Glory Ho

Writhing. It’s not a word that should be used lightly. It indicates pain and suffering. But that day I saw it. 

I’m certain that the idea of “snorkeling”, in most beaches across the earth was started by some marketing genius to make tourists feel “active” after all the Coronas and lying around. So at least I knew, as we counted the pesos and lopped our legs over the side and hissed open a cold Tecate, I knew that this excursion was just putting a little wind into my hairstyle.

Luckily after 45 minutes of ho hum snorkeling, we saw an octopus.

I have this playground of images which live in an old pirate trunk at the back of my mind. Creatures which I full well know are real, but remain mythical and monstrous until I actually see them in person without the presence of fences or glass. Giraffes live there. Sharks. Gorillas. And definitely octopuses.

When it was first thrown onto the beach by our mustached, Mexican guide , it wasn’t writhing. With all eight arms–or were they legs–slithering in cartoon-like coordination, the octopus wasn’t squeezing some diver to death. The octopus was only walking, just trying to go home, back to the water. He was scary and scared all together, with iridescent, army-green skin and a layer of viscous slime.

But then we watched that Mexican turn that boneless creature’s head inside out, clutch the brain and toss it into the Gulf. All the octopus’s defense mechanisms–an ink sac, color camouflage, arm detachment to distract a predator–were each a merely fascinating Animal Planet factoid in the face of a human.

Then we heard the octopus cry, its toothed tongue rasping for life. A wheezing sound one makes when they are laughing so hard that they can’t breathe.

Then. We watched the octopus die, all three of its hearts slowing to a stop on the beach.

On the way home, the wind tied knots in my hair, the octopus lie still on the floor and my eyes followed the scalloped V of our wake.