After the HaHaHole performance last month a few of us were sitting around and chatting about this and that. Apropos of nothing I remarked that a Whale is a BIG Fish. That Whales are really BIG FISHES. A very lovely lady sitting nearby corrected me — rather sharply, I thought, for comedy night — she corrected me that Whales are not Fish. They are MAMMALS.

       Of course I knew this. I know that they breath air like Mammals and have those little vestigial leg bones on their skeletons underneath all that blubber just like land Mammals have REGULAR legs, and WHALES do other things like Mammals do — but they do it under the water — where they can escape detection.     

      Yes, I said to the lovely lady, they are Mammals. WHALES ARE MAMMALS. But they don’t like being CALLED Mammals. They don’t like being IDENTIFIED as Mammals. In fact, they prefer to LIVE LIKE FISH. AS FISH. In the water. Under the water. They prefer to live like FISH and to be called FISH. And if they fall OUT of the water and land in Mammal territory — on Mammal turf — they DIE. They CROAK — just like THAT. Like other Fishes do when WHOLE SCHOOLS of them beach themselves out of frustration at being called Alewives and such.

      And here’s another thing. You know that chapter in Moby Dick on the Identity of Cetaceans. On CETOLOGY. Well in that chapter Herman Melville explicitly confirms that WHALES — and fucking-a, Melville KNEW Whales — that Whales preferred to be referred to as FISH. That they were -- for all intents and purposes — TRANS. Big time TRANS, too. Whale time TRANS. And so Melville called them FISH. He understood and respected that Whales prefer to shit and piss in the ocean — just like FISH do. Whales essentially use FISH BATHROOMS. The oceans. They are not Mammals in any real sense — they don’t take a dump and try to cover it up like show dogs or your prissy goody two shoes Mammal girlfriend.

      And it’s not just Melville that recognized the right of Whales to BE Fish. Look at the Bible. Look at the story of Noah. When God told Noah to load his Ark with the Animals -- you remember that, don’t you — you don’t see Noah and his sons Japheth and Ham and Sam the Sham – you don’t see them all trying to push a pair of PRETTY PISSED OFF WHALES up the gangway of the Divine Tub – aboard the ARK. Hell no. Fuck no. You don’t see that at all. What kind of stupid ass move would that be. They recognized Whales’s rights to be Fish — with a capital F — Whales’s rights to be Fish during cataclysmic flood times as well as boring old humdrum times. Probably the Whales agreed to swim alongside the Ark — I don’t know, I wasn’t there — but AS FISH. Their CHOICE. No smarty pants biology professor standing around and telling people otherwise. You know there are times when SCIENCE just doesn’t cut it. Ask Jonah if you don’t believe me. He got swallowed by a Whale. By a Big Fish. Can you imagine if the Bible said Jonah got swallowed by big MAMMAL. Can you imagine what your kids would say? Dad? Mom? What the fuck is God talking about? A MAMMAL? ONE OF US? Say it ain’t so, Mom. Dad, don’t tell us Whales are porcupines or pangolins now. Whales are Fish — aren’t they, aren’t they, aren’t they??

      Right. And now Melville again. Melville tells us that Moby Dick was a Sperm Whale. Dick — Sperm — see how it all starts to make sense. How it all fits together. Have you ever seen a Sperm? I mean through a microscope. Or in health education class — the film. Do Sperm look like Mammals – sprouting cutesy little hands and feet on their way upstream to the egg pen? Hell no. Fuck no. They look like Fish. And more than just Fish. They look like UR-Fish. The very most Primordial Fish — Fish with a capital F. Have you ever read about Plato’s Fish? Essential and immutable Fishness. Hell no. Because nobody gives a shit about essences anymore. In college or elsewhere. Essences are out. And I KNOW you Enlightened Folks out there are with me on this. Because I just made a big error in logic — a categorical error. And I don’t care. I don’t give a Flying Fish. WHALES can be FISH. If they want to FLOUNCE AROUND under the sea in FLIPPERS — if they want to hide their little vestigial legs under their blubber skirts — well let them for Pete’s sake.

      And Dolphins. Don’t even get me started in DOLPHINS. And Bats. Jesus Christ — Rats with sonar and wings. Or Elephants. My Korean wife sees an Elephant on tv and she says Look, Bob, A LEAF ANT. A LEAF ANT. If an Elephant wants to be a Leaf Ant in Mi-kyung’s world — who am I to gainsay her? Who am I to step on a Leaf Ant and crush its Trunk and Tusks and Flappy Awning Ears and all that — just to prove a point? Not me. I’ve read my MOBY DICK.

      And I thank you very much.

Robert Perchan’s latest books are the comic futuristic novella Tropic of Scorpio (Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2022) and Last Notes from a Split Peninsula: Poems and Prose Poems (Uncollected Press, 2021). His poetry collection Fluid in Darkness, Frozen in Light won the 1999 Pearl Poetry Prize and was published by Pearl Editions in 2000. Bob continues to eat and drink and write in Busan, South Korea, under the bemused gaze of his translator wife, Mi-kyung Lee.