers, I shed my clothes and stepped outside to absorb some sun.

No one needs to see those old tits! yelled a teenage boy from his bike, laughing and pumping his legs to speed away.

No need to disrobe, I aim and fire, instantly knocking him from his bike.

I release another stream of goo, just to scare him good, and he crawls to his knees, crying for his mom.

Attempting to stand up, he slips. Lands on his back.

*

Sliming that asshole leaves me ravenous. Fist plunged into the cookie jar, my fingers scrape the bottom.

There’s a familiar ache in my pelvis.

My husband will be home within the hour, and I can’t wait to see him.