The Perfect Chooker
by Colin Sjostedt
I’ll never forget that one time I was stupid enough to even think about that pukefying summer job. I was as dumb as a woodchuck in those days. Not a regular woodchuck either but one of them special ed. jobs with the football helmet and mini yellow bus.
But who in their right little mind could resist the soft sell? MAKE $8,000 IN 10 WEEKS! The finer print mentioned something about a fishing boat in Alaska but I didn’t get past the dollar signs. After suffering through my 2nd year at a big dumb university in Ohio I needed some flash money to attract the ladies. My witty banter at the all-night binge drinking parties was getting me bitch slapped so many times I had calluses on my cheeks. Think about that for a minute. The shallow hootys I wanted to know better would be so pleasantly blinded by my big wad they wouldn’t notice a lack of table manners.
So I called the number and got my info packet in the mail. I glossed over the blather about hard work and lonely nights at sea and got right to the part about swimming in Jackson’s. The money was paid in one lump sum at the end of the summer and the room and board were free. With eyes as big as Hostess Sno-balls, I filled out the application including something called “an accidental death waiver”—whatever.
My parents agreed to pay for my air fare to Anchorage. My mom was saddened that I wouldn’t be coming home to help her weed the garden and sit in with her bridge club but my dad was thrilled that I’d finally be doing some real work. When I told him I would be getting paid to vacation on the high seas drinking daiquiris and occasionally casting a pole he laughed until he was crying.
After a tearful goodbye to my imaginary friends it was off to that special place just left of the Great White North. I was greeted at the airport by a surly, disheveled, stinkbomb that went by the name of Earl. I tried in vain to make small talk with Smellman but he only said, “I’ll be back to gitcha in the morn, Stumpy” as he dropped me at a Motel 6. There was no reservation under my name or the name Stumpy for that matter so I had to pony up $22 of my own sugar for the room. I was awakened by a pummeling at my door at 4am and was soon guided aboard a decrepit schooner lovingly called “The Blackhole”—could this be what my English professor referred to as foreshadowing? I was given the two penny tour along with nine other zombies that looked to be about my age but with half the brain cells—not that I got many myself but these poor blokes looked like they were mentally engraving their tombstones with, “Thank the Lord it’s finally over”.
After viewing the sleeping bunks, cutting tables, packing room, and ice machine it was time for some Q&A. Where was the sunning deck, game room, and cocktail waitresses with the big honey dews and inviting eyes? This was a fishing factory not Club Med I was told. The Love Boat was at the other pier. Okay, okay I get it. Just show me my fishing pole and comfy chair and I’ll get right to work. Frank, who was every bit as dumpy as Earl but smelled much worse, said I was the front runner to be the first guy tossed off the boat and immediately put down $50 to back up his claim.
We were told to get some rest—it would be 20 hours before the first fish started to come in. The zombies got in their bunks and promptly snoozed off. The gently ocean waves had me in a deep slumber only interrupted by vomiting every five minutes. My sweet dreams of costume fitter at Hooters came to an abrupt end with the screaming of grown men and the smell of slippery critters from the deep.
Turns out my cush job involved cutting the heads off fish and packing them in ice—not the heads but the other parts. This task was pretty new and exciting for all of three minutes. The other cutter/packers were working about ten times as fast as I was until I got the hang of it and cut that ratio in half. It was all blood and guts and ice and puke for the next ten weeks. Like a Vegas casino, life aboard “The Blackhole” was timeless. After working for a month only three days had gone by. I cut my hands with the savagely sharp knives so many times that I went through 10 pairs of rubber gloves which, of course, came out of my salary. We worked in shifts day and night.
After the ice was broken I got to talking to my fellow slave workers as we did our glamorous jobs. The range of discourse went from food to sex with nothing in between. We talked about what we would do with our new found wealth. Hookers and steak came up often. What about a hooker that could cook, or a chooker, I wondered? That quickly became our favorite word. Mmmm… gonna get me a fine-ass, blonde Asian chooker that can sow my oats and fry it up in the pan at the same time.
At about the eighth week a strange thing happened. Our imaginary chookers had become real live women with names and family’s and favorite kinds of ice cream. The sex and food talk fell by the wayside as we discussed careers and the ideal place to raise a family with our chookers. I’m gonna live in the suburbs and drive a mini-van with my chooker, exclaimed short balding zombie Steve with glee. Our goofy day--dreaming made the time go by incrementally faster and before I knew it we were coming back to port.
Our newly found emotional maturity disappeared with an audible poof as we got a glimpse of the finest street skank that Anchorage had to offer. These high class dames didn’t even mind our sea stench or desire to be fed greasy burgers during coitus. After getting my fill of ho and turf it was back to the land that is round on the ends and high in the middle.
After a few weeks of home cooking and cable TV it was back to higher education. In my linguistics class this comely cutey that gave me the hollow man treatment for two years was starting to notice me. Maybe I had actually picked up what George C. Scott called “character” in The Hustler. On our first date Shelley opted for the cheapest burger joint in town over the French place. I didn’t even have to burn much of my hard earned flash money. I guess that’s what my English professor would call irony.
Eddie:
How should I play that one, Bert? Play it safe? That’s the way you always told me to play it, safe. Play the percentage. Well here we go, fast and loose. One ball, corner pocket. Yeah, percentage players die broke too, don’t they, Bert? How can I lose? Twelve ball. How can I lose? Because you were right. It’s not enough that ya just have talent. You gotta have character, too. Four ball. Yeah, I sure got character now. I picked it up in a hotel room in Louisville.
Fats:
Shoot pool, Fast Eddie.
Eddie:
I’m shootin’ pool, Fats—when I miss, you can shoot. Five ball. Fourteen ball. Twelve ball…
• Paul Newman in The Hustler, 1961
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