Jellyfish

Dave looked down at his cell phone on the table to the right of the arm of the couch.  Should he call Rachel?  Would she call him?

He wasn’t sure and was only vaguely focusing on the show he was watching, something on the Discovery Channel about jellyfish.  They were going into some detail about the toxicity of the poison, especially that of the box jellyfish.

“Box,” thought Dave.  Disturbing thoughts about sex and neurotoxins floated through his mind.

He’d always been fascinated by jellyfish, the way they didn’t even seem like animals, just semi-transparent globs of drifting flesh with tentacles.  Did they have brains?  How did they see?

The show had a section about how jellyfish navigate their surroundings, but Dave hadn’t quite been able to follow it.

Why weren’t there horror movies about jellyfish?  They didn’t fit the typical blueprint for something scary.  They didn’t have large teeth or angry faces.  They didn’t have a bone-chilling stare.  They weren’t, like most movie monsters, vaguely humanoid, like vampires and werewolves.  They weren’t even really visible, for that matter.  Their semi-transparency perhaps made for poor horror visuals, but to Dave that made them even creepier.  Weren’t ghosts and poltergeists also invisible?

Jim looked back at the cell phone.  What had happened between him and Rachel?

They’d had a high compatibility rating on Match.com and had exchanged e-mails for a while.  That moved to phone calls, and then they finally went out to dinner.  Rachel had seemed pretty nervous at first--fidgety--but during the movie on their second date they were holding hands.

They liked similar movies and music, which made for easy conversation.  They were both fans of Werner Herzog, and Dave had entertained Rachel with the story of how Herzog had held the actor Max Von Sydow at gunpoint when he threatened to walk off the set of Fitzcarraldo.  They discussed Grizzly Man, a documentary on Timothy Treadwell, who tried to commune with grizzlies but had eventually been killed by one.  They’d argued briefly about whether or not some of Treadwell’s final recordings of being killed should have been used in the film--he’d said maybe a little, she said definitely none--but the shared references had given them plenty of material for discussion.

The Discovery show was playing a Jaws-like soundtrack over the image of people swimming at a beach known to harbor box jellyfish.

On a subsequent date, Rachel invited Dave over to her apartment.  They watched Revolutionary Road, about a marriage in the 1950s between a man frustrated with his job and a woman who wanted more than just to raise children.  Perhaps the most interesting character was their neighbor, John, who struggled with debilitating fits of mental illness (he’s called “insane” in the film) but seemed to be the voice of reason.  “Frank and April have an inkling that something is missing from their lives,” remarked Rachel afterwards, “but John realizes that the whole system, the whole world they’re living in, is fucked up.”  Despite Rachel’s sympathies, Dave noticed her turning away during some of John’s outbursts.  They made out on the couch after the movie was over.

Dave wondered again why horror films didn’t feature jellyfish.  Looking at the image on the screen, he decided that they didn’t really appear frightening, just some goop with weeds attached.  They seemed vegetative, and the word “animal” didn’t quite fit with them.

Dave and Rachel were both in their mid-20s and had been in serious relationships before meeting each other.  During their second dinner out, Dave talked about the headaches that occur during a breakup when two people have lived together in the same apartment, the divvying up of furniture and, worst of all, the decision of who would get to keep the cat.  Since April had seemed more attached, Dave had let her keep it.

“So, was your breakup hard as well?” Dave had asked.

Rachel looked down and said, “Yeah, it was rough,” then paused and said, “So, do we want to get any dessert?”

Dave decided that, to him at least, jellyfish were the most frightening creatures on the planet, perhaps for the very reason that they looked so unassuming.  If a person was swimming and saw a shark fin in the water--even 100 feet away--running to shore was a no brainer.  A jellyfish, though, could rub up against your leg and, looking down, you might not even see anything.  It might be some seaweed, or your imagination.  A minute later, you could be screaming from the worst pain in your life and being rushed to the hospital to remove the spiked tentacle embedded in your thigh.

Dave looked back at the cell phone.  It vibrated.  Was it a text from Rachel?  He swiped on the phone and checked.  No, someone had made a move in a word game he was playing.

He should call her.  He hadn’t really done anything wrong but felt like he should apologize.  Or had he done something wrong?  He wasn’t sure.

“The full name of the species is ‘Medusa Jellyfish,’” said the announcer.  “The term ‘Medusa’ was coined in 1752, many years before the term ‘jellyfish’ was used.  Jellyfish are not technically fish...”

Images of Medusa entered Dave’s mind from his days playing Dungeons and Dragons with friends in middle school.  One could escape from paralysis in the game, but in the myth one was permanently turned to stone.

Dave thought about turning off the television but somehow didn’t have the strength to do so.  

They were interviewing a man who had been stung in the face and had scars all around his left cheekbone.  “I had no idea what hit me.  I was scuba diving in relatively shallow water, and suddenly it felt like a truck hit me in the face.”

They had been at his apartment, and they’d just finished Forgetting Sarah Marshall.  They had both felt like a comedy and found Jason Segel’s character particularly endearing, his pathetic dejection played for laughs.  Like most romantic comedies, everything worked out in the end, with Peter eventually finding someone who understands him (named Rachel, oddly enough), with the implication that they lived happily ever after.

After they finished talking about the film, Rachel discussed her videography classes in college, how she often enjoyed watching lighthearted movies but was drawn to making horror-style films.  “Which is really odd,” she’d said, “because I get more freaked out from horror movies than anyone I know.”

Dave hadn’t known exactly what to make of this topic, and she seemed to become anxious as she spoke about it.  “Do you want a neck rub?” he asked.

“Okay,” she said, and turned over on the couch.  He started gently kneading her neck with both hands, using steady downward motions to try to release tension.  

After a few minutes, he asked, “Does that feel better?”

“Yes,” she replied.

“Do you want any chips and salsa, and maybe some wine?”

“Okay, how about both?”

He opened a bottle of white wine, poured them each glasses, and brought chips and an open jar of salsa to the table in front of the television.

After they talked for a while, he said, “It’s late.  Do you want to stay over?”

Rachel hesitated.  “Okay,” she replied.  He had been making his bed regularly just in case this opportunity presented itself.

After they crawled into bed, he pulled her gently towards him and started kissing her lips.  She kissed him back, gently but firmly.  A little ways into it, he untucked her shirt and put his hand on her back.  She pulled away.  “I should go.”

“What?” Dave asked.  “I’m sorry.  We can just sleep.  I didn’t mean...”

“No, I have to get up in the morning.  Let me get my things.”  She put on her shoes, grabbed her purse and coat on the way out, and left.

That had been three days earlier, and he hadn’t heard from her since.  He vaguely remembered that there were tears in her eyes when she left, and she’d looked shaken up.

What had he done?  He didn’t think he was being pushy, and everything had been going fairly smoothly in their relationship up until then.



The lights were dim in Rachel’s apartment as she sat on the couch with her two cats.  She’d briefly been pulled in by a show about jellyfish but had turned it off partway through.  It was well-done but too unnerving.

Should she call Dave?  No, the explanation would be too complicated.  She sort of wanted to apologize, but how could she parse it?  She wanted to apologize for leaving, but she didn’t want to negate what she had been feeling at the time.  Anyone who was with her would have to know that she could be unpredictable, that she could be upset for reasons not apparent to those around her and which she wouldn’t be able to explain at the time.

She had turned off the television at the point they were comparing jellyfish to medusas.  Everything was blamed on women.  Women paralyzed men, terrorized men, were mysterious and amorphous and dangerous.

No, men were the jellyfish.  You thought you were in a beautiful ocean, a perfectly safe environment, enjoying the salty smell and the sunlight above.  And then, out of nowhere, you’re in blinding pain and confusion, left with a scar that lasts for the rest of your life.  

After that, you don’t want to visit the ocean again.