Heartbreak, She’s a Muskie

Heartbreak has many faces. To some, it looks like the final digit of a lottery ticket. To others, it appears as a bright red graphic on Election Day. But to my Dad, it’s a giant, hideous fish.

I learned this several years ago, when heartbreak paid me a visit at the end of a three year relationship. I was dumped unexpectedly from the first romance in my life that I believed would involve “Save the Date” cards. While I’ll omit the particulars to respect my ex’s privacy, the separation left me with the emotional grace of a kicked chicken.

In the following days, I learned the pawn shop value of a wedding ring, and accepted that the names of our future children belonged to fictional characters. I exhausted the sympathetic ears of friends and family. After the fifth call to my Mom in three days, she suggested I seek a different therapist:

“You know what, Joe? You should talk to your Dad.”

A quick note about me: I currently work as a writer/producer in Existential, Dread (Los Angeles, CA), but grew up in rural West Virginia where most of my family still lives. And when I say “rural” I don’t mean “we shopped at Walmart”; I mean “we had to drive forty-five minutes to the nearest Walmart and it was Manhattan in comparison to my hometown.”

Most Appalachian men of my Dad’s generation have the emotional sensitivity of a rail road spike. It’s not entirely their fault; their fathers doled out love in the form of extra shifts at the power plant mixed with grunts, gristle, and the occasional handshake.

Despite this, my Dad wound up with a romantic finger-painter for a son. We loved each other, but without the Appalachian bonds of sports, hunting, or snuff-rubbing between us, we regarded one another as Magic Eye puzzles: we squinted until we were cross-eyed, but neither of us could make sense of the other.

Because of this, I had never consulted him on matters of the heart. But on my darkest day of grief, when I caught myself on the verge of attending a yoga class, I decided to call my Dad instead.

“Everything seemed great, Dad. My friends loved her. We had two dogs and a Costco card. I thought it was just a matter of time before we’d be dancing the Electric Slide in a banquet hall.”

“Well Joe, heartbreak… she’s a muskie,” Dad replied.

Turn in your Hicktionary to “muskie” and you’ll read that it is an abbreviation for “muskellunge,” the prize fish of a thousand casts. These hard to hook apex predators are similar to the Northern pike, and nabbing one requires a fishing style much more aggressive than the “six pack and a bobber” variety. You have to drag the river with a moving lure, because a muskie won’t bite at anything that doesn’t seem alive in the water. They’re ugly as sin to boot.

The metaphor made no sense to me.

“Dad, is this a ‘plenty of fish in the sea’ thing, or — ”

“Son, in stories you don’t jump to ‘Shane got shot.’ Now listen…”

Dad launched into a tale about the first time he went muskie fishing with his buddy Muskie Mike. Mike held the state record for tiger muskie, and having attained such a title, retired to a fishing life of training apprentices like my Dad while sipping moonshine and hiding from his wife.

“We were out on McKim Creek, and Mike was in his cups,” said Dad. “It had been a muskie-free venture, but with Mike out of shine, we turned the boat upriver. As the sun began to set, I flopped my lure in the crick for one last drag.”

“Then the fish broke the water. It was prettier than a thirty point buck in a scope. Doubt did not enter my thinkings; Mike assured me this was the real deal.”

A struggle between fish and man of Ahab proportions ensued as my dad wrestled the massive, thrashing beast into the bowels of the boat.

“I dropped her out of the net and there she was: a flopping, shining, giant …carp.”

While the muskie is a prize fish worthy of your living room wall, you would be embarrassed for a garbage man to find a carp sitting atop your curbside trash.

“Dad, what does this have to do with heartbreak?”

“Sometimes your friends think you’ve reeled in a muskie, but the truth is they’re drunk and you’ve really caught a carp.”

He assured me that netting carps teach us just as much as reeling in a muskie. It takes a lot of fishing to notice the differences, but if you keep casting and look alive in the water, you’ll hook a muskie eventually.

The writer in me remained snagged on a single detail:

“So just to be clear… heartbreak is a carp, not a muskie?”

My Dad sighed.

“I’m just a boilermaker who loves his family. If you want a perfect story, ‘McClintock’ is on channel four.”

Though the Magic Eye of my Dad remains a little fuzzy around the edges, I no longer have to squint to see the heart at the center.