Chapter 3

The kiss left me a little woozy. Was it the loss of sleep, lack of food, collapse of Adrenalin levels or was that some kind of electricity I had felt when our lips touched?

Elaine also appeared to be a bit out of it, but then she had been near death not long ago.

“Right, then”, I stated firmly. “Time to get this ‘shew’ on the road. We need to find more food sources than bananas and what little I managed to scavenge on my way off the tub.”

Elaine insisted on introducing reality. “How will we know what is edible and what is poisonous? Have you had survival training”?

“This is what is called on-the-job training. I will pick out what I think is safe, then get someone else to eat it first. If they don’t die, then I will try it.”

“So you expect me to be a Guinea pig”?

“Do you have a better solution? If I am the taster and have a bad reaction, are you prepared to take care of me or carry on without me?”

“Oh”, she said in a small voice.

“Don’t worry, I have nearly as much to lose as you do if I make a bad choice.”

“Oh? And how is that”?

“Compare my life here without you, with my life here with you. What do you see?”

“Do men never think about anything other than sex?”

“Spoken like a true woman. Does it never occur to women that the only advantage a woman has over a fist is the emotional aspect? An orgasm is an orgasm. What makes it more pleasurable for me is the companionship, intimacy and emotional contact with a woman. Otherwise, why would any man give up his freedoms, hobbies, sports cars and essentially all his money to one woman, while swearing to forsake all others when he has an alternate sexual release solution growing at the end of his arm”?

“Hmmmnh. I never heard it put that way before.” At least she was listening.

“Men are biologically programmed to spread our seed far and wide, to insure survival of the species, but women are programmed to seek security above all, hence the concept of marriage. If men did not value the love and support of a good wife, there would be no incentive to marry.”

“Wow! You certainly go off the deep end when somebody asks a question, don’t you”? She managed a smile.

“Sorry about that. You just tripped over one of my hot buttons. It has become fashionable to portray men as some sort of flawed creature, simply because we respond to our biological imperatives. Wanting something viscerally and controlling those urges through learned civil behavior are two different things. Women who are hurt when their mate looks at another attractive female with obvious appreciation may feel threatened, but do themselves and their relationship harm when failing to give him credit for not acting in response to his attraction.”

“Ok, ok. So when do I start my Guinea pig chores or do you plan to pontificate all day”?

I was relieved that she had not gone off in a huff as I might have expected. Perhaps her earlier brush with death was still fresh on her mind and she was willing to cut me some slack under present conditions. Luckily for me, I had no competition at present. I was still leery of her mental state and resolved to keep an eye out for further signs of instability.

“For a start, let’s look for some edible fruit or nuts. Then we can look for some sort of potatoes and green leafy things. The poisonous plants that I remember reading about seem to be certain types of mushrooms, which we can ignore, and perhaps some fruits, but I think we will be fairly safe if we limit our early trials to small bites.”

“What about fish?”

“Damn! You have a way with the obvious, don’t you? Why didn’t that occur to me right away? Hey! You’re not just a pretty face ... and legs ... and a killer ass ... and...”

“Men”!, was all she said as she led the way to the beach.

I would follow that killer ass anywhere, but she also had a good point. Not only does it take two to Tango, but it frequently takes more than one to see the obvious. Now if I can think of some way to catch a fish besides out-swimming it, we might have something to eat soon.

We got to the beach and began scanning the surf, then it dawned on me why I hadn’t immediately thought of fish as a food source. I had never seen a fish in the surf, although I have spent a fair amount of time messing around on various beaches. On an intellectual basis, I know they are out there, but the key word is “out”. We weren’t “out”. We were definitely, “at”.

“Perhaps the fish idea is a good one, but we are not in the right place”, I surmised. “We need to look for some kind of lagoon, where there is no surf or else go back to where the stream runs to the beach and walk back upstream.”

Elaine agreed and we walked back in the direction of the stream, keeping our eyes peeled.

“There, there”!, she squealed, clutching my arm. Even under the dire circumstances, it was impossible to ignore what she was rubbing against my arm.

I tore my eyes away from her and looked where she was pointing. There was a small pool in the stream, not more than a few inches deep and only a few feet in diameter, but there were four beautiful fish lazing about. Do fish never work”?

Elaine was jumping up and down in excitement, making it very hard for me to concentrate on anything else, but I finally managed to work out a plan. It was a version of what I called a “Neanderthal bridge”. It may have taken mankind 50,000 years of evolution to create the Golden Gate bridge, but the strait could have been crossed thousands of years earlier by simply rolling enough boulders into the gap. Granted that it would have taken generations and it would have been hard to convince taxpayers of the necessity, but it could have been done.

Lacking the accessories of “The Compleat Angler” for catching the fish, I simply began rolling boulders into the pool, starting at the lower end, in order to prevent escape to the larger pool downstream. As long as I continued rolling boulders in the pool, the fish would become increasingly easier to catch. This would also give us a creel in which to keep the remaining fish alive and healthy until we needed to eat them. One fish should certainly be adequate for our shrunken bellies at this point.

And Viola! (or voila! for you Quebecoise). Now we have a fish that looked like some kind of Trout. However, we do not have a knife or sharp instrument of any kind.

Once more, Elaine saved our ass. “Why not use a sharp shell?”