Legend of the Big Fish

I caught the big fish when I was twenty six. I would have liked to do it on my own but luck and fate conspired against me. I had to rely on others, to bait the trap and help me capture before it escaped.

He was thirty and in his prime. For the young, he was a role-model; for the old, his genes mattered; and, the public like doting parents loved him for doing all that they would have loved to do themselves.

When I expressed my desire to snare him, my folks’ response was, ‘You…?!’

But I, or whatever it took, managed to do so. He was undemanding but receptive in those negotiations.

Twenty odd years of education, from an abridged Lorna Doone to the E.L. James trilogy, made me anticipate an erotic and rather selfish romantic conquest of my senses and my body.

In those nervous days before the wedding, I also pictured him on his knees, holding my hands gently and with a sensitive voice telling me truthfully that I am his first and all that he wanted in his life, leaving nearly all of my dreams shattered with that facile victory. The pages of my diary were ready even for such a cruel twist in a wife’s tale.

Contrary to all expectations, reality just chugged along well-used tracks. I can read my future on a page from a discarded unused diary. The days are pleasant and on many a moonlit night, I lie next to my trophy with a bored snore. Some legends are such.