EPISODE 66

THE FINAL CHAPTER

I had arrived at Joan’s home with my usual quiver of fishing rods and every intention of spending each morning until lunchtime casting for blues and stripers during my stay. My mother, who always nurtured my somewhat obsessive preoccupation with fishing, took me out to the back porch and pointed to the pond out back. A thin ribbon of beach separates the pond from the Atlantic Ocean and on that day as I looked out with her, we could see a small canal that breached the sand, allowing water to flow out of the pond and into the sea.  This was a regular springtime event on Sagg Pond. The Town of Southampton would bring a big backhoe onto the beach and cut through the beach to allow the stale water out of the pond, to be replenished by seawater.

“The Town opened the pond about four days ago,” she informed me. “People have been surfcasting there every night.”  Of course, I took in this piece of information and misinterpreted it completely.  I saw it as a not-too-subtle attempt by my dear mother to keep me from visiting the somewhat more remote fishing spots that I liked to frequent when I visited my aunt and my uncle.  “Keep the boy close to home” was all I heard from her polite insistence that I fish at the site of the newly dug canal.  I smiled indulgently and went into the house, under the pretense of looking for a beer, which I did indeed crave at that moment.  But what I really needed to do was to get away from the woman I just knew was trying to sabotage my fishing expedition.

The next morning, I left for North Sea at about 5:30.  I spent a delightful two hours casting to absolutely nothing.  I moved to the Shinnecock Canal, where I had always found good fish in the past and finally caught a schoolie striped bass, but essentially the morning was a washout. That evening, I looked out at Sagg Pond and again my mother asked me if I planned on fishing there.  Once more, I smiled and set about ransacking the refrigerator for beer.  The next morning, I drove back to the Shinnecock Canal and with the exception of the small fact that I didn’t even see a fish anywhere; I repeated my somewhat fruitless experience of the previous day.  I decided to pack it in early.  As I drove back to my aunt’s house, I began to think about what my mother had had told me. Was it possible that she was just trying to make sure that her son might enjoy himself during his visit? She likely only meant well. How could I ignore her?

The answer was obvious. I was an idiot and I never paid attention to what anybody told me.

But on that morning, I broke with tradition and chose to listen.  I drove past the road where my aunt lived and headed to Sagg Beach. It was before nine o’clock, so the parking lot only held a few cars. I drove in, parked, and hauled out a rod and my tackle bag. I still wasn’t convinced, but I figured that another hour or so of casting there wasn’t going to hurt anything. I trudged across the beach to the water’s edge.  The first thing I noticed was the enormous quantity of bait in the water. There was a very light offshore breeze and so there was literally no surf breaking that day. I could see thousands and thousands of silverside minnows massed together, only 10 or 12 feet from shore. As I stared, I saw larger flashes of silver beneath them, indicating that something was feeding on the bait.

My very first cast resulted in a solid hit, which I botched completely, as is my habit when dealing with success where I don’t necessarily expect to find it. I cursed myself silently and made another cast. Oddly, I didn’t get any action on that offering, or from any of the subsequent efforts over the next 15 minutes. I decided to give a little careful study to the situation before continuing any further.  I reasoned that maybe I might do better with a smaller lure, fished a bit slower and deeper, so that it met the spot where all of the carnage seemed to be taking place. Sometimes I’m good at that: observing the obvious and adjusting my previously inappropriate strategy accordingly.  I swapped out the three quarter ounce Kastmaster I’d been using for a two-fifths of an ounce Cleo.  It turned out to be a very good idea and I got a second strike. What was bizarre though was that I discovered I’d hooked into a menhaden, a fish I normally think of as being bait, not as a game fish.  I released the menhaden and kept making casts. A few minutes later, I pulled in a bluefish. That was more like it! It appeared as though while the menhaden were feeding on the minnows, the blues were chomping on the menhaden as well as the smaller baitfish. I’d stumbled upon a veritable food chain!

 But the morning wasn’t over yet and perhaps a half hour after I’d released the bluefish, I got another strike.  I felt that hit all the way into my right shoulder and was delighted to see line zip off the reel as the fish ran. In spite of my predilection for giving every fish a more than even opportunity for escape by doing something fairly spastic, I managed to hold onto this one and after another five minutes, I saw a striped bass come to the surface off to my right, exhausted and ready to be beached.  I knelt by the shore, cradling the fish.  I had to take extra time after removing the hook from its mouth to revive it before letting it go.  As I held it, I was able to take stock of its heft.  The fish looked to be more than two feet long, but probably just shy of the legal keeper size of 28 inches.  The movement of its tail grew increasingly agitated, and it broke free of my grasp. 

I stood up and looked at the water.  The sight of the predators and prey flashing beneath the surface was mesmerizing.

That's all folks!

Thanks for reading!

All material on this blog copyright 2013 by Peter Cammann

SlipNot is an ebook, available for sale on amazon.com

EPISODE 65

I gave notice a few weeks after I got back from fishing with Sasha in Florida.  We spent two nice days on the water before ending up in bed together after a particularly good dinner of barbecued mahi, grilled red peppers and onions, and a couple of bottles of Gary Farrell Chardonnay at Sasha’s house.  After being so close for 10 years, it just seemed like the right time.  Neither of us was surprised that we also wanted to see what life might be like as a couple. We didn’t talk about moving in together or anything along those lines, at least not yet.  I found a one-bedroom bungalow for rent in Sarasota for about a grand a month.  It was small, clean, and the landlady had been amenable to a month-to-month agreement instead of a one-year lease.  Sasha approved, as it was located just a short drive from the boat ramp at Turtle Beach.  My departure from SlipNot went almost unnoticed.  Keith and Bosco were both in Asia at the time, sparing us all any further histrionics, which was probably as great a relief to them as it was to me.  

Allan had been willing to assume the rest of the lease at Jimmy’s apartment in New York.  He was sick of the group apartment he had been renting near NYU.  Since I’d sublet Jimmy’s place fully furnished, I didn’t have all that much to pack up either.  My stuff fit neatly into my car and left me with enough room in the front for a small cooler, which I had planned on filling with sandwich fixings and a few stray beers.  It was going to be a long drive down to Florida, so there was no sense to my mind in making it without proper provisions.  On a particularly beautiful June morning, I headed onto the FDR Drive and over the Triborough Bridge.  I headed east though as I had a stop to make before taking Route 95 South.

My parents were visiting my mother’s sister, Joan out on Long Island.  My aunt lived in Bridgehampton, right on the shore of Sagg Pond.  The two sisters had been born in New York City and Ellie (my dear mother) had her first encounter with my father (Rick) shortly after he got out of the army, having just completed a tour in Korea.  He had been staying with friends in Manhattan after being discharged and had spent a couple of weeks contemplating his eventual return to Vermont by hitting as many of New York’s drinking establishments as he could.  He was out slamming beers at the bar at the Heidelberg Restaurant on Second Avenue in Yorktown when Ellie came in with Joan and a couple of friends.  Joan thought he was cute, but she was already involved with a guy who was in the Navy.  He would eventually become my Uncle Andy, an avid fly angler and one of the people who taught me a lot about how a gentleman is supposed to behave on the water.  Joan urged Ellie to go talk to the nice looking fellow two barstools down and to her surprise, her sister did!  That’s how my mother met my father.  Rick really didn’t like New York all that much, but Ellie fell in love with him and fortunately, with White River Junction as well.  Joan eventually married Andy and moved out to the east end of Long island in the mid-‘60’s.  She used to joke that she did it to escape the Lindsay administration, but I think it had more to do with her new husband’s love of the ocean.  When I was a kid, my family would drive down to visit them every summer for a couple of weeks and I would spend all day at Sagg Pond, fishing for white perch.

During the heady summer that I turned eighteen, I spent the entire summer at Joan’s house.  I knew all of the thrills of working at a small newspaper doing page layout by day and drinking beer on the beach at night with the neighborhood hooligans.  One Saturday afternoon, I got a call from one of the aforementioned ruffians I’d been hanging out with.  Rob was actually pretty close to a solid citizen, at least during daytime hours.  He was the brightest and most ambitious of the guys I knew back then.  He was in the process of buying a house and Rob owned his own business too, a little farm stand located on the Montauk Highway, just to the east of Bridgehampton Village.  He also understood how to enjoy a day off and so when he invited me to join him and his grandfather for a day of fishing, I was all over it.

Of course, I showed up at the appointed morning armed for bear with my surf rod and a box filled with lures.  Rob’s grandfather smiled kindly and took them from my hands, assuring me that he already had all of the gear we’d need.  The three of us piled into his station wagon and that’s when I noticed three bamboo poles sticking out the back window.  We drove over to the long, skinny beach at North Sea and lugged the poles, a bucket, and a small seining net out to the shore.  While Rob’s grandfather filled the bucket with water, Rob and I untangled the net and waded out with it between us, corralling minnows and hauling them up onto the beach.  After a couple of sweeps, we’d caught several dozen silversides and a host of other miscellaneous species, which we dumped into the bucket.  The old man handed us each a pole and smiled.

“I think you know what to do now,” he said as he put a minnow on his hook and waded knee deep into the water.

Well, I sure as hell thought I did.  But no mater what I tried, I consistently missed the fish every time it hit my bait and yanked the bobber under.  Of course, whenever I looked over at Rob’s grandfather, I saw him take another fish off his line and drop it into a plastic garbage bag he’d brought along with him.  There was a school of snapper bluefish, little guys – maybe a foot long – that was holding just a few yards offshore and it soon became obvious that the old man was rapidly cutting into their numbers.  I, on the other hand, was beginning to feel a little foolish.  But one of the great things about old men fishing with young men is that after they’ve stopped laughing and have caught their breath, they offer to help the poor sons of bitches out. Rob’s grandfather waded over to me and explained to me that I’d been pulling back too hard when I tried to set the hook.  He also scolded me for not waiting long enough to make my move.

“The fish’s got to suck it down,” he admonished.  “You wait until that bobber is all the way down and then wait a few more seconds.”

I did and still I came up with an empty hook.

“You must love those fish,” the old man observed.  “You feed them like their mother.”

I simply refused to be taught anything when I was a young man and as I drove east on the Long Island Expressway to meet my mother and my aunt, I reckoned that it appeared that time had done little to alter that basic truth about myself.

The FINAL episode of SlipNot 

will be published on November 24th.

               If you'd like to read SlipNot in its entirety, GO HERE. 

EPISODE 64

I went back to my office and called Sasha’s.  Eric answered the phone.

“Michael!” he practically shouted in my ear.  “I’m glad you called. Sasha wants to talk to you.  Give me a sec to find her.”

I was put on hold for about a minute before Sasha came on the line.

“Michael?”

“Hey.”

“You are such an asshole!”

“What did I do?”

“Bosco told me you screwed up real bad.”

“I did,” I replied.  “I acted like a complete dick.”

“That’s what Bosco said.  How could you tell Keith to go fuck himself?”

“It seemed appropriate.”

“Michael!”  She was really ticked off now.  “You don’t know how serious this is!”

“Actually I do.  I insulted the guy who owns the company I work for by dropping the F-bomb.  Then I insulted him again by handing him a bill for the commissions he’d taken from me.  Other than that, I thought things went fairly well.”

“Jesus!  Michael, what the hell were you thinking?”

“Did Bosco tell you that SlipNot is going to pay me the money I told Keith I thought he owed me?”

“Bullshit.”

“Nope.  I met with Richard and he said that they’d pay me in monthly installments over the next year.”

Sasha was truly astonished.  All I could hear was her breathing.  It reminded me a bit of that time when she’d called to complain about the quality of the leads that Bosco and I sold her.  I waited for her to speak, but she remained silent.  Then she started to giggle.

“What?” I asked.

“I can’t believe you!” she laughed.  “You told them all to go screw and they rewarded you for it?”

“Yup!” I laughed.  “I was as surprised as you.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“It’s pretty obvious.  I have to get out of here, Sasha.”

“But why?  They’re paying you off.”

“I know, but they’ve also taken away my territory and that means I have to start all over again and with the toughest, crappiest part of the market that’s been left to me.”

Sasha didn’t say anything to that at first.  I figured that she was trying to come up with a pep talk that would get me to see this new adversity as an opportunity.  Hell, I’d tried to do the same thing, but I didn’t buy it.

“You couldn’t try it?” she offered.  “Just for a few months?  To see if it works?”

“I need some time to put something in place, but I’m definitely going to get out before they fire me.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Sell, what else?”

“Michael, that’s a little vague, even for you.”

She was right, of course.  Neither of us said anything for a bit before Sasha broke the silence.

“You could come work with me.”

“No.”

“Now wait!  I think this is really good idea!  I need someone who can take on the sales and marketing part of the business.  I can barely keep up with it and still keep the studio running every day.  It’d be a real relief…”

“Sasha, please.  But, no.  You’re very nice to offer.”

“Don’t patronize me, you shit!  I mean it.  You should come work here with me!”

The truth of the matter was that I was completely unemployable.  I simply didn’t play well in the sandbox with other people.

“I think I’m going to try something different.”

“What?  Michael, what are you thinking?”

“Well,” I said, “I’ve spent years selling advice to people who sell a product to people who don’t really need what they’re buying.  That’s pure sales.  It’s almost Zen.  It simply can’t get any more abstract than that!  Imagine for a second what it would be like if I sold something to people that they really wanted.  I’m not saying that you and folks like Frank Rotella, or even Joey Romano don’t offer something to your clients.  You do, otherwise they wouldn’t keep showing up.  They trust you guys and in return, you give them something that no one else can.  But I sure as hell can’t do that in this business, you know what I mean?”

“Actually, that was unusually condescending.”

“I’m sorry.  It wasn’t mean to be.  But in reality, I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know.  You sell your clients hair replacements because you want to make then happy.  That’s a real talent and you can’t fake it either. My job has been simply to show folks how to sell more of the product that Keith makes.  When Bosco and I tell people in seminars to ask their prospects questions like ‘How long have you been losing your hair?’ – or ‘What were you hoping we could do for you?’ – it’s almost not important what the answer is.  We basically tell them that don’t really need that ‘data’ to close the sale.  But you do need to get the prospect to think about the moment that he felt at his lowest about his hair and so that he can relive the pain.”

“So?”

“So, I don’t really care what any of my prospects say either, as long as I can direct the conversation the way I want it to go, to sell them advertising programs and marketing training.  That’s the only way I can look at this business.    I’m not in it to help anyone but my myself and by extension, SlipNot.”

“That’s very cynical, Michael.”

“I agree and I’m tired of feeling that way.  I think that’s part of the reason why I blew up at Keith.  I’m mad at him, but I’m also very angry with myself for putting myself in this position in the first place.  I’ve been telling people that it doesn’t matter what you sell, for so long, that I began to believe it.”

“Bought your own bullshit, did you?

“Appears like it.  That’s what makes this so bad.  What little credibility I have left is about to crash.  So I figure my best move is to reinvent myself and I sure as hell can’t do that in the hair business. 

“By the way,” I added.  “That was very sweet of you.”

“What?”

“To worry.  I appreciate it.”

“Thanks.  But you still haven’t answered my question: What are you going to do next?”

“They sell a lot of real estate in Florida.”

“What?” 

“I figure if I’m so good at essentially selling nothing, how tough could it be to sell houses or to rent out apartments?  That’s something that people actually need, unlike the parlor tricks I’ve been pushing all of these years.  From what I read, Florida is the place to be too. Besides, I already like the fishing down there.”

“Is that all you like?” Sasha asked softly.

“No.”

The next episode of SlipNot will be published on November 17th.

If you'd like to read SlipNot in its entirety, GO HERE.

ONLY 2 MORE EPISODES LEFT!