Three Tiny Shellfish Stories

Another college creative writing assignment. The title (originally "The Shellfish on My Mind") says it all.

I. Oysters of the Sound

It must have been mid-November. My father and I drove the 175 miles from Portland to Seattle mostly in a grey silence. I’m sure it rained, or was going to, during the car ride - I can’t remember because I had conveniently tucked my mind away into sleep as I slouched in the passenger seat. The purpose of our trip was to visit an arts college as a prospective student. But very quickly, that goal became vastly overshadowed by the disease of tourism. It was somehow decided that Dad and I would spend hours each day searching for parking spaces, desperately hiding our dry hair under thin rain jacket hoods, perusing the maze of Pike Place Market, and testing the local cuisine.

One afternoon, after a guided tour of my possible future undergrad institution, we parked beneath an overpass and trekked down to the waterfront. Elliott’s Oyster Bar was situated firmly on one of the long piers that stretched out into the lapping water of the harbor. The name of the establishment did not frighten me - rather, I welcomed it as a challenge, a rite of passage into adulthood. If I could precariously shove a blob of raw crustacean innards down my gullet without it somehow landing back on my plate, surely I could do anything - including get accepted into the school.

Cold, extremely wet, pungent, and surprisingly sandy, the ingestion of my first oyster proved to be an anticlimactic moment in history. I liked it - I suppose? It had been a similar sensation of knocking back an uncooked egg yolk, resisting the temptation to bite down and accidentally allow your tastebuds to sample the thing in your mouth, leaving you in bitter momentary disgust. As I blinked in uneasiness and reached for my glass of soda, a thought crossed my mind: Is that what college will feel like?

II. Crab for a Cakeless Birthday

My mother’s new kitchen was filled with the salty aroma of the Pacific Ocean as a six-legged crustacean steamed inside a big steel pot.

My father and I once trolled for crab off the coast, in a little rented motorboat; he ended up doing the vast bulk of the labor, as I was young and too scared to help him retrieve such spidery-looking creatures. Even back then, I knew that crabs could not eat humans alive (let alone at all) - but whether I got pinched or devoured by the little sea dwellers, I dared not handle them. Now, it was my nineteenth birthday, and for reasons I cannot now recall, I craved Dungeness crab and wanted to eat it as a birthday dinner with my mom.

When it was time to set the table, I entered the kitchen to receive an armful of dinner plates. There, nested in a bowl on the coffee table, was the crab carcass. My mom was not the most graceful when it came to preparing gourmet meals, so there were bits of shell and cartilage splintering the tiny chunks of white, opaque crab flesh. Later, when I popped some of the meat into my mouth, I was honestly disappointed - as much as I enjoy seafood, I did not find my eyes rolling back in pure bliss, like I half-expected to happen. The crab meat tasted a little too much like it had lived at the bottom of the salty sea. Crestfallen, I wondered why I hadn’t played it safe and just requested a cake with candles.

III. Lobster - The Immortal Ocean Crawler

Had I not chosen to make a trip to the grocery store that afternoon, surely I would have all but given up on my passionate dream of one day tasting lobster.

Lobster! It’s a funny name for a funny-looking shellfish. Its claws are gigantic in proportion to its spiny legs and, much like the aforementioned crab, would break the skin of your finger if the claw somehow ensnared it. But its tiny, beady eyes - they look like dark capers lodged between the long, flowery antennae - suggest a look of eternal, peaceful ignorance. An existence which is, literally, eternal, since biological evidence points to the fact that lobsters have the ability to live forever.

And yet, I had made the decision to deprive three lobsters of their immortality that day. BUY ONE GET TWO FREE said the orange plastic sign behind the glass of the frozen seafood display - and so I did. Hours later, I unwrapped one of the lobsters from its wax paper casket. I realize now why some people are so creeped out by such beings - lacking visible eyelids, they can give the impression of staring at everything and everyone, though seeing nothing...like a crawling ghost from the shoreline. Nevertheless, I followed Julia Child’s instructions and briefly steamed the dead shellfish in my biggest pot.

The labor required in separating the meat from the lobster shell might be another justification for not wanting to prepare this crustacean for dinner; this process requires a nutcracker or kitchen shears, a large knife, and a small nut pick. By the time you finish gutting the flesh from the lobster, it will almost certainly be too cold for enjoyment; so it is best to just eat the meat as you dig it out of the shell. Despite the messiness and painstaking caution, however, the reward is beyond compare. When Julia remarked that there is really no gastronomic experience that can compare to the taste of lobster, she did not joke around.

As I took a long-awaited bite of my very first butter-drenched lobster claw meat, the intensity of the flavor caused my eyes to slowly close in utter joy. I eagerly tore through the rest of the lobster’s flesh - a process which surprisingly took over twenty minutes. I smiled as I chewed, realizing that a relatively small yet extremely important item had been crossed off my bucket list much, much earlier than expected.

Author's Note

Honestly, not too much effort put into this one, so I know it's clearly not my best work. With that in mind, all constructive criticism is welcome!